Reviewed by Emily Webber

Within the preface to Held Collectively: A Shared Memoir of Motherhood, Drugs, and Imperfect Love (HarperOne; 2025), creator Rebecca N. Thompson emphasizes that the ladies in these pages refuse to “settle for the insupportable assertion we too usually foist on the grieving—that all the things occurs for a cause—however they’re making which means out of all the things that had occurred.”

This completely captures what this heartfelt assortment provides: brave ladies sharing advanced tales about what it means to be a mom, together with the customarily hard-earned insights and private development.

Held Collectively maps the various experiences of mothering by means of Thompson’s personal story, interwoven with the narratives of different moms. The essays describe the various fears, doubts, and challenges ladies face on their journey to motherhood, whether or not making an attempt to conceive, enduring miscarriages, confronting their very own well being points, exploring different paths to parenthood, or elevating younger kids. Held Collectively presents not solely a broad spectrum of experiences but in addition a various group of ladies from completely different ethnic backgrounds, representing nontraditional households.

Organized into seven sections, every starting with elements of Thompson’s story and adopted by that of different ladies. Selecting this braided construction as an alternative of presenting her story as a standalone essay in a set is a robust alternative as a result of it permits the e book to grow to be a refrain of ladies’s voices, emphasizing the therapeutic and data ladies can achieve from each other by sharing their tales and the connection that varieties from speaking about private experiences.

These essays handle to look each inward and outward. All the ladies discover renewed private perception and reference to different ladies, and a few common themes emerge among the many tales. Many ladies point out how laborious it may be to open up a few advanced, emotional time, particularly when the intuition is to maintain quiet to keep away from burdening others or considering they gained’t perceive. Thompson speaks of early being pregnant losses:

“I felt all of the extra remoted as a result of nobody else knew we have been going by means of these losses. At work, after weekly division conferences, I light away with the excuse of some swiftly imagined administrative process as different medical doctors gathered to talk about their pregnancies and younger kids.”

But, Thompson comes to understand that most of the ladies round her are dealing with their very own challenges, even when it appears on the floor that they’ve all the things she longs for. Held Collectively prompts us to think about, each in our personal lives and in these of others, “the large vary of experiences—each completely unified and starkly contrasting—which have come collectively to create” our lives.

One other distinctive perspective on this e book is that most of the tales come from medical professionals, together with Thompson, a household doctor. The e book highlights each the necessity for ladies to advocate for medical care that considers their complete bodily and psychological well-being, and the way the ladies within the medical career, whose tales are represented right here, be taught to channel the braveness and power from their very own experiences, each of their private lives and in caring for sufferers.

For girls studying this assortment, many of those tales will resonate with their very own experiences. Even for readers who don’t determine as moms, there’s nonetheless a lot to realize from this assortment. In the direction of the tip, Thompson talks to her son concerning the scars folks carry: “I thought of how we’re all damaged however therapeutic. How we are able to heal ourselves solely by therapeutic one another.” Held Collectively is a testomony to the ability of sharing tales to assist therapeutic and supply consolation.