‘How to Expect What You’re Not Expecting: Stories of Pregnancy, Parenthood, and Loss’ edited by Jessica Hiemstra and Lisa Martin-Demoor

Guest Post by Miriam Booy

I didn’t know miscarriage was so common until I experienced it, twice within 7 months. I didn’t know infertility was so common until several friends experienced it, and told me their stories. The truth about pain and loss is that we don’t really understand it until we go through it or someone close to us does. Then we start the search for similar stories to us in an attempt to know we are not the only ones or help another person through the same experience.

“How to expect what you’re not expecting” is a collection of personal stories of unexpected loss including miscarriage, stillbirth, infertility, premature delivery and giving up children for adoption. The writers are skilled and share their emotional journeys with poetic liberties that strive to capture the experiences they have been through. When I read I tend to ‘skim for the story’ so it was good for me to slow down and appreciate the beautiful descriptive language.

A common theme in each of the stories is that loss never really leaves you. Instead, you learn to live with it as you find new hope and joy. The last sentence of the book seems to capture it well “We hold because we grieve. We grieve because we love. And we wait in the possibility of love without grief. We wait as best we can.”

Thanks to Lisa Martin-Demoor, my cousin, for her skilled writing, editing and vision for this book and my sister for sending it to me. Lisa writes “It is not only the beauty of the world that saves us. If we let it, something else can save us too–our responsibility for this world, for our pain and each other’s.”