Motherhood, for me, has been a mess of contradictions. It is both the easiest and the hardest thing I have ever done; my greatest purpose and my biggest regret; and the most rewarding and most restricting experience of my life.

Motherhood is complicated.

Which is why this month will be devoted entirely to the topic of motherhood and will feature submissions that include:

• Fiction with characters experiencing the highs and lows of motherhood

• Poetry about the experiences of motherhood

• Nonfiction that offers advice, or personal narratives of motherhood

• Reviews of media that cause us to reflect on the concept of motherhood

If you’re a mother and have an experience you’d like to share, this is your time to shine!  

Click here to submit your content now! ☝

With that being said, here’s a sneak peek of upcoming content this month:

Friday May 5 — Personal Narrative: The Rubber Squishy Toy, How Motherhood Has Made Me Resilient

Wednesday May 10 — Special Guest Poet Eric Browne, When I Knew

Friday May 12 — Fiction: The Little Pink Power Strip, a flash fiction adaptation of the novel I’m working on

Friday May 19 — Book Review: All the Rage by Darcy Lockman

Friday May 26 — Film Review: My Top 3 Mommy Guilty Pleasure Shows

This one was a doozy. 

But I suppose that’s to be expected from a biographical account of a dying man.

I found this book while browsing the local library. I try to select at least one fiction novel and one nonfiction novel to read each time I go and this was my nonfiction pick. The poetic title and the minimalistic cover design are what stood out to me the most. Then, when I picked it up and read the first couple sentences of the cover flap, I was hooked:

I’m a sucker for exploring the philosophies of life. Like Paul, I consider myself a seeker of meaning, constantly asking myself questions like those proposed in the synopsis of the book:

To be able to ask these questions, and to put ourselves on the path of seeking the answers, I believe is one of the hallmarks of the human experience. Though, as Paul reminds us in the book, “No system of thought can contain the fullness of human experience.” 

The story starts out with Paul’s first diagnosis with cancer and then quickly turns into a biographical account of his life’s work: attempting to discover what it means to live and die as a human being through the lens of a neurosurgeon and a lover of literature. 

We see him growing up in a rural part of Arizona, his mother impressing upon him the importance of education and literature. Like most young men at a certain point in their lives, he aspired to be someone entirely different from his father, a doctor who was inspiring and brilliant but also frequently absent and engrossed in his work. 

And also like most young men at a certain other point in their lives, he eventually became a very similar person to his father in the end by becoming a neurosurgeon and combining his interest in literature's quest for meaning with the scientific study of how the brain makes us capable of pursuing such a quest.

He believed that science and literature were not complete opposites but instead two sides of the same coin: a way to make and pursue meaning in life. By pursuing a career path as a neurosurgeon, it’s clear that he hoped to find meaning in the deeply intense work of holding someone’s meaning-maker in his hands, literally taking it apart and piecing it back together over and over and over again. 

Then, as life tends to do, in an ironic twist of fate, his quest for meaning was put to the test when he became the patient on the verge of death that he encountered constantly in his every day life. 

In the aftermath of his diagnosis, we see Paul struggling to come to terms with what it means to truly live as he grapples with his terminal illness, overcomes it, and then relapses again. 

He threads his reflections on important questions with his first person account of what it felt like to live with his illness, what it felt like to be a patient after years of being a doctor, and also what it was like to be staring death right in the face and deciding to live a life worth meaning in spite of it. 

Above all the bits of wisdom threaded throughout the book (and there are A LOT), the notion that the quest for meaning is a never-ending process—one we will all ultimately struggle to define every day of our lives until we die—is the most prevalent. A reminder that life is about the journey, not the destination.

What gutted me the most about this novel was how much of it was clearly written with the intention for his daughter to be able to know him, even after he is long gone. He died just 8 short months after her birth, leaving her with this book and the last line he wrote in it–a clear dedication speaking directly to his only child:

“When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.”

I had to put the book down after reading that last line so I could bawl my eyes out. It hit me so hard my grief wound was split wide open and it took me a moment to recover and actually finish the rest of the book.

And, man, do I love a book that makes me cry. Isn’t that the point of art, after all? To make us feel something?

The book officially ends with a note from his wife, Lucy, who shares what the last year of Paul’s life was like in the time between when he wrote that last line and when the book was published. She talked about what his intentions were for writing, how he wrote, and also how he lived.

