Showing results for "the swallows" in Parenting & Families

When her son was three, Brooke Boland was diagnosed with depression. She went back to find where it all started–the panic attacks, the dissociation–in the early days of motherhood. When she found it difficult to read or write. In this wide-ranging collection of essays Boland moves on from the person she was and writes to understand who she is now. She swims with sharks, falls in love with a rabbit, and watches her father fight for his life. She is a newcomer in a small regional town and a mother, but what else?

Charismatic, beautiful Sally Flynn was the center of her daughters' imaginations, particularly Laura's. Without warning, life as they knew it changed as paranoid schizophrenia overtook Sally. Whether it was accusing Laura’s father of trying to win her over to the side of Satan, or buying only certain products that were evil-free, glimmers of her mother’s future paranoia grew brighter as Laura’s early years passed. Once her husband left the family and filed for divorce, Sally’s symptoms bloomed in earnest, and the three girls united in flights of fancy of the sort their mother had taught them in order to deflect danger.