At the Top of My Lungs

This memoir begins with a love story—young, electric, and full of possibility. It traces the winding path of a relationship shaped by both tenderness and turmoil, the kind of love that endures not because it is easy, but because it refuses to break. From those early days of uncertainty and passion, a life begins to take shape—one marked by growth, resilience, and the quiet determination to build something lasting. As the years unfold, motherhood becomes the heartbeat of that life. Each pregnancy carries its own story, its own rhythm of hope and fear, joy and exhaustion. With every child, the family grows fuller, louder, more complete. Four children come to define a hard-won sense of stability—a fragile but beautiful balance that feels, at last, like peace. In these moments, the chaos of the past seems to settle into something meaningful, something whole. But life does not always honor the illusion of completion. When a seventh pregnancy begins, it carries the same familiar hopes, the same expectation of new life and continued growth. Instead, it becomes a turning point that reshapes everything. What follows is a deeply personal account of loss—raw, disorienting, and profoundly human. The experience fractures not only the future that was imagined, but also the understanding of love, faith, and survival itself. Told with honesty and quiet strength, this memoir moves through grief without losing sight of what came before it: the love that built a family, the children who remain its center, and the enduring question of how to keep going when the unimaginable happens. It is a story about holding joy and sorrow in the same breath, about the resilience of a mother's heart, and about finding a way forward when there is no clear path at all.