| Suzy Zail |
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SUZY ZAIL’S poignant collection of stories, All You Need is Love: Fifteen Journeys to Motherhood, is a portrait in words and pictures of fifteen Australian women and their remarkable journeys to motherhood. The mothers who share their stories have a diversity of experience – whether single, married, gay, heterosexual, disabled, surrogate, adoptive, multiple birth or foster mother – they tell of a selfless yet fierce love for their children. Their experiences are studded with fear, insecurity and sadness, but also light, laughter and love. Some women struggled to become mothers. Others fought to keep their babies alive. Some work, some stay at home. One mother cannot see her child, so she uses her fingers to feel for his smile. Another sees her children only on weekends, during prison visits. A woman with an adult son describes the pain of relinquishing her baby, and the joy at being reunited. "I was privileged to sit in these women’s kitchens, meet their children and listen to their stories" says author Suzy Zail. "We talked of their earliest memories of wanting to be a mother, how they came to be pregnant, their efforts to conceive, how they coped with labour, their experience of motherhood, and how being a mother had changed them. "Motherhood comes in many forms and yet what struck me more than these women’s differences were their similarities," she says. "Whether raising foster children, a child with a disability, or a child born of egg-donation, all share the same pride over their children’s achievements and the same swell of anger when their children are hurt or threatened." All You Need is Love: Fifteen Journeys to Motherhood is a celebration of the joys and challenges of motherhood – a reflection of the diverse experience of women in 21st century Australia. Suzy Zail, a mother of three, was born in 1966 in Melbourne, and has worked as a solicitor specialising in family law. After the birth of her second child, Suzy left the law to concentrate on writing. She has written for magazines and is the author of children’s books published in Australia, Canada and the U.S. Her father-daughter memoir, The Tattooed Flower, the story of her relationship with her ailing father, was published in 2006. Suzy Zail titles include: All You Need is Love |
