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Passionate Journey: My Unexpected Life
What does it take to change established childbirth practices, hospital procedures, infant nutrition standards, and cultural norms that work against the best interests of mothers and their babies? It takes a woman who is passionate about all of those things, and who unknowingly took the first steps of a journey that would ultimately lead to the founding of La Leche League International and a life devoted to speaking up and speaking out for mothers and babies around the world. That woman is Marian Tompson, whose passion for insisting on the childbirth and breastfeeding options that nurtured and nourished the breastfeeding couple became her life's work. Part biography, part memoir, Passionate Journey -- My Unexpected Life, tells the story of a shy 1950s stay-at-home mother who became a childbirth and breastfeeding advocate whose influence reached around the globe. Marian Tompson, mother, grandmother and great grandmother is best known as one of the founders of La Leche League Internationa
- GenresNonfiction
172 pages, Paperback
First published June 19, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 19, 2011
I love Marian, she is a true inspiration. But the book added very little new to what I know of her. It wasn't well-written, just lots of snippets and no real depth about any of the amazing events in her life. I would love to read a real biography of her that explored more.
September 8, 2011
Well I"m about 1/2 way through and keep thinking --this book is TOO SHORT!! Very interesting and enjoyable to read.
October 9, 2019
This is a thoroughly enjoyable, heart-warming autobiography. One reason I enjoyed it is because I know Marian as well as many of the people she writes about, including my mother. It is also inspirational and easy to read.
Marian’s childhood, marriage and raising seven children are interesting. She will be remembered in history, however, as “the high priestess of breastfeeding.” As the president and spokesperson for La Leche League International, she helped lead the revival of breastfeeding in the United States, after it had sharply declined in favor of formula.
An instructive anecdote is her confrontation with feminist icon Betty Friedan in 1964. While Friedan urged women to enter the workforce to become less dependent and more fulfilled, Marian told her that as the mother of seven, she found fulfillment and happiness raising her family. Friedan did not recognize that Marian and her colleagues promoted female empowerment and choice by insisting upon natural childbirth, rather than the restrictive hospital routine at the time, and upon feeding their babies as nature intended. Both choices were greatly discouraged during the 1940s and 50s.
Marian is an upbeat, positive person. One of her strengths is being able to express her viewpoint without contention and sharp elbows. If she has regrets, she doesn’t share them. She also tries to spare others embarrassment.
But her good manners leave this reader with lingering questions: Did the teenage driver who ran over and killed Tom, the love of her life, face any charges? Which founder’s husband told her that a man, rather than the LLLI president, should introduce such an important person as Dr. Grantly Dick-Read? Where was LLLI going wrong in 2010 when Marian resigned as a leader, and has it corrected the error of its ways? ###
Marian’s childhood, marriage and raising seven children are interesting. She will be remembered in history, however, as “the high priestess of breastfeeding.” As the president and spokesperson for La Leche League International, she helped lead the revival of breastfeeding in the United States, after it had sharply declined in favor of formula.
An instructive anecdote is her confrontation with feminist icon Betty Friedan in 1964. While Friedan urged women to enter the workforce to become less dependent and more fulfilled, Marian told her that as the mother of seven, she found fulfillment and happiness raising her family. Friedan did not recognize that Marian and her colleagues promoted female empowerment and choice by insisting upon natural childbirth, rather than the restrictive hospital routine at the time, and upon feeding their babies as nature intended. Both choices were greatly discouraged during the 1940s and 50s.
Marian is an upbeat, positive person. One of her strengths is being able to express her viewpoint without contention and sharp elbows. If she has regrets, she doesn’t share them. She also tries to spare others embarrassment.
But her good manners leave this reader with lingering questions: Did the teenage driver who ran over and killed Tom, the love of her life, face any charges? Which founder’s husband told her that a man, rather than the LLLI president, should introduce such an important person as Dr. Grantly Dick-Read? Where was LLLI going wrong in 2010 when Marian resigned as a leader, and has it corrected the error of its ways? ###
October 25, 2011
Well... where do I start?
Marian Tompson is one of the Founding Mothers of La Leche League. I'd read a few accounts of LLL history and also much more recently read that she had resigned in protest at the current management of LLLI. I knew she was coming to speak at a conference but as far as I was aware it was going to be about HIV and breastmilk. There was some to my mind rather giddy stuff about how if you volunteered to help with the conference running, you would get a ticket in a draw to have 'Tea with Marian'. I wondered rather ungraciously whether I could ask not to have a ticket - what would I have to say to her if I won? I don't know the woman!
And then Marian gave her talk about her work with AnotherLook - important, brave work requiring consummate skills in communication, bringing several opposing camps in HIV to talk together constructively out of the glare of publicity. Let me be honest, I love a speaker who can deliver her session in the time available. But Marian was captivating and the messages went beyond whether HIV is transmissible via breastfeeding and whether breastfeeding is a reasonable choice for an HIV+ mother to make.
