This Particular Happiness, Jackie Shannon Hollis
This Particular Happiness, Jackie Shannon Hollis
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This Particular Happiness
A Childless Love Story

Author: Jackie Shannon Hollis, Kate Mulligan

Narrator: Jackie Shannon Hollis

Unabridged: 7 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/01/2019

Synopsis

As a farm girl in eastern Oregon, feeding bottles to bummer lambs and babysitting her little sister, Jackie Shannon Hollis expected to become a mother someday. After a series of failed relationships, she met Bill, the man she wanted to spend her life with. But he was a man who never wanted children. Saying I do meant saying I don’t to a rite of passage her body had prepared her for since puberty.Told in short nonlinear chapters, This Particular Happiness explores the fracturing of female identity as Shannon Hollis questions her childless decision, navigates her roles as daughter and wife and sister and friend, and ultimately learns to listen to her own heart. This debut memoir is about what we keep and what we abandon to make space in our lives for love.

About Jackie Shannon Hollis

In addition to thinking she would be a mother, Jackie Shannon Hollis once dreamed of being a June Taylor dancer or a race car driver. A lifelong Oregonian, she resides in a home her friends call the tree house. Through her local library, she facilitates writing classes for people experiencing houselessness. Jackie and her husband lead workshops on communication, conflict management, and creating successful and satisfying relationships.

About Kate Mulligan

Kate Mulligan has acted with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for more than ten seasons in productions including Hairspray, Alice in Wonderland, and Sense and Sensibility. Her film and television work includes Being John Malkovich and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rene

This is a book about how to not get what you want. After agreeing with husband to not have children, Jackie Shannon Hollis changed her mind. He did not. She tells of having to reconcile her desire for a child that might never exist with the deep love of a husband. It is a book about finding peace in......more

Goodreads review by Courtenay

I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of this book and adored it. As a woman who has chosen to remain childless, I thought I might find it difficult to relate to the story of a woman who so deeply wanted to be a mother, but I was with her every step of the way. The book weaves beautifully from v......more

Goodreads review by Sue

Finally someone has told the story of what it’s like to be childless because your partner doesn’t want to have kids. Not childless by choice, not childless by infertility, but childless because of whom you love. Yes, I told a similar my Childless by Marriage ([URL not allowed]) book, but I too......more

Quotes

“This Particular Happiness, is a deeply moving story about Jackie Shannon Hollis’s decades-long yearning to have a child―and her complicated decision not to. But it’s also about so much more than that. With honesty, generosity, precision, and insight, Hollis writes the story of her life―from her girlhood in rural Oregon, where she both broke and followed the rules, to her hard-earned self-acceptance at middle age. This Particular Happiness is a gloriously wise memoir about one woman’s unexpected path to becoming.” Cheryl Strayed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild

“We all know that having a child changes everything, but so, too, does not having one, and in Hollis’s brave, moving memoir, she explores the bliss, the yearning, the making peace with a life she and her partner chose (and didn’t choose), and how happiness takes on shapes we can never imagine. The perfect book for anyone contemplating motherhood―or not!” Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You

“An ideal memoirist. Her prose is honest and open; she presents herself, with all her shortcomings, in the same direct light as her other characters.” The Oregonian

“This Particular Happiness examines the particularly female journey―how and where do we make room for love? And whether lover, wife, mother, or daughter, how can we be our most authentic selves? Jackie Shannon Hollis explores this rich terrain with clarity and courage, in spare and lovely prose evocative of the high plains landscape and fertile farmland she hails from.” Jennie Shortridge, author of Love Water Memory

“This deeply engaging memoir wrestles with one of the most important questions of all: Why do we want what we want? Jackie Shannon Hollis explores how her own desires have been shaped by a culture that celebrates ‘mother’ more than any other role for women, and the possibilities that open up when she chooses not to play the role. A vibrant, absorbing, intimate book.” Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks

“A celebration of living life using your own damn map.” Yuvi Zalkow, author of A Brilliant Novel in the Works

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