Motherhood Memoir

When Meaghan O'Connell got accidentally pregnant in her twenties and decided to keep the baby, she realized that the book she needed - a brutally honest, agenda-free reckoning with the emotional and existential impact of motherhood - didn't exist. So she decided to write it herself. And Now We Have Everything is O'Connell's exploration of the cataclysmic, impossible-to-prepare-for experience of becoming a mother. With her dark humor and hair-trigger B.S. detector, O'Connell addresses the pervasive imposter syndrome that comes with unplanned pregnancy, among other issues.

Celebrating twenty years since her bestselling debut autobiography, Being Jordan, and a stellar thirty-year career, This is Me is Katie Price as you've never seen her before - honest and reflective, Katie explores the incredible highs and devastating lows of her life and turbulent career, as well as the journey she's been on to get to where she is today.

Clover Stroud's idyllic childhood in rural England was shattered when a horrific riding accident left her mother permanently brain-damaged. Just 16, she embarked on a journey to find the sense of home that had been so savagely broken. Travelling from gypsy camps in Ireland, to the rodeos of West Texas and then to Russia's war-torn Caucasus, Clover eventually found her way back to England's lyrical Vale of the White Horse.

In a bold and brilliant memoir that reinvents the form, the acclaimed author of the novel Museum Pieces and the collection Mendocino Fire explores the ferocious desire for perfection which has shaped her writing life as well as her rich, dramatic, and constantly surprising personal life.

Born and raised in Utah, Jenny Lowe got married at the age of 19. The marriage ended in divorce, and at 30 years old, she married again. Emotionally and financially ready to start a family and with her biological clock ticking, the couple decides to have a child. After months of trying without success, they seek the help of fertility specialists. What follows is a series of unsuccessful attempts to conceive and the discovery that she has ovarian cancer. This book lets the listener accompany her on her emotional journey.

Black women are at higher risk of developing postnatal depression but are the least likely to be identified as depressed. Sharing the voices of other mothers, Sandra examines how culture, racism, stigma and a lack of trust in services prevent women getting the help they need. Breaking open the conversation on motherhood, race, and mental health, she demands that Black women are listened to, believed and understood.

Claudia Garcia crossed the border because her toddler, Natalia, could not hear. Leaving behind everything she knew in Mexico, Claudia recounts the terror of migrating alone with her toddler and the incredible challenges she faced advocating for her daughter’s health in the United States. When she arrived in Texas, Claudia discovered that being undocumented would mean more than just an immigration status—it would be a way of living, of mothering, and of being discarded by even those institutions we count on to care.

Jane is to the world a charismatic personality—opinionated, an inner-city teacher and public activist, a lover of Italy, proud and successful—who thrives on a carefully crafted life narrative. Susannah, her beautiful only daughter and her intended protege, senses the stricter, darker truth, and fights to resist the control imposed on her by her mother's narcissistic tale, especially as Susannah becomes a mother herself. But then Jane at seventy-five, healthy and fit, chooses suicide, leaving her daughter with grief and the unwelcome gift of forty-five years of hidden diaries

Ann Campanella, a freelance writer and horsewoman, returns to North Carolina after a several year absence. In her midthirties and ready to start a family, she is used to setting goals and accomplishing them. But when Ann experiences a series of miscarriages at the same time her mother shows signs of Alzheimer's, she plunges into an emotional journey that leads her to a deeper understanding of herself and what it means to love.

In this exhilarating, deeply poignant, and often laugh-out-loud book, Lauren Keyana Palmer gets real about life, work, love, and belief. These stories will encourage listeners to empower themselves with the truth, leverage their currency, and find the keys to master themselves and the art of alchemy. Keke writes, "You are not on anyone else's timeline, only your own."

Psychologist and expert witness Dr. Sharon Lamb evaluates parents, particularly in high-stakes cases concerning the termination of parental rights. The conclusions she reaches can mean that some children are returned home from foster homes. Others are freed for adoption. Well-trained, Lamb generally can decide what's in the best interests of the child. But when her son's struggle with opioid addiction comes to light, she starts to doubt her right to make judgments about other mothers.

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.

Because I'm Not Myself, You See is a candid, often humorous memoir of motherhood and madness, interwoven with research and expert commentary. It's the story of the impossible pressures placed on new mothers and how quickly things can go wrong during 'the happiest time of your life'. It's also about life on the other side of serious illness, trying to make sense of what doesn't make sense, and finding humour, beauty and joy when things don't go according to plan.

Laura June’s daughter, Zelda, was only a few moments old when she held her for the first time, looked into her eyes, and thought, I wish my mother were here. It wasn’t a thought she was used to having. Laura was in second grade when she realized her mother was an alcoholic. As the years went by, she spiraled deeper, and by the time of her death, before Zelda’s birth, the two had drifted apart entirely. In Now My Heart is Full, Laura June explores how raising her daughter forced her to confront this tragic legacy and recognize the connective tissue that binds generations.

Fight Like a Mother is the incredible account how one mother’s cry for change became the driving force behind gun-safety progress. Along with stories of perseverance, courage, and compassion, Watts shines a light on the unique power of women - starting with what they have, leading with their maternal strengths, and doubling down instead of backing down.

The Mama Sutra spans an 18-year journey through motherhood as a spiritual practice, chronicling Cushman’s first pregnancy, her daughter's tragic stillbirth, the joyful birth of her son, the “home retreat” of early motherhood, the challenges of parenthood, the diagnosis and gifts of her son’s developmental differences, the meltdown of her nuclear family and its reconfiguration into a new and joyful form, and more. This is a powerful story of the rawness and beauty of life.

Bess Kalb has saved every voicemail message her grandmother - her best friend, her confidante - ever left her until the day she died. In this wildly imaginative memoir, Bobby Bell's voice is still in Bess' head. Stubborn, glamorous, larger than life, she gives Bess critical advice on everything and tells the history that made them both. This unusual love story celebrates the bond of women across generations and the personalities that live on through grief and love.

Picture it - it's 8:30 p.m. You close the door to your child's room just as you hear your partner closing the dishwasher, and now it's time for an hour or two of glorious freedom. What do you do? Read the book you've been waiting to crack open all day? Chat on the phone with a friend, glass of wine in hand, or go out with pals and share a whole bottle? Or, like many modern parents, do you get caught up in chores, busywork, and social media black holes?

Heather Christle has just lost a dear friend to suicide and now must reckon with her own depression and the birth of her first child. As she faces her grief and impending parenthood, she decides to research the act of crying: what it is and why people do it, even if they rarely talk about it. Along the way, she discovers an artist who designed a frozen tear-shooting gun and a moth that feeds on the tears of other animals. She researches tear-collecting devices (lachrymatories) and explores the role white women’s tears play in racist violence.

Mothering is as old as human existence. But how has this most essential experience changed over time and cultures? What is the history of maternity - the history of pregnancy, birth, the encounter with an infant? Can one capture the historical trail of mothers? How? In Mother Is a Verb, the historian Sarah Knott creates a genre all her own in order to craft a new kind of historical interpretation. Blending memoir and history and building from anecdote, her audiobook brings the past and the present viscerally alive.