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A New Constellation: A Memoir
On December 19, 2018, I went in for an eye appointment. By the end of the day I had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. As this unexpected world intruded into my life, I started to write. I got up that night when everyone else was asleep and wrote and then kept going. An experiment writing in real time. The chronology is not perfect, but when the earth shifts the fault rupture is rarely linear. This is a beginning, nothing more. Above all, it is simply my experience, which I hope can reach out in some way and hold hands with what is hard and unexpected in your life, however small or large.
106 pages, Paperback
Published March 25, 2019
5 people are currently reading
109 people want to read
About the author
Ashley Mae Hoiland
12 books24 followersHI, I'M ASHMAE.
I write, I paint, I teach, I explore, but most of all I try to connect to the people and places around me.
I write, I paint, I teach, I explore, but most of all I try to connect to the people and places around me.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
April 6, 2020
A shorter memoir that covers a shorter amount of time than her "A Hundred Birds Taught me to Fly". A quickly written memoir, relating her experience of being diagnosed with MS. Again, lots of lovely passages. I especially liked her poem “Diagnosis", written right after she received her diagnosis. She uses the metaphor “un-sheathing”--taking blankets on and off her children. Now un-sheathing going on inside the nerves in her brain. “Breaking apart the only Pangea I have ever known, And trust it will re-arrange itself into something of a new history.”
April 4, 2019
This is beautiful writing and it moved me. I was glad to spend one night and one morning doing nothing but reading, feeling totally immersed in the language and experience of changing. And in the end, feeling that everything is different and everything is the same. I hope far beyond my right to hope, that she'll share more as this story continues to unfold. Being allowed inside another person's heart this way is a sacred experience.
July 12, 2019
“I can do nothing more than attempt to better understand what it is to hurt, so I can better understand what it is to heal.”
Insightful & vulnerable & creative
Insightful & vulnerable & creative
July 8, 2019
This is a very short book. I bought it for my Kindle because it's not yet on the radar of my local library. I didn't want to wait to read it since her first book is still so fresh in my mind. I think I must have heard of this author from Brooke White who I sort of follow sometimes on Instagram. Turns out the author is also on Instagram where Brooke has left comments. They seem friends. It was super interesting to see more of the author's life on Instagram, especially since I just finished reading two of her books. This is a wild world we live in where we have windows into people's lives.
What to say about the book... Now that I've seen the author's Instagram and blog she seems more of a real person to me. I don't know that I can be critical of her memoir. This is her story. It feels more significant and a little heavier than her first book. It's easy to sense the increased maturity and life experience. Especially at the beginning of the book, I was struck by the enormity and overwhelm of her diagnosis.
Funny thing, at first I was thinking I couldn't fully relate to such a significant, life-changing problem. It didn't take long for me to remember I have a life-altering physical problem and some serious life-affecting circumstances that will be with me for the rest of my life. I've just grown very used to them, fully accepted them, and found ways to cope. They aren't the first thing I think about or how I define myself and my life. I've learned to live with them. Yet, this book reminded me of some of those raw, first feelings after changes. I can understand those intense emotions of mourning a loss of the type of life you thought you were going to live.
She talks about the privilege in her life. It's good that she recognizes what a blessed life she's living. She seems surrounded by opportunity and a lot of family love. The image of being "under the wing" is interesting. I don't completely relate to that. During hard changes I've felt so alone and unprotected in the tornado. Maybe I just haven't recognized the times a wing has been there for me after all.
I've given this four stars because I respect the author's openness and willingness to share her story. It's something I really like.
What to say about the book... Now that I've seen the author's Instagram and blog she seems more of a real person to me. I don't know that I can be critical of her memoir. This is her story. It feels more significant and a little heavier than her first book. It's easy to sense the increased maturity and life experience. Especially at the beginning of the book, I was struck by the enormity and overwhelm of her diagnosis.
Funny thing, at first I was thinking I couldn't fully relate to such a significant, life-changing problem. It didn't take long for me to remember I have a life-altering physical problem and some serious life-affecting circumstances that will be with me for the rest of my life. I've just grown very used to them, fully accepted them, and found ways to cope. They aren't the first thing I think about or how I define myself and my life. I've learned to live with them. Yet, this book reminded me of some of those raw, first feelings after changes. I can understand those intense emotions of mourning a loss of the type of life you thought you were going to live.
