Posts Tagged ‘prematurity’
giving our stories a voice – day 9
Thank you so much to Rachel Turiel of 6512 and Growing for hosting day 9 of the Use Your Words virtual book tour. I first discovered her blog after we both posted as part of the March of Dimes’ Fight for Preemies fall campaign, and I felt an immediate affinity with Rachel as a fellow…
Read Morefight for preemies
November is Prematurity Awareness Month and today, November 17, is the March of Dimes’ Fight for Preemies. Over 300 bloggers are writing their preemie stories today. You can read them here. In honor of the Fight for Preemies, I am posting another short excerpt from Ready for Air. This section comes just after I have…
Read Moreseven
The weekend was a blur. I spent Saturday at the first Minnesota Blogger Conference, which was a tremendous success thanks to the countless hours that went into planning and executing the event. (A huge thanks to Missy Berggren of The Marketing Mama and Arik Hansen of Communications Conversations for all their work.) And yesterday, we…
Read Morefight for preemies
I am half-way through my revision of Ready for Air, which is both exciting and daunting—exciting because retyping it has forced me to cut unnecessary paragraphs, to put pressure on my prose, and to never let the narrative threads slip too far from sight; daunting, of course, because I still have 150 pages to go,…
Read Morethis lovely life
Oh, what to say? How to begin? Vicki Forman’s memoir, This Lovely Life, is so close to my heart. When I initially started reading Vicki’s blog, Speak Softly, I didn’t realize that Evan had been born prematurely. I was caught up in Vicki’s lovely writing and in her voice as an advocate for children with…
Read MoreRoad Map to Holland
I’m always on the look-out for good motherhood memoirs, but I was recently lamenting the fact that there aren’t that many out there. Some would have us believe that the market is positively flooded with them, that there exists a glut of so-called “momoir,” but it’s not true. There are, certainly, a number of fine…
Read Moreblogging in my head
I’m sorry I’ve been silent for the last week. I’ve wanted to blog and have actually been thinking about blogging, but it’s been impossible for me to get myself to the computer. Partly, this is because I have a new cold (or maybe it’s the same cold with new life), and all I’ve wanted to…
Read Morestruggling with structure
No luck on Thanksgiving not gorging myself. In fact, I ate excessively all weekend. And now I have a horrible cold. (Not that these two things are related. I only wanted to point out that I’ve been uncomfortable—in slightly different ways—for many days now. With Sudafed off limits I’d actually go so far to say…
Read Moreviable
I am twenty-four weeks pregnant today, which means that I’m carrying a viable fetus. When we were contemplating a second pregnancy, and shortly after I became pregnant, I thought that these weeks—24 to 28—would be the most difficult for me. A baby born earlier than 23 weeks has virtually no chance of survival, but 24-weekers…
Read Moreheartbreak and hoping
Oh why did I do this to myself? Why? For class tomorrow, I’m having my students read Susan Ito’s “Samuel” and Suzanne Kamata’s “You’re So Lucky.” I chose these pieces to spark discussion about point of view, emotional distance, and writing about heartbreak. But I’m not going to talk about how talented I think both…
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