Shadow Child: An Apprenticeship in Love and Loss

A friend of mine told me to read this book, and I couldn't thank her enough. This book touched me deeply in so many ways, and I feel it was an act of courage to finally express the unthinkable loss of a child. I especially liked the way the author captured the sense of being shocked at the loss of control that accompanies birth (and motherhood). I recommend this book to any woman who has considered moving past loss into a second or third chance at the greatest experience: motherhood: with all of its terrors and confusions and poignant heart splitting moments of unbearable love and vunerability. As someone who has considered having a child, Shadow Child has opened some harsh realities about the trauma and pain of losing one's child. Kudos to this author for transformming what could have been a destructive and bitter experience into hope and a kind of triumph...

This is the biography of Beth Powning. Her first child, Tate, was stillborn at term in the 1970s. Beth struggled with her right to grieve for her son. When her third child Jacob arrived, her long silent grief flooded over her.

This is a beautifully written book. It weaves art and nature, marital love and familial connections, great losses and sweet celebrations. It chronicles childbearing--not just the physical but the emotional, from welcoming a child into the world to seeing a child off for the first day of school. It also beautifully describes the heartache of a first son who died at birth.

I too had a difficult birth, but one with a happy ending. My son had his umbilical cord wrapped twice around his neck and a prolapsed placenta ; it was an emergency C section and I will never forget it. This book touched me deeply in so many ways, and I feel it was an act of courage to finally express the unthinkable loss of a child. The woman next to me in ICU recovery had also lost her child, and I felt much the same as the author...wanting to comfort her but not knowing quite how to. I especially liked the way the author captured the sense of being shocked at the loss of control that accompanies birth (and motherhood). I recommend this book to any woman who has considered moving past loss into a second or third chance at the greatest experience : motherhood: with all of its terrors and confusions and poignant heart splitting moments of unbearable love and vunerability.....cheers to this author for transformming what could have been a destructive and bitter experience into hope and a kind of triumph......

This is a book that I am sure will be very important to many women. I admire the author for having the courage to tell her story of losing her first son, Tate, and how this affected her life and her mothering of her second son Jacob. I also admire her honesty in talking about parenting Jacob---especially talking about his schooling, and how she hoped that he would fit in and become part of the community partly to help her also feel more part of it, and how she came to see that homeschooling for a while was the best choice for him. This book, however, is written in a style that is not my personal favorite, although it is very well written. It is quite poetic and lyrical, and at times I found myself wishing very much that events were being told about in a more straighforward way, and that some areas were more clearly explained--more about whey they decided to move to Canada, how her husband's pottery business became so popular, etc. I am sure that not everyone would feel as I do, and in fact that many people would love this writing style---full of striking metaphors and nature descriptions. This book deserves wide reading.