Holding Avery: A Memoir

In the tradition of The Year of Magical Thinking and The Glass Castle comes Heidi Chandlers memoir Holding Avery.

When Heidi and her husband decide its finally time for kids, everything goes just as planned. Heidi, a teacher, needs a summer baby, and her baby girl is set to arrive mid-July. Heidi, an athletic young woman, suffers almost no morning sickness, no disruption to her routine. Still a nervous expectant mother, she is reassured that at each of her check-ups, her growing baby is not just healthy--she is perfect. So when Heidi wakes up on the night of June 30th, blood covering her sheets, she cant believe that something less than perfect has occurred. When the same doctors who told her not to worry now inform Heidi that her daughter will be stillborn, she is at a complete loss. Cradling her babys lifeless body, Heidi realizes that she and her baby--her Avery--will never have the lives she envisioned.

When Heidi finally seems recovered enough to leave the hospital, she goes home to face a world which is full of traps for a woman mourning her child; babies at the grocery store, new students asking about her baby, other women who say all of the wrong things, and worse--women who say all the right things. Because nothing for the Chandlers feels right with Avery gone. Heidi has to figure out how to navigate her home, her family, and her friends, familiar territory that suddenly feels strange. Holding Avery makes Heidis incredibly private pain something universal, an assurance that in the face of loss, the only thing to do is move forward.

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When her otherwise healthy, even idyllic, first pregnancy ends in the sudden and terrible stillbirth of daughter Avery, Heidi Chandler and her husband are left at a total loss. Looking into Averys perfect face, one that never cooed or cried, Heidi realizes how much her life has changed. Holding Avery is a raw exploration of life after the death of a child. Heidi Chandler unapologetically recounts her heartache — the fears and doubts that come with knowing she is a mother but without a child to care for. The unabashed honesty of her grief will resonate with anyone who has experienced loss and found that the question why? may always go unanswered. But Heidi learns that moving through the tragedy is not impossible.

Heidi Chandler grew up in Michigan and now lives with her family in Texas. Holding Avery is her first book.