Unfolding Secrets: Jill Christman Reveals the Hidden Truths Behind The Heart Folds Early
Once I get to revision, I try to ask the Vivian Gornick question: What’s the situation — i.e., the subject matter — versus the story, as in what am I really here to say? So the situation is the abortion, and also everything leading up to it as well as the pregnancy that followed the abortion, where I was constantly freaking out that history would repeat itself.
But I think the real story of the book is waking up to what it’s like to hold both life and death inside our bodies. As women, we literally carry people inside of us — those we have birthed, those we’ve chosen not to birth. Literally — biologically — we contain multitudes. And then there are the moments that surprise me, things I didn’t even know were there. In the aftermath of a late-term abortion, how do you explain why you were pregnant but now you aren’t anymore? How do you handle it when your milk comes in? I don’t know that anyone takes that into consideration. I certainly didn’t.
