Giveaway Alert!!! Win a signed copies of The Second Cup by Sarah Marie Graye .@SarahMarieGraye #heartfelt #stories .@rararesources #sucide #tearjerking

Today, I’m taking part in the first anniversary blog blitz for The Second Cup by Sarah Marie Graye. I asked Sarah Marie to share the most heart-rending scene from her novel and she chose the scene where Abbie finds out she’s pregnant.

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 The Second Cup

by

Sarah Marie Graye

Abbie had known there was something awry with her body the way only a pregnant person can. And it wasn’t just the swollen ankles, swollen abdomen and swollen breasts.

The tiredness and the backache that she’d put down to too many long days and too many late nights had reached the heights where they could no longer be ignored as symptoms of something bigger.

The pregnancy test was a mere formality: a wand to wave magician-like at Ebbs in a “look what we’ve made” kind of way. Except that she didn’t want to wave anything at Ebbs, except maybe a hand to shoo him away.

She had a little person growing inside of her and it was half Ebbs and she didn’t know if she wanted it. And until she knew, she wasn’t going to be able to tell him.

The secrets and the waiting and the decisions. They all became nothing when the pain came. It didn’t just rip her in two: she’d felt hung, drawn and quartered, her mind flitting back to history lessons at school, to the horrors of the centuries gone by where people who betrayed the crown were subject to a slow and humiliating torturous death.

Abbie felt like she was suffering a similar agonising fate, but all she could think of was the little person inside of her, that they were probably dying in her place.

Ebbs rushed her to A&E, knowing something was terribly wrong, but having no idea of the cause. At that point Ebbs simply cared about Abbie – and she realised she could have told him. But it’s too late for confessions, so she must speak in whispers with the hospital staff.

A positive pregnancy test confirms what she tells them in hushed tones. An ultrasound scan confirms the worst. Nothing in her uterus.

An explosion in her right fallopian tube. The worst type of ectopic pregnancy. A medical emergency. Abbie rushed into theatre, crying for herself, for her dead baby, for anything to make the pain go away. She cried out – the sounds began to form the name “Paul” – and she quietens herself with her fist in case Ebbs is near.

Later, after a straightforward laparoscopy, she was moved to the recovery ward, her ruptured fallopian tube removed. Her baby removed.

The part of her and Ebbs that she didn’t know if she wanted she now so desperately craved. She knew it was the hormones pulsating round her body, but that knowledge didn’t stop her womb from aching for the life that never was.

Later still, she was at home with Ebbs, the two of them coming to terms with the pregnancy neither of them supposedly knew about. He thinks it is easier that way: that they never got to know the idea of having a baby before it was taken away.  

She agreed, nodding, trying to hide the waves of grief for the baby she’d known about for three weeks. And along with that grief, she needed to come to terms with a diagnosis of pelvic inflammatory disease causing damage to her fallopian tubes. The reason her baby didn’t make it to her womb.

The potential damage it may have caused to her other fallopian tube. The problems she may face conceiving safely in the future.

She comforts herself with “at least” – the motto she has come to live her life by – that at least they didn’t have a Band-Aid baby. So Abbie knew she needed to be grateful alongside her grieving. To not be trapped by a baby like her mother was.

And then later still, none of it matters. Shortness of breath, followed by feeling faint, followed by yet more pain. Another hurried journey to A&E. Another visit to theatre. A nasty infection. Another tube removed.

Just isolated ovaries swimming around inside her, with no connection to her womb. No way to make babies – Band-Aid or not.

And then later still, Abbie and Ebbs are no longer together. The doctor checked Abbie’s scars and told her she had healed well. She looked down at her abdomen and agreed. Physically she had healed very well.

The little cream lines near her belly button sat in the natural folds of her skin and could easily be mistaken for chicken pox scars. Yes. Physically she had healed very well.

And then later still, came an extra glass of wine to ease the pain, to keep her company, an attempt to fill the hole. And then later still came Dominic. But the hole was too big for him to fill too.

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 The Second Cup

Would your life unravel if someone you knew committed suicide? Theirs did.

Faye knows her heart still belongs to her first love, Jack. She also knows he might have moved on, but when she decides to track him down, nothing prepares her for the news that he's taken his own life.

Faye is left wondering how to move forward - and whether or not Jack's best friend Ethan will let her down again. And the news of Jack's death ripples through the lives of her friends too.

Abbie finds herself questioning her marriage, and wondering if she was right to leave her first love behind. Poor Olivia is juggling her job and her boyfriend and trying to deal with a death of her own. And Jack's death has hit Beth the hardest, even though she never knew him.

Is Beth about to take her own life too?

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Giveaway – Win 3 x Signed copies of The Second Cup by Sarah Marie Graye

(Open Internationally)

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome.  Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below.  The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time I will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

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Sarah Marie Graye was born in Manchester in 1975, to English Catholic parents. To the outside world Sarah Marie’s childhood followed a relatively typical Manchester upbringing, until aged nine, when she was diagnosed with depression.

It’s a diagnosis that has stayed with Sarah Marie over three decades, and something she believes has coloured every life decision, including the one to write a novel.

Sarah Marie wrote The Second Cup as part of an MA Creative Writing practice as research degree at London South Bank University – where she was the vice-chancellor’s scholarship holder.

Sarah Marie was diagnosed with ADHD in November 2017 and published an extended edition of The Second Cup in February 2018 that included character interviews so she could diagnose one of her characters with the same condition.

