Dealing With Loss

The author uses the losses in her life — her divorce, the death of her father, and the loss of the life she wanted — to illustrate how she learned to deal with these losses. The author indicates that it was her divorce and the joint custody requirements that caused her to hit the bottom. Before that, she dealt with the loss of the life she had imagined for herself when her husband said that he wanted a divorce. Through all of this new grief, the author is still trying to deal with the loss of her beloved father and the disappointment he showed in her when she refused to take care of her brother.

The author describes her devastation she felt when she learned as a result of the divorce, her son would live with his father, away from her, half of the time. Despite the author...