She talks about the privilege in her life. It's good that she recognizes what a blessed life she's living. She seems surrounded by opportunity and a lot of family love. The image of being "under the wing" is interesting. I don't completely relate to that. During hard changes I've felt so alone and unprotected in the tornado. Maybe I just haven't recognized the times a wing has been there for me after all.
I've given this four stars because I respect the author's openness and willingness to share her story. It's something I really like.
April 6, 2019
The way AshMae is able to capture her emotions and detail her lived experience brings me to tears. I am grateful for the way she describes a shift where a big event is both everything and nothing. Her writing inspires me to want to write more and capture my own story, even if it isn't written as eloquently as I'd like it to be. I loved how she described all those that help and serve her and treat her with kindnesses and equate it to being under the protective wing of a bird. This (along with her other book One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly) is one I plan to revisit again and share with others.
April 14, 2019
A lovely little book that explores ideas of newness and strangeness and suffering and the ways that our stories of ourselves are interrupted and refuse to conform to what we thought or desire. Hoiland has a way with words to create images in a poetic sense that linger. Little snippets of wisdom scattered throughout about the grace and beauty that surrounds us and the ways that we unlock new worlds when our lives change and see things anew.
The Foreword calls on the reader to be ready to write once they finish, to explore their own story and I feel the call of the pen, to get out some of the countless ideas that I have bouncing around my brain.
The Foreword calls on the reader to be ready to write once they finish, to explore their own story and I feel the call of the pen, to get out some of the countless ideas that I have bouncing around my brain.
April 5, 2019
Ashley’s writing teaches me to see my life better—to notice the meaningful moments and to write them down. Take Bruce, for instance, the friendly worker at Walmart today who found me staring at the aisle of Command Strips. He called me Sunshine and gave me a small chocolate with a faded wrapper. I think I would have already forgotten that kindness if it hadn’t been for this book.
Ashley uses words as only an artist could. And in her sharing, she not only helps her readers see the beauty she has found, but inspires them to discover their own. That is an amazing gift.
Ashley uses words as only an artist could. And in her sharing, she not only helps her readers see the beauty she has found, but inspires them to discover their own. That is an amazing gift.
December 30, 2019
I don't like most memoirs. This book was brilliant. I finished it in 1.5 readings (kids wanted to eat, or something like that). This was infinitely better than Everything Happens For A Reason, and a lot better than the author's last work, One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly. The way she views simple things, then how she profoundly applies it to her life, is enviable.
April 9, 2019
I had the good fortune of hearing Ashley Mae Hoiland read excerpts of this book out loud, and her readings brought tears to my eyes. My expectations for the book were high, and they were exceeded. Ashley cherishes experience through the written word and writes about her grief at being diagnosed with MS in real time. Her writing is gorgeous--full of soul-tugging imagery and prose that reads like poetry.
May 6, 2019
Ashley is such a thoughtful, artful writer. I felt so present in the wilds of this very intimate capsule of time and processing of her diagnosis of MS and emergence as a person who is new and the same in own. I always come away from her work wanting to write more and read more.
January 31, 2023
3.5ish. Same author of “One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly,” but this book covers her diagnosis of MS. I absolutely love her writing, but perhaps I’ve not experienced enough tragedy for this book to resonate with me as deeply as One Hundred Birds did. I also found OHB to be rich and introspective when it came to her reflections on faith, while this one felt significantly more jaded and hardened. I still enjoyed the read but it wasn’t the spiritual experience I had with OHB.
August 8, 2020
Beautiful. Ashmae’s writing style in this memoir feels reverent. She’s raw and honest and has a way of turning the mundane into the miraculous. Her ideas about bodies, God, and motherhood are life giving and thought provoking. Would read again at least once a month.
April 5, 2020
Her writing is beautiful and poignant. It makes me catch my breath and take notice. I am grateful for her work.
January 2, 2021
This a very different style of writing that I am use to, but I loved the message it portrayed. I hope to reread it again to learn to articulate my own experiences.
