
The year before, the family saw me launch into a phase of self-discovery that included quitting my job as a newspaper editor and staying home going through old journals and making masks from the pages. I had a soul need to differentiate from the me-as-wife-and-mom, and I was working hard to manage a wildly creative self that had suddenly emerged one day and refused to be silent any longer. In the end, divorce followed that rebirth.
Corey was not quite ten when she wrote this keenly observant description of me in that card: “Name for you: Purple woman, Mommy, Secret woman, and Mask woman. P.S. I love you.”