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Birthing Hope: Giving Fear to the Light
"Love is always a risk, beginning with that first blood sacrifice: when a woman consents to nurture a child with her body and allow it to be torn open for the sake of new life: that's the miracle that saves the world. That's where fragile hope is found." While living and working in one of the world's most impoverished countries, teacher, doula, and young mother Rachel Marie Stone unexpectedly caught a baby without wearing gloves, drenching her bare hands with HIV-positive blood. Already worried about her health and family and whether her service was of any use, Stone grappled anew with realities of human suffering, global justice, and maternal health. In these profound reflections on the mysteries of life and death, Stone unpacks how childbirth reveals our anxieties, our physicality, our mortality. All who are born or give birth will someday die. Yet even in the midst of our fears and doubts, birth is a profoundly hopeful act of faith, as new life is brought into a hurting world that groans for redemption. God becomes present to us as a mother who consents to the risk of love and ultimately lets us make our own way in the world, as every good mother must do.
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First published May 1, 2018
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May 1, 2018
Pain marks our journeys. Pain is borne alone.
Rachel Marie Stone is an English teacher and the celebrated author of Eat with Joy (IVP, 2013), the 40th Anniversary edition of the More With Less Cookbook (Herald Press, 2016), and numerous articles on justice, faith, food, public and maternal health. In her new memoir, Birthing Hope: Giving Fear to the Light, she opens up about the ways pain has shaped her journey, alongside risk, anxiety, tenderness, and hope.
Stone describes the birth of her children (she is the mother of two boys), her family and personal history with osteogenesis imperfecta (O.I) (a genetic condition, she also passed on to her children), her teenage diagnosis of Scoliosis and the anxieties which have plagued her through life. She opens up about a painful chapter when she and her husband Tim were in Mawali teaching at a Presbyterian Seminary that was marred by scandal, and the anxiety-ridden weeks after Stone caught the newborn baby of a HIV positive mother with her ungloved, cuticle-chewed and papercut fingers (Stone is an American doula who was in a Mawali hospital to observe). There were also life-threatening illnesses in Mawali that affected her and her family (e.g. the dehydration that accompanies malaria). Later, she described to a group of beer-drinking-hipster pastors that her whole time in Mawali felt like a miscarriage.
Stone is open and vulnerable about the painful parts of her story, and the particulars of her story are pretty different from my own. As a man, I will never know what it is like to carry a tiny, invasive being inside my own body, much less the pain of labor. I have never gone to Africa or been exposed directly to the threat of HIV. Though I have had my own anxious encounters and painful life chapters that have felt like miscarriages. There are worries I carry and episodes I can't put a pretty bow on. As different as our stories are, Stone opens up for me a space to reflect on the ways pain and fear have shaped my own journey.
But Stone's book is not just a book about the pain and anxiety, but about hope. Hurt and joy come intertwined. And so the osteogenesis imperfecta that plagues her family story, also reveals a rootedness—a connection to her mother, grandmother, and great-grandparents. The pain of birth and bearing children is intermingled with the joys (and travails) of motherhood, and the special, physiological and psychological attachment between her and her children. Even the painful feeling of miscarriage in her time in Mawali comes commingled with relationships and connections she and her husband made there. While the pain was hers alone to bear, she was strengthened in her journey by sympathetic guides, a supportive family, and joyful encounters with others.
Hope is born as Stone risks, faces down the pain, endures and emerges. Birthing is a poignant image. I underlined several passages. I particularly loved the "Blood" chapter when Stone describes the messiness of birth, relating it to the incarnation of Christ (calling the often misogynistic Christian tradition to task for the ways they sanitize Christ's birth). I also loved how her own experience of pain and bringing life into the world gives her compassion and extend forgiveness toward's mothers facing hard choices who chose to abort, even those in her own family history. Perhaps one of the gifts of pain is it gives us empathy and compassion for the painful journeys of others.
This is a great book. Read it. I give it 5 stars. - ★★★★★
Notice of material connection: I received an electronic copy of this book from the author and publisher in exchange for my honest review.
