Emma Gattey

When We Remember to Breathe: Mess, magic and mothering by Michele Powles and Renee Liang (Magpie Pulp, 2019), 211pp, $25

This is a love-addled, baby-brained, hormone soup of a book. And I could not be using those compounds in a more positive way. Billed as ‘a conversation by Michele Powles and Renee Liang’, this textual, maternal exchange between two gifted authors is one of radical honesty and vulnerability. Composed of emails exchanged during their second pregnancies (and beyond), this conversation feels easy, fluid and mutually beneficial. They thrilled and enthralled one another with the entropy of motherhood. To new parents, but mothers especially, there must be something deeply cathartic to this. Even for childless readers (myself included), there’s something reassuring about this creative kinship and solidarity through maternity. [Read more…]