Despite the fact that I had a dream pregnancy, nothing went as planned as soon as the labor began. Instead of birthing my son in our sea view bedroom, I woke up in the ICU with a baby I didn’t remember having. I learned that I had died the night before, moments after we arrived at the ER. In a case the doctors say they never heard of– I suffered unexplainable eclampsia, triggering a seizure during the final push of labor. Back at home with our baby, I hid from my husband James just how dark my mind was becoming. When I wasn’t washing baby clothes or pumping breastmilk, I was researching near death stories and entertaining suicidal thoughts. Depression clouded over my motherhood, still I decided to stick with our life plan, which had me pregnant within the year. At home with two under two, the walls began to come down. I realized the extent to which I had neither processed the trauma of sudden death, nor being written off by the medical community. Born in the Beyond explores my need to find purpose by searching for the answers as to why I died and came back. Beginning with therapy urged on by James, then hypnosis and energy work. Through this search I finally learned to live beyond the mold of motherhood I was born into and reclaimed this new gift of life as my own.

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Born in the Beyond answers the call of mothers who are searching for a memoir that not only touches on the realities of suffering from a birth trauma, it provides a roadmap to climbing out of postpartum depression to find oneself again through my own survival and healing. Chronologically unfolding the six years that follow my birth nightmare, Born in the Beyond is a modern perspective on a motherhood memoir. In the thousands of conversations and connections I have had with other mothers experiencing birth trauma through my podcast interviews and Instagram community, I have learned that this book is necessary for women who seek representation amongst the picture perfect births broadcasted all over social media.

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My book gives language to mothers who give themselves away piece by piece, never coming back to the women they once were. It’s the story of a woman who breaks away from the threads of martyrdom tying her down. Cutting through the tapestry woven by generations of motherhood sacrifices, told through my own experiences as a child witnessing my mother and grandmother disappearing into the backdrops of their husband's and children's lives. Beautiful adornments, silently shattering. This is the story ultimately about a woman who chooses to cut these cords so she can know her identity beyond the label of motherhood. 

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