What are the motifs in Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult?

Individuality is a recurring idea in this novel because it is a challenge that several of the characters struggle with. The first character who struggles with this theme is May, Paige's mother. May is a woman who feels strongly about her own identity, and feels that by being a wife and a mother, she has simply become an extension of someone else's identity and no longer has an identity of her own. In order to resolve this problem, May leaves her family when Paige is five. Although this is a difficult thing for May to do, she feels she cannot return to her family because she caused too much hurt to be allowed back into the family.