Rachel Marie Stone is an English teacher and the celebrated author of Eat with Joy (IVP, 2013), the 40th Anniversary edition of the More With Less Cookbook (Herald Press, 2016), and numerous articles on justice, faith, food, public and maternal health. In her new memoir, Birthing Hope: Giving Fear to the Light, she opens up about the ways pain has shaped her journey, alongside risk, anxiety, tenderness, and hope.
Stone describes the birth of her children (she is the mother of two boys), her family and personal history with osteogenesis imperfecta (O.I) (a genetic condition, she also passed on to her children), her teenage diagnosis of Scoliosis and the anxieties which have plagued her through life. She opens up about a painful chapter when she and her husband Tim were in Mawali teaching at a Presbyterian Seminary that was marred by scandal, and the anxiety-ridden weeks after Stone caught the newborn baby of a HIV positive mother with her ungloved, cuticle-chewed and papercut fingers (Stone is an American doula who was in a Mawali hospital to observe). There were also life-threatening illnesses in Mawali that affected her and her family (e.g. the dehydration that accompanies malaria). Later, she described to a group of beer-drinking-hipster pastors that her whole time in Mawali felt like a miscarriage.
Stone is open and vulnerable about the painful parts of her story, and the particulars of her story are pretty different from my own. As a man, I will never know what it is like to carry a tiny, invasive being inside my own body, much less the pain of labor. I have never gone to Africa or been exposed directly to the threat of HIV. Though I have had my own anxious encounters and painful life chapters that have felt like miscarriages. There are worries I carry and episodes I can't put a pretty bow on. As different as our stories are, Stone opens up for me a space to reflect on the ways pain and fear have shaped my own journey.
But Stone's book is not just a book about the pain and anxiety, but about hope. Hurt and joy come intertwined. And so the osteogenesis imperfecta that plagues her family story, also reveals a rootedness—a connection to her mother, grandmother, and great-grandparents. The pain of birth and bearing children is intermingled with the joys (and travails) of motherhood, and the special, physiological and psychological attachment between her and her children. Even the painful feeling of miscarriage in her time in Mawali comes commingled with relationships and connections she and her husband made there. While the pain was hers alone to bear, she was strengthened in her journey by sympathetic guides, a supportive family, and joyful encounters with others.
Hope is born as Stone risks, faces down the pain, endures and emerges. Birthing is a poignant image. I underlined several passages. I particularly loved the "Blood" chapter when Stone describes the messiness of birth, relating it to the incarnation of Christ (calling the often misogynistic Christian tradition to task for the ways they sanitize Christ's birth). I also loved how her own experience of pain and bringing life into the world gives her compassion and extend forgiveness toward's mothers facing hard choices who chose to abort, even those in her own family history. Perhaps one of the gifts of pain is it gives us empathy and compassion for the painful journeys of others.
This is a great book. Read it. I give it 5 stars. - ★★★★★
Notice of material connection: I received an electronic copy of this book from the author and publisher in exchange for my honest review.
April 25, 2018
I tend to avoid thoughts of death, covering my eyes to the reality of how little control I have over my life. Here, Rachel Marie Stone pries those hands off my eyes, forces me to consider the reality of life and death, and still leaves me with hope. This book is a beautifully written meditation on mortality, childbirth, the trauma we bear in our DNA, and a God who is with us in the waters. Profound and wrenching.
June 19, 2018
Birth is the metaphor that runs throughout Birthing Hope: Giving Fear to the Light as it binds memoir to meditation and bears witness to the journey that has left its mark on the author. When Stone and her husband packed up baggage and boys and relocated to Malawi, they had not an inkling of what it would cost them to serve university students in one of the poorest countries in the world. Whether it was her training as a doula or her tendency since childhood to be drawn toward the things that scare her, she was drawn to serve in a hospital where maternal death was commonplace–even unremarkable.
When Rachel’s bare hands plucked a baby from a pool of its mother’s HIV-infected blood, she tried not to think about the consequences to her own personal health or to her family. Even so, as she waited for the test results to reveal the impact on her own HIV status, she had plenty of opportunity to ponder the fleeting nature of life and her persistent fears for the safety of her husband and her children. She expressed the angst with borrowed words from Kathleen Norris:
“One of the most astonishing and precious things about motherhood is the brave way in which women consent to give birth to creatures who will one day die.” (74)
An Earthen Vessel in Zomba
Living as a white woman in a Malawian city, Stone “wore shame like a scarf” because of her comparative wealth, her education, her access to medical care, and the fact that she was there in the country voluntarily and could leave at any time. In the city of Zomba they called home, she taught English with a cringe, wishing her students did not need to learn it.