August 20, 2019
By ElleK
"The heart does not know what it can hold until it is given the thing it must carry. I did not know I would love my children, or the ocean, or the purple flowers that bloom in our front yard tree, until they showed up for me, until I was asked to stoop down and take a piece of them into my heart. I imagine it is the same with things that are hard; I cannot dictate beforehand the ways they will contract and expand my universe until they show up at my front door unexpected. And then I will know they have traveled a long way to get here, that they have made plans to be here for this part of the journey, and that I must let them in" (p. 2).
Ashley Mae Hoiland’s A New Constellation: A Memoir About a Beginning is slim and unassuming–just 86 pages–and is the record of the author’s unexpected diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. The book records her musings, her emotions, and snapshots of her life in the early days of learning she had a chronic illness. Indeed, reading this book is like paging through a scrapbook; it is less clear narrative and more a time capsule of an intense and frightening and, somehow, beautiful time. It is also a love letter to the author’s body, a reworking of her relationship to it, an expansion of the understanding of what it means to be mortal, to be human.
I trust the work the body does, the hot tectonic shifting I can barely detect,
Breaking apart the only Pangea I ever knew
And trust it will re-arrange itself into something of a new history,
One that is mine to write.
(excerpt from the poem Diagnosis, p. 20)
I’ve read several memoirs, and while I generally enjoy the genre, Hoiland’s book had a different feel from anything else I’ve read. Part of that is the style: the non-linear method of storytelling, the collection of vignettes and narrative interspersed with poems, and part of that is that the book was written in real time during those first few weeks after her diagnosis. Hoiland was diagnosed with MS in December 2018, and this book was published in early April 2019, and the author’s closeness to these events imbue the writing with a sense of immediacy, vulnerability, and rawness that feel unique and poignant. There is no trite resolution, no insight gleaned from hindsight years after the fact, no reminiscences made sterile and clinical by the passage of time. It is a rare opportunity to witness such a crushing and formative moment in another person’s life, and Hoiland leads the reader through her journey with grace and grief, and the reader experiences with her the crushing bigness of overwhelm juxtaposed with small snapshots of everyday life, of moments that come like clockwork regardless of tragedy or timing.
To continue reading: https://www.the-exponent.com/book-rev...
"The heart does not know what it can hold until it is given the thing it must carry. I did not know I would love my children, or the ocean, or the purple flowers that bloom in our front yard tree, until they showed up for me, until I was asked to stoop down and take a piece of them into my heart. I imagine it is the same with things that are hard; I cannot dictate beforehand the ways they will contract and expand my universe until they show up at my front door unexpected. And then I will know they have traveled a long way to get here, that they have made plans to be here for this part of the journey, and that I must let them in" (p. 2).
Ashley Mae Hoiland’s A New Constellation: A Memoir About a Beginning is slim and unassuming–just 86 pages–and is the record of the author’s unexpected diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. The book records her musings, her emotions, and snapshots of her life in the early days of learning she had a chronic illness. Indeed, reading this book is like paging through a scrapbook; it is less clear narrative and more a time capsule of an intense and frightening and, somehow, beautiful time. It is also a love letter to the author’s body, a reworking of her relationship to it, an expansion of the understanding of what it means to be mortal, to be human.
I trust the work the body does, the hot tectonic shifting I can barely detect,
Breaking apart the only Pangea I ever knew
And trust it will re-arrange itself into something of a new history,
One that is mine to write.
(excerpt from the poem Diagnosis, p. 20)
I’ve read several memoirs, and while I generally enjoy the genre, Hoiland’s book had a different feel from anything else I’ve read. Part of that is the style: the non-linear method of storytelling, the collection of vignettes and narrative interspersed with poems, and part of that is that the book was written in real time during those first few weeks after her diagnosis. Hoiland was diagnosed with MS in December 2018, and this book was published in early April 2019, and the author’s closeness to these events imbue the writing with a sense of immediacy, vulnerability, and rawness that feel unique and poignant. There is no trite resolution, no insight gleaned from hindsight years after the fact, no reminiscences made sterile and clinical by the passage of time. It is a rare opportunity to witness such a crushing and formative moment in another person’s life, and Hoiland leads the reader through her journey with grace and grief, and the reader experiences with her the crushing bigness of overwhelm juxtaposed with small snapshots of everyday life, of moments that come like clockwork regardless of tragedy or timing.
