Cleaved: A story of loss, legs and finding family

CLEAVED is the story of Jane and her sister Julie, foot soldiers in the family war, growing up under the same roof, each cleaved to a different parent from birth. Jane is Mum’s and Julie is Dad’s.

The situation is normal, even if Jane’s not.

＂Just tell them you were born that way,＂ her mother says when the kids at school taunt her about her ＂big leg＂, as her mother calls it.

There’s no name and no cure for the mysterious swelling that means Jane’s right leg is a perfectly proportioned bigger version of her left, so it’s ignored, subsumed by bigger family problems.

The emotional cleaving is made physical when their parents finally separate - until a shocking discovery blows Jane and her mother away from the rest of the family.

Jane’s leg is later diagnosed as Milroy’s disease, a rare genetic form of the incurable and progressive swelling disease lymphoedema.

Written with compassion and humour, CLEAVED is a tale of resilience, and of tender and fraught reunions and partings, until Jane finally puts the pieces of the family puzzle together, examining everyone’s part in the tragedy, including her own.

Illuminating and moving, CLEAVED is the story of two sisters who lost and then found each other.