Kate Jackson’s mother took off when Jackson was an infant, leaving her 9-month-old daughter and 4-year-old son with an overwhelmed father and a lifelong search for equilibrium.

“He was a loving and nurturing father,” Jackson writes in “Relative Strangers,” the new anthology she edited, “but affection and attention couldn’t give my brother and me what we also needed — the truth about our mother.

“It’s a misconception,” she continues, “that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Unknowing can be bewildering, isolating, shame-inducing, and deeply disquieting.”

Well into adulthood, Jackson happened upon her mother’s obituary, which referenced six surviving children, none of whom was Jackson or the brother she knew. A few years after that discovery, a DNA test revealed that the man who raised Jackson and her brother was not her biological father.

“In a heartbeat, the yearning, the ache, and the grief doubled back,” Jackson writes. “I lost my bearings. I was like a pilot flying blind in the fog. My compass was off kilter, and my touch points had disappeared.”

“Relative Strangers” is, in part, her attempt at a roadmap. As the founder and editor of Severance, a........

© Chicago Tribune