Motherhood Memoir

Happiness begins with a charming courtship between hopelessly attracted opposites: Heather, a world-roaming California girl, and Brian, an intellectual, homebody writer, kind and slyly funny but loath to leave his Upper West Side studio. Their magical interlude ends, full stop, when Heather becomes pregnant - Brian is sure he loves her, only he doesn't want kids.

Three years ago, Stacey Duguid's happily ever after imploded messily, snottily, disastrously, and she is still clearing up the debris. The dream marriage she'd spent an entire lifetime pursuing shattered, leaving her half a person and angry. Who suggested 'happily ever after' was even a given thing? In this collection of essays, Stacey draws upon her own life to touch upon everything taboo today: divorce, dating and sex in mid-life, affairs, miscarriage, drugs, and challenges the societal expectations and ideologies of needing a partner to live a full life.

A kooky, gregarious mother and perceptive, poised daughter introduce listeners to their offbeat Connecticut family, who follow their hearts to rural Brazil. Broke and broken, they're forced to return to the United States, and navigate their rebirth in a foreclosed 1770 New England farmhouse. Hilariously honest and heart-wrenching, listeners will fall in love with their spunk, feel the knockout punches of betrayal along with them, and be rooting for them to get back up off the mat.

On the surface, Victoria Jackson is the American Dream personified: from a troubled childhood and unfinished high school education, she overcame immeasurable odds to create a cosmetics empire valued at more than half a billion dollars. Married to Bill Guthy - self-made principal of infomercial marketing giant Guthy-Renker - Victoria’s most treasured role is mother to three beautiful, beloved children, Evan, Ali, and Jackson. Suddenly, Victoria’s dream life is broken....

On a hot August night on Cape Cod, when Adrienne was 14, her mother, Malabar, woke her at midnight with five simple words that would set the course of both of their lives for years to come: Ben Souther just kissed me. Adrienne instantly became her mother’s confidante and helpmate, blossoming in the sudden light of her attention; from then on, Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help orchestrate what would become an epic affair with her husband’s closest friend. The affair would have calamitous consequences for everyone involved.

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.

She never imagined the pursuit to parenthood would involve the emotional assault of an adoption agency's flexible morality or invasive surgical procedures that brutalize both their bodies - but it did. Lauri M. Velotta-Rankin and her husband were sent overseas by an unscrupulous adoption agency to chase the ghosts of children they'd never bring home. After turning to in-vitro fertilization (IVF), a life-threatening diagnosis sent them reeling with fear and to the brink of emotional collapse.

Kelly Oxford is a wunderkind producer of pirated stage productions for 6-year-olds, a underage schnitzel-house dishwasher, the kid who stood up to a bully and almost passed out from the resulting adrenaline rush, and more.

After being diagnosed in her early 30s with terminal breast cancer, Heather McManamy felt like her life was crumbling. Her "normal" vanished and was replaced with multiple surgeries and dozens of chemo treatments that could briefly extend her life but would not prevent her inevitable death. With an effervescent spirit and a new perspective, Heather started to live each day as if it were her last. She learned to soak in the moment, appreciate the beauty around her, and celebrate her blessings.

Fugitives from a man as alluring as he is violent, Andrea Jarrell and her mother develop a powerful, unusual bond. Once grown, Jarrell thinks she's put that chapter of her life behind her - until a woman she knows is murdered, and she suddenly sees that it's her mother's choices she's been trying to escape all along. Without preaching or prescribing, I'm the One Who Got Away is a life-affirming story of having the courage to become both safe enough and vulnerable enough to love and be loved.

Renowned as a BBC journalist, Victoria Derbyshire has spent 20 years finding the human story behind the headlines. In 2015 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. With honesty and openness, she decided to live out her treatment and recovery in the spotlight in a series of video diaries. Victoria has kept a diary since she was nine years old, and in Dear Cancer, Love Victoria she shares her day-to-day experiences of life following diagnosis and coming to terms with a future that wasn't planned.

This gripping memoir details a California woman's quest to adopt a baby girl from Guatemala in the face of overwhelming adversity. At only 32 years old, Jessica O'Dwyer experiences early menopause, seemingly ending her chances of becoming a mother. Years later, married but childless, she comes across a photo of a two-month-old girl on a Guatemalan adoption website and feels an instant connection. When the process drags on for more than a year, Jessica quits her job at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and moves to Antigua, Guatemala, to finish the adoption herself.

This audiobook contains everything I did in my pregnancy. From how I prevented stretch marks, to the ways I stopped my headaches without pain killers. Recipes to the nutritious meals I made.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lee Martin has done it again. Building from his acclaimed first memoir, From Our House, which recounts the farming accident that cost his father both his hands, Gone the Hard Road is the story of Beulah Martin's endurance and sacrifice as a mother, and the gift of imagination she offered her son. Martin unfolds the world she created for him within their unsettled family life, from the first time she read to him in a doctor's office waiting room, to enrolling him in a children's book club, to the books she bought him in high school.

Until the 1960s infants were plucked from orphanages and maternity wards and used as "practice babies" in college home economics department across the country. Award-winning writer Jill Christman was determined to find out what happened to them. Along the way, five months pregnant herself, with her hormones (and anxiety) raging, she also hoped to discover what it means to be a mother.

Author Hannibal Johnson flawlessly captures the collective wisdom passed from generation to generation with a beguiling blend of wit, wisdom, and insight. Following each of the heartwarming nostalgic narratives are the most quotable of quotes - the very words that echo through the memories of our childhoods. An imaginative blend of Mama's brand of comforting common sense and her gentle ethical and moral lessons, Mama Used to Say is full of insights as illuminating as they are honest.

Moms in Medicine: Navigating Mental Health Challenges is a heartfelt and empowering guide that delves into the unique challenges faced by mothers who work in the medical field. Written by Sarah El Yaman, a seasoned physician, and mother herself, this book offers invaluable insights, practical advice, and real-life examples to support doctor moms in balancing their careers with motherhood.

S'Mother is a hilarious memoir based on 30 years of unsolicited advice, news updates, and opinions in the form of thousands of inappropriate, embarrassing, and utterly crazy letters showing the pathological extremes maternal instincts can take. Why is a grown woman so frantic that her adult son screw on his windows to keep out killer bees? Are adult trick-or-treaters really that much of a threat?

Kerry Hudson is celebrated for her emotionally and politically powerful writing about growing up in poverty. Her books and journalism have changed the conversation and touched countless lives. In this new book she asks: what next, after a childhood like hers? What hope is there of creating a different life for herself, let alone future generations? We see how Kerry found love, what it took to decide to start a family of her own and how fragile every step of the journey towards parenthood was. All along the way, she faces obstacles that would test the strongest foundations.

If happiness has a hiding place, Roxane Battle may have found it. As a new mom with a divorce decree and a reporting job on the five o'clock news, she landed on a few thorns among the roses as she learned to raise a child by herself while trying to keep it together in front of the camera. Guided by a strong belief things could, and would, get better, Roxane shed a few tears and found a lot of joy. Pockets of joy are what she calls them - moments where it feels like everything is going to be okay.