Day 10: "The Ones We Sent Away"

Jennifer Senior (The Atlantic, September 2023)

IIn this twenty-two-day series, we are counting down the days to publication (October 22, 2024) with a brief passage from each of the twenty-two essays included in The Best American Essays 2024. These excerpts were curated by Best American Essays Editorial Assistant Cheyenne Paterson and are presented in the order of the volume’s table of contents.

“Strange how seldom we think about who our parents were as people before we made their acquaintance—all the dynamics and influences that shaped them, the defining traumas and triumphs of their early lives. Yet how are we to know them, really, if we don’t? And show them compassion and understanding as they age?”

—Jennifer Senior, “The Ones We Sent Away,” The Atlantic, September 2023.