She shared the lives, the meals, and the routines of Malawian women who became friends, all the while learning that “every act of eating and drinking in Malawi was preceded by strategic harm reduction acts” such as washing raw vegetables and fruit in a bleach solution and filtering water. Learning to fashion pottery from the clay taken from termite mounds (Yes, it was accumulated termite droppings . . .), Rachel savored the image of God as the Potter who fashioned her own vessel out of humble clay.
Beautiful Incarnation
One of the highlights of Birthing Hope is the theological ponderings that flow out of the narrative arc. For instance, so many of our anxieties are tied to our mortality and physicality, and yet the truth of the incarnation that anchors our hearts in hope for these frail bodies has been challenged, messed with, and diluted throughout history. This is tragic, because the reality that a Palestinian teenager gave birth to God in a body, that Mary was given the option to bend and break over scandal and risk around a fully human pregnancy gives meaning and purpose and fosters fellowship around our own human struggles that are firmly rooted in our feeble flesh.
From God’s perspective, the incarnation was a huge unshielding of His own heart as He brought into being the possibility of a Suffering Servant and the Perfect Sacrifice. What a precise picture of the mothering life! Starting with birth, and growing by leaps and bounds as small bodies grow into large and independent selves, the mothering journey is one huge unshielding process! And it is fraught with risk.
Birthing Hope is an invitation to enter fully into that risk, trusting that there is no contamination or sorrow that is not gathered up into the collective groaning that will be turned inside out and will one day weigh like feathers in the balance against the overwhelming weight of glory which comes from a life in which love is allowed to have the last word.
Many thanks to IVP Books for providing this book to facilitate my review, which, of course, is offered freely and with complete honesty.
When Rachel’s bare hands plucked a baby from a pool of its mother’s HIV-infected blood, she tried not to think about the consequences to her own personal health or to her family. Even so, as she waited for the test results to reveal the impact on her own HIV status, she had plenty of opportunity to ponder the fleeting nature of life and her persistent fears for the safety of her husband and her children. She expressed the angst with borrowed words from Kathleen Norris:
“One of the most astonishing and precious things about motherhood is the brave way in which women consent to give birth to creatures who will one day die.” (74)
An Earthen Vessel in Zomba
Living as a white woman in a Malawian city, Stone “wore shame like a scarf” because of her comparative wealth, her education, her access to medical care, and the fact that she was there in the country voluntarily and could leave at any time. In the city of Zomba they called home, she taught English with a cringe, wishing her students did not need to learn it.
She shared the lives, the meals, and the routines of Malawian women who became friends, all the while learning that “every act of eating and drinking in Malawi was preceded by strategic harm reduction acts” such as washing raw vegetables and fruit in a bleach solution and filtering water. Learning to fashion pottery from the clay taken from termite mounds (Yes, it was accumulated termite droppings . . .), Rachel savored the image of God as the Potter who fashioned her own vessel out of humble clay.
Beautiful Incarnation
One of the highlights of Birthing Hope is the theological ponderings that flow out of the narrative arc. For instance, so many of our anxieties are tied to our mortality and physicality, and yet the truth of the incarnation that anchors our hearts in hope for these frail bodies has been challenged, messed with, and diluted throughout history. This is tragic, because the reality that a Palestinian teenager gave birth to God in a body, that Mary was given the option to bend and break over scandal and risk around a fully human pregnancy gives meaning and purpose and fosters fellowship around our own human struggles that are firmly rooted in our feeble flesh.
From God’s perspective, the incarnation was a huge unshielding of His own heart as He brought into being the possibility of a Suffering Servant and the Perfect Sacrifice. What a precise picture of the mothering life! Starting with birth, and growing by leaps and bounds as small bodies grow into large and independent selves, the mothering journey is one huge unshielding process! And it is fraught with risk.
