Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Body Full of Stars: Female Rage and My Passage into Motherhood” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Body Full of Stars: Female Rage and My Passage into Motherhood

Molly Caro May

3.79 · Rating details · 341 ratings · 54 reviews

"This book is an ancient call from our first mothers to connect to our bodies―for our own good and for the good of humanity . . . It is healing, illuminated." ―Laura Munson, New York Times bestselling author of This Is Not The Story You Think It Is...

What if labor does not end with pregnancy but continues into a mother's postpartum life? How can the fiercest love for your ...more

Get A Copy

Hardcover, 272 pages

Published January 16th 2018

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Body Full of Stars, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about Body Full of Stars

Lists with This Book

The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton

Memoir Published in Year: 2018

217 books — 95 voters

The Path to Perfection by Dawn Thomas-Cameron

On Motherhood

24 books — 8 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 3.79 ·

Rating details

· 341 ratings · 54 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of Body Full of Stars: Female Rage and My Passage into Motherhood

Feb 08, 2018 Janelle Janson rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2018, autobiography-memoir-biography, from-publisher-or-author, nonfiction

BODY FULL OF STARS by Molly Caro May - Thank you so much to Counterpoint Press for providing my free copy - all opinions are my own.

I found this book an extremely personal, necessary, and important work that all women should read. I am not a mother but I was still able to identify and empathize with much of what was written. I have very close friends who are moms that have struggled in similar ways. Although I am not a mom, and even though I can’t possibly understand everything, the contents of ...more

flag 21 likes · Like · see review

Feb 01, 2018 Ramona Mead rated it it was amazing

This is a tough review for me. Based on my reading experience, I would say 4 stars. I bumped it up to 5 because this is an extraordinary work of memoir. The author's honesty and vulnerability is incredible, and when I think about the fact that that her husband and family support her 100% and didn't try to sensor a word in this book, it blows my mind.

This is an important book, and it's striking up crucial conversations for women. As a woman who has chosen not to become a mother, there were parts ...more

flag 15 likes · Like · see review

Feb 25, 2018 Devon Steven rated it liked it

3.5 stars. Lots of lovely writing and phenomenal ideas about motherhood, female rage, and our bodies, but it meandered on for longer than served its purpose, resulting in an overall feeling of navel gazing instead of philosophizing.

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Aug 23, 2017 Meli rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction, mental-wellness, contemporary, feminism, profesh-self-growth, auto-bio-memoir, giveaway

"She is, after all, the greatest story of all time."

*I received an ARC of this book in a giveaway in exchange for an honest review*

Sometimes a giveaway book stands out as one to be particularly excited about, despite the odds of actually winning. This was one of those books. Although I have never been pregnant and have no plans to be in the near future, the element of body fluency caught my attention. Plus, the cover is gorgeous. After getting about 50 pages in, I went back and got a pencil and "She is, after all, the greatest story of all time."

*I received an ARC of this book in a giveaway in exchange for an honest review*

Sometimes a giveaway book stands out as one to be particularly excited about, despite the odds of actually winning. This was one of those books. Although I have never been pregnant and have no plans to be in the near future, the element of body fluency caught my attention. Plus, the cover is gorgeous. After getting about 50 pages in, I went back and got a pencil and started re-reading and marking the parts that stood out to me or made an impact: discussions of food, body healing, and the inextricable link between how we treat the earth and how we treat women. The postpartum challenge, as May calls it, is a reality that is pressing and unsurprisingly hidden. This is a story that needed to be told. Body Full of Stars is about more than postpartum challenge(s), though. It takes us to womanhood at its core.

"I don't know what gender is anymore but I do know what the presence of trusted women does to me."

"Dreams of women lovemaking, me lovemaking with other faceless women, only women. Lesbian sex dreams the entire pregnancy. Woman, love yourself, love your mother, love your daughter growing with you, but start with love of self and all women."

I very much appreciate how, although this is not a queer book, May sprinkles throughout an acknowledgment of the connection between sapphic connections/women loving women in this.

I give this book three stars. After getting 150 pages in, it lost steam because the incessant need to be noticed and honored became somewhat gratuitous and self-indulgent. Yet, I recognize the necessity for this. After all, a key part of the story calls attention to the need for women and female rage to finally be heard, to gain attention, to be the center of conversation. My mixed feelings on this continued until the end of the story.

