“Maybe now you’ll learn your place,” my mother-in-law sneered after my husband attacked me while I held our sick baby post-surgery. Weak and trembling, I locked us in the room and dialed one number. Minutes later, heavy boots kicked down the front door, and my husband’s face went pale as my father walked in wearing his general’s uniform and said…

chest. They conveniently omit the visceral horror of a complicated birth. The incision that bifurcated my lower abdomen was a brutal, stapled trench. It burned with the intensity of a branding iron every time I dared to draw a full breath. Sitting upright was a negotiation with agony; walking felt as though my internal organs were threatening to spill continue reading …