Birthing Hope is an invitation to enter fully into that risk, trusting that there is no contamination or sorrow that is not gathered up into the collective groaning that will be turned inside out and will one day weigh like feathers in the balance against the overwhelming weight of glory which comes from a life in which love is allowed to have the last word.
Many thanks to IVP Books for providing this book to facilitate my review, which, of course, is offered freely and with complete honesty.
June 2, 2018
I picked up Birthing Hope because so many friends were enthusiastically gushing about it.
I'll join the crowd--though I'm not sure what this book, exactly, is about!
It seems to be a meditation on life and the Bible through the lens of childbirth--which is certainly a unique way of looking.
It is so rich. Stone draws parallels between Bible passages I never saw before, through her unique lens. So, Noah and his ark remind us of God brooding over the planet in Genesis--awaiting new life from cataclysmic acts.
Isn't childbirth, in a way, the same thing?
She parallels the children of Israel moving through the narrow passage and water of the Red Sea from the slavery of Egypt into the light and freedom of the Sinai.
Wow, just as we do in childbirth--when we're the one being birthed. :-)
Stone's writing is gorgeous, her images profound. Her personal story fascinates and I devoured this lovely book.
I'm not sure, though, if someone who has not experienced the intricate emotions of childbirth would have quite the same emotional response.
Still, well done.
I'll join the crowd--though I'm not sure what this book, exactly, is about!
It seems to be a meditation on life and the Bible through the lens of childbirth--which is certainly a unique way of looking.
It is so rich. Stone draws parallels between Bible passages I never saw before, through her unique lens. So, Noah and his ark remind us of God brooding over the planet in Genesis--awaiting new life from cataclysmic acts.
Isn't childbirth, in a way, the same thing?
She parallels the children of Israel moving through the narrow passage and water of the Red Sea from the slavery of Egypt into the light and freedom of the Sinai.
Wow, just as we do in childbirth--when we're the one being birthed. :-)
Stone's writing is gorgeous, her images profound. Her personal story fascinates and I devoured this lovely book.
I'm not sure, though, if someone who has not experienced the intricate emotions of childbirth would have quite the same emotional response.
Still, well done.
May 9, 2018
We all carry fear with us in our bodies. Some of us try to escape it, some excel at denying it, and others attempt to bully it into submission. Rachel Marie Stone's shimmering writing instead invites readers to recognize the ways in which fear shapes us (and sometimes breaks us) as human beings. Birthing Hope reveals with honesty and grace the ways in which holy, embodied hope can re-form our response to fear.
July 21, 2018
Oh, gush gush gush. Rachel Marie Stone’s writing is exquisite. I’m not sure how I’m just finding her way with words now.
June 6, 2018
Rachel beautifully shares her story of childbirth, memories, and her time in Africa.
Her words captivated me and made me ponder fear and hope like I’ve never done before.
Her words captivated me and made me ponder fear and hope like I’ve never done before.
July 31, 2019
I put off reading this book for a while, mostly because I have never given birth, and I thought it might not be relevant. Boy was I wrong. This beautiful, soulful book has motherhood as its surface level topic, but underneath, Rachel Marie Stone is really writing about fear, faith, family, and the intersection of those three ... plus so much more. The language is breathtaking, the storytelling is poignant, even the pacing is superb. I couldn't put it down, and when it was over, I was truly sad. A great read for ... well anyone, but especially those of us who need a little hope in our lives.
April 25, 2018
This is a gorgeously written book which delves into so many topics swirling around motherhood, birth, suffering, and inequality. As someone who (barely) survived two traumatic births it was so life-giving to see the reality of death discussed side-by-side with the wonder of rebirth and hope. Rachel Marie Stone is one of the best living Christian writers, and this book shows that she can take any topic to deep, thoughtful, and unexpected places.
September 4, 2018
Review originally posted on the blog.
***
We often see God as Father but never - or only seldom - as a Mother. Author Rachel Marie Stone paints vivid image of God as a Mother - not in a theological way, but as someone as real as a mother gives birth to her child, cares, protects, that only mothers can do. I like how she connects God's love and sacrifices for us to motherhood and vice versa. It is both creative and revelational.
