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So to clarify one thing - and I love that you said the closed doors of your psyche. But I mean, it kind of - this is the kind of detail, I guess, that lives in those closed doors of our psyche because at 12 years old, what were you going to do about it? What actions would you have taken at that time? So you had all but forgotten about your aunt until your husband had you look at a viral tweet thread. So you knew about your aunt when you were 12.

The mothers were instructed not to even look at the baby, as if the sight of a baby who was different could be so monstrous. There were children who were born in hospitals who were just left at the hospital. I mean, there's, like, an iconic shot that I think we run in the Atlantic of just this thing. And yet, if you look at the archival photos from Willowbrook and all kinds of state institutions - not just Willowbrook alone, which was the most famous palace - gothic palace of horrors - you will see six and seven kids in a crib waiting to - you know, for supposedly some kind of therapy. I didn't know they institutionalized babies.

And your aunt, as we mentioned, was just 21 months old. Your mom, at the time that your aunt was institutionalized, was 6 years old.

Things that didn't make sense, as you mentioned, started to make sense. MOSLEY: Things about your family - the pieces of the puzzle, in a way - started to come together. I mean, the whole thing just sort of blew my 12-year-old mind, you know. So yeah, and I remember also being rather upset on sort of everyone's behalf that, like, wow, my mom had this sister she hadn't seen, and my grandparents had to give, like, a baby away. And we were Jewish, so I didn't know why, but it was because she had a daughter who was in a home where they were taken to church every Sunday. There had been no language revolution back then - and why my grandmother every Christmas would frantically and sort of anxiously go Christmas shopping. I write in the piece that it was both shocking, but also made this spooky kind of sense, because suddenly I had this understanding of these invisible forces that were slowly and subtly rearranging all the family dynamics, that this would explain why my grandfather was a volunteer at the Westchester Association for Retarded Citizens - which is what they called it in those days. SENIOR: Yeah, I was dumbstruck - thunderstruck. You learned about your Aunt Adele when you were 12 years old, and up until that time you actually thought your mother was the only child. And through your writing, you've created this space to acknowledge really the grief that comes with this choice. I mean, having to institutionalize loved ones is such a source of shame for so many families. MOSLEY: Thank you for this moving piece, Jennifer. JENNIFER SENIOR: Oh, thank you so much for having me here. The article is now published as a book under the title 'On Grief.' Jennifer Senior writes about her aunt Adele in the September issue of The Atlantic, titled 'The Ones We Sent Away.' Jennifer Senior, welcome back to FRESH AIR. Jennifer Senior is a staff writer at The Atlantic and winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for her piece 'What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind.' It's a portrait of a family's grief and the search for meaning after losing their son and brother on September 11. Jennifer Senior writes about her aunt Adele in the September issue of The Atlantic, titled 'The Ones We Sent Away.' In the piece, Senior gets to know the aunt she never knew she had and tries to restore her aunt's humanity and place in the family unit.

Many families of the time were advised the same thing - to send their children away for the sake of the child and the family. Basically, she'd never live a normal life. She had a younger sister named Adele, who had been institutionalized in the 1950s when she was just 21 months old.Īdele was born with a developmental and intellectual disability, and her parents were told she'd never know her family members' names or be able to function in society. Her mother was not the only child of her grandparents, as she'd grown up to believe. When Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jennifer Senior was 12 years old, she learned a startling detail about her family.

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