To continue reading: https://www.the-exponent.com/book-rev...
April 7, 2019
I just finished this book, and sit here in quite peaceful thought wishing I could thank the author in person for this gift she has created. For those who know what it is like to get life altering news, and for those who don't - this books brings both comfort & understanding. It's poetic, beautiful, sad & strong. Ashmae writes in such a reverent way that her words serve as a reminder for the small beauties in this world that will show up for each of us if we but pause to acknowledge them. She has excelled at bringing to light all that most of us miss, that we should not.
I love her work, and I'm grateful for this piece that was created out of her new unknown. It is quite the gift.
I love her work, and I'm grateful for this piece that was created out of her new unknown. It is quite the gift.
December 1, 2024
A New Constellation by Ashley Mae Hoiland was a magnificent book. I genuinely enjoyed this book much more than other books I have read recently. Hoiland talked so much about her experiences in great detail when getting diagnosed with MS. It honestly felt like the audience was going through it with her. Not only would she talks about her experience while going through her diagnosis, but she also talked about things she went through previously in her life that reminded her of the present. It honestly hurt my heart knowing how much she cared for kids and didn’t want to affect them. This book was also an eye-opener for diagnoses I had no idea about. I loved this book so much.
April 7, 2019
Gorgeous writing in a small book about a big thing. Hoiland writes with honesty and love about her MS diagnosis, observing this beginning and noting the everyday. The loss, change, beauty, and compassion she describes are common human experiences--but I'm grateful for her vision and how it will inform my own.
July 2, 2019
Ashmae writes about dealing with her diagnosis of MS. Her writing feels so calm and grateful... it's actually kind of hard for me to believe! Did she not think about all the uncertainty of her future abilities or did she just not write about it?? I feel like I only got a taste in the Epilogue of some of her other thoughts and I wanted more of that.
August 22, 2019
A beautifully written and "must read" memoir by one of my favorite authors. Ashmae shares her journey, which is just beginning, with insight, poignancy, hope appreciation and gratitude for life and the "small things" which make all the difference. Love this and love her for sharing. Inspiring and uplifting seem trite and inadequate words to describe this memoir but are apt.
December 25, 2019
Raw and beautiful memoir
Reading this made me feel more connected to other humans also having a human experience. Everyone has different life circumstances, but “some lives are just hard”. No one will escape hardship, and some may have more than their share. Ashley reminds me of the beauty of this earth, despite the hard times.
Reading this made me feel more connected to other humans also having a human experience. Everyone has different life circumstances, but “some lives are just hard”. No one will escape hardship, and some may have more than their share. Ashley reminds me of the beauty of this earth, despite the hard times.
August 31, 2021
Beautifully written - imaginative descriptions perhaps only an artist could write. So, much thought and feeling in such a small book. It was a gift for me to be able to read this at a time when I’m experiencing something similar.
April 18, 2019
I was invited into a sacred space; it was a privilege to read.
April 19, 2019
I love Ashley Mae's writing and this book is no exception. This book is honest, emotional, calm, heartbreaking, hopeful, lovely, and genuine. I highly recommend it.
May 3, 2019
A beautiful experiment in vulnerability and story-telling.
June 17, 2019
Beautiful, haunting, faceted writing on the experience of facing one’s inevitable tragedy as a human being heading towards death with one’s eyes and and arms flung open, embracing.
July 27, 2019
A lovely little memoir. I wanted to read it slow to enjoy. Made me reflect on how big life events can mean everything changes, but many things are the same.
August 6, 2019
I always love spending time with Hoiland’s words. I love her lyricism, thoughtfulness, and her ability to pack so much depth into short passages that don’t feel heavy.
August 31, 2019
Exquisite, again. Hoiland’s voice is necessary food for the soul. Brave, honest, attentive, and thoroughly gracious.
November 18, 2019
I absolutely cannot get enough of Ahsley Mae Hoiland's work.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews