Dear Rainbow Rowell,
I first read your book Attachments in September of 2014. You were coming into Northern Virginia for a signing, and I read the book before attending. That might seem like a random fact to remember, but I recall it for several reasons. One is that you came into town the same week of my birthday and my husband planned a surprise party for me that year. As my friends and I left the signing, I asked them their plans for the weekend and they kind of shrugged awkwardly. Not that my friends can't keep a secret: they later told me they felt like they were awkward. I just thought they hadn't made any plans yet and didn't think it odd at all.
The other reason I remember it so well is because I'd experienced the same tragedy that Jennifer does in the book about a month before reading it. Unlike Jennifer, I didn't know that I was pregnant. I woke up in pain and it took a visit to the emergency room to confirm what was happening to me. A month later, I was still grieving, though not so continuously as I had been. I'd ceased thinking about it every minute of the day, but random things could still make me cry or give me anxiety.
I suppose there's a scenario in which reading this book would have been terribly upsetting and hard to manage. In reality, though, it was the exact opposite. Throughout Attachments, we get to know Jennifer and Beth through their emails to each other as best friends. Just like Lincoln, reading their emails makes us feel like we know them, like we're part of their conversation. So when I read the exchanges between them after Jennifer's miscarriage, when Beth comforts Jennifer and they grieve together, I felt like Beth was comforting me. And even better, when Jennifer mourned, we mourned together. She cried, just like I cried. She wanted to rant and rave to everyone she knew, just like I did. The thing is, that ranting and raving about your miscarriage to everyone you know is painful for everyone in the long run and still doesn't heal the wound.
Jennifer's experience made me feel incredibly seen. The kindness Beth and Lincoln show her was as soothing as the kindness my own friends and family showed me. The entire book is sweet and wonderful, but it was also therapeutic.
It's six years later now, and I no longer experience the same kind of anxiety or crying at the thought of my lost child. I do think of him/her wistfully from time to time, and wish that my daughters could meet their oldest sibling. But again, reading this book was a comforting experience. It was reuniting with old friends and revisiting our joys and our sorrows. It was not just being seen this time, but also being remembered.
Thank you for that, not just then but also now and with every reread (and I anticipate many).
Sincerely,
Jeannette
