A Powerful Memoir of Loss and Hope

Even after seventeen years, I still remember getting the alarming call from my friend Kimber. “Mandy, can you come get Eden? I think I’m losing this baby,” she said.

Kimber was nearly to term with her second pregnancy when she didn’t feel any movement from the baby. After a conversation with her doctor, she headed to the hospital, her three-year-old in tow because her husband was still at work.

I remember quickly canceling dinner plans with a friend before jumping in my car to drive the twenty minutes to Long Beach, my stomach in my throat. I was closely connected to this pregnancy, paying attention to the details while I was trying to get pregnant myself. I learned about things like gestational diabetes and the specific diet Kimber religiously adhered to so that everything went smoothly for her and her baby.

When I arrived at the hospital, we talked in code so as not to alarm her daughter and then I walked hand in hand with her little girl back to my car, praying for the best. Fearing the worst.

This is the beginning of the story Kimber Del Valle shares in her memoir, Still: Making A Whole When Parts Go Missing.

What surprises me the most about my friend’s book is that it isn’t just about losing a baby. This is also an honest look at how one moves into very raw places of grief and then how a person learns to put the pieces back together.

What Kimber has modeled for me in our friendship, and now through her memoir, is how to stay present with a whole range of feelings that at times seem like they might irreparably flatten a person.

As I read her book, I was reminded of my own experiences of loss and struggle. My details were different but I connected with the need to live with grief and pain when my husband and I moved through infertility, miscarriage, in vitro, and later a Down Syndrome diagnosis for my second son.

Kimber’s book also gives permission to be messy and unedited as she writes about where the mind goes when it is under significant stress. This is particularly helpful because Kimber is a clinical psychologist and trauma expert. She skillfully, and subtly, weaves her expertise into the story.

Sometimes I expect professionals like Kimber to tie trauma up in a neat bow with specific strategies to overcome the difficult time. I expect psychologists to distance themselves from vulnerably sharing experiences so that it doesn’t tarnish their reputation as healers.

But Kimber offers a sophisticated examination of the complex and complicated nature of loss and grief. She also writes about healing in the midst of the pain. Her memoir doesn’t stay in the grief and loss. Her story is also one of hope.

After years of being in process with her grief, Kimber offers hope for new life again. Not just for another pregnancy but for the possibility of reconnecting with the good around her.

She does not say the grief eventually goes away, that the loss isn’t with her in her daily life, because grief, in varying degrees and in different ways is always present. Rather she exquisitely details how a mother doesn’t just keep living but can actually thrive in the midst of grief.

Kimber’s story also offers great hope for marriage. As she and I have shared the many ups and downs of marriage, I have watched her and her husband continually choose one another. Kimber weaves the dynamics of her marriage throughout the her book and offers yet another window in how a couple can manage conflict and different experiences in a healthy way.

She doesn’t romanticize or gloss over the hard parts. And there were some very hard parts. But she expertly explains how they decided regularly, sometimes hourly, to keep working together to be a healthy partnership versus attacking one another.

Yes, this is a story about losing a baby. It is a difficult story, at times quite painful. But it is a hopeful story. It is a memoir that tells the reader you’re not alone. You’re not crazy for feeling the things you’re feeling. It even gently offers some strategies for getting through the day. Strategies I use even now in my own life like intentional like breath work or journal writing.

There is one other element that makes this memoir so dynamic and it is the poems scattered throughout the narrative. They serve as a special literary device that brings the reader right into the mind of the author while also offering a different cadence to process trauma.

One particular stanza stays with me.

“I’m sitting here with nothing to give. A shell of a human full of grief rather than fulfilled desires. Can you sit with me, my friend? Can you sit with me and not try to move me out of my despair? Can you trust that I, in time, will move myself-but only with your company?” A Voice in Need (pg. 77)

It is a gift to have a friend like Kimber. It is even a greater gift that she decided to share her wisdom with the world.

Everyone Needs an Aunt Mary