They seemed to be traveling south early, the flight of geese I saw through the high, floor to ceiling windows of my office yesterday morning. They appeared about the time my first client of the day was recounting how her daughter nearly died recently from bingeing on alcohol and Xanax. Her daughter told her she was not attempting suicide, that she just wanted to blot out the world, so great was her psychic pain. My attention was split, listening to a story of despair and a person's desperate attempt to escape it while drawn and exhilarated by the long dark strand of geese, advancing elegantly, straight as a pencil line against blue sky, across a continent and toward a warmer season of life. They sometimes exhaust themselves in their journey, their bodies giving out, their will still determined when the last breath comes. I learned this in my mid-teens after finding a Canada Goose lying dead along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, its wings spread and its webbed feet trailing behind, its long neck stretched before it, as if still in flight, still destined for a far place. Much later in life I learned that geese mate for life. That lesson was learned while facilitating grief groups for the university where I worked. As a poignant illustration of grief, I would tell my group that if its mate is lost in the flight, a goose will go in search of it, searching sometimes until it too exhausts itself and dies. The point is furthered by the understanding that grief, too, must exhaust itself. No goose fell from the morning sky during my brief glimpse of their beautiful, confident and determined act of life. In that moment, my thoughts and emotions lightened and took flight. If the client before me had been new, if I hadn't worked with her for some time and developed a trusting relationship in which she would properly understand, I wouldn't have alerted her to the scene. But I know her strength, and she knows by now my unwavering empathy and regard for her. A decent interval had passed between her daughter's crisis and our discussion of it in session. I asked her to take a look, so she could know that my visibly divided attention was not caused by anything mundane. I took the chance that what had taken flight in me would take flight in her: hope, determination and an awe of life and of the elegant flyers who inspire such heart-lifting thoughts as no therapist ever will. I hope it worked. I hope it lasts.