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Amy Cole Has Lost Her Mind by Elizabeth McGivern #suicide #miscarriage #inspirational #books .@MayhemBeyond .@rararesources

Amy Cole Has Lost Her Mind 

by

Elizabeth McGivern

Amy Cole is a stay-at-home mum and a woman on the edge.

After a very public breakdown and failed suicide attempt, Amy finds herself trying to make it through her everyday life as a high-functioning zombie. 

Amazon UK | Amazon.com  

Elle De Bruyn is a force of nature ready to shake Amy back to life whether she likes it or not.

After a fortuitous meeting, the two embark on a journey together which will change them both and help them find out exactly what they’re capable of when rock bottom is just the beginning.

Excerpt 

This extract is a flashback to the events which start the book in motion. Amy suffers a miscarriage and the fall-out of it causes ramifications for her and her family from the hospital right through to the present day:

  I woke up bleeding on 10th December. I threw myself out of the bed and ran into the bathroom. Even before I saw the blood I knew what was happening.

  What is it about being pregnant that makes you think that love and sheer stubborn will can protect your child?

  I gripped onto my stomach, feeling the start of the piercing pain ripping in my womb. I sat on the floor with hundreds of thoughts going through my mind.

  Some relevant, others not.

  Ben was in England on business and the boys were still asleep. My eyes were burning and I ached to cry but I couldn't give into tears, not just yet. I decided that I could save this baby. I knew if I just got to a doctor then I could save my little girl.

  I packed up my children, who were still fast asleep, and left them with the child-minder. To this day I don't know how I kept it together that entire day. All I knew was that if I let one tear fall, it was as good as admitting defeat and I didn't know how to do that. My daughter needed me.

  After a very terse conversation with a GP receptionist, I was told to go to the hospital.

  By the time I got to the emergency department's reception I was shaking so badly I thought I was going to faint then and there.

  They must have noticed the panic on my face as I was seen by a doctor quite quickly. I answered the obligatory questions and blood was taken for testing. I was asked to sit back in reception and I would be called soon.

  The wait was agony and every time I went to the bathroom to clean more blood away I was getting more and more agitated. I didn't understand why no one was grasping how urgent this was.

 

I spent the next eight hours sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair waiting for someone to give me words of comfort and tell me that the bleeding was normal.

  I watched countless people come in and out. I imagined their stories and gave them names and tragic backstories - that way I could comfort myself knowing that by the time I was seen by a doctor and told everything was fine, I would go home feeling lucky. I was certain that the doctor would give me some sort of tablet or injection to stop the bleeding and I would go home to take it easy.

  I decided that I would take months off work and sit on my ever-expanding arse until my daughter was ready to make her appearance.

  I knew it was a girl. A mother knows these things – one of the many bullshit things I convinced myself of during those eight hours of waiting.

  Eventually, I was told they had lost the blood samples but they had finally located them around 9pm.

  After the briefest of examinations, I was informed that my baby was gone. They told me to go home and let "nature do its work".

  I was offered no words of comfort or an explanation, something I so desperately needed.

  Still, I did not cry.

  I picked up the kids, on autopilot, and returned home to a quiet house. They had fallen asleep in the back of the car and I was tempted to wake them up just to have some distraction or company. My phone had died hours ago and, no doubt, Ben would be anxious to hear from me, but I couldn't find the words to say it out loud.

 

As far as I was concerned, I had failed. I had lost our baby.

  I hated that phrase.

  I hadn't ‘lost' anything. My body had let me down.

  The body that I had finally grown to love after years of shallow self-loathing had become my enemy once again.

  It had killed my daughter.

  The numbness carried on for weeks. My family thought I was just being stoic and getting on with things – while those around me offered gems like:

  "Sure, it was early days anyway so it wasn't that bad."

  This was a direct quote from an ill-informed, but well-meaning aunt.

I had an easy to remember go-to response for when I was asked how I was feeling; I simply shrugged and said:

  "These things happen."

  People seemed satisfied with this, but to be honest I had no idea what that even meant in a situation like this. I knew they were all waiting for me to cry, but still, no tears came.

  I tried a few times but it was as if every attempt to find my heart again was futile. I was a high functioning zombie.

  Six weeks later I started to hear her; the hideous version of myself that rejoiced in my failure. I hated her, but unfortunately, by this stage, I was in no shape to defend myself against her onslaught of visceral abuse. It didn't take her long to gain more and more ground and soon I was lying awake night after night, listening to a new list of insults.

  It was around 3am on a Wednesday that she first planted the seed.

  If you go to the lake, all this will stop. I promise. Your family will be so much happier without you. Deep down, you know that's the truth.

  After weeks of feeling shame and continuous mental and physical pain, I felt like I had an answer on how to make it all go away.

  I wasn't scared or feeling guilty about who I was leaving behind. I believed her when she told me they were better off without me.

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Picture credited to

Jess Lowe 

Elizabeth McGivern is a former journalist turned hostage-in-her-own-home surrounded by three men and a horrible dog named Dougal. 

In an effort to keep her sanity she decided to write a parenting blog after the birth of her first son so she can pinpoint the exact moment she failed as a mother. 

In an unexpected turn of events, the blog helped her to find a voice and connect with parents in similar situations; namely those who were struggling with mental health issues and parenting. It was because of this encouragement – and wanting to avoid her children as much as possible – her debut novel, Amy Cole has lost her mind, was born. 

Elizabeth lives in Northern Ireland although wishes she could relocate to Iceland on a daily basis. To witness her regular failings as a parent you can find her on: 

www.mayhemandbeyond.com