Profiles

I want to make it a little easier for everyone to honor their truth, whatever it looks like.

In writing [Tillie’s] story, I wanted to recognize women of that era who . . . fought a lonely battle against cancer.

Four years into motherhood, parts of my life as a mother are just now coming into focus. . . . The transformation is ongoing.

“The pandemic lockdown gave us a taste of the claustrophobia that develops when people are trapped together while dealing with personal struggles, inherited traumas, and complicated family systems.”

“One opportunity in writing Akmaral was exploring a culture that honors the hearth goddess over the war god.”

“So much of writing nonfiction is the process of learning about ourselves, not just learning how to write.”

“What is a woman willing to give up in order to become?”

“There is a pain that comes from separating from a family member and then reconnecting. There may be a disconnect between a mother who sees the world differently than you because her lived experience means she has just moved through the world differently. How do you articulate this in the traditional fairy tale narrative arc that we’ve seen so many adoption narratives take on?”

“With my divorce, my children were very young, and it was a constant decision in my head: what to say, what not to say, when to say what I want to say, and how I should say it.”

“I also wrestled more honestly with what it meant as a mother to be so mentally unwell that she emotionally or physically neglected her children.”

“This is what so much of my book is about—the tension between needing to be seen and, at the same time, fearing being seen—which I still work on every day of my life.”