No One Talks About This Stuff: Twenty-Two Stories of Almost Parenthood

by Kat Brown (Editor), Alice Jolly (Contribution by), Jody Day (Contribution by), Rosie Wilby (Contribution by), Noni Martins (Contribution by)

Overview

A profound and honest anthology in which twenty-two writers share everyday experiences from their pursuit of parenthood.

No One Talks About This Stuff is a support group for almost-parents: it is a place to share journeys of loss and limbo, to confront social pressure and to find courage in the darkness of tragedies which happen every day yet are brushed under the carpet.

So, we hear from a stepmother who wrestles with infertility. A husband and wife each tell their experience of losing their baby. A lesbian comes of age at a time when gay people rarely become parents. A father finds loss to be his unlikely superpower. Complex post-traumatic stress disorder impacts a person’s choices about having a family. A black woman unpacks ancestral shame while finding renewed purpose. And each person shares how they lived through it.

This captivatingly beautiful, profound and honest anthology opens a much-needed conversation about society, family and honouring the missing children we will never forget.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781800182875
Publisher:	Unbound
Publication date:	07/02/2024
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	635,042
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Kat Brown is a freelance journalist and commentator whose work, covering arts and entertainment as well as her experience with infertility and adult ADHD diagnosis, has appeared across national print and broadcast. She has published two books within one month of each other (which is very ADHD), No One Talks About This Stuff (ed.) and It’s Not A Bloody Trend: Understanding Life as an ADHD Adult. She loves horse riding, tarot, and quizzes, and captained The Jillies on BBC Two’s Only Connect – arguably the greatest quiz show in existence. Kat lives in south London with her husband, their dog, and two appalling cats.

Table of Contents

Introduction - xi

Disenfranchised Grief

The Story Which Does Not Have an End by Alice Jolly - 3

Pronatalism and Me: Waking up from the Trance of Motherhood by Jody Day - 14

A ‘Nearly Life’ by Rosie Wilby - 24

The Unspoken Trauma of Almost-Motherhood by Noni Martins - 29

Small, Soft, Grey Pig by Laura Barton - 38

Society

A Historical Perspective on Women Without Children by Emma Duval - 47

The Silence of Shame by Yvonne John - 57

Grief is Not a Competition by Alice Rose - 71

‘Other People’ Problems by Gemma Stone - 79

Choice

Elodie by Hilary Freeman - 89

Flashbacks and Tricycles: Chosen Childlessness and Trauma Disorders by Quinn Clark - 102

Decisions by Sophia Money-Coutts - 117

‘Happy Ending’ by Seetal Savla - 124

Parenting

Self-portrait, Pregnant by Miranda Ward - 137

The Baby Loss Diaries by Nana-Adwoa Mbeutcha - 153

Loss as a Superpower by Tom Wateracre - 173

The Baby Loss Diaries by Donald Mbeutcha - 181

Living

Eshet Chayil by Sarah Lewis - 197

Work in Progress by Rageshri Dhairyawan - 210

Notes from Here by Kat Brown - 220

Imogen and Delilah by Natalie Sutherland - 235

Hard Glad by Stella Duffy - 247

Resources - 257

Acknowledgements - 263

Supporters - 266

Editorial Reviews

06/03/2024

These intimate personal reflections, collected by journalist Brown (It’s Not a Bloody Trend), probe the complicated emotions that follow miscarriages, terminated pregnancies, and learning one can’t have a biological child. Jody Day recounts struggling to conceive despite having no discernible medical impediment and feeling like “a failed woman” until her mid-40s, when she started a blog about the experience, around which coalesced a supportive community of women who were “childless-by-circumstance.” Other entries explore the reasons women choose to end a pregnancy, with Hilary Freeman offering a plaintive account of deciding not to carry her baby to term after discovering it had a rare genetic condition that would have made its life short and painful. Elsewhere, Miranda Ward meditates on maintaining her “capacity for hope” after four miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy, and Rageshri Dhairyawan recalls burying herself in her work to distract herself from the grief she felt after learning she wouldn’t be able to conceive by IVF. The heartrending stories capture the sorrow and despair that accompany unsuccessful attempts to have children, even as they illuminate the many roads to acceptance after pain. Readers will want to keep tissues at the ready. (July)

Publishers Weekly

The heartrending stories capture the sorrow and despair that accompany unsuccessful attempts to have children, even as they illuminate the many roads to acceptance after pain. Readers will want to keep tissues at the ready.” — Publishers Weekly

"[F]rank, humorous essays about facing infertility, pregnancy loss, and childlessness....With entries that are somber, angry, and wry...No One Talks About This Stuff addresses the feelings of shame and sadness that accompany atypical experiences with parenthood." — Rebecca Foster, Foreword

"Shining a warm light on the stories that should never have sat in the shadows. Each generously shared experience powerfully validates and chips away at shame, as it speaks the truth of hoping, waiting, losing, loving and questioning. This book welcomes knowing nods, valuable insight, and hope to those who are tired of sitting behind the taboo. Life affirming, searingly honest and deeply moving." — Anna Mathur, bestselling author of Know Your Worth

"Kat’s raw, honest and open book – with her words and those of her contributors – will allow you to find the peace, the rage, the acceptance, the anger, the love, the hatred, the joy and the connection that we all need to be allowed to feel when life deals us an unexpected and unfair hand. Kat could not have described NOTATS more perfectly by saying it is a support group in a book; it is that, and so much more." — Pippa Vosner, author of Beyond Grief

"Kat Brown’s constellation of stories explores the persistently misunderstood experience of reproductive loss. The voices of the contributors are necessarily varied, but they are unified by fascinating and moving insights." — Julia Bueno, author of The Brink of Being

From the Publisher