Beyond breaking the silence on 'women's problems'

In 1978, writer Tillie Olsen published a remarkable book of essays about the subjects women didn’t write about. Titled “Silences,” Olsen reflected on the societal forces that subverted creative expression about women’s mental illness, poverty, racism and grief.

Olsen wrote in the introduction: “These are not natural silences, that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation in the natural cycle of creation. ... The silences I speak of here are unnatural; the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being but cannot.”

In the last decade or so, women writers have broken the silence on infertility, miscarriage and long-awaited pregnancies. Belle Boggs’ “The Art of Waiting” is a wonderful counterpoint to stubborn misconceptions about infertility.

But few writers take on the details like N. West Moss, whose book "Flesh & Blood" deeply explores topics once referred to as “women’s problems."

In transparent yet imaginative writing, Moss chronicles years of episodic bleeding – the kind of bleeding that is both fearful and shameful; the kind of bleeding that will lead to lost pregnancies, infertility and surgery; the kind of bleeding that one simply does not mention in polite conversation or even among one’s closest friends.

“Trying to figure out who to tell,” Moss writes, “and how to bring it up is too much to cope with.”

But “Flesh & Blood” is also a meditation on what makes a family and on deciding to make way for a new dream for the future when the original one has disappeared.

In the aftermath of a miscarriage, Moss’s husband, Craig suggested: “What if we just tried to be happy anyway? I mean, we can’t make the sadness go away but maybe we can be happy too, at the same time?”

Moss concludes, after the ensuing months of pain, surgery and recovery, “He was right, as he so often is.”

Tune into my show on Friday, Nov. 19, for my interview with the author on her story in the book.