At the age of five Jessica Fein’s daughter Dalia was diagnosed with a rare degenerative disease that would claim her life at 17. Before that moment came, and inspired by Dalia’s own irrepressible spirit, Fein and her family would discover how to live in the present when the future can’t be fixed. In this heartfelt yet clear-eyed memoir, Fein maps both her journey to becoming an adoptive mom and the roller coaster ride of loving and caring for a terminally ill child, persevering when the simple act of taking a breath can become an act of courage. Through it all, she discovers the need to be both relentless advocate and calm presence, to show vulnerability as well as strength, and to allow joy to be louder than sorrow.
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A Sampling of
Podcast Appearances
Jessica Fein has faced a lot of loss. Siblings, parents, and in 2022 her daughter Dalia. At the age of five Jessica’s daughter Dalia was diagnosed with a rare degenerative disease that would claim her life at 17. In our conversation today, and in her beautiful book, Breath Taking: A Memoir of Family, Dreams, and Broken Genes, Jessica maps both her journey to becoming an adoptive mom and the roller coaster ride of loving and caring for a terminally ill child, persevering when the simple act of taking a breath can become an act of courage. Through it all, she discovers the need to be both relentless advocate and calm presence, to show vulnerability as well as strength, and to allow joy to be louder than sorrow.
Zibby chats with author Jessica Fein about her astonishing, heartrending, vulnerable new book, BREATH TAKING: A Memoir of Family, Dreams, and Broken Genes. Jessica describes her lengthy infertility journey, her and her husband’s unconventional journey to parenthood through international adoption, their three children from Guatemala, and their middle daughter Dalia’s diagnosis with an ultra-rare degenerative disease. She shares what it was like to turn her house into an ICU and care for Dalia 24/7 until she passed away at the age of 17—and how it impacted her marriage and other children. Ultimately, she reflects on the role of writing as a therapeutic outlet.
Kelly shares an excerpt from Jessica Fein's new book Breath Taking: A Memoir of Family, Dreams, and Broken Genes. In Jessica's words, the memoir is "The story of building, loving and losing a family. How I learned to live in the present and create a world of joy and beauty in the midst of loss and tragedy." The excerpt shared here is, "A Girl's Best Friend" and is the story of Jessica's daughter Dalia's very special dog, Blackie-O, a loving canine companion who essentially trained himself to be Dalia's service dog.
Jessica Fein joins Let’s talk Memoir for a conversation about making, loving and losing family, how we go from the desire to fix and control to understanding some things are out our hands, creating a life of meaning, memoir vs. a collection of essays, when the ending changes, being okay with revising, recognizing when our manuscripts need more work, navigating feedback, finding joy even in the context of extreme uncertainty and sadness, her podcast I Don’t Know How You Do It, living on the precipice, and her memoir Breath Taking: A Memoir of Family, Dreams, and Broken Genes.
In this episode, Jessica Fein shares: the incredible ways that her experiences with grief have woven themselves into her DNA; how being "whole" means letting others see where you are broken; how her late daughter, Dalia, showed her how to live; and how, in the darkness, there’s always light to be found.
At the age of five Jessica Fein’s daughter Dalia was diagnosed with a rare degenerative disease that would claim her life at 17. Before that moment came, and inspired by Dalia’s own irrepressible spirit, Fein and her family would discover how to live in the present when the future can’t be fixed. In this heartfelt yet clear-eyed memoir, Fein maps both her journey to becoming an adoptive mom and the roller coaster ride of loving and caring for a terminally ill child, persevering when the simple act of taking a breath can become an act of courage. Through it all, she discovers the need to be both relentless advocate and calm presence, to show vulnerability as well as strength, and to allow joy to be louder than sorrow.
In this episode of Comforting Closure - Conversations with a Death Doula, host Traci Arieli sits down with Jessica Fein, author of Breath Taking, to discuss her family's profound journey caring for her daughter Dalia, who was diagnosed with the rare disease MERRF syndrome (. Jessica shares the emotional challenges of becoming her daughter's advocate, the process of navigating a complex medical system, and the lessons she learned about staying present. Together, they talk about how to find moments of peace, joy, and vulnerability even during life’s most overwhelming challenges. This episode provides a look at how we can balance grief and joy, and how we are capable of more than we ever imagined.