My first contact with Martha Beck was a book titled The Joy Diet. It was an upbeat, humorous guide on how to add joy to your life. As I read it, the author’s life became slowly revealed showing that she was a person who had experienced so many things that should have made joy a foreign emotion. She knows that being happy is a deliberate decision that we make. Probably the major event in her life was giving birth to her son Adam. But, let us start at the beginning of EXPECTING ADAM.
Martha and her husband John were graduate students at Harvard. With two degrees apiece under their belts, they were on their way to successful careers. Although already the parents of a daughter, Martha was on the professional track demanded by her school and fellow classmates.
The new pregnancy brought with it constant battles with nausea, dehydration, and censure from the Harvard community. The criticism became more intense when the unborn baby is diagnosed with Downs Syndrome and it is clear that she is not going to terminate the pregnancy.
This story covers so many issues that it is hard to know where to begin. I was particularly amazed by how critical her fellow female colleagues were. Showing signs of illness was showing signs of weakness and as one woman told her, “gave woman a bad name”. The stress to get ahead on campus did not allow for any type of personal life. Almost from the moment that she thought she was pregnant, Martha started having “spiritual” experiences. She said that she could not explain some of the things that happened, but it was as if Adam brought his own guardian angels with him from the very beginning.
This is a tender, honest, funny, wonderful book. If you are the type to scoff at visions or guardian angels, you will still be captured by the warmth and love contained in Adam’s story. If you have been blessed with a special needs child, this book should be required reading.
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