I found Andrew Root’s chapter, “The Loss of Family as the Loss of Being: Divorce as an Ontological Wound,” particularly relevant, again, though, up to a point. The description of the impact of a father’s absence on a child after a divorce rang true. Referencing the thoughts of Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher, Root says, that “when the one who moves to another place is her father, the one responsible for the origins of her own being ... this sends shockwaves back to her own being”. “An ontological world has collapsed. ... She must question who he is, and in so doing must also ask who she is”.