Little Secrets

Marin Machado’s Support Group for Parents of Missing Children is symbolic of community. Marin joins the group in the months after Sebastian disappears in an attempt to find support through her grief and confusion. Unlike Marin’s therapy sessions, Marin’s support group meetings carry no “unspoken expectation that she’s there to get better” (19). Rather, the group brings together people who have “one terrible thing in common: they all have missing kids” (19). The group has no distinct leader and, therefore, no exact agenda. Instead, the group grants its members a safe space in which to freely discuss what happened to them and to express their complex emotions without judgment.

The support group also reminds Marin that she isn’t alone in her loss. Because Derek Machado has been silent and withdrawn since Sebastian’s kidnapping, Marin has no one with whom to process her experience. The group grants her this realm. Marin finds the group particularly helpful because “sometimes someone else’s pain is the only thing that makes yours better” (33). Therefore, the group equalizes its members. Marin finds common ground with the other parents, including Frances Payne, Lila Figueroa, and Simon Polniak. She not only listens to their stories but shares her own in a raw and unbridled manner.