Leaving Them

Birth is not merely that which divides women from men: it also divides women from themselves.— Rachel Cusk

I left my daughters when they were eleven and eight. I didn’t leave them entirely, but I did remove them from the place in my life — the centre — they had previously occupied. I put them off to one side and moved into that centre myself, or tried to. It was a gradual process. I thought there would be room for all of us, but I was wrong.

After twelve years of marriage, their father and I separated when the girls were nine and six. I had dated him all through high school and university. We married when we were both twenty-one. A daughter was born three years later, a second one three years after that. For two years following our separation, the girls alternated households: two weeks with me, then two with their father. We were living in Cobourg, Ontario, a biggish town a couple of hours east of...