With each ripple that the accident sent into our lives, I was lucky to have loved ones and strangers offering kindness and support—from the people who stopped to help and called the ambulances, the emergency workers who freed me and got us all to hospital, all the health care providers (even the physiotherapists) who worked hard to help us survive, heal and grieve, to the friends who moved furniture for us, brought us food, sent gifts and good thoughts and who continue to remember our daughter with us. My midwives (and now dear friends) Jen and Mandy—what incredible work you do, and what a difference you made!
Special thanks go to my family, particularly Mum, Dad, Erica, Jeremy, Deb, Jazzie, Jackie and Rima, as well as Penelope Goodes, for being there both in the living and the writing, every step of the way. I love you all so much and I’m so thankful you are in my life.
Belinda Quantock, Steve Macmillan, Matt Drummond, Rosalind Hearder and Samantha Kimpton and Sabdha and Cristi Pink-Charlton—thank you for providing friendship, encouragement, practical help and sage advice.
So many of the insights that made our loss bearable came from other baby lost parents who I’ve come to think of as my ‘dead baby parents group’, both at the SANDS Thornbury group and online, particularly Angie, Sally, Catherine, Merry, Jeanette, Kate, Sarah and Kate. As sorry as I am that we have this in common, I am so glad I found you. Karin and Ned, thank you for letting me tell a piece of Albie and Esther’s story, and Brigette, for sharing your experience with Sacha.
This book would not have happened without the Somers friends who encouraged me to be brave and realise I wanted to really write it. And it was Maria Tumarkin’s excellent Creative Non-Fiction course put on by Writers Victoria which helped kickstart it. That course also led me to my fabulous writing group—Debi Hamilton, Frank Golding, Kath McKay and Anastasia Kanjere. Thank you for providing a structure and a space for me to build this book, one chapter at a time, and for unfailingly helpful questions, feedback and advice. Thanks also to Madeline Hamilton, for reading early fragments and encouraging me to take it further, and to the amazing Monica Dux, for taking a chance on my writing in Mothermorphosis, and for wise advice and playing fairy godmother to the project ever since.
Colleagues and the head of the Law School at La Trobe, Patrick Keyzer have been incredibly supportive in helping me find a middle space between what I had experienced and my legal academic writing, particularly Laura Griffin, Kirsty Duncanson and Fiona Kelly. Thank you to the various ‘Shut up and Write’ groups at La Trobe, Melbourne Law School and RMIT who egged me on, provided valuable feedback about the title and other key decisions about the book, and who allowed me to literally shut up and write.
For bringing it to publication and making it a better manuscript, thank you so much to Dina Kluska, Sally Heath and Louise Stirling at MUP, Sarina Rowell for sensitive and careful copyediting, Klarissa Pfisterer for working with us to develop such a beautiful cover, Nicholas Purcell for the profile photography, Paul Smitz for your proofreading, Hilary Harper, for reading closely and for her own beautiful writing, and my literary agent Clare Forster for wonderfully astute advocacy and advice.
Last but not least, thank you to my beautiful children—to Ali, for shining such light into our lives and persistently harassing me about ‘finishing my chapter’, and to Zainab, for teaching me about life, death and being a mother.