Unravelled: Life as a Mother

Unravelled: Life as a Mother
Maria Housden

Maria Housden tells of her own transformation, as a mother, a wife and a woman, as she struggled to cope with the death of her daughter Hannah and make the hardest decision of her life. From the author of the bestselling Hannah’s Gift.• At the age of 36, instead of enjoying the perfect family life she had imagined as a child, Maria felt judged and found wanting by others. She realised that, no matter how much she still loved her husband and how powerful her bond of love was with her children, she had to change her life radically – and make it her own again. So began an emotional and enlightening search for herself.• Written in the same moving, lyrical style as Hannah’s Gift, the story unfolds in a series of painful, joyful and humorous moments, at times heart-wrenchingly sad, but ultimately uplifting.

Unravelled

Life as a Mother

Maria Housden

In memory of my beloved father,Ronald Guy Schlack

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though, some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray…

‘Live in the layers,

not on the litter.’

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

Stanley Kunitz, ‘The Layers’

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u28d77258-4b4f-5e5f-85ae-3b475ee89bff)

Title Page (#ua25b2c31-6c6d-568a-95d3-6c3bca05127e)

Dedication (#udaeb398d-5e77-51ce-b6c9-359c24a38c57)

Epigraph (#u05cfcbdc-d6c1-5128-82f7-fd27f7df387b)

Prologue (#u9670fc53-d318-5541-8708-ae5aa95393d7)

Summer 1975 (#u13601788-0172-51ee-8542-039a22d813e5)

Ten Days, Ten Years (#u4b03f08d-9b6d-5ab7-b022-f4dccebc4567)

Summer 1998 Sunday (#ub1be88e9-1e53-5880-aff5-e5fbaef7cca5)

Winter 1988 (#uc1c62655-d367-5772-ba5c-ac25202f5c49)

Monday (#u4001e2e3-f3f3-5e09-9b3f-183b2060c1ba)

Tuesday (#u9d780d9e-fcfe-5680-9b11-715bf1a7ef5f)

Wednesday (#litres_trial_promo)

Thursday (#litres_trial_promo)

Friday (#litres_trial_promo)

Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

Sunday (#litres_trial_promo)

Monday (#litres_trial_promo)

Tuesday (#litres_trial_promo)

Whatever Happened to Her? (#litres_trial_promo)

A New Life (#litres_trial_promo)

Gravity (#litres_trial_promo)

Release (#litres_trial_promo)

Wings, Lifting (#litres_trial_promo)

Scarlet Letter (#litres_trial_promo)

Apartment by the Sea (#litres_trial_promo)

Thud (#litres_trial_promo)

Mommy Always Comes Back (#litres_trial_promo)

Wish Upon a Star (#litres_trial_promo)