Table of Contents
Advance Praise
A Childless Love Story
Foreword
I. The Shout of Motherhood
1. The Woman Things
2. We Practiced. We Pretended
3.Good Housekeeping
4. Flicker Shadows
5. This Unloosed Thing
6. The Knowing Was in Me
7. A Place to Slip Through
8. A Place for a Girl
9. Leaving Doesn’t Mean It’s Gone from You
II. Maybe This Will Make Me Happy
10. Falling Apart
11. The Man He Will Be
12. Things to Do When I Fall Apart
13. Important Things to Tell Your Daughters
14. Like a Badge, Like a Star
15. The Muddy Ground
16. Clearly, Boldly, No Apologies
17. Like I Knew What I Was Doing
18. Red Days Circled
19. Another Thing to Do When I Fall Apart
20. Get a Glow On
21. We’ll Talk About This Later
22. The Last Thing to Do When I Fall Apart
23. This Important Weight
24. Shiny Bows of Blue and Silver
25. His Place of Better Sunsets
26. Like an Unasked Prayer
27. Secrets and Calculations
28. His Dream Child
29. The Question of My Future
30. Precious Things
31. Red Ink and Side Notes
32. On the Way to a Grown-Up Life
33. Fault Line
34. Things That Come in Threes
35. Stand Up and Carry On
36. Light in The Chapel
37. Roots Took Hold and Ran the Length of My Body
38. Other People’s Children
39. Crazy Mazes
40. I Was Almost Sure
III. A Kind of Transformation
41. What We Knew by Now
42. The Things People Think
43. The Symbols of My Name
44. This Was New. This Was Scary. I Wanted More
45. An Ugly, Messy, Hurtful Thing
46. Conditional Surrender
47. The Place Where Ungiven Love Is Held
48. The Heart of a Witness
49. All Out, All In, All Over
50. No Belts for Safety
51. Only for a Parent
IV. What Comes When Wanting Stops
52. Make a List
53. A Whole Lot of Perfection
54. Maybe a Love Sound, Maybe a Heartbreak
55. The Turn to My House
56. Language I Could Speak So Easily
57. Days of Easy Falling
58. How Easily I Could Hurt
59. In a New Country
60. I Do, No Matter What
61. A Path to Somewhere New
62. The Balance of Things
63. That Love Was a Memory Too
64. This Moment
65. Faults Cracked Open
66. This Particular Happiness
67. Temporary Allograft
V. The Joy I’ve Had All Along
68. Most of The Time, This Is Enough
69. Tiny Tadpoles of Life
70. A Cure for Hives
71. Babyland
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Reader’s Guide
Book Club Questions
Photo Gallery