Author: Kristen Rademacher
Publisher: She Writes Press (July 21, 2020)
ISBN: 978-1631528668

I feel like I will be thinking about this memoir for a long time. Kristen Rademacher has a way with words that wrapped me up in her perspective and held me there. Reading this book was an altering experience for me. Rademacher's courage and strength in the face of such a devastating and insurmountable loss was both harrowing and heartwarming to read about. Her writing was magic and I felt a real sense of closeness to her as I made my way through the book, even as she described her isolation from everyone around her.

At the age of 39, after already losing a lot in her life, Rademacher survived the loss of her unborn child after carrying her fully to term. Not only that, but at the same time that she was told her baby died she also discovered that she would still have to labor and deliver conventionally.

“While the room hummed and whirled, I kept silent, curled on my side. Soon I heard whimpering, soft and gentle and barely audible, as if from off in the distance. My childhood dog made cries like this, cowering in a corner every July 4th, her pathetic whines a little louder with every firecracker burst. My awareness of the whimpers came and went until eventually they drowned out other sounds and filled my ears. Wait. Were these moans coming from me? Yes. But this wasn’t crying: no tears, no runny nose, and no pained face. This was a groaning—low, steady, and quiet from deep in the gut of my coiled body, and it had a will all its own.”

Rademacher takes the reader through every painful moment of the labor and through the goodbye with the daughter that she only got to know for one hour with the gentle and realistic grasp of a true mother. I felt like I was there in the hospital room with her as she delivered, and the beautiful but painful moments that she got to spend with little Carly was even more poignant because of it. After losing her daughter, Rademacher understandably struggled to return to her normal life and to cope with the fact that she was still a mother despite not being able to see Carly every day.

To top it all off when she got pregnant, her and her boyfriend were living together but did not get along and their relationship deteriorated even more after they lost Carly.

This is an excellent book for anyone who has struggled with a miscarriage, stillborn child or mental health issues in general because of its gentle look at the subject. I hope that Rademacher intends to write more in the future, because she truly has a talent for putting emotions on the page and I would love to read more by her.

About Kristen Rademacher

Kristen Rademacher has lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina since 2002, which is when she began writing. FROM THE LAKE HOUSE is her first memoir. With a Master’s Degree in Education and a Professional Coaching Certification, Kristen is an Academic Coach and ADHD Specialist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also leads trainings and presentations at national conferences on the topic of academic coaching.