When a star goes supernova, it scatters stardust across the galaxy, altering everything it touches and spurring new life. But dead stars can also leave behind a black hole—a place where all known laws of the universe begin to break down. Daughter God: A Cosmology of Motherhood is a literary memoir tracing the convergences of a maternal line in crisis: my mother’s loss of sanity, the loss of my firstborn daughter to full-term stillbirth, and the self-resurrective reconstruction of my own life.

Growing up, I often felt solely responsible for my mother’s happiness. But when I turned twenty-two, my maternal grandmother died, my parents’ marriage dissolved, and my mother’s lifelong spiritual eclecticism warped into a severe, drawn-out mental health crisis. Her existence unfurled into a succession of delusions, con artists, and a quest for a romantic “twin flame” who never materialized. For years, I tried to manipulate her into getting help—until my own life cracked open with the stillbirth of my firstborn daughter. I emerged from the wreckage with a fierce desire to untangle myself from generational legacies of depression and longing. Rebuilding a life worthy of my love for my child, I realized, would mean doing the hardest thing of all: letting my mother go.

I am actively querying this project.