Cheryl E. Klein, a failed perfectionist and successful hypochondriac, wanted a baby with her partner—but instead encountered infertility, miscarriage, breast cancer at age 35, and separation. Despite the betrayals of her own body and the echoes of the past (such as her own mother’s death from cancer), Klein shows us, sometimes with dark humor, how she found her way through these traumas, and how they even helped prepare her and her partner for their next challenge, trying to become parents through open adoption.
Klein moves back and forth between her adulthood and childhood, exploring how early experiences shaped her responses to later events, but also how change and reconciliation are possible. She shows how she was able to move forward, through fluctuating feelings of hopelessness and hope, noting, “I wanted to live in a happy story, not a tragic one, but even a tragic one seemed preferable to no story at all,” before observing, “The life impulse and the death impulse are both relentless, and daily.”
Klein is open about living with depression and anxiety. She’s not afraid to expose flaws in her own attitudes—but we also see her gradually learning and trying to work things out with partner, family, and friends. While not all these threads are resolved (hers is a life in progress, after all), we also sense that she has gained wisdom from her experiences. Despite her harrowing history, she leaves us in the end with a sense of hope.
A memoir of difficult things, but all the more important for it.
Klein is White; her partner CC is Mexican. One friend is a trans man who carried his baby.
