Motherhood Memoir

An unflinchingly honest and disarmingly funny memoir from an exhausted mom who broke under the pressure to do it all, faced her past, found herself—and learned to let go of perfection and just serve the dang chicken nuggets. "Libby is shifting the cultural narrative in a way that will echo for...

Motherhood treats one of the most consequential decisions of early adulthood - whether or not to have children - with the intelligence, wit and originality that have won Sheila Heti international acclaim. Having reached an age when most of her peers are asking themselves when they will become mothers, Heti’s narrator considers, with the same urgency, the question of whether she will do so at all. Over the course of several years, under the influence of her partner, her body, her family, mysticism and chance, Heti's narrator struggles to make a wise and meaningful choice.

What if Augustine's Confessions had been written not by a man, but by a mother? How might her tales of desire, temptation, and transformation differ from his? In this memoir, Natalie Carnes describes giving birth to a daughter and beginning a story of conversion strikingly unlike Augustine's - even as his journey becomes a surprising companion to her own. The challenges Carnes recounts will be familiar to many parents. She wonders what and how much she should ask her daughter to suffer in resisting racism, patriarchy, and injustice. 

When Deb Moerke and her husband decided to become foster parents, they never imagined how their lives would change. And never did they imagine their worst nightmare coming true: Their five-year-old foster daughter, Hannah, murdered at the hands of her birth mom, Karen. The Moerkes were overwhelmed with horror and grief. And just when they didn’t think they could bear any more, Deb received a phone call from Karen in prison. Facing a life sentence for Hannah’s murder, she was pregnant. And Karen had an incredible request: Would Deb take her unborn baby and love it as her own?

This is the story of an independent woman who is a model for our time—photographer Toby Molenaar. It begins in Holland during World War II, when her country is decimated by the occupying German army and she is literally left to starve. As a little girl, she learns to be self-sufficient—survival is the order of the day. Courage, indomitable spirit, an open mind, and accountability only to herself are the stuff of this fascinating and inspirational story.

A provocative and deeply important study of women’s lives, women’s choices—and an ‘unspoken taboo’—that questions the societal pressures forcing women into motherhood Women who opt not to be mothers are frequently warned that they will regret their decision later in life, yet we...

A stunning memoir by a writer and mental health advocate about motherhood, postpartum mental health, and finding ground when you lose all control. When writer and blogger Ayana Lage became pregnant, she prepared as any parent would: voraciously researching, Redditing, preparing for anything. And...

Raw, candid and hilarious, Ellie Taylor's My Child and Other Mistakes is the funny truth about motherhood and all its grisly delights. My Child and Other Mistakes is the honest lowdown on Motherhood and all its grisly delights, asking the questions no one wants to admit to asking themselves - do...

Moving and immersive, and crafted with wisdom, disarming humour and raw honesty, The Unfamiliar casts a fresh eye on motherhood and challenges our assumptions about pregnancy, gender roles, queer identity and what it means to be a parent.

This is the story of one of Church history's most revered women, the godly mother of John and Charles Wesley. This biography recounts the story of a woman who used her strong leadership and faith to raise well educated and spiritually disciplined children. Her unwavering devotion to God and family in the face of grief, poverty, and a sometimes difficult marriage is a tremendous inspiration.

Once upon a time, I was meandering down the road of life with my husband, Jon. It was a regular and beige life, and it worked. It was a warm beige. We felt, and were, blessed and lucky. Normal. On the morning of October 7th, 2023, Rachel Goldberg-Polin's beloved twenty-three-year-old son, Hersh...

The CEOs behind Sesame Street bring you the inspirational and life-changing lessons and parenting insights that successful people have learned from their moms. The first and most important teacher in life is mom. Her lessons start in early childhood and last a lifetime. Behind many successful...

Ariane Beeston is a child-protection worker and newly registered psychologist when she gives birth to her first child – and very quickly begins to experience scary breaks with reality. With medication, the support of her husband, psychotherapy and, ultimately, time, Ariane rebuilds herself.

Anna Prushinskaya explores the deep life shifts of pregnancy, birth and motherhood in the United States, a world away from the author's Soviet homeland. Drawing from inspirations as various as midwife Ina May Gaskin, writer and activist Alice Walker, and frontierswoman Caroline Henderson, Prushinskaya captures the inherent togetherness of motherhood alongside its accompanying estrangement. She plumbs the deeper waters of compassion, memory and identity, as well as the humorous streams of motherhood as they run up against the realities of work and the ever-present eye of social media.

When Catherine left London for the US with her husband, James, to introduce her family to their newborn son, she could not have envisaged how that trip would end. Catherine would find herself in an involuntary psych ward in New Jersey, separated from her husband and child, unable to understand who she was, and how she had got there.

A Still Life is a story of illness and pain that rarely sees the light: illness and pain with no end or resolution; illness and pain that we must meet with courage, joy, ingenuity and hope. Against a world which values ‘feel good’ progress and productivity above all else, Josie sets out a quietly radical alternative: to value and treasure life for life itself, with all its defeats and victories, with all its great and small miracles.

Lene Fogelberg is dying - she is sure of it - but no doctor in Sweden, her home country, believes her. Love stories enfold her, with her husband, her two precious daughters, her enchanting surroundings, but the question she has carried in her heart since childhood - will I die young? - is threatening all she holds dear, even her sanity. When her young family moves to the US, an answer, a diagnosis, is finally found: She is in the last stages of a fatal congenital heart disease. But is it too late?

A funny, biting, and entertaining memoir of coming of age in the shadow of celebrity and finding your own way in the face of absolute chaos that is both a moving portrait of a complicated family and an exploration of the cost of fame. Growing up, Jenny Pentland’s life was a literal sitcom...

Written and read by New York Times bestselling author of They Knew, Hiding in Plain Sight, and The View from Flyover Country, Sarah Kenzidor, The Last American Road Trip navigates a changing America as Sarah and her family embark on a series of road trips in an audiobook that is part memoir...

A searing portrait of a mother’s body—a resurrection and reclamation of pleasure after abuse, a study of intergenerational trauma, and a love letter to the bodies of women: as alive and unbound as the teeming Mississippi wilds that bear witness Four months postpartum with her second child...