Kelly Kittel, author of Breathe, on tour June 2014

About Breathe: A Memoir of Motherhood, Grief, and Family Conflict

Paperback: 384 pages

Publisher: She Writes Press (May 14, 2014)

Kelly Kittel never questioned her Mayflower Society mantra—Family is the most important thing—until the day when her fifteen-month-old son is run over by her sixteen-year-old niece. Nine months later, Kittel’s doctor makes a terrible mistake during her subsequent pregnancy and she finds herself burying yet another baby. Caught up in the maelstrom of a malpractice lawsuit, Kittel and her husband battle not only the medical system, but their own relatives, in the courtroom. As their family tree begins to topple, the Kittels struggle to nourish the roots of their young family and find healing. Achingly raw and beautifully narrated, Breathe is a story of motherhood, grief, and family in the face of unspeakable tragedy and, ultimately, how she learns to breathe again.

“In Breathe, [Kittel] bares her broken heart, and shows us all courage and hope and, mostly, love.”- Ann Hood, author of the memoir Comfort: A Journey Through Grief and The Knitting Circle.

“Many are the stories of a mother’s love and loss. Kelly Kittel’s is different: when her beloved niece killed Kittel’s toddler in the unimaginable accident of a moment, horror spread through her extended family like the cracks in a mirror … bad luck, bad luck, bad luck. Her warrior’s fight for the survival of that family is a witness to every one of us.”- Jacquelyn Mitchard, author, The Deep End of the Ocean

“Breathe is a heroic story of one mother’s struggle to find the courage to continue to breathe after the deaths of her precious sons… Kelly Kittel learned to open her heart again and again and serves as a beacon of hope for those newly arrived in the valley of grief.”- Darcie D. Sims, Ph.D., CHT, CT, GMS; Director, The American Grief Academy and Co-founder of Grief Inc.

“A powerful story of how a family comes to terms with the unbelievable loss of one child, then another, and how love and hope knit them together.”- Linda Joy Myers, President of the National Association of Memoir Writers

Purchase Links

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About Kelly Kittel

Kelly Kittel is a fish biologist by trade but a writer at heart. She is married with five living children, her best work beyond compare. She lives with her husband and their two youngest children in Rhode Island but her favorite writing space is in their yurts on the coast of Oregon. She has been published in magazines and anthologies and has written many notes to teachers, but Breathe is her first book.

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