Reviewed by Emily Webber
In the preface to Held Together: A Shared Memoir of Motherhood, Medicine, and Imperfect Love (HarperOne; 2025), author Rebecca N. Thompson emphasizes that the women in these pages refuse to “accept the intolerable assertion we too often foist on the grieving—that everything happens for a reason—but they are making meaning out of everything that had happened.”
This perfectly captures what this heartfelt collection offers: courageous women sharing complex stories about what it means to be a mother, along with the often hard-earned insights and personal growth.
Held Together maps the many experiences of mothering through Thompson’s own story, interwoven with the narratives of other mothers. The essays describe the many fears, doubts, and challenges women face on their journey to motherhood, whether trying to conceive, enduring miscarriages, confronting their own health issues, exploring alternative paths to parenthood, or raising young children. Held Together presents not only a broad spectrum of experiences but also a diverse group of women from different ethnic backgrounds, representing nontraditional families.
Organized into seven sections, each beginning with parts of Thompson’s story and followed by that of other women. Choosing this braided structure instead of presenting her story as a standalone essay in a collection is a powerful choice because it allows the book to become a chorus of women’s voices, emphasizing the healing and knowledge women can gain from one another by sharing their stories and the connection that forms from talking about personal experiences.
These essays manage to look both inward and outward. All the women find renewed personal insight and connection with other women, and some universal themes emerge among the stories. Many women mention how hard it can be to open up about a complex, emotional time, especially when the instinct is to keep quiet to avoid burdening others or thinking they won’t understand. Thompson speaks of early pregnancy losses:
“I felt all the more isolated because no one else knew we were going through these losses. At work, after weekly department conferences, I faded away with the excuse of some hastily imagined administrative task as other doctors gathered to chat about their pregnancies and young children.”
Yet, Thompson comes to realize that many of the women around her are facing their own challenges, even if it seems on the surface that they have everything she longs for. Held Together prompts us to consider, both in our own lives and in those of others, “the huge range of experiences—both perfectly unified and starkly contrasting—that have come together to create” our lives.
Another unique perspective in this book is that many of the stories come from medical professionals, including Thompson, a family physician. The book highlights both the need for women to advocate for medical care that considers their entire physical and mental well-being, and how the women in the medical profession, whose stories are represented here, learn to channel the courage and strength from their own experiences, both in their personal lives and in caring for patients.
For women reading this collection, many of these stories will resonate with their own experiences. Even for readers who don’t identify as mothers, there’s still much to gain from this collection. Towards the end, Thompson talks to her son about the scars people carry: “I thought about how we are all broken but healing. How we can heal ourselves only by healing each other.” Held Together is a testament to the power of sharing stories to aid healing and provide comfort.
Emily Webber is a reader of all the things hiding out south Florida with her husband and son. A writer of criticism, fiction, and nonfiction, her work has appeared in the Ploughshares Blog, The Writer, Five Points, The Rumpus, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. She’s the author of a chapbook of flash fiction, Macerated. Read more at emilyannwebber.com.
