Grief Motherhood

When your baby dies, you find yourself in a life you never expected. And even though pregnancy and infant loss are common, they're not common to you. Instead, you feel like a stranger in your own body, surrounded by well-meaning people who often don't know how to support you. In Unexpecting, bereaved mom Rachel Lewis is the friend you never knew you'd need, walking you through the unique grief of baby loss. When nothing about life after loss makes sense...this book will.

Sifting gingerly through memories of her late mother, brilliant newcomer Sarah McColl has penned an indelible tribute to the joy and pain of loving well. Even as her own marriage splinters, McColl drops everything when her mother is diagnosed with cancer, returning to the family farmhouse and laboring over elaborate meals in the hopes of nourishing her back to health. In a series of vibrant vignettes - lipstick applied, novels read, imperfect cakes baked - McColl reveals a woman of endless charm and infinite love for her unruly brood of children.

Korean immigrant Mina Pak Johnson is clearing out the last of her husband’s things when she finds a picnic basket in his closet—a long-forgotten wedding present from her mother. With it comes decades of memories—of her mother’s wishes for her to be happy and her own shattered hopes for her first child—and regret at never having used it. Pushing her husband’s ashes and a bottle of wine in a rusty old stroller, Mina is determined to re-create the picnic they never had. But with it comes something Mina never expected, illuminating a loving gesture her husband made years ago.

Jesse Cooper was an honor-roll student who loved to windsurf and write poetry. He also had severe cerebral palsy and was quadriplegic, unable to speak, and wracked by seizures. He died suddenly at age 17. In fiercely honest, surprisingly funny, and sometimes heartbreaking prose, Jesse's mother, Marianne Leone, chronicles her transformation by the remarkable life and untimely death of her child.

February 29th is a date that comes into existence just once every four years. It is also the birthday of Thais - author Anne-Dauphine Julliand's darling daughter - who died of a genetic disease. Thais lived just shy of her fourth birthday. She had a short life but good one. As this special day is about to reappear on her calendar for the first time since her daughter passed away, Anne-Dauphine struggles with how to mark this momentous occasion. She wants to live fully on this special day: Thais would have been eight years old.

Secrets shared can bind hearts, but secrets concealed? That's a tale of its own. The year is 1884. Robert Cooke and his pregnant wife Freya tragically lose their two sons to scarlet fever, sending Freya into self-imposed isolation for the safety of their unborn child. Cut off from each other, their shared grief becomes a silent, destructive foe. A decade later and now a successful businessman, Robert conceives a poignant tribute to his lost sons - a pleasure garden. But in withholding his vision from Freya, he widens the gulf between them.

Getting pregnant as a teenager was never part of Kate's plan, but when it happens she's determined to do right by her daughter, showing her the love she never had as a child. Life as a single mother is hard, sometimes impossible, but it only brings Kate and Becky closer together. By the time Becky is making her own way in the world as a tenacious trainee journalist, Kate couldn't be prouder.

Kate Inglis' story is a springboard that can help other bereaved parents - and anyone who has experienced wrenching loss - reflect on emotional survival in the first year; dealing with family, friends, and bystanders post-loss; the unique survivors' guilt, feelings of failure, and isolation of bereavement; and the fortitude of like-minded community and small kindnesses.

After losing four pregnancies with no obvious cause, Jennie Agg set out to understand why miscarriage remains such a profoundly misunderstood, under-researched and under-acknowledged experience. Part-memoir, part-scientific investigation, Life, Almost documents Agg's path to motherhood and her search for answers. Tracing each tentative step of her fifth pregnancy—as her body becomes a creature she does not wish to spook—Agg dismantles the myths that we unquestioningly accept about our reproductive lives.