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No one talks about this stuff : twenty-two stories of almost parenthood
2024
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Publishers Weekly Review
These intimate personal reflections, collected by journalist Brown (It's Not a Bloody Trend), probe the complicated emotions that follow miscarriages, terminated pregnancies, and learning one can't have a biological child. Jody Day recounts struggling to conceive despite having no discernible medical impediment and feeling like "a failed woman" until her mid-40s, when she started a blog about the experience, around which coalesced a supportive community of women who were "childless-by-circumstance." Other entries explore the reasons women choose to end a pregnancy, with Hilary Freeman offering a plaintive account of deciding not to carry her baby to term after discovering it had a rare genetic condition that would have made its life short and painful. Elsewhere, Miranda Ward meditates on maintaining her "capacity for hope" after four miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy, and Rageshri Dhairyawan recalls burying herself in her work to distract herself from the grief she felt after learning she wouldn't be able to conceive by IVF. The heartrending stories capture the sorrow and despair that accompany unsuccessful attempts to have children, even as they illuminate the many roads to acceptance after pain. Readers will want to keep tissues at the ready. (July)
Summary

A profound and honest anthology in which twenty-two writers share everyday experiences from their pursuit of parenthood.

No One Talks About This Stuff is a support group for almost-parents: it is a place to share journeys of loss and limbo, to confront social pressure and to find courage in the darkness of tragedies which happen every day yet are brushed under the carpet.

So, we hear from a stepmother who wrestles with infertility. A husband and wife each tell their experience of losing their baby. A lesbian comes of age at a time when gay people rarely become parents. A father finds loss to be his unlikely superpower. Complex post-traumatic stress disorder impacts a person's choices about having a family. A black woman unpacks ancestral shame while finding renewed purpose. And each person shares how they lived through it.

This captivatingly beautiful, profound and honest anthology opens a much-needed conversation about society, family and honouring the missing children we will never forget.

Table of Contents
Introductionxi
Disenfranchised Grief
The Story Which Does Not Have an End3
Pronatalism and Me: Waking up from the Trance of Motherhood14
A 'nearly Life'24
The Unspoken Trauma of Almost-Motherhood29
Small, Soft, Grey Pig38
Society
A Historical Perspective on Women Without Children47
The Silence of Shame57
Grief is Not a Competition71
'Other People' Problems79
Choice
Elodie89
Flashbacks and Tricycles: Chosen Childlessness and Trauma Disorders102
Decisions117
'Happy Ending'124
Parenting
Self-Portrait, Pregnant137
The Baby-Loss Diaries153
Loss as a Superpower173
The Baby-Loss Diaries181
Living
Eshet Chayil197
Work in Progress209
Notes From Here219
Imogen and Delilah234
Hard Glad246
Resources257
Acknowledgements263
Trigger Index269
Remembering Our Children271
Supporters275
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