I must admit that it was quite different from other Christian non-fiction books I've read - from the writing style to the tone, apart from the fact that motherhood or birth-giving is a topic I cannot yet relate to (though the birthing process is something I am familiar with as an observer because of my OJT as a student nurse before). The writing was poetic, while the book itself is like a memoir. It took me a while before I get into the book, before I realize that this book is not going to give me to do's and not to do's. I won't say it's bad - it's beautiful, though you have to look hard or experience the same thing in order to connect. So allow me to say this: this book is meant for mothers (or fathers), for those who are trying to be mothers, soon to be mothers/parents, and those who wanted to see God in another way. I won't discourage singles because anyone can still try. After all, this book is about birthing hope in the midst of pain and fear.
***
We often see God as Father but never - or only seldom - as a Mother. Author Rachel Marie Stone paints vivid image of God as a Mother - not in a theological way, but as someone as real as a mother gives birth to her child, cares, protects, that only mothers can do. I like how she connects God's love and sacrifices for us to motherhood and vice versa. It is both creative and revelational.
I must admit that it was quite different from other Christian non-fiction books I've read - from the writing style to the tone, apart from the fact that motherhood or birth-giving is a topic I cannot yet relate to (though the birthing process is something I am familiar with as an observer because of my OJT as a student nurse before). The writing was poetic, while the book itself is like a memoir. It took me a while before I get into the book, before I realize that this book is not going to give me to do's and not to do's. I won't say it's bad - it's beautiful, though you have to look hard or experience the same thing in order to connect. So allow me to say this: this book is meant for mothers (or fathers), for those who are trying to be mothers, soon to be mothers/parents, and those who wanted to see God in another way. I won't discourage singles because anyone can still try. After all, this book is about birthing hope in the midst of pain and fear.
July 22, 2022
I bought this book from the publisher during a sale because I was buying every book on pregnancy, birth, or death I could get my hands on. So I knew nothing about it. It took about halfway through this book for me to finally get hooked. But once I was hooked, I was reeled completely in. The theology and crisp descriptions of Christ as a human born of a woman, a mother--the love of God being pushed through a birth canal and covered in slippery vernix. This made my head swirl with the magnificence of God and His love for us and what this means about the Gospel.
It talks of maternal health and mortality - of the birth of babies and their deaths. It speaks to mental health and aging. Of Christ and his everlasting presence at our sides. This book was an unexpected favorite.
"There are no answers to our questions, only the assurance of God's presence everywhere, in the weirdest and wildest places--on a mountain when the wild goats give birth, in the depths of the sea when the whales sing. There is only--and in Christianity, this is everything--the astonishing humility of God in taking on flesh. Of making a woman's body his home, of being squeezed and pushed and grunted into the world, of suffering hunger and loneliness, humiliation and death. Of sharing our lot. God's presence, Christ's compassion, so often shown to us when one person reaches toward another in empathy, in companionship, in love."
It talks of maternal health and mortality - of the birth of babies and their deaths. It speaks to mental health and aging. Of Christ and his everlasting presence at our sides. This book was an unexpected favorite.
"There are no answers to our questions, only the assurance of God's presence everywhere, in the weirdest and wildest places--on a mountain when the wild goats give birth, in the depths of the sea when the whales sing. There is only--and in Christianity, this is everything--the astonishing humility of God in taking on flesh. Of making a woman's body his home, of being squeezed and pushed and grunted into the world, of suffering hunger and loneliness, humiliation and death. Of sharing our lot. God's presence, Christ's compassion, so often shown to us when one person reaches toward another in empathy, in companionship, in love."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 3, 2018
Birthing Hope
Giving Fear to the Light
by Rachel Marie Stone
InterVarsity Press
Christian , Religion & Spirituality
Pub Date 01 May 2018
I am reviewing a copy of Birthing Hope through Intervarsity Press and Netgalley:
In Birthing Hope the author points out that bringing something to light requires us to dive fully into water.
We are reminded that love is always a risk, from the time a woman agreed to nurture a child with her own body and then allows it to be torn open for the sake of the new life that grew inside of her, the author points out that, that is the miracle that saves the world. The author reminds us that is where fragile hope is found.
Author Rachel Marie Stone unexpectedly caught a baby with her bare hands, drenching it with HIV blood while working as a doula, as well as a teacher in the world's most impoverished countries.
The author reminds us that all who are born or give birth will someday die, but amongst our fears and doubts birth is a deeply hopeful act of faith, new life is brought into a hurting world that recalls for redemption.
I give Birthing Hope five out of five stars!
Happy Reading!
Giving Fear to the Light
by Rachel Marie Stone
InterVarsity Press
Christian , Religion & Spirituality
Pub Date 01 May 2018
I am reviewing a copy of Birthing Hope through Intervarsity Press and Netgalley:
In Birthing Hope the author points out that bringing something to light requires us to dive fully into water.
We are reminded that love is always a risk, from the time a woman agreed to nurture a child with her own body and then allows it to be torn open for the sake of the new life that grew inside of her, the author points out that, that is the miracle that saves the world. The author reminds us that is where fragile hope is found.
Author Rachel Marie Stone unexpectedly caught a baby with her bare hands, drenching it with HIV blood while working as a doula, as well as a teacher in the world's most impoverished countries.
The author reminds us that all who are born or give birth will someday die, but amongst our fears and doubts birth is a deeply hopeful act of faith, new life is brought into a hurting world that recalls for redemption.
I give Birthing Hope five out of five stars!
Happy Reading!
May 1, 2018
I think I am currently reading this book for the third time, and I think I will read it again someday. Yes, I got to read some early drafts because I was at a writer's workshop with the author. And yes, she's my friend. But that's not why I'm reading it again. I'm reading it again because the prose is lyrical and compelling and surprising and beautiful, because the stories span generations and the globe and yet remain clear and relevant, and because the insistence that in a world of darkness and despair, we have reason to hold onto hope, to celebrate the light, and to lean in to the goodness and beauty and joy of it all.
Rachel uses her own experiences as a mother and as a doula--especially as a doula in Malawi--to think through risk and anxiety, life and death, beauty and hope.
If you like literary memoirs, if you have ever struggled with anxiety, if you like family stories, if you like birth stories, if you like really good writing, buy this book and read it. And then read it again. And then tell everyone you know who loves books like this that they too must read it.
May 1, 2018
This carefully-woven, thoughtfully-crafted memoir by Rachel Stone took my breath away. Throughout the book Stone explores life, death, and the liminal places in between through story-telling, historical observation, and theological inquiry.
I was especially touched by the stories of her grandmothers and mothers as Stone describes the kind of situations and circumstances that reveal the deep complexities of our lives and the decisions we must make in the midst of uncertainty and doubt. It caused me to reflect on my own existence—and all of the women who came before me who make this life for me possible.
Birth, as Stone discusses often in the book, is a unique experience through which we touch both life and death. It’s beautiful and dangerous, invigorating and depleting, sacred and ordinary.
This is a book I will revisit again and again.
I was especially touched by the stories of her grandmothers and mothers as Stone describes the kind of situations and circumstances that reveal the deep complexities of our lives and the decisions we must make in the midst of uncertainty and doubt. It caused me to reflect on my own existence—and all of the women who came before me who make this life for me possible.
Birth, as Stone discusses often in the book, is a unique experience through which we touch both life and death. It’s beautiful and dangerous, invigorating and depleting, sacred and ordinary.
This is a book I will revisit again and again.
June 23, 2018
Really, 3.5 stars. Some of the writing in this book is beautiful, searing, and full of rich meaning. But it is uneven. At times I read sentences several times to try to get their meaning as the sentence seemed to contradict the rest of the context around it or the connection between one paragraph and the next was oblique. I’m not actually sure what makes the whole book hang together because it is so broken into vignettes. Having been a doula briefly, I appreciated some of the meaningful connections around birth, death, fear, faith, and earthiness especially. I would absolutely read favorite portions again, and I would love if the author wrote a more focused book. At the very least, I’m looking forward to talking about it with the friend who lent the book to me as there s plenty of material for discussion.
May 17, 2018
Because Rachel is a friend and writing colleague, I read early drafts of this book, and later drafts of this book. And then most recently I listened to the audiobook version. Such a richly crafted book - so much nuance, challenge, courage, and beauty. It's about a great many things - ancestors and anxiety, HIV and childbirth, joy and beauty. This could have made for an unwieldy book that feels "all over the place", but there's such an intelligence to the structure of the book. It all comes together in breathtaking ways - making sense of often senseless paradoxes of life and death. I will reread, quote, remember.
May 12, 2018
I appreciate Stone’s work on the process of labor, birth, and delivery as metaphors for the spiritual life. However, I think she was trying to string too many genres and ideas together in this book. There were stories about her time as a missionary in Africa, stories about her fear of water, a short examination of the idea of “contamination” and then the birthing imagery. I would have enjoyed a more focused book.
That being said, she does write beautifully and there are many lines that stand out. I hope she revisits some of these themes in the future.
That being said, she does write beautifully and there are many lines that stand out. I hope she revisits some of these themes in the future.
January 21, 2019
In Birthing Hope, Stone draws out the theological truths revealed through the process of birth. Birthing Hope is not a book about motherhood per se, but rather a memoir of sorts that probes the complexities of motherhood and birth for what they reveal about community, family, and God. It's a powerful read for men and women of any age—do not for an instant believe that it is geared primarily towards those who have given birth! It is a gift to Christians in all phases of life.
July 11, 2019
Katherine, Central patron, July 2019, 4 stars:
I found Rachel Marie Stone's book, a sort of autobiography of fear and anxiety, a refreshing examination of our ability to trust as rooted in faith. Her descriptions of life in Malawi transported me back to my time in Uganda as a newlywed, and while I had hoped for more of an exploration of pregnancy and birth, the book as a whole made an interesting read.
I found Rachel Marie Stone's book, a sort of autobiography of fear and anxiety, a refreshing examination of our ability to trust as rooted in faith. Her descriptions of life in Malawi transported me back to my time in Uganda as a newlywed, and while I had hoped for more of an exploration of pregnancy and birth, the book as a whole made an interesting read.
April 16, 2022
This is very loosely Christian, and only roundabout about what the titles states. It's mostly memoir. It's mostly descriptions of the authors anxieties and physical problems. Nothing in the blurb clearly describes what the book is actually about, so this was very disappointing, even if she does write beautifully. By the end, I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to get from this.
September 23, 2024
I think I would have been more I turn with this book had I realized it was more of a memoir. I felt it was a bit all over the place. The last few chapters made some excellent points, but I felt the author never truly relinquish her fear. She admitted it like a family crest. It was a great reflection, just not as relevant to the concept of Hope I expected.
May 11, 2018
Captivating. More than stories about birth, but certainly not less than that. Being a person well acquainted with anxiety, I found myself laughing at her apt description of a lifestyle marked by fatal fantasy. Hopeful and open handed, with no easy answers. Artfully told.
September 22, 2018
I'm still processing this book and all it brought up in my own story.
So appreciated Rachel Marie Stone's beautiful prose and honesty in her sharing about the many parts of life that have shaped and continue to shape her story.
So appreciated Rachel Marie Stone's beautiful prose and honesty in her sharing about the many parts of life that have shaped and continue to shape her story.
January 18, 2019
What a lovely, lovely little book! What delightful prose! It's like drinking a clear glass of water — simple, familiar, but utterly refreshing. It's all the themes I love woven from her life experiences in Scotland, Germany, Malawi, and her childhood by the sea: God, birth, blood, death, and hope.
May 24, 2018
Haunting. Raw. Vulnerable. Beautiful. And sad. Rachel's words flow like poetry.
July 24, 2018
Beautiful. Links personal experiences of the author to just about every aspect of giving birth and pregnancy, and much of motherhood as well. Ties it all to Christian faith in a very real way.
July 24, 2018
Lush, deep and knowing. <3
October 18, 2018
Beautifully written. Powerful. Heart breaking and healing at the same time.
March 4, 2019
Beautiful book that is a reflection on birth and life. Half memoir. Witty and emotional.
March 25, 2019
Goegeous. Plan on reading again later in my pregnancy.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews