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Arrival Stories: Women Share Their Experiences of Becoming Mothers
A wide range of women-actors, athletes, academics, CEOs, writers, small-business owners, birth workers, physicians, and activists-share their experiences of becoming mothers in this multifaceted, moving, and revealing collection.
Throughout her difficult pregnancy and following her frightening labor experience, Amy Schumer found camaraderie and empowerment in hearing birth stories from other women, including those of her friend Christy Turlington Burns. Turlington Burns's work in maternal health began after she experienced a childbirth-related complication in 2003-an experience that would later inspire her to direct and produce the documentary feature film No Woman, No Cry, about the challenges women face throughout pregnancy and childbirth around the world.
It is through Schumer and Turlington Burns's conversations that the idea for Arrival Stories was born. By sharing their experiences, the contributors to Arrival Stories offer an informative and deeply affecting account of what it feels like when a woman first realizes she is a mother. This beautiful collection features essays by:
Serena Williams • Alysia Montaño • Abby G. Lopez • Amber Tamblyn • Shilpa Shah • Christy Turlington Burns • Emily Oster • Emma Hansen • Leslie Feist • Amanda Williams • Angel Geden • Adrienne Bosh • Latham Thomas • Rachel Feinstein • Ashley Graham • Jill Scott • Jennie Jeddry and Kim DeLise • La La Anthony • Shea Williams • Sienna Miller • Katrina Yoder • Amy Schumer
Intimate and urgent, Arrival Stories offers a panoramic view of motherhood and highlights the grave injustices that women of color face in maternal healthcare. It is the perfect book for any expectant or new mother, or for anyone who knows and loves one.
Throughout her difficult pregnancy and following her frightening labor experience, Amy Schumer found camaraderie and empowerment in hearing birth stories from other women, including those of her friend Christy Turlington Burns. Turlington Burns's work in maternal health began after she experienced a childbirth-related complication in 2003-an experience that would later inspire her to direct and produce the documentary feature film No Woman, No Cry, about the challenges women face throughout pregnancy and childbirth around the world.
It is through Schumer and Turlington Burns's conversations that the idea for Arrival Stories was born. By sharing their experiences, the contributors to Arrival Stories offer an informative and deeply affecting account of what it feels like when a woman first realizes she is a mother. This beautiful collection features essays by:
Serena Williams • Alysia Montaño • Abby G. Lopez • Amber Tamblyn • Shilpa Shah • Christy Turlington Burns • Emily Oster • Emma Hansen • Leslie Feist • Amanda Williams • Angel Geden • Adrienne Bosh • Latham Thomas • Rachel Feinstein • Ashley Graham • Jill Scott • Jennie Jeddry and Kim DeLise • La La Anthony • Shea Williams • Sienna Miller • Katrina Yoder • Amy Schumer
Intimate and urgent, Arrival Stories offers a panoramic view of motherhood and highlights the grave injustices that women of color face in maternal healthcare. It is the perfect book for any expectant or new mother, or for anyone who knows and loves one.
Editorial Reviews
"Intimate . . . The stories are consequential, the voices delightfully direct, and the collection's greatest strength is in its embrace of all the mothers, whether they are single, coupled, straight, queer, or chose adoption. This anthology triumphs by making motherhood feel anything but lonely."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Short Excerpt Teaser
Introduction
It's time to break one of the unspoken rules of motherhood. Since, well, forever, women have been taught not to tell the story of birthing our babies. Taught by whom? Well, that's a story for a whole other book but, unbelievably, in the year 2022, it feels like the rule still applies. What happens to us in the most vulnerable and powerful hours of our lives isn't supposed to be shared in all its stark, bloody detail. Instead, we are told to be grateful, to accept pain and suffering as simply part of the gig of motherhood. Conception, pregnancy, birth, matching with your baby through adoption, or the period of time after birth can be incredibly difficult, frightening, even traumatic. It can also be joyful and empowering. And it can be all these things at the same time. No matter how it happens, the arrival of a child is a life-altering event. And yet, all too often we keep quiet about our experiences. Why shouldn't we talk about the beautiful mess of it all?
Change often begins with the simple act of people coming together to share knowledge and experience to lift each other up. This is how we birth ideas and cultural movements: together. Life is about sharing stories. These are some Arrival Stories. This book was born in conversation between Amy Schumer and Christy Turlington Burns when Amy was very pregnant and Christy visited her. After months of throwing up every single day, Amy had been diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, an extreme form of morning sickness. When she shared the story of her illness-the raw, unvarnished truth of it-on social media, friends and strangers alike responded with incredible messages of support. Amy went from feeling isolated in her struggle, to understanding that many others had persevered through the same or similar challenges. Hearing their stories gave Amy the comradery and the encouragement she desperately needed at that time. But Amy soon saw that it didn't end with her. When she heard from other women who saw themselves in her story, Amy realized that sharing had not only helped her, it had helped other people too.
Amy wanted to find a way to keep the chain going, to pay her good fortune forward. Talking to Christy, she learned more about Christy's nonprofit organization, Every Mother Counts, which seeks to make pregnancy and birth safe for women all over the globe. Christy started Every Mother Counts in 2010, after suffering from a retained placenta and severe bleeding hours after delivering her healthy daughter. Christy sensed that Amy was ready to handle the devastating truth of maternal healthcare and so she decided to share the statistics.
In the United States, maternal healthcare is in crisis. Our country has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. Although most are preventable, maternal deaths have been increasing in the U.S. since 2000. It's worse for women of color, who are three times more likely to die than their white counterparts. Even in a wealthy city like New York (where Amy was born), women of color are twelve times more likely to die unnecessarily from childbirth. These statistics rocked Amy to her core. It all begged the question, one that Christy has been asking since she started Every Mother Counts more than a decade ago: Why are so many mothers dying?
Women, especially women of color, do not have a voice in a biased system that has long been much more invested in the research and funding of men's health issues. In 2020, a United Nations global report found that close to 90 percent of all people are biased against women, and the medical world is no exception. Medical research has often excluded women, partially because scientists wrongfully assumed that their hormones and menstrual cycles made them difficult to study. A 2018 study found that doctors often view men with chronic pain as "brave" or "stoic," but they described women with chronic pain as "emotional" or "hysterical." The U.S. also has a history of denying Black women their consent for performing medical experiments. Looking at the systemic racism embedded in every American institution, it's not surprising to find it deeply entrenched in the medical world. But that doesn't mean we must accept a high maternal mortality rate as a permanent reality of living in America. We must not let racism, sexism, or any other scourge of humankind keep women unsafe. Every mother deserves safety and protection not only for her baby but for herself too.
After Amy talked to Christy, she couldn't stop thinking about the indelible crash course in maternal health she'd been given. Soon enough, she called Christy with the idea to curate a collection of birth stories from many kinds of mothers, a book that wo...
It's time to break one of the unspoken rules of motherhood. Since, well, forever, women have been taught not to tell the story of birthing our babies. Taught by whom? Well, that's a story for a whole other book but, unbelievably, in the year 2022, it feels like the rule still applies. What happens to us in the most vulnerable and powerful hours of our lives isn't supposed to be shared in all its stark, bloody detail. Instead, we are told to be grateful, to accept pain and suffering as simply part of the gig of motherhood. Conception, pregnancy, birth, matching with your baby through adoption, or the period of time after birth can be incredibly difficult, frightening, even traumatic. It can also be joyful and empowering. And it can be all these things at the same time. No matter how it happens, the arrival of a child is a life-altering event. And yet, all too often we keep quiet about our experiences. Why shouldn't we talk about the beautiful mess of it all?
Change often begins with the simple act of people coming together to share knowledge and experience to lift each other up. This is how we birth ideas and cultural movements: together. Life is about sharing stories. These are some Arrival Stories. This book was born in conversation between Amy Schumer and Christy Turlington Burns when Amy was very pregnant and Christy visited her. After months of throwing up every single day, Amy had been diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, an extreme form of morning sickness. When she shared the story of her illness-the raw, unvarnished truth of it-on social media, friends and strangers alike responded with incredible messages of support. Amy went from feeling isolated in her struggle, to understanding that many others had persevered through the same or similar challenges. Hearing their stories gave Amy the comradery and the encouragement she desperately needed at that time. But Amy soon saw that it didn't end with her. When she heard from other women who saw themselves in her story, Amy realized that sharing had not only helped her, it had helped other people too.
Amy wanted to find a way to keep the chain going, to pay her good fortune forward. Talking to Christy, she learned more about Christy's nonprofit organization, Every Mother Counts, which seeks to make pregnancy and birth safe for women all over the globe. Christy started Every Mother Counts in 2010, after suffering from a retained placenta and severe bleeding hours after delivering her healthy daughter. Christy sensed that Amy was ready to handle the devastating truth of maternal healthcare and so she decided to share the statistics.
In the United States, maternal healthcare is in crisis. Our country has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. Although most are preventable, maternal deaths have been increasing in the U.S. since 2000. It's worse for women of color, who are three times more likely to die than their white counterparts. Even in a wealthy city like New York (where Amy was born), women of color are twelve times more likely to die unnecessarily from childbirth. These statistics rocked Amy to her core. It all begged the question, one that Christy has been asking since she started Every Mother Counts more than a decade ago: Why are so many mothers dying?
Women, especially women of color, do not have a voice in a biased system that has long been much more invested in the research and funding of men's health issues. In 2020, a United Nations global report found that close to 90 percent of all people are biased against women, and the medical world is no exception. Medical research has often excluded women, partially because scientists wrongfully assumed that their hormones and menstrual cycles made them difficult to study. A 2018 study found that doctors often view men with chronic pain as "brave" or "stoic," but they described women with chronic pain as "emotional" or "hysterical." The U.S. also has a history of denying Black women their consent for performing medical experiments. Looking at the systemic racism embedded in every American institution, it's not surprising to find it deeply entrenched in the medical world. But that doesn't mean we must accept a high maternal mortality rate as a permanent reality of living in America. We must not let racism, sexism, or any other scourge of humankind keep women unsafe. Every mother deserves safety and protection not only for her baby but for herself too.
After Amy talked to Christy, she couldn't stop thinking about the indelible crash course in maternal health she'd been given. Soon enough, she called Christy with the idea to curate a collection of birth stories from many kinds of mothers, a book that wo...