The biggest "star losing" problems I had with this book are the following: Her insular, self-important, elitist, wordly, sagacious naturopath, rooted yet rootless, essential oils understanding of female empowerment were incensing and patience testing. She faces serious medical complications but holds such a disdain for medicine that spreads a dangerous message to new mothers. My neonatal nurse twin sister would be enraged to hear how life-saving treatment is so distorted and misunderstood by this white upper class woke segment of people.

At times, her writing was lyrical and beautiful, but at other times it was loaded of self-important fluff. As an example, the author's website reads (shortened) "Let us inhabit the regenerative power of the storyteller within. Build capacity to be both with and release the story. Create open space in your chest cavity. Make contact with your sensory body to see how and where it relates to your story. It is play; it is counter-cultural; it is craft-based; it is crawling in the mud. You are biologically wired for story. It is part of your ancestry and your legacy. We are on this sacred and rugged path together." Her previous book chronicles her transition from a world traveler (which she describes as "nomadic" *eye roll*) to 100 acres of Montana land with her husband where they build and live in a Mongolian yurt. As a Brazilian, it is clear I am not reading a work authored by one of my Latina counterparts, whose relationship with nature don't generally fall on this kind of sanctimonious free-spirit nonsense. It reads heavily like a female rage and mental/emotional/spiritual connection with one's body version of Eat, Pray, Love, which can get quickly tiresome.

Overall I am glad to have read this book but would not do so again. ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Feb 05, 2018 Lisa Eirene rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is a very important book and I wish I had read it two years ago, when I was in the middle of the post-partum haze. I could relate to this book SO MUCH. I think it’s an injustice to women that the modern birth and pregnancy books don’t really talk about post-partum issues much. Sure, they might give you a checklist of PPD signs but they don’t talk about much of the issues that can happen…

“Because we are a culture focused on the singular act of birthing, no one tells you what comes before or This is a very important book and I wish I had read it two years ago, when I was in the middle of the post-partum haze. I could relate to this book SO MUCH. I think it’s an injustice to women that the modern birth and pregnancy books don’t really talk about post-partum issues much. Sure, they might give you a checklist of PPD signs but they don’t talk about much of the issues that can happen…

“Because we are a culture focused on the singular act of birthing, no one tells you what comes before or after birth. Not really. How can they? It’s different for every woman. There may not be one narrative. However, there is no truth. Before and after are not times where all you do is glow. [Loc 400]”

…Like post-partum incontinence (thankful I never had this issue but the author goes into great deal of what sounded like a living hell for her peeing ALL THE TIME no matter what she did), prolapse (again, I didn’t really have this issue but I did have pelvic floor issues that I had to do PT exercises for), among other things. None of the books I read went into detail about these issues, and the pregnancy/labor class I took didn’t cover it, either. They BARELY covered breastfeeding and the issues that can cause.

“I can’t bounce (the baby). Bouncing makes my vagina “fall out”–and pee, lots of pee, oceans of urine. If I put her down, she screams a baby dinosaur scream I can’t handle yet. There is no way for me to be with her and have my hands free. [Loc 308]”

So I think this memoir is a must-read for new moms. The author talks about not being a “radiant” pregnant woman, how she felt at war with her body during the entire pregnancy because she was sick all the time. She had a fairly traumatic birth experience, as well, and that caused a lot of issues for her AND her husband.

“Little do I know this moment is the middle of the beginning of a 2 year quest for my health, a crawl across the parched desert where I will question everything I once knew about my body, about it means to heal, about the woman-mother I so wanted to become. I’m about to lose my whole sense of self. [Loc 437]”

She talks about how the arrival of their daughter changed her marriage, sometimes for the worse, but they got through it. She talked about how far away she felt from her husband and he told her that it was “hard to move toward a person who snarls.”

I highlighted A LOT of quotes from this book. I won’t share them all here. I think it’s more significant to read the book and experience the author’s journey to fully understand it. I could relate to a lot of stuff. There were definitely subjects that didn’t speak to my birth/post-partum experience, but it was an eye-opening read anyways. ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jan 23, 2019 Kirsten rated it did not like it

I wanted to love this book. I really did. My own experience of early motherhood resonated with the idea of a rage that can come out of becoming a mother, and I am on board with Caro May's thesis that there is something to be said for connecting with our feminine bodies, something to be said about the importance of listening to the shifts - anger, grief, transformation - that can come after childbirth. She's so vulnerable in her writing, documenting ugly moments for herself and her family in the I wanted to love this book. I really did. My own experience of early motherhood resonated with the idea of a rage that can come out of becoming a mother, and I am on board with Caro May's thesis that there is something to be said for connecting with our feminine bodies, something to be said about the importance of listening to the shifts - anger, grief, transformation - that can come after childbirth. She's so vulnerable in her writing, documenting ugly moments for herself and her family in the year(s) after childbirth left her incontinent. And for that I respect her, for laying it all so terribly out there for the world to see.

But no matter how I tried, I just couldn't connect with her. The writing is rambling and self-absorbed, it whirlpools around the same phrases and themes. I tired of hearing of her desire to be "honored" by her husband after the first two times. Tired of reading about her lying down and "pounding the earth" in her anger, hearing about all of her body work sessions and meditations on her pelvic bowl and "Mayan abdominal massages." Like many, after the middle of the book, I just wanted it to be over, and sped through the second half as quickly as possible. If I was a person who could stop books in the middle, I would have abandoned this one. I am also highly skeptical of any writer, especially one who is non-native and White, who writes incessantly of the wisdom of an ambiguous "tribal past" and writes phrases like "I make ceremony." It feels like a romanticized vision that does no actual work and gives no actual credit to the supposed histories its referencing. And this book had space for that. A few chapters that delved deeper into actual, researched exploration of traditions of the feminine would have rounded this out and made it more palatable. She references only three authors in her acknowledgements as books she found insight and inspiration in; I looked them all up and all three of the books are written by White women. That is not to say that those three books contain nothing of use, I haven't read them, but for a book so incredibly focused on female connection to the earth, on menstrual ritual, and on the so-called ancient wisdom of the feminine - I'm sorry, she needed to do more work and rely on a more diverse set of reference books. ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Apr 23, 2018 Kristin Boldon rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018, borrowed, memoir

An excellent, lyrically written, often wrenching memoir about one woman's postpartum struggles with rage and physical healing, while also celebrating the love she has for her daughter, and the connection she builds with her mother and the memory of her grandmother. It sometimes wandered too far for my taste into the mystical, and I occasionally struggled to follow the story, but I was always willing to keep going with this author. It's so important to have stories like this out there, bringing t ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

May 04, 2018 Katie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

I was initially hesitant about reading this memoir as it reminded me of a very overwhelming and manipulative old friend of mine, who also happened to be a Cancer as is the author, Molly. A noteworthy sentence I took from the novel is Molly's mother telling her "We've all heard enough of your troubles... I just hope you learn how to take care of yourself. I haven't seen you do that yet." This sentence summed up my feelings perfectly towards my old friend and towards my thoughts of the author init ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

May 30, 2018 Alex Templeton rated it really liked it

I have probably mentioned in other reviews how my favorite new subgenre of memoir are motherhood memoirs, especially early motherhood memoirs. I became a mother four years ago, so I enjoy commiserating with authors about their experiences of this nutty time. I looked forward to reading this one, as it promised to explore the emotion of rage, and that is something that I've struggled with. There have been many times where it all just seems! So! UNFAIR! And I don't CARE if I'm rational or not! I t ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 15, 2018 Sarah rated it it was amazing

Finally a real book about the postpartum experience.

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 16, 2019 Anna rated it it was amazing

Shelves: motherhood

This book. "Wow" feels like an understatement, but my emotions are so raw after finishing it, every single memory of my immediate postpartum years coming back to me so alive and tangible right now, that I can't locate the right words to describe how beautiful and meaningful and real this book is. So I'll focus on things I've done this week while reading it: 1) reached out to the author through social media to thank her for writing it (that is not a thing I usually do, even though I love so many ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 24, 2019 Katie Metzler rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This book was so repetitious and the midpoint I just wanted it to be over. There were some beautifully written passages and thought-provoking themes but overall the author seemed very self-absorbed. For as introspective as she claimed to be, she could NOT see outside herself. The refusal to take care of herