Emma's Laugh: The Gift of Second Chances - A Memoir

(Paperback)

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Author has excellent connections: The author is a social worker for New York States Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in the Early Intervention program, giving her a close connection with a community of parents across the state who are raising nearly 70,000 children with delays and disabilities.

Addresses important issues: The divorce rate for couples with special-needs kids hovers around 80 percent, about 14% of American children between the ages of three and 17 have developmental disabilities, and the stress levels of parents whose children have developmental disabilities are significantly higher than those of parents with typically developing children

A unique memoir angle: This adoption memoir is different than most because the authors adoption was reversed after six months. Adoption dissolutions are rarebetween 1 and 5 percent of US adoptions get legally dissolved each year.

Reviews

The author effectively shows how she learned lessons from raising Emma that allowed her to draw on a wellspring of love for other members of her family. . . . An engaging work about how the tenacity of a young girl changes her parents lives.
KIRKUS REVIEWS

Rarely in life, in marriage, or in motherhood does a person have to make the choices made in the life of this author. And as she makes them, we go with her, deep into our own selves, traveling on her details to a journey to our own consciences, hearts, and minds. This is a powerful tale of family and of the kind of hard-fought courage that we always hope exists in this world. Beautifully written and wonderfully told, this is the book for right now.
MARION ROACH SMITH, author of The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life

Emmas Laugh traces the authors moving, exhilarating, and devastating journey as a parent. Told with humor, humility, and grace, it is filled with deep sentiment but never falls into sentimentality. This moving family story had me at the edge of my seat, clutching a box of tissues, never wanting it to end.
MARIA KUZNETSOVA, author of Oksana Behave!

Emmas Laugh is an honest and beautiful look at parental love. From her early rejection of her special-needs child to her gradual falling in love with her daughter, Kupershmit shows us how much a mother is willing to give of herself for the sake of her child. I read with my heart in my throat all the way to the end.
MONICA WESOLOWSKA, author of Holding Silvan: A Brief Life

Emmas Laugh made me laugh, and cry, and smile, and cry again. Kupershmit delivers literary love with a capital L. This is what motherhood is. This is what love is. Just as Kupershmit climbs into a crib to mold herself around her daughter when she suffers headaches and pain, I felt myself molding to this story, ever involved, rooting for mother and daughter and this family all the way.
ELIZABETH COHEN, author of The House on Beartown Road: A Memoir of Learning and Forgetting

How important it is that Kupershmit has given us this gem of a book. It is a story of heartache and of realityof despair, strength, and resilience. This book, in its tenderness and sensitivity, will offer you solace and companionship. Im so glad it exists.
MIRA PTACIN, author of Poor Your Soul and The In-Betweens

Diana Kupershmit has written a remarkably honest and unflinching account of her journey from rejection to acceptance raising a special-needs child. A heartbreaking and heartwarming tributeand a testimony to one mothers endless love for her extraordinary child.
HEATHER SIEGEL, author of The King and the Quirky

Diana Kupershmits innate gift of storytelling and astute observations carefully invite the reader to bear witness to a heartbreaking journey toward acceptance. This gorgeous and honest memoir holds up the lens to motherhood and dares to address the profound grief that is capable of burying us or propelling us. Emmas Laugh is a mothers love letter to a remarkable child and a beautiful reminder to each of us that in life, the two most valuable things are time and laughtereverything else is simply details.
JESSICA CIENCIN HENRIQUEZ, author of If You Loved Me, You Would Know

Diana Kupershmit writes an incredible story after being forged in the fire of her experience. Her story is urgent, necessary, and shows readers how to persevere with love, in every circumstance.
EMILY RAPP BLACK, New York Times best-selling author of The Still Point of the Turning World

With a voice that is crisp and clear, Kupershmit shares the story of her daughter, Emma, and the earthshaking decisions that came with parenting such an exceptional girl. Faced with situations that most parents are spared, Kupershmit takes us into her darkest moments with tenderness and grace. What shines the brightest is the joy that is set free when we accept that instead of controlling outcomes perhaps our greatest responsibility is in surrendering to the possibility that our children come with their own plan for how they will live and what they will teach.
ASHLEIGH RENARD, author of Swing: A Memoir of Doing it All

Author Bio

Diana Kupershmit holds a Master of Social Work degree and works for the Department of Health in the Early Intervention program, a federal entitlement program servicing children birth to three with developmental delays and disabilities. She has published online in the Manifest Station, Power of Moms, Motherwell Magazine, Still Standing Magazine, HuffPost, and Her View From Home. On the weekends, she indulges her creative passion working as a portrait photographer specializing in newborn, family, maternity, and event photography. She lives in New York City.