THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE: A Memoir
“It is our stories that bridge the divide. Our stories that whisper, I am like you, and you are like me. This is my story. But perhaps parts of it are yours too.”
In my early thirties, as I approached the 24-week mark of my first pregnancy, due to medical complications affecting the viability of the child’s life, my husband and I faced an unimaginable decision. Choosing to release my son’s pregnancy came from the deepest love I have ever encountered. It was also the hardest, most heart-wrenching moment of my life - a moment where I was forced to shut out the culture’s narrative around me and tune into the voice inside me. Find my own truths.
However, in the months and years that followed, the knowing in having made the right choice for me and our family became deeply tested. I wrestled with not just the pain of grief and loss from giving birth to a stillborn child, but also a cultural reckoning. A reckoning that took subsequent years of deep inner work to emerge on the other side, to find the solace in myself to tell the truth and wholeness of my story. A story that couldn’t be summed up in an Instagram post or even a blog article - but needed the breath of a book.
It’s a story I wish I could have read years ago - one that spoke a different tune than the vitriol and political dichotomy in the world around me. One that not only took this unbelievably brave and difficult act into the palm of its hand and said Yes, I see the love in your heart, and it’s a love that doesn’t need to hide, but continued to tell the story of what happens after.
It is a story about how the heart and soul respond to heartbreak, how you dive into your own shadow and emerge more whole for having taken the journey. How taking such a journey can become a catalyst to heal so much more than the act that broke you open, leading you to find the comfort and confidence to know every bit of who you are, formed by your history, is worthy despite voices that might tell you otherwise.
My greatest hope is this book will give new language and a new narrative to an experience that is too shrouded in silence. Because what I know for sure, learned in a profound way as a child moving almost yearly across countries and continents, is that we have far more in common than our cultural difference might have us believe.
EARLY READER PRAISE:
“The Other Side of Silence was a profound read. Laurel has both poetry in her writing and gives the sense that she is just a friend, telling you her story. She brings deep insights to the experiences of her life — most of which I found incredibly relatable and helpful to understanding myself more. She also is a master of her own nervous system and shares her spontaneous techniques as memoir. I found myself joining her as she inhaled and exhaled on this journey to becoming a fuller version of herself.”
“Laurel’s writing captures the raw, honest emotion from life’s unimaginable events. The reader can feel the depth and many dimensions of grief, yet simultaneously the sense of hope and peace that comes with acceptance and healing.”