I recently met with an advisor of my memoir — I have given her the title of creative midwife. She’s read my book twice, and at the end of our five hour meeting over diner coffee, I asked her a question.
What is this book really about?
She took a deep, reflective breath and said,
“This book is about survival. This book is about resiliency.”
And that stopped me in my tracks.
Because I thought I was writing about the NICU. About traumatic birth. About raising medically complex and disabled children. I thought the book was about what happened.
But it’s not.
It’s about the beauty and the ugliness of what it takes to keep showing up when your world collapses. It’s about a complete identity rupture within motherhood. It’s about continuing to survive — even when you don’t know if you want to, or if you can. It’s about the quiet, relentless resiliency that forms when you live inside the unimaginable.
I’ve been writing this book for seven years. In that itself, as a right-brained artist, this is the most resilient act of creation I’ve ever committed to. And while I wanted this book published years ago, the passage of time has given me perspective.
This book is not about the NICU.
It’s not about disability.
It’s not even really about trauma.
It’s about resiliency.
About survival.
About what it looks like to rewrite a life you never saw yourself living. And, despite blow after blow, to continue to show up anyway.
This book is about motherhood rewritten.