Overall, When Breath Becomes Air is truly a beautiful reminder that maybe the most meaningful thing we can do in life is seek to make life meaningful. 

Maybe, just maybe, that is more than enough.

What do you think? 

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Last summer, I went on a trip to Pensacola, Florida to connect IRL with some gaming friends who lived in the area as well as to reunite with old friends who lived out of state. 

The only other time I had been to Florida was for a family trip to Disney, and my impression of the state was not particularly positive. However, during my trip to Pensacola, I absolutely fell in love with the city–especially the white sand beaches of the glistening emerald coast and all the lush greenery in the surrounding areas. 

Ever since, I’ve been actively seeking out literature set in Florida with the hope I’ll be transported back to that feeling of wonder and awe for the Sunshine State that was awakened during my trip.

Which is initially what drew me to The Light Pirate when it popped up as one of my Book of the Month picks. 

What sold me, though, was the opening paragraph provided in the sample reading:

“Somewhere west of Africa, so far from land the sky is empty in all directions, a storm begins. The water is warm, the waves are high. The air is heavy with moisture. A breath of wind catches, then circles back, churning itself into something new: a closed circuit gathering power, tighter and tighter. In this way, the storm grows. It matures. Learns to hold a shape. The warm water feeds it, fattens it, then urges it westward. Electronic eyes watch as it skims across the Atlantic. Soon enough, it earns a name. Reports are written about its speed and size. Preparations are made. There are other storms in this ocean, other pockets of hot, moist wind and rain-heavy cloud. But this one–this one will outgrow them all.”

And so the story introduces us to Hurricane Wanda, the storm that will forever alter and define the lives of the main characters.

Written in third person and set in a not-so-distant future, the story first focuses on the perspectives of task-oriented lineman Kirby and his new, very pregnant wife Frida. After losing her mother in a devastating hurricane the year before, Frida has been struggling to keep her anxiety in check while Kirby has been struggling to juggle his responsibilities as the lead lineman responsible for keeping the electricity running in a town constantly pummelled by viscous storms; an understanding husband to his fretful new wife; and a father to his two boys staying with him for the summer, Lucas and Flip.

Their struggles come to a head when Lucas and Flip–hellbent on rebelling against the life their father is building with his new wife–decide to venture out in the thick of the storm while Kirby is at work and Frida is attempting to rest. When Kirby returns home and finds the boys missing, panic ensues as Kirby races to bring the boys home before the worst of the storm hits. Meanwhile, Frida–left behind in Kirby’s panic–finds herself enduring a pre-term labor that she must fight to survive.

By the time Kirby returns home, she’s nearly lost the fight but still manages to hand him their baby girl and request that she be named Wanda–after the hurricane. 

The story then follows Wanda as she grows up motherless in a town slowly succumbing to nature’s elements. We see the remnants of Wanda’s world through her curious exploration of and interaction with what’s left of it. Frequent hurricanes have been slamming the Florida coast so often that civilization has become nearly impossible. Bigger cities have started to evacuate while smaller towns–like the one Wanda lives in–are little more than ruins hardly able to keep their heads above the water. The only people still residing there are the loyal residents determined to fix it–like Wanda’s father, Kirby–or the people with nowhere else to go. 

When the schools get shut down, she’s forced to spend her days with a former professor and biologist named Phyllis who lives in a neighboring house. Through Phyllis, Wanda learns how to make sense of the world, and most importantly, how to survive– a skill that becomes ever more useful as the years pass by and the world around Wanda continues to deteriorate. 

We also learn that Wanda has a special power: whenever she touches water, she’s able to make it glow. Phyllis, ever the scientist, tries desperately to solve what might be causing this “bioluminescence” to occur, but we never get a definitive answer throughout the book. The closest we get is in the very last chapter when we see the community of fellow survivors Wanda has become a part of and she remarks on how other kids have certain, special abilities as well: one who is able to hold their breath underwater for an inhuman length of time, another who is able to talk to fish, and another still who is able to see clearly in the dark. It’s essentially chalked up to evolution, the natural adaptation that occurs out of a necessity of survival. 

Which brings me to the main theme of the book: the inevitability of change. 

Through beautifully written prose The Light Pirate teaches us that even the best laid plans can fail and survival is more about being willing to adapt than anything else.