Laura June, NOW MY HEART IS FULL

Laura June's daughter Zelda was only a few moments old when she held her for the first time, looked into her eyes, and thought, I wish my mother were here. It wasn’t a thought she was used to having. Laura was in second grade when she realized her mother was an alcoholic. As the years went by, she spiraled deeper, and by the time of her death, before Zelda’s birth, the two had drifted apart entirely. In NOW MY HEART IS FULL, Laura explores how raising her daughter forced her to come to terms with her own mother’s tragic legacy and recognize the connective tissue that binds together the three generations of women. She also confronts the complicated place that women's drinking often occupies and interrogates the culture of drinking that surrounds our ideas of motherhood, reflecting on her own decision not to drink.

In beautiful and irreverent prose, Laura explores the often messy relationship between mothers and daughters, while also addressing the fact that we still do not have the language to fully understand the transformative powers of motherhood. Through a series of flashbacks that span her lifetime, she considers her own mother, a woman who tried her best to raise her children while struggling with addiction. “My mother didn’t leave me much, but she also left me everything she had. What more can we ask for?” writes Laura. Only by experiencing the pain and joy of becoming a parent herself, is she able to make peace with her mother’s memory, discovering along the way that they have more in common than she thought.NOW MY HEART IS FULL is a heartbreaking and hopeful memoir about the depth of familial ties, the power of accepting people fully, and the strength that it takes to let go.

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