The M Word: A Roundup for Mother’s Day Part 1

by Kerry Clare

After the birth of my first child, I was fascinated by how experiences of motherhood (and also choosing not to have such experiences, or having that choice made for you, or experiencing motherhood in unconventional ways) can make one feel far outside the realm of ordinary, and not in a good way. What would happen, I wondered, if put all these very different stories together? What kind of story would that tell? The M Word is the answer to that wondering, an anthology that honours mothers and motherhood in all its complexity, as do the works I’ve listed below—some of whom are by The M Word contributors.

The M Word: Conversations About Motherhood, edited
by Kerry Clare (Goose Lane Editions)

A Dropped Threads-style anthology, assembling original and inspiring works by some of Canada's best younger female writers — such as Heather Birrell, Saleema Nawaz, Susan Olding, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Carrie Snyder, and Alison Pick — The M Word asks everyday women and writers, some of whom are on the unconventional side of motherhood, to share their emotions and tales of maternity.

Whether they are stepmothers or mothers who have experienced abortion, infertility, adoption, or struggles with having more or less children, all these writers are women who have faced down motherhood on the other side of the white picket fence. It is time that motherhood opened its gates to include everyone, not just the picture postcard stories.

Born
by Heather Birrell (Coach House Press)

I met Heather Birrell when our children were very small, and she was publishing beautiful stories about the mess of pregnancy and motherhood and life in general. Her novel Born is coming this June, the story of a high school teacher who goes into labour during a terrifying school lockdown, and it’s one of my most anticipated books of the season.

Any Kind of Luck at All
by Mary Fairhurst Breen (Second Story Press)

This book is from one of my favourite literary genres: memoirs by women who’ve seen some shit. Breen writes about her suburban childhood, her father’s mental illness, her activist experiences, marrying young, parenting as her husband’s addictions overtook him, of becoming a single mother, a lesbian, the struggles of finding work over 50, and of supporting her daughter through mental illness and losing her to fentanyl poisoning in 2020. Breen started writing down her stories for her daughters to read, and as a result they are told with such warmth, and are candid, breezy, funny, and wise.

Roost
by Ali Bryan (Freehand Books)

This one is a perennial favourite, the hilarious and heart-wrenching story of a single mother who’s mourning her own mother, as well as the domestic life she’d thought she had before her marriage ended, and who is struggling to make space for her own dreams in the chaos of single motherhood.

How to Lose Everything: A Field Guide,
by Christa Couture (Douglas & McIntyre)

For so many people, grief and loss are essential parts of mothering, and more women need to know they’re not alone in this. In her memoir, Couture weaves the threads of her grief into a story of surviving childhood cancer, living with a disability, and losing her two young sons—one at birth, and their other through a heart condition when he was just a year old. This ultimately hopeful book is a gorgeous testament to how deep a mother’s love can go. 

Rose’s Run,
by Dawn Dumont (Thistledown Press)

When life gives you demons (summoned unintentionally by your teenage daughter), what else can a mother do but face them down? It’s just one more challenge for Rose Okanese, a single mother with two kids who’s made the curious decision to run her rez’s annual marathon, never mind that she smokes and hasn’t run in 20 years. This novel was my introduction to the warm and hilarious literary world of Dawn Dumont, and it’s a lot of fun, underlined with real feminist power.

A Womb in the Shape of a Heart
by Joanne Gallant (Nimbus Publishing)

Joanne Gallant’s A Womb in the Shape of a Heart is a story of motherhood and loss, a motherhood story that didn’t always promise a happy ending either, though Gallant had no inkling of this when she and her husband set out to have a baby. A pediatric nurse, a person who’d always seem in control of her own destiny, the grief and powerlessness of miscarriage and infertility would rock Gallant to her core. She tells her story with such beauty and generosity.

Treed and Fungal
by Ariel Gordon (Wolsak and Wynn)

One of my favourite fun facts about The M Word is that Ariel Gordon’s essay was her intro to writing creative nonfiction. And since then, she’s published the essay collections Treed and Fungal, both books providing glimpses into her domestic life, serving as a reminder that motherhood need not be the end of creativity, adventure, and pursuing one’s passions.

Monsters, Martyrs and Marionettes
by Adrienne Gruber (Book*hug Press)

In this essay collection, Gruber explores the ways that bringing life into the world is tangled with death,  right down to dead pigeons on the sidewalk. She writes about her pandemic pregnancy, the challenges of unruly toddlers and being able to hold a child’s gigantic and ferocious feelings, about being stuck in a two bedroom apartment with small kids due to wildfires that have made the air outside unhealthy to breathe. She’s writing about legacy, about her own struggles with mental illness, and those of her scientist mother, and her grandmother’s cognitive decline. About how essays about motherhood turn out the essays about everything, about the most elemental parts of life itself.

Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue
by Christine Higdon (ECW Press)

Higdon’s novel is a terrific adventure, including a bit of everything, including points of view from a dog, and actual rum smugglers, but my favourite thing is how Higdon shows that the four working-class McKenzie sisters and their supposedly divergent paths over the course of a year—infertility, pregnancy, an illegal and nearly fatal abortion, and a lesbian relationship—are not divergent at all, but instead irrevocably connected to bodily autonomy, choice, and women’s liberation.

Joy Is So Exhausting
by Susan Holbrook (Coach House Books)

Holbrook’s poetry collection was published in 2009, the year my eldest child was born, and it felt like such a revelation to read her poem “Nursery,” about the boring intensity of breast feeding, and it made me feel so seen. I love this book, and I also love her latest, Steamy: A Menopause Symptomology (because time marches on!).

Stay tuned next week for part 2.