My Writing

Memoir-in-Progress: Synopsis

Parts of You, Parts of Me: What My Child’s Dissociative Identity Disorder Taught Me About Love, Listening, and Letting Go is an unflinching account of what happens when a mother stops trying to fix her child and starts listening instead. At 50, Jill was blissfully remarried and eager for the third, post-children act of her life to begin. Everything changed the day her oldest child returned home in crisis. 21-year-old Luna had become someone Jill barely recognized, with volatile mood swings and theatrical behavior. In the weeks and months that followed, a host of unwelcome strangers seemed to inhabit Luna’s body—a 4-year-old girl one minute, an angry 17-year-old boy the next—sometimes begging for comfort, others spoiling for a fight.

Throughout the two decades of raising Luna, Jill had researched and written extensively about child development and parenting. She had listened to countless expert voices; time and time again, conventional advice failed them both. This time, with Luna threatening suicide almost nightly and little to no help available, Jill decided to do the only thing she hadn’t already tried: Drop everything she thought she knew, and listen to Luna.

During Luna’s first year back home, Jill forged connections with previously unacknowledged parts of her child and herself. This decision would change both of their lives and open a path to previously unimagined levels of authenticity, trust, and healing.