Coming Home to Motherhood
A Memoir by Heather McLellan
I thought perseverance meant trying harder.
Motherhood taught me otherwise.
After five miscarriages, I searched everywhere for certainty—in doctors and blood tests, prayer and saints, healers and signs.
Each time I thought I’d found something I could trust—a promising number, a heartbeat, even faith itself—I discovered again that hope was not certainty.
Eventually, the question changed.
It was no longer simply:
How do I get the life I want?
It became:
How do I live when I don’t know whether I’ll get it?
I finally became the mother of the daughter I had imagined for years.
Six years later, a blood vessel burst in my brain.
Lying in an ICU, unable to open my eyes, I found myself fighting to return to the little girl I had fought so hard to bring into the world.
Coming Home to Motherhood is the story of the journey between those two moments.
It is about pregnancy loss and motherhood, but also about daughterhood, marriage, ambition, home, faith, and the stories we inherit about who we are supposed to be.
And it is about something I am still learning:
Sometimes perseverance means holding on.
Sometimes it means letting go.
And sometimes finding your way home begins with trusting yourself.
Coming Home to Motherhood is complete and currently seeking publication.