Vancouver, BC—Greystone Books has acquired world language rights to Still: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood by Emma Hansen.
In 2015, when Hansen was 39 weeks and 6 days pregnant, doctors explained to her that her baby had died, and she would need to deliver him, still. The next day, on his due date, Hansen gave birth to her son, Reid, amidst a tidal wave of grief. Nine days later, she published a candid essay on her website that shared photos from the delivery room and depicted a type of loss experienced by about 2.6 million women and their families annually, but seldom acknowledged or talked about in public.
Hansen's post went viral, attracting thousands of comments and shares from across North America. Her story was quickly picked up by national news outlets. Soon, Hansen founded an online support network through her Instagram account, which empowers others to share stories of child loss and generates awareness for a more inclusive, compassionate vision of motherhood and family life.
Still generously describes the most challenging years of Hansen's life. Rarely have the circumstances surrounding stillbirth—and the trauma experienced by parents and families in the days, months, and years that follow—been revealed in such minute, sensitive detail.
Hansen charts her journey with luminous, frank prose. She muses on faith and family. She welcomes her second son, Everett, into the world in 2016—an event that brings a multitude of contrasting and—at times—confusing emotions: joy intertwined with sorrow, gratitude edged with exhaustion, and hope for the future steeped in longing for the past.
Throughout, Hansen widens her lens to share statistics and facts about stillbirth. And she turns inwards, cataloguing private struggles with fear and isolation.
As the memoir draws to a close, Hansen offers Reid’s story as a gift to cherish, not a tragedy to bury and forget. Honest, brave, and uplifting, Hansen’s memoir will resonate with anyone seeking insight into one of life’s greatest challenges: learning to live–and love–after loss.
Greystone Books is proud to publish Hansen’s memoir in the spring of 2020.
Emma Hansen is a writer and model whose blog post about the passing of her first son, Reid, due to a true knot in his umbilical cord, went viral in 2015. Today, Hansen is trained as a full spectrum doula and offers education on the realities surrounding child loss and grief through her social media and writing for outlets such as The Huffington Post and her own blog. She lives in Vancouver, Canada, with her husband, Aaron, and their family. She is the daughter of Rick Hansen, a former Paralympian who is internationally renowned as a leader in the pursuit of an accessible and inclusive world for people with disabilities.
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