Description: My Body Is A Big Fat Temple, a memoir of pregnancy and early motherhood, follows a writer as she debates having children, miscarries, faces morning sickness, uncertainty, physical impairments, labor, breastfeeding, the "baby blues," the heartache of not loving her son as she thinks she should, parenting through a plague, until finally (basically, mostly) blossoming into her new identity.
Creating life is a primal phenomenon. It requires grit, resilience, and a lot of bathroom breaks. There are dry heaves and darkened nipples, crotch lightning and brain fuzz, milk stains, sleep regressions, and equal amounts of despair and joy. It's a complicated magic. The undertaking is airbrushed to preserve the ideal of motherhood, and exacerbated by a culture that dictates what women can do and how they should feel. We don't get the full story, so mothers with unromantic experiences feel like aberrations, and worse, alone. This is why the voices of women matter. The voices of mothers matter. Here's one to remind you of the important things.Brief description: Alena Dillon is the author of Mercy House, a Library Journal Best Book of 2020, which has been optioned for a CBS television series produced by Amy Schumer, and The Happiest Girl in the World. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including The Rumpus, Slice Magazine, LitHub, Bustle, and River Teeth. She teaches creative writing at St. Joseph's College and lives on the north shore of Boston with her husband, son, and dog.