I bought the book and I asked her if she would sign it and I didn't find it difficult to have a conversation with her.
The following day she spoke about the genesis of the book, how it had involved long phone calls with her co-author Melissa Vickers and related several anecdotes from it. I feel that having heard some from her own mouth did enhance the experience of reading the book and gave it a vibrancy it may not otherwise have had for me. It's been serious work but she has plenty of funny stories and plenty of names to drop. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the influence of her husband and mother and reading the contributions from her seven children.
The 'unexpected' theme was well-chosen. By now I knew her origins and the 'unexpectedness' of finding herself globetrotting heading an international organisation. I also knew about the unexpectedness of losing her husband. What I did not know, and what was humbling to read as she tells it matter of factly and almost by the way was that she then had to sell up a home she couldn't afford to maintain, and that she had to take up several part time jobs to make ends meet. Somehow the story comes full circle as she writes about the moment of her mother's death - not unexpected.
It's a slim volume and I don't think she's told the half of it and she may never tell the rest. She signed my copy "with gratitude" Beg pardon? The gratitude is all mine.
Marian Tompson is one of the Founding Mothers of La Leche League. I'd read a few accounts of LLL history and also much more recently read that she had resigned in protest at the current management of LLLI. I knew she was coming to speak at a conference but as far as I was aware it was going to be about HIV and breastmilk. There was some to my mind rather giddy stuff about how if you volunteered to help with the conference running, you would get a ticket in a draw to have 'Tea with Marian'. I wondered rather ungraciously whether I could ask not to have a ticket - what would I have to say to her if I won? I don't know the woman!
And then Marian gave her talk about her work with AnotherLook - important, brave work requiring consummate skills in communication, bringing several opposing camps in HIV to talk together constructively out of the glare of publicity. Let me be honest, I love a speaker who can deliver her session in the time available. But Marian was captivating and the messages went beyond whether HIV is transmissible via breastfeeding and whether breastfeeding is a reasonable choice for an HIV+ mother to make.
I bought the book and I asked her if she would sign it and I didn't find it difficult to have a conversation with her.
The following day she spoke about the genesis of the book, how it had involved long phone calls with her co-author Melissa Vickers and related several anecdotes from it. I feel that having heard some from her own mouth did enhance the experience of reading the book and gave it a vibrancy it may not otherwise have had for me. It's been serious work but she has plenty of funny stories and plenty of names to drop. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the influence of her husband and mother and reading the contributions from her seven children.
The 'unexpected' theme was well-chosen. By now I knew her origins and the 'unexpectedness' of finding herself globetrotting heading an international organisation. I also knew about the unexpectedness of losing her husband. What I did not know, and what was humbling to read as she tells it matter of factly and almost by the way was that she then had to sell up a home she couldn't afford to maintain, and that she had to take up several part time jobs to make ends meet. Somehow the story comes full circle as she writes about the moment of her mother's death - not unexpected.
It's a slim volume and I don't think she's told the half of it and she may never tell the rest. She signed my copy "with gratitude" Beg pardon? The gratitude is all mine.
January 14, 2012
Passionate Journey by La Leche League International co-founder Marian Tompson is the story of a young mother who became known worldwide and was even referred to as "The High Priestess of Breastfeeding Mothers." Written in a light and casual tone, many of Marian's stories are familiar if you've read The LLL Love Story, Seven Voices, One Dream, or The Revolutionaries Wore Pearls. While theoretically a personal memoir from one Founder, rather than a history of LLL, because Marian's personal history is intimately entwined with the organization's history, the end result is very similar to existing books about LLLI.
The writing style is simplistic and ironically often fairly dispassionate in tone, perhaps due to having a co-writer for a first person memoir. Chronology jumps are occasionally confusing.
Several anecdotes made me laugh aloud and read them to my husband--such as a medical intern rushing to the physician after witnessing one of Marian's three natural hospital births and exclaiming, "oh, doctor! How did you do it?" As a birth activist and feminist, I'm fascinated by the radical courage required at the time to support and promote home birth and breastfeeding. While LLLI has always been a "single purpose" organization, it has also always recognized something that seems to escape the notice of many professionals and consumers: that normal, undisturbed breastfeeding begins with normal, undisturbed birth. Tompson notes: "...having a baby at home is at least as safe as a hospital birth, and in most situations home birth is safer. New sciences and new research are helping us understand why giving birth in your own bed, surrounded by people who care for you, where you feel supported and can celebrate the birth, rather than just endure it, changes both the experience and the outcome." Tompson had her first home birth in 1955 and went on to have three more children at home. Her daughters carried on her legacy, one of them returning to the family home to give birth to her own daughter. The Tompson family home was also the site of multiple family weddings as well as the almost unheard of home funeral for husband Tom in 1981. In a nice touch, reflective paragraphs from each of Marian's seven children close the book.
An inspirational story of the twists and turns of an ordinary life with an extraordinary global impact, Passionate Journey reminded me of the deep importance and transformative influence of providing support and encouragement to women who wish to breastfeed.
The writing style is simplistic and ironically often fairly dispassionate in tone, perhaps due to having a co-writer for a first person memoir. Chronology jumps are occasionally confusing.
Several anecdotes made me laugh aloud and read them to my husband--such as a medical intern rushing to the physician after witnessing one of Marian's three natural hospital births and exclaiming, "oh, doctor! How did you do it?" As a birth activist and feminist, I'm fascinated by the radical courage required at the time to support and promote home birth and breastfeeding. While LLLI has always been a "single purpose" organization, it has also always recognized something that seems to escape the notice of many professionals and consumers: that normal, undisturbed breastfeeding begins with normal, undisturbed birth. Tompson notes: "...having a baby at home is at least as safe as a hospital birth, and in most situations home birth is safer. New sciences and new research are helping us understand why giving birth in your own bed, surrounded by people who care for you, where you feel supported and can celebrate the birth, rather than just endure it, changes both the experience and the outcome." Tompson had her first home birth in 1955 and went on to have three more children at home. Her daughters carried on her legacy, one of them returning to the family home to give birth to her own daughter. The Tompson family home was also the site of multiple family weddings as well as the almost unheard of home funeral for husband Tom in 1981. In a nice touch, reflective paragraphs from each of Marian's seven children close the book.
An inspirational story of the twists and turns of an ordinary life with an extraordinary global impact, Passionate Journey reminded me of the deep importance and transformative influence of providing support and encouragement to women who wish to breastfeed.
Read
January 15, 2016"Breastfed." It's a word that editors used to avoid. But thanks partly to Marian Tompson, co-founder of La Leche League (and an EPL patron), it's a widely-used word and a commonplace in our culture.
In this autobiography Tompson writes in ordinary prose about what began as an ordinary life. She was "just a wife and mom" ... who happened to start a breastfeeding discussion group that exploded into La Leche League. (Why this name? Partly to avoid the word "breast.") Since 1956, when membership comprised seven friends in the Chicago-area support group, LLL has grown to several million members in over sixty countries.
In the post-war U.S., breastfeeding rates hovered around 20%. Formula-feeding had become the norm, starting from birth. But as of the 1980s, more than half of U.S. mothers were breastfeeding for at least six weeks. The overall societal impact of this shift is hard to calculate, but it includes reduced rates of neonatal illness, and a per-family cost savings of more than a thousand dollars in the first year (because baby formula is pricey).
The book describes Tompson's challenges at the personal as well as professional level. As LLL grew, Marian and her husband Tom were rearing seven children. Marian gives Tom much credit--for his logistical support of course, but more significantly for sharing her passion for LLL's work. Not every 1950s guy would've had the patience. Tom died in 1981, but Marian has kept plugging away for more than three decades since--such as in support of HIV-positive new mothers. In a charming afterword, the seven Tompson kids offer their tributes. (Jeff B., Reader's Services)
In this autobiography Tompson writes in ordinary prose about what began as an ordinary life. She was "just a wife and mom" ... who happened to start a breastfeeding discussion group that exploded into La Leche League. (Why this name? Partly to avoid the word "breast.") Since 1956, when membership comprised seven friends in the Chicago-area support group, LLL has grown to several million members in over sixty countries.
In the post-war U.S., breastfeeding rates hovered around 20%. Formula-feeding had become the norm, starting from birth. But as of the 1980s, more than half of U.S. mothers were breastfeeding for at least six weeks. The overall societal impact of this shift is hard to calculate, but it includes reduced rates of neonatal illness, and a per-family cost savings of more than a thousand dollars in the first year (because baby formula is pricey).
The book describes Tompson's challenges at the personal as well as professional level. As LLL grew, Marian and her husband Tom were rearing seven children. Marian gives Tom much credit--for his logistical support of course, but more significantly for sharing her passion for LLL's work. Not every 1950s guy would've had the patience. Tom died in 1981, but Marian has kept plugging away for more than three decades since--such as in support of HIV-positive new mothers. In a charming afterword, the seven Tompson kids offer their tributes. (Jeff B., Reader's Services)
October 2, 2011
What a marvelous life. I am so glad Marian Tompson has shared it with us in print. A history of childbirth and breastfeeding in our country since the mid 1950s, and a history of "Organized medicine" and formula companies and how they have undermined breastfeeding for decades.
June 14, 2012
I loved this book ...
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews