On Facebook, Jennifer Senior described her latest, very personal piece like this: “My aunt was wearing a bright red sweater…and so was my mom. My aunt was wearing a chunky necklace she’d made…and so was Mom. Because they were both now into making necklaces. It was NUTS.
This is the story of how my mother found her way back to Adele. But it is also a story about the price of institutionalization and the trauma it caused. To my mom. To her parents. And to my aunt above all, who suffered terribly and became a case study in unrealized potential. Whole generations of adults were lost to institutionalization. They were warehoused, hidden away, forgotten. So many of us colluded in their erasure.
This piece is my small attempt to un-erase one of them.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Ones We Sent Away.