Now My Heart Is Full: A Memoir

A deeply affecting memoir of motherhood and daughterhood, and how we talk about both, from popular writer Laura June

“Laura June writes with wit and melancholy, unabashed joy and tenderness. . . . When I reached the end, I found myself in tears.” —Roxane Gay

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 June explores how raising her daughter forced her to confront this tragic legacy and recognize the connective tissue that binds generations of women together. As she documents in beautiful and irreverent prose the pain and joy of raising a child, Laura shows how, even a generation later, we still do not have the language to fully discuss the change that a woman undergoes when she becomes a parent and finds that, to her surprise, she has more in common with her mother than she ever knew.

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• A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother
• Motherhood: A Novel
• Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger
• Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls: A Memoir
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation
• Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion