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Jennifer Berney’s memoir of her extended, arduous, and deeply thoughtful path to motherhood swells with the oceanic saudade of a woman who came of age already missing the baby she’d not yet had, and missing herself as the mother she’d not yet become.

Learning to navigate midlife and motherhood offers a jarring ambivalence for mothers who are trying to gain their footing in uncertain terrain.

I know that people can be led, by invitation, to notice the world and to relish it.

Novelist Nicola Harrison shares the inspiration for her latest novel, The Show Girl, and why she loves historical fiction.

Former Literary Mama Editor Jamie Sumner shares her journey to becoming an author and how to write great characters.

It’s like the act of writing, where I have kept my sourdough starter alive by continuing to feed it, and I have practiced the art of baking over and over again, knowing that not every loaf will leave my home, that some of them may even go in the garbage or become croutons. It is only because I continue that I succeed.

What I wanted, of course, was some kind of Plumfield. A space that didn’t force me to choose, but accepted both parts of my life.

But I don’t flinch, as her hands move in, smothering me in womanly warmth. It feels nice. Hardly anyone comes near me, not these days.

I slide over and place my ear onto his chest, hear life rushing from one chamber to the next. The strength and the sound of it startles me. How can I not hear it all the time? Across the room, across the house, even? How do I forget?

More than staring, though, I smelled him. I touched my cheek to his and gently sniffed the tiny bowl made by his collarbone.

Our children didn’t survive. Saying it this way makes me feel like a homesteader in a daguerreotype photograph.