FOR SIX YEARS I didn’t talk about what happened.

Now I’ve written the whole story, complete and honest. It’s a mix of love and pain. A very specific kind of love, which is the affection a woman feels for her as-yet unborn child. And a very specific pain, the result of losing a child in the womb. There is more to say about this. But if you’ve been there personally, if you’ve experienced something like this very particular kind of grief, then please read on.

Because it’s not so simple, is it?, to talk about what is, what isn’t, what was, what could have been, what we remember, what we hold on to, and, yes, most importantly, how we can honor that which was so near, really note and express our emotions around what we felt and how we felt it… and then… let go.

Letting go is not so easy.

Especially when from all angles, people are telling you—too soon—to move on. It’s not so black and white. It’s complicated, like just about all important things and issues. So this book makes a space for us to look closely at what one person’s journey was like. All the pain, the promise, the hope, the dashing of it, what society seemed to press down with, and how she managed to do her very best to sidestep it. This is a true and honest story.

KARIN MALHOTRA ARRIVES IN SEATTLE, a shiny city by the sea that she has dreamed about for many years, with a suitcase, a backpack, and big dreams for living “the perfect life.” At 28 she’s landed what seems like a great job, one that lets her use her creative skills, and it’s right in the heart of the gleaming city she thinks she loves.

But things change when a stunning, jarred instance of twisted fate crumbles her picture of what things might have looked like in the carefully constructed picture her imagination has designed. In the slow unraveling of a less-than-perfect relationship with colleagues, then later friends and even family, Karin withdraws. The Dive is the story that outlines with sharp clarity exactly how one young woman can fall from being ready for anything into a long, loose dive… one whose dark shadow and painful memory will never fully leave her.

Author Dipika Kohli writes about the experience of telling this story, in full, from the heart. ‘Since 2006, I’ve held in my heart a love story, unfinished. I wrote The Dive to honor that, and somehow, to complete it.’ No one can ever stand in another’s shoes, not ever, and this is a way to share one very honest, very loving story of what it felt like for a mother-to-be to embrace the not-being, in making room for what might yet continue, if only she can muster courage to move forwards and press on. ‘If you found this page because of something that’s happening personally, I highly recommend the website AHeartbreakingChoice.com. I wouldn’t have written this book were it not for that welcoming, unjudging space.

This book was available from 2012-2014. Next available: January 2020.

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