Sixteen weeks into her second pregnancy, psychologist Jessica Zucker miscarried at home, alone. Suddenly, her career, spent specializing in reproductive and maternal mental health, was rendered corporeal, no longer just theoretical. In this memoir, she confronts the cultural silence around miscarriages and illuminates how she built a movement from her experience, transforming trauma into human connection.
Though it plagues one in four pregnancies, pregnancy loss is not something mothers are encouraged to discuss, which Zucker makes clear in her memoir-slash-manifesto. Zucker, a psychologist specializing in reproductive and maternal mental health and the founder of the #IHadAMiscarriage movement, is an expert on miscarriage: she provides therapy to mothers experiencing pregnancy loss ... Aside from Zucker’s detailed descriptions of her own miscarriage, the most memorable parts of I Had A Miscarriage are the scenes with her children: Liev, rainbow baby Noa, and her unborn child. It’s in these scenes the reader sees Zucker with her guard down, her prose poignant and poetic with detail, sophistication, and honesty ... Through her own trauma and grief, Zucker made me reconsider my own attitudes and responses to miscarriage. Her book made me call my mother ... While this book acts as a powerful tool for women who are experiencing or have experienced pregnancy loss, it also serves those of us who haven’t. Zucker is smart to include scenes recounting her own incidents with friends and family post-miscarriage that felt extremely isolating and inappropriate ... she encourages her readers to offer support and encouragement and empathy ... I Had A Miscarriage: A Memoir, A Movement is radical in what it asks its readers to do. It asks us to change the narrative of shame and silence surrounding miscarriage and pregnancy loss to one of conversation and acceptance.
Psychologist Zucker delivers an illuminating discussion of miscarriage in her strikingly intimate debut memoir ... Zucker’s story is a profound personal reflection, and her remarkable storytelling sheds new light on a difficult topic. Miscarriage survivors will find affirmation and hope in this stirring account.
The author is candid about the personal, frightening details of her loss, and she smoothly interweaves her moving story with the narratives of some of her clients, all of which are complex and worthy of examination ... Given that so many pregnancies end without a successful birth, this book should serve as both balm and guidebook for those suffering from such loss. A contemplative, sensitive, and necessary work in the field of pregnancy and parenting.
