BirthedPub. Date: December 6, 2016

List Price: $19.99

Pages: 176

Print Paperback 9780827203112

EPUB 9780827203129

EPDF 9780827203136

Deborah Arca • Marketing and Sales Directorwww.chalicepress.com • 314-252-3212

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What happens when your one dream for life dies? When infertility interrupted Elizabeth Hagan’s plan to start a family, the path of grace offered her another way. Instead of giving birth to a child, she ended up giving birth to herself. In the deeply personal pages of her new book, Birthed: Finding Grace Through Infertility, Hagan shares her story as a companion and guide for all of those going through inevitable pain and loss, of any kind.

“Read the beautiful, pain-laden words in this book. Read every single one, because when you do you will recognize yourself. And when you do you might find, as I did, that this story will help you grasp the courage you need to speak of your life in its fullness. You will know in the core of who you are that your experience in not a lonely aberrance.” – from the foreword by Amy K. Butler, senior minister, Riverside Church

In this book, Elizabeth Hagan shares hard-won lessons from her journey:

• When life doesn’t go as you plan, something greater might be emerging beneath the surface. Live through the pain and you will get there!

• There are no “one-size” fits all answers to a fertility journey, medically, emotionally or spiritually.

• It is ok to live into the mystery — the mystery of not knowing how you will bear a child, when or if at all.

• Infertility does not have to be a silent journey. Connect with my story. Connect to others who’ve gone through it too. Let friends and family who can bear with your pain love you through it.

• A long season of grief doesn’t have to destroy your marriage or friendships. It can in fact bring you closer.

BirthedFinding Grace Through Infertility

BY ELIZABETH HAGAN

Praise for Birthed

ELIZABETH HAGAN is an ordained American Baptist minister who lives outside of the normal vocational boxes. Sometimes she serves churches through short-term interim pastorates. She often travels to support her husband, Kevin, in his work with the American Diabetes Association and on behalf of Our Courageous Kids, a foundation she created in 2015 to provide educational opportunities for children living in international orphanages. And she always writes. You can find her words about soul care and advocacy over at her blog, Preacher on the Plaza, and the web at Christian Century, Patheos, Huffington Post, and the Young Clergy Women’s Journal, Fidelia’s Sisters. Elizabeth has contributed to three books: This is What a Preacher Looks Like, The Modern Magnificat, and There’s a Woman in the Pulpit.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“An utterly absorbing account of birthing -- and allowing God to birth — compassion, pain, hope, solidarity, abundance, and lament. But not only those: in this birth story, what’s born is a richness in the spiritual life, and, ultimately, a self. (Which means that you needn’t be, or want to be, a mother, to find this book good, wise company.)” —Lauren F. Winner, author of Mudhouse Sabbath and Wearing God

“With emotional depth and pastoral sensitivity, Elizabeth Hagan gives particular insight to the visceral longing for biological motherhood. Her story is instructive for people who are not aware of the trials of infertility, and it is hopeful as Hagan bears witness for the countless women and men who know those trials all too well.” —Rev. Carol Howard Merritt, author of Healing Spiritual Wounds

“‘God must hate me.’ If you’ve ever felt that way, I hope you’ll read Elizabeth Hagan’s beautiful new book. No one can read this book without also being helped to see their own story differently, and no less important, to empathize more deeply with all who suffer the grief of dreams long deferred or permanently denied. This is the kind of book you will always remember and be better for having read.” — Brian D. McLaren, Author/Activist

For readers seeking a better word from God in their lives, pursuing a better way to live their lives, and creating a better world for all of us—discover Chalice Press.

An imprint of the century-old Christian Board of Publication, based in St. Louis, Missouri, Chalice Press supports authors making prophetic claims that all are welcome at God’s table and challenging authority when authority is wrong. We help them share their message with a world desperate for good news. With our diverse base of authors and customers, we are proud of our growing reputation as the go-to publisher for books and materials on social justice, inclusive community, spirituality and leadership development.

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“Raw. Real. Funny. Honest. Hagan’s tale of hope amid infertility will delight readers with its accessibility and nourish them with thoughtful reflections on love, faith and family. So many books on this topic have a happy bundle of joy waiting at the end. Hagan’s story is more nuanced than that. And yet grace lurks on each page, sometimes in surprising places.” —MaryAnn McKibben Dana, author of Sabbath in the Suburbs: A Family’s Experiment with Holy Time

“Birthed is an unflinching, courageous, and much-needed portrait of what it means to wrestle faithfully with desire, death, and rebirth. By shying away from trite phrases and easy answers, Birthed invites us to reflect honestly and courageously on our own forays into the valley of the shadow of death. Yes, this is a story about one’s woman’s hard-fought struggle through infertility, but it is also a much-needed reminder that God’s Spirit is always making things new in us.” —Rev. Dr. Maria A. Kane, Rector, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church