Diana Kupershmit - Emmas Laugh: The Gift of Second Chances--A Memoir

PRAISE FOR EMMAS LAUGH:
THE GIFT OF SECOND CHANCES

Emmas Laugh traces the authors moving, exhilarating, and devastating journey as a parent. Told with humor, humility, and grace, it is filled with deep sentiment but never falls into sentimentality. This moving family story had me at the edge of my seat, clutching a box of tissues, never wanting it to end.

MARIA KUZNETSOVA, author of Oksana Behave!

Emmas Laugh is an honest and beautiful look at parental love. From her early rejection of her special-needs child to her gradual falling in love with her daughter, Kupershmit shows us how much a mother is willing to give of herself for the sake of her child. I read with my heart in my throat all the way to the end.

MONICA WESOLOWSKA, author of Holding Silvan: A Brief Life

Diana Kupershmits innate gift of storytelling and astute observations carefully invite the reader to bear witness to a heartbreaking journey toward acceptance. This gorgeous and honest memoir holds up the lens to motherhood and dares to address the profound grief that is capable of burying us or propelling us. Emmas Laugh is a mothers love letter to a remarkable child and a beautiful reminder to each of us that in life, the two most valuable things are time and laughtereverything else is simply details.

JESSICA CIENCIN HENRIQUEZ, author of If You Loved Me, You Would Know

Emmas Laugh made me laugh, and cry, and smile, and cry again. Kupershmit delivers literary love with a capital L. This is what motherhood is. This is what love is. Just as Kupershmit climbs into a crib to mold herself around her daughter when she suffers headaches and pain, I felt myself molding to this story, ever involved, rooting for mother and daughter and this family all the way.

ELIZABETH COHEN, author of The House on Beartown Road: A Memoir of Learning and Forgetting

Diana Kupershmit has written a remarkably honest and unflinching account of her journey from rejection to acceptance raising a special-needs child. A heartbreaking and heartwarming tributeand a testimony to one mothers endless love for her extraordinary child.

HEATHER SIEGEL, author of The King and the Quirky

With a voice that is crisp and clear, Kupershmit shares the story of her daughter, Emma, and the earthshaking decisions that came with parenting such an exceptional girl. Faced with situations that most parents are spared, Kupershmit takes us into her darkest moments with tenderness and grace. What shines the brightest is the joy that is set free when we accept that instead of controlling outcomes perhaps our greatest responsibility is in surrendering to the possibility that our children come with their own plan for how they will live and what they will teach.

ASHLEIGH RENARD, author of Swing: A Memoir of Doing it All

The author effectively shows how she learned lessons from raising Emma that allowed her to draw on a wellspring of love for other members of her family. An engaging work about how the tenacity of a young girl changes her parents lives.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

EMMAS LAUGH

Copyright 2021, Diana Kupershmit

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

Print ISBN: 978-1-64742-112-0

E-ISBN: 978-1-64742-113-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020922825

For information, address:

She Writes Press

1569 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Any views expressed therein, are mine and mine alone and not necessarily those of the City and DOHMH.

All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

for Emma

I PEELED MY BODY AWAY from the wetness of the sheets and heaved myself out of bed. My eyes landed on the plastic diaper pail that occupied the corner of our bedroom, like some sentry on the lookout for an incoming baby. Next to it stood a cake fashioned out of Pampers that balanced a basket filled with baby paraphernalia: lotions, creams, shampoo, gender-neutral onesies. I laughed to myself at the absurdity of the situation. Here I was, rolling out of bed where my water had just broken, with the baby right on schedule, and nothing to show for preparedness other than the gifts from the baby shower my coworkers had surprised me with just weeks before.

This was not my choice. Had I had the energy to challenge my mothers old-world, cultural superstitions, which dictated that one does not celebrate a babys arrival prematurelyto avoid tempting fate, messing with the universeI would have had the spare room of our three-bedroom duplex apartment fully equipped, with all the bells and whistles, furnishings, and requisite five-foot plush giraffe, ready to receive its new tiny tenant. Had my perfectionist tendencies been given full rein to wield the control that I brought to all situations, I would have thrown myself the baby shower, and feigned surprise. My mother didnt care to know that at twenty-six, having spent more than half my life in this country, I considered myself an American, or at least more American than Ukrainian.

Lets do this! my husband, Anatoly (Tolya, as I called him), announced with the inappropriate glee of one not expected to shortly push a human out of their privates. He was not doing this. Technicality, I could imagine him answering if I were to point this out.

I forgave him. Because the truth was, we were doing this together, and things were largely moving according to plan. We were both gainfully employed professionals. Id completed graduate school and worked my dream job as a family therapist. Though many days I felt ill equipped to be helping others while battling my own demons of anxiety and self-doubt, I learned quickly to act the part of the qualified clinicianto fake it till you make it.

Because on the surface, things checked off. We were confident in our parenting abilities, having had the benefit of playing house with my thirteen-year-old sister, Holly, who had come to live with us three years prior. New baby worries were dwarfed by typical teen angst. I believed we were at an advantage, some might even say ahead of the game.

I grabbed the stair rail and stepped down, taking one last sweeping glance at our open living room areaarguably my favorite space. Contemporary but comfortable furniture in the bright color palette of a Kandinsky painting was arranged just so. The red leather sleep sofa that had withstood so much adolescent action when still in Tolyas parents home now anchored our living room. Adjacent to it stood the sexy, steel-framed, round open shelf unita serendipitous Soho furniture store findon whose beech shelves lived my extensive collection of books. A jolt of excitement moved through me as I imagined myself on the couch, nursing, and