Birthing Hope: Giving Fear to the Light

Review"Ask me what this book is about and I will struggle to give you a simple answer. It is about pregnancy and birth, anxiety and despair, blood and water. It is memoir and history, poetry and theology. Ask me, though, why you should read this book, and my answer is very simple?because you are a person with a body in and through which you bear pain, fear, and failure. Read this book for its necessary wisdom. In our most desperate vulnerability, when all we can do is endure, God is there too." -- Ellen Painter Dollar, author of No Easy Choice: A Story of Disability, Parenthood, and Faith in an Age of Advanced Reproduction"Birthing Hope drew me in from the first page to the last. Rachel Marie Stone’s masterful interweaving of family story, theological truth, and personal reflection on birth, life, and loss puts her in the company of writers such as Rebecca Solnit and Eula Biss. I will return to this book for wisdom, beautiful writing, and encouragement that, even in the face of loss and sorrow, it is good to give ourselves to the light." -- Amy Julia Becker, author of Small Talk and A Good and Perfect Gift"We all carry fear with us in our bodies. Some of us try to escape it, some excel at denying it, and others attempt to bully it into submission. Rachel Marie Stone’s shimmering writing instead invites readers to recognize the ways in which fear shapes us (and sometimes breaks us) as human beings. Birthing Hope reveals, with honesty and grace, the ways in which holy, embodied hope can re-form our response to fear." -- Michelle Van Loon, author of Moments & Days: How Our Holy Celebrations Shape Our Faith"Rachel Stone writes with power in this captivating reflection on the legacies of pain, procreation, and promise that echo through women’s (reproductive, emotional, and familial) lives. Part memoir, part travelogue, part time travel, Birthing Hope kept me glued to its pages. Highly recommend!" -- Jennifer Grant, author of Love You More, Wholehearted Living, and Maybe God Is Like That Too"I’ve been waiting for a book like this one for years, and no one could have written it more beautifully and wisely than Rachel Marie Stone. With the skill of a poet and the patience of a doula, Stone invites the reader to look straight into the face of fear and find in it the spark of hope. There are words and phrases from these pages that I will go on pondering for years. Theologically rich and carefully researched, Birthing Hope is a book for everyone, but as a new mother it proved life changing?the kind of book that leaves you breathless." -- Rachel Held Evans, author of Searching for Sunday and A Year of Biblical Womanhood"Every woman who gives birth knows that it is a profoundly spiritual experience. Something in us changes as our bodies bring life into the world. Rachel Marie Stone puts words around the ways the birthing process pulls women into the depths of pain, but also identity, fear, mercy, and even death. In doing so, she offers a clear look at the physical, emotional, and mystical messiness of birth." -- Carla Barnhill, author of The Myth of the Perfect Mother, former editor of Christian Parenting Today"Profound theology, deep psychic insight, and the kind of wisdom that only emerges from immersion in life and the Scriptures?Rachel Marie Stone's book is a treasure, unforgettable, entirely compelling." -- James Howell, author of Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week"Why do so many movies and TV shows portray birth so laughably poorly? It's as if we've all agreed the real thing?the most elemental human reality?is too raw and inelegant, too terrible and ecstatic, to be honest about. Rachel Marie Stone upends this conspiracy in this feisty, smart, theologically illuminating book. In her hands, birth is not only a sacrament of solidarity, a sign of hope amid the chaos of doubt and fright, but also a reminder that, for all our talk of immortal souls, we have and are bodies, fearfully and wonderfully so." -- Wesley Hi