Part 2 of "In The Woods When First We Met"

226. A Fellow Traveler

This is the most important chapter to me.

Anne has people around her who don't quite fully understand the emotions she's going through, but she IS getting a lot of love and help from them. Her family and her friends are a wonderful support system for her.

But now, she needs someone who can tell her the practical stuff about how to get through it.

I thought about what *I* would have liked to have been given warning of...someone to tell me what lay ahead for me.

I thought about how I didn't know that triggers wouldn't necessarily last forever. That they can get better, and can even go away.

I thought about how I felt on those "anniversaries"- and how I didn't expect the whirlwind that hit me and drew me back in when the weather started to change. ...How experiences we have can be so tied to the seasons around us.

I felt like I was too young to know that bad things can get better. When you're young, you just don't have enough life experience to know that when something happens, it doesn't have to be the end of everything.

So.

In this chapter I wanted to create a new character- someone who can help Anne find a path, because she has already navigated her own.

"He was not a well-wisher, but a fellow-traveler. And that made all the difference." -Elizasky, Within a Forest Dark.

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"You know, Gilbert Blythe said something to me when he first told me about the...attack."

"What did he say about it?" Dr. Carter asked Marilla as he sat with a cup of tea in her kitchen one sunny afternoon.

"He said she needed more. Gilbert shook his head and said, 'I don't know what, but she needs more'. ...And when he said it, I thought that he had done the best he could as her friend, and now it was time for me to take over- that I- as a mother figure- was the 'more' that she needed."

Dr. Carter nodded.

"But I find myself in the same boat Gilbert was...she needs more, and I don't know what the 'more' is either, but I don't seem to be it! I'm trying so hard to help her, but I don't know what she needs."

Dr. Carter, being both a professional physician and a respected and beloved member of the community, wanted to help Anne, but he, too, felt helpless. "I was thinking, perhaps a change? Take her away to the city, where things are livelier...there's always something exciting happening, and it might draw her out of her confinement. And she could associate with people who've never heard about what happened to her. She could start fresh there."

As Marilla thought about that, he went on: "Or perhaps take her away to a warmer climate. Time by the seashore might be calming."

Marilla tried to be hopeful, but found herself unable to imagine that anything could be different. "Even if we could take her away, I don't think it'll do any good because eventually she'll have to come home and all her same troubles will be right here where she left them."

Dr. Carter tried to think of something else to suggest.

"I tried to talk to the reverend," Marilla said, feeling very near tears now. "He blames Anne. Not completely, but still, he does. He told me that a boy can easily fall into temptation, and so Anne must have..." Marilla trailed off, then said- anger in her voice- "...all I've learned from the reverend is that it's a girl's responsibility to keep men from attacking her, since they can't seem to help themselves."