Processing Trauma

Through this theme, the author demonstrates how trauma from a person's past can continue to affect them in the present, shaping behavioral patterns and emotional responses. Many of the characters in the stories are somewhat unaware of the extent to which their past traumas are contributing to problems or confusion in their present lives, including the narrator of “Mind Craft.” It is revealed through a conversation with her half-brother Cole that the narrator's mother left her family many years earlier because she was romantically involved with another woman, and that the narrator has not seen or spoken to her mother since. She brushes Cole's questions off and does not think about the subject further, but the fantasies she has later at Walmart make it clear that she has not processed any of this trauma and that it is affecting her social and sexual life.

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