Linger in the Uncertainty: Jill Christman on Writing Through Grief and Loss

Send us Fan Mail What do we carry with us from the people we love and lose, and how do we make a choice from the center of our grief? This week, I'm wrestling with these questions alongside memoirist Jill Christman, whose new book The Heart Folds Early is a fierce and tender exploration of the decision to end a pregnancy after a devastating diagnosis. Jill and I talk about how grief from an earlier loss shaped her path toward this choice, the craft of handling time and signposting in memoir, and why she believes memoir is an act of extraction, not accumulation. Episode Highlights 05:31 Serial Memoir Method 14:32 Writing To Many Audiences 28:10 Making The Hard Decision 33:49 Opposite World Exercise 34:43 Disrupting Dark Spirals 35:38 Finding Levity in Pain Resources for this Episode: Falling by Jill Christman Beautiful Things on Riverteeth Magazine Get Your Free Human Design Report Register for Build Better Memoir Scenes Ditch Your Inner Critic Now Jill’s Bio: Jill Christman is the author of The Heart Folds Early: A Memoir (released March 2026 from the University of Nebraska Press). Christman’s other books include If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays (2023 Foreword INDIES Silver Winner), Darkroom: A Family Exposure (winner of AWP Prize for CNF), and Borrowed Babies: Apprenticing for Motherhood. Her essays have appeared in many anthologies and in magazines such as Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Iron Horse Literary Review, Longreads, and O, The Oprah Magazine. A 2020 NEA Literature Fellow, she teaches at Ball State University and serves as co-editor of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative and Beautiful Things (a weekly online magazine of micro nonfiction). Visit her at jillchristman.com. Connect with Jill Website: Jillchristman.com Bluesky: @jillchristman.bsky.social Instagram: @Jillchristmanwriter Connect with your host, Lisa: Get Your Free Copy of Ditch Your Inner Critic: https://lisacooperellison.com/subscribe/ Website: https://lisacooperellison.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisacooperellison/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UColPDzpoQlVktIv7-f7ObRg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lisacooperellison/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-cooper-ellison-b5483840/ Produced by Espresso Podcast Production: https://www.espressopodcastproduction.com Building Better Memoir Scenes: https://janefriedman.com/building-better-memoir-scenes-with-lisa-cooper-ellison/ Connect with your host, Lisa: Get Your Free Copy of Ditch Your Inner Critic: https://lisacooperellison.com/subscribe/ Website | Instagram | YouTube | Facebook | LinkedIn Produced by Espresso Podcast Production