"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far."

These are lines from "On Children," a chapter of Khalil Gibran's The Prophet. Children are arrows, and parents are pivots. The bowstring is stretched tight to send the children into a limitless future. But what if the string snaps or the parents lose their hold? Won't the children go off course, be powerless, or fall straight to the ground?

Divorce is the collective hurt of people in these times, and just like any kind of injury, when there's no hope you can only lick your wounds in the dark. Someone who's out of work can seek unemployment benefits from the government (as discussed in our article "Employment Insurance" in this issue). Someone who's been in a car accident can complain to everyone around. Someone who's been diagnosed with cancer will be asked after by loved ones. But someone who gets a divorce will be sized up by everyone. No one will say a word, acting like everything is normal. Whether the divorce is caused by an affair, domestic violence, money problems, or irreconcilable differences, it's always a long and painful process. But no matter whether a couple will come to regret it later, it is in the end a decision made by adults. The ones who don't have the right to decide, yet carry the burden anyway, are the children.

This month, after reading deputy editor Chang Chiung-fang's "Children of Divorce," I cried and cried. It wasn't just the sad stories in it, it was all the memories it stirred up in me. When I was a child, there was a boy next door who would only turn up mysteriously during summer and winter vacations. Though he played ball and skipped rope with us, he was nobody's friend because he was an "outsider" and because he was always moody and hard to get close to.

Only later did I learn that he was in joint custody--his parents divorced, but both wanted to take care of him. He had to be shuttled back and forth to satisfy the parents. Nobody cared whether or not he'd rather spend his vacations with his buddies from school, or whether he might feel uncomfortable because of our hostility toward him. But at least he didn't have it like Hsiao Mei in Chang's article--she had to start flying to America all by herself at the age of five!

Then there was the college-age girl, smart and attractive, whose parents had divorced. She was jealous of her friend's tightly knit family. One day when her friend's father came to pick her friend up, she wouldn't let her leave with him, threatening to kill herself. Her friend would always be haunted by the memory.

Another child of divorce described his feeling "rootless" and "like an abandoned fledgling." He says, "A home is like a tree's roots. If they're not complete, then you have to drift over to another tree and make a home there."

There were so many. This time, we didn't have to do any detective work to find interviewees--examples were all around us. If no one asked children of divorce about it, they wouldn't say anything. But when they have a chance to talk about it, even though it might have all happened years ago and they are no longer frightened little children, the resentment and anger they pour forth is enough to make parents on the verge of divorce stop and think.

There are also some happier articles in this month's issue. There's one about an arts carnival that everyone will want to take part in, the Dream Community. It will make you appreciate all the hard work the people of Taiwan put in every day to make our island a better place. There's also "Yoga 2.0"--some of our editors have been swept up in the yoga craze, so it was an especially interesting report for them. They're all still getting the basic poses down, though. If they want to move on to themore spiritual aspects of yoga practice, they've still got work to do.