The Story She Left Behind

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, suicidal ideation, child abuse, and bullying.

Clara is the protagonist of The Story She Left Behind. The chapters that include her name in the title are also written from her first-person point of view. These sections offer insight into Clara’s internal world. Her first-person narration also reflects her self-possession and attunement with herself. She wants to find answers to her past and resolve her conflicts in the present—desires captured in her ongoing work to make sense of her identity.

Clara is an artistic person with a loving heart. In the present, she works as a children’s book illustrator and an art teacher who embodies Artistic Creation as a Form of Self-Expression and Self-Discovery. Painting and drawing are her ways of expressing her often inarticulable emotions and capturing the mysteries of her internal experience. Whenever she is feeling overwhelmed with complex feelings, she “want[s] a canvas, a palette of paints” (165). Art is a way for her to understand herself and capture her complicated lived experiences.

As a daughter and a mother, The Indelible Bonds Between Mothers and Daughters heavily impact Clara.