All Seasons Pass: Grieving a Miscarriage - Softcover

"We live in a culture that is incredibly dismissive of miscarriage as anything worth observing, grieving or commemorating.

"As a psychologist I know how important it is in a time of loss to have vehicles that help you grieve and give you comfort. More important, as a woman who has suffered two miscarriages, I know personally the solitary suffering that accompanies such loss. I know about the anger, the self-blame, the fears for the future.

"All Seasons Pass is a spiritual story about miscarriage-mine. I tell it in the form of a parable in which an old woman comforts a younger woman who thinks that if she just tries hard enough, and does everything perfectly, she will be in control of her life-specifically her precarious pregnancy. Through the loss of the pregnancy and the events that follow, the young woman learns not only about the ragged edges of grief, but the many sources of grace amidst that grief.

"May you find this story-my story-to be a gift of hope and healing."

--Martha Manning

"When a woman has a miscarriage its largely invisible, but its a loss that needs to be mourned," she says.

The author of four books including Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface and Chasing Grace: Reflections of a Catholic Girl, Grown Up, Manning displays what the Los Angeles Times calls a "brilliant combination of wit, irony and despair."

Manning received her bachelor's in psychology from the University of Maryland in 1974 and a masters and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Catholic University of America in 1978 and 1981. From 1981 to 1983, Manning was a postdoctoral fellow at McLean Hospital. A major teaching facility of Harvard Medical School, the hospital maintains the largest program of research in neuroscience and psychiatry of any private psychiatric hospital in the United States.

A frequent award winner, Manning won the Stephen Logan Award in 1999 from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, as a psychologist who made significant contributions to unraveling brain disorders. In 1996, she won the American Psychiatric Associations Presidential Award for Patient Advocacy.

As a regular columnist for Salt of the Earth magazine, Manning received numerous awards from both the Associated Church Press and the Catholic Press Association. In 1995, People magazine listed her memoir, Undercurrents, as one of ten books that year worth note. And in 1997, USA Today chose Chasing Grace as a "Best Bet."

Manning lectures throughout the United States and Canada, giving hundreds of talks to patient and mental health groups on topics such as depression, the impact of mental illness on families and the stigma of mental illness. Manning was featured on an Emmy-award winning HBO documentary "Dead Blue" that addressed how families and individuals can survive depression.

The parents of one child, Manning and her husband, Brian Depenbrock, live in Virginia.