Breathe: A Memoir of Motherhood, Grief, and Family Conflict

(Paperback)

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Kelly Kittel never questioned her Mayflower Society mantraFamily is the most important thinguntil the day her fifteen-month-old son was run over by her sixteen-year-old niece. Nine months later, Kittel's doctor made a terrible mistake during her subsequent pregnancy and she found herself burying yet another baby. Caught up in the maelstrom of a malpractice lawsuit, Kittel and her husband battle not only the medical system, but their own relatives, in the courtroom. As their family tree begins to topple, the Kittels struggle to nourish the roots of their young family and find healing. Achingly raw and beautifully narrated, Breathe is a story of motherhood, death, and family in the face of unspeakable tragedy and, ultimately, how she learns to breathe again.

Reviews

"People always ask me why I write about loss and grief. And I tell them that I write about loss and grief because when I do, I'm also writing about love, and hope, and family, and all the big messy glorious things in our lives. Kelly Kittel understands that. In Breathe, she bares her broken heart, and shows us all courage and hope and, mostly, love."
Ann Hood, author of the memoir Comfort: A Journey Through Grief and The Knitting Circle

Author Bio

Kelly Kittel is a fish biologist by trade but a writer at heart. She is married with five living children, her best work beyond compare. She lives with her husband and two youngest children in Rhode Island but her favorite writing space is in her yurt on the coast of Oregon. She has been published in magazines and anthologies and has written many notes to teachers, but this is her first book.