“The gun on the floor. Bending to pick it up. The noise that exploded around us. This is what I know about myself. She was all I wanted. And I took her away.”(Kidd 8) Lily has had a rough start to her life with her father being abusive and neglecting to her and not to mention her shooting and killing her mom on accident. Lily had lost so much, but gained a great deal of parental figures when she and Rosaleen escape off to Tiburon. There they find August Boatwright and Lily’s life changes. In the book “The Secret Life Of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd, the author establishes a theme of gain from loss when Lily suffers the loss her mom and dealing with an abusive father that lead her to find a new family of Rosaleen and the Boatwright family.
Lily's loss of her mom provided guidance to where she is now. “It looked to me like somebody had cut the black Mary’s picture from a book glued it onto a sanded piece of wood about two inches across, and varnished it. On the back an unknown hand had written ‘Tiburon, S.C.’.”(Kidd 14) Although losing her mom was a great tragedy it led her to where she is now and where she found the Boatwright family. Killing her mom was the only way she would have found the picture of the black Mary with Tiburon, S.C. on the back.
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“This is the moment I remember clearest of all how I stood in the driveway looking back at them. I remember the sight of them standing there waiting. All these women, all this love, waiting.”(Kidd 299) Although Lily did suffer a great loss from losing her mom, she gained so much more with the love and support that the Boatwrights and their group gave her. She has gained friends, someone to look up to, and the sense of family from all of them. Without the loss of her mom and the abuse of her dad she would never of gotten the experience of such powerful female role models and a new