I looked down at the first statement on my list and felt myself blush. “When you tell me I don’t deserve to be loved,” I winced in embarrassment, “I feel sad?” I looked to Charlotte, worried I was doing it wrong.

“Good,” she said. “Now can you try doing this without a smile?”

Getting me to stop smiling was a goal for all the counselors. According to them it was part of my armor. “We wear masks to protect ourselves, but they also keep us from being vulnerable,” Richard announced the first week. “They keep us from achieving intimacy.” During the Wednesday night Big Book meeting, a recovering alcoholic defined intimacy as “into-me-you-see.” I’d written it down on the back page of my journal.

“Okay.” I shook my head as if to shake off the smile and looked back down at my list. “When you told me you were from a better family than me, I felt bad.”

“You’re my mother,” Charlotte said. “Tell her, ‘you’re my mother.’”

“You’re my mother,” I echoed.

“Tell her, ‘I’m your blood. I’m your family.’”

“I’m your blood,” I said to the chair. I realized that I was shivering. I looked at the list and couldn’t distinguish the words. I looked at Charlotte. “Do I have to keep going?”

She nodded.

“When you told me you were beautiful, and I was average,” I said, and then stopped. I couldn’t speak through my chattering teeth.

Overseas, her looks, elegance, and status as an Abu Sa’ab all work together to ensure that she is loved. By the time I was in high school, our trips to Jordan had changed shape, contoured by summer jobs. One year, I got to Amman a few weeks before my mother. For days leading up to her visit I was questioned about when she’d be arriving. “I don’t know exactly,” I answered. Like a celebrity, my mother never told. When we found out she was on a connecting British Airways flight set to land at nine thirty, I watched as her friends and family changed out of their pajamas to meet her at the Four Seasons lounge once she arrived. I sat there with a glass of wine, exhausted by the anticipation of seeing her, hoping everyone would finish their drinks quickly so we could go home. I was fully aware that no one had forced me to join.