THE MISSING SIDE
Read, hear, and view Rooters literary and artistic expressions of their abduction experiences
The contents of the Missing Side Collection are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. You are free to share, copy, and distribute for any non-commercial purpose provided you attribute the work to both Take Root and the individual author and do not alter or transform it in any way.
Abduction Narratives | Artwork | Prose & Poetry | Essays | Music
To understand how to help, you have to understand what happened. From our own perspective, in our own words, abduction narratives by Take Root members participating on our VOICES panel
Tiffany
My family has always been extremely dysfunctional. I was born to a drug addict and dealer. My father, at least since I can remember, was always very abusive to my mother. After their divorce, things were great with my mom, sister and I, until my mother was in a horrific car accident. My mother was completely disabled from the waist down and could not even get out of bed. She knew at the time that she could not take care of my sister and I so she looked to...
Sheri
Even after everything I’ve been through and the trust issues that accompany my childhood, I really do believe that people are generally well-meaning. They want to be there for their friends and family emotionally, but when there is a true rift between life experiences sometimes it’s hard for them to really grasp what another is feeling. This has been my experience. Until joining Take Root recently, I had never spoken to another person, other than my brother, who truly understood the ghosts that haunt me on a daily basis....
Sam
My brother was born in December of 1958. I was born in June, 1962. At age 1-1/2, my parents separated. My father was extremely jealous and occasionally hit my mother. She says the last straw was when the dog, Moe, knocked my brother down a flight of stairs and my father ran for the dog first. At age 3, their divorce was final. My mother got custody while my father had weekend visitation rights. After one of those visits, I asked my mother, “what if Daddy doesn’t bring us...
Rick
I was born in early 1951, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the son of an Argentine attorney married to an American woman (one of three sisters from Brooklyn, all of whom met and married men from Argentina). I was raised in Buenos Aires, speaking Spanish as my native language, and starting to speak English at around age three. When I was three and a half, I contracted polio, and was totally paralyzed. I gradually recovered all functions in my upper body and arms, and regained some limited function in my...
Mic
My father was a criminal long before he abducted my siblings and I. It is hard now for me to believe there was a time in which I may have loved him. I know my attempt to put this story to words will not succeed in conveying even a small percentage of the evil he has inflicted on those who have had the misfortune to know him. I was born aboard a 32 ft boat while crossing the Atlantic Ocean with my parents and 10-month-old sister. My father choose...
Lynda
My name is Lynda Eigenberger and I am 43 years old. Abduction doesn’t mean the parent is in the right or in the wrong, it’s just something that happened to me. I really don’t care who the legal parent was. There were no winners in this, I lost my parents, a good relationship with my brother, and I can’t look at my life and say that I have a childhood friend. My parents moved us all over the states, running and hiding from each other, when we didn’t want...
Liss
In 1977, I was Missy Sokolsky, the daughter of affluent parents on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. I was loved and supported by an extended network of family and friends. I had been in the same bedroom in the same apartment in the same building since the day I came home from the hospital. By fourth grade, I had been with many of the same classmates since nursery school. After school, I had riding lessons, and ballet, and piano, and tumbling, and a tight pack of kids from the building...
Linnea
Somehow I find it very difficult to put my story down in writing. It has taken me many attempts just to come this far. It’s strange, because I’ve told it innumerable times, and that without much trouble or hesitation. But putting it down in print… why is that so difficult? Maybe because I will have to choose one version. The problem is that I personally don’t have a recollection of the abduction or the problems leading up to it. My story has always been a regurgitation of what others...
Kelly
My story of parental abduction began in the summer of 1976-I was nine, my brother was six. Our parents were in the middle of a bitter divorce and custody battle. We had recently undergone a court-ordered custody evaluation that eventually put my father at the losing end, or so he perceived it. My brother and I were taken during a regular weekend visit just before I was to start fourth grade and my brother was to begin first grade. If I close my eyes, I can still see my...
Jen
As is the case with almost everyone I have met recently, my situation is very unique. There are a couple of factors that allow for the individuality of my past, and fortunately, one of those is the fact that I am currently able to maintain relationships with both of my parents, and both of my step parents. I was born into a marriage which quickly disintegrated when I was two years old. My parents probably never should have entertained a marriage, but luckily for me, they did, thus I...
Charlene
My parents were going through a bitter divorce. Not because of money – each wanted custody of me and my brother. Most of my early childhood is a blur of memories, some happy, most sad. My father had anger problems and was unemployed a lot, and my mother was an alcoholic.My older brother and I stuck together while we could. I had seen many tragedies already at such a young age.My father beat my mother enough to go into a hospital while we watched. My mother would stagger home...
Rebekah
I am 24 and this is the first time in the 13 years I have been home that I am actually reaching out to others who have been through a parental abduction.For so long I was in denial about what happened to me and I didn’t want to deal with all of the anger and emotions I had because of my mother taking me, but I have finally got to a point in my life where I don’t want to feel bad about myself and about what happened to...
Carolyn
I was five years old when I was taken out of my bed and placed in my father’s waiting car and along with my two brothers and sister driven from our home in Chicago to central Mississippi. Once there I was literally dropped off on a relative of my father’s in the middle of nowhere to live with people I did not know. I was taken from a mother I loved and with whom I had a strong bond, an extended family of grandparents, uncles, and cousins, friends, school,...
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