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Cleaved: A story of loss, legs and finding family
Journalist, cartoonist, playwright - that’s how most people know Melbourne writer Jane Cafarella. What she didn’t write about was her “big leg” – the mysterious swelling disease that meant her right leg was a perfectly proportioned bigger version of her left.
Growing up, there was no cure and no name for it, so it was largely ignored. “Just tell them you were born that way,” her mother says when Jane is taunted at school.
Jane’s leg story was always secondary to the bigger story of family estrangement – the story of two sisters each claimed by a different parent in the family war.
Written with humour and compassion, Cleaved begins when Jane is 17 and the emotional divide has finally become physical. Jane and Mum have moved out of the family home and Mum is repeating the story of their cleaving:
“I cleaved you to me. I grabbed you up, because you were a very ill baby,” she tells me as the years roll by, her jade eyes wide. “I was around you all the time, weeping and crying. Around you all the time, stuck to you like glue.”
And the story of our cleaving feels both inevitable and uncomfortable, a fairy tale curse - and a gift.
Between hiding her mismatched legs, Jane ferries messages between the two warring households until the explosive discovery that further “cleaves” Jane and her mother from the rest of the family for decades.
A year later Jane’s leg is finally diagnosed as a Milroy’s Disease, a rare form of congenital lymphoedema and she undergoes a series of pioneering surgeries to reduce it, while pursuing her career as a journalist and embarking on serial marriage to replace her lost family.
A sister story, an immigration story, a story of growing up different, and a mystery, Cleaved is a candid and compelling search for family, truth and self-acceptance that will leave you laughing and crying.
Growing up, there was no cure and no name for it, so it was largely ignored. “Just tell them you were born that way,” her mother says when Jane is taunted at school.
Jane’s leg story was always secondary to the bigger story of family estrangement – the story of two sisters each claimed by a different parent in the family war.
Written with humour and compassion, Cleaved begins when Jane is 17 and the emotional divide has finally become physical. Jane and Mum have moved out of the family home and Mum is repeating the story of their cleaving:
“I cleaved you to me. I grabbed you up, because you were a very ill baby,” she tells me as the years roll by, her jade eyes wide. “I was around you all the time, weeping and crying. Around you all the time, stuck to you like glue.”
And the story of our cleaving feels both inevitable and uncomfortable, a fairy tale curse - and a gift.
Between hiding her mismatched legs, Jane ferries messages between the two warring households until the explosive discovery that further “cleaves” Jane and her mother from the rest of the family for decades.
A year later Jane’s leg is finally diagnosed as a Milroy’s Disease, a rare form of congenital lymphoedema and she undergoes a series of pioneering surgeries to reduce it, while pursuing her career as a journalist and embarking on serial marriage to replace her lost family.
A sister story, an immigration story, a story of growing up different, and a mystery, Cleaved is a candid and compelling search for family, truth and self-acceptance that will leave you laughing and crying.
216 pages, ebook
Published March 6, 2024
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