Content Warning: This guide and its source material addresses LGTBQ+ and anti-gay discrimination and bias.

“Our first summer at the lake cabin with Mom, there were Mom-shaped reminders everywhere, like her blue Sorry! Pieces and the chipped yellow bowl she always used for tomato salad. The Mom-reminders were all over the place, but I was the only one who saw them.”

After the divorce, Bea sees her mother everywhere, demonstrating one of many of The Effects of Parental Divorce in Childhood. Unlike her dad, who has moved on, Bea still misses how things used to be and feels isolated by her emotions. Bea sees the changes and feels nostalgic for how things were before.

“Those first months at Dad’s, it was like I had to build a hundred bridges, from me to every new pieces of furniture, every new lamp, every new fork, even the bathroom faucets and the lock on the door, until, slowly, all of Dad’s new things stopped feeling wrong.”

Moving into her dad’s new apartment and adjusting to a new schedule, place, and life was difficult for eight-year-old Bea. She felt like a stranger there, as though at some point soon she would be returning to her actual home. The examples Bea uses are simple, everyday objects that most people would take for granted, but which for her felt strange at first.

“When my happiness makes me feel huge, it’s almost like nothing can hurt me. But I was wearing sandals, and the glass cut my foot.”

During the period after her parents’ divorce, Bea learned a great deal about The Relationship between Mental Health, Behavior, and Emotions. Reflecting back, she describes a balloon of happiness that often welled up inside of her and caused her to lose perspective, which sometimes led to hurting herself or others.