The Ones We Sent Away

September 22, 2023

(The Atlantic) – It is extraordinary what we hide from ourselves—and even more extraordinary that we once hid her, my mother’s sister, and so many like her from everyone. Here are all these pictures of nonverbal children, so pulsingly alive—their parents describing their pleasures, their passions, their strengths and styles and tastes—while I know nothing, absolutely nothing, of my aunt’s life at all. She is a thinning shadow, an aging ghost. (Read More)