Date/Time
Date(s) - 02/21/18
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Location
Books Inc.
Categories
Molly Caro May, cofounder of the Thunderhead Writers’ Collective, shares her brilliant new book, Body Full of Stars: Female Rage and My Passage Into Motherhood. Molly will be in conversation with Courtney E. Martin, entrepreneur, weekly columnist for On Being, and author of The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream.
What if labor does not end with pregnancy but continues into a mother’s post-partum life? How can the fiercest love for your child and the deepest wells of grief coexist in the same moment? How has society neglected honest conversation around the significant physical changes new mothers experience? Could real healing occur if generations of women were fluent in the language of their bodies?
Molly Caro May grapples with these questions as she undergoes several unexpected health issues after the birth of her first child Eula: pelvic floor dysfunction, incontinence, hormonal imbalance. As she and her husband navigate new parenthood, May also moves between shock, sadness, and anger over her body’s betrayal. She finally identifies the roots of her anguish as premenstrual dysphoric disorder and what she calls female rage. The process leads May to a long-desired conversation with her body in an attempt to balance the physical changes she experiences with the emotional landscape opening up before her.
Body Full of Stars is one woman’s story–dark and tender, honest and corporeal– that reveals deeper truths about how disconnected many modern women are from their bodies. It is her “postpartum awakening.” It is also a joyful and tenderhearted celebration of the greatest story of all time: mothers and daughters, partners and co-parents, and the feminine power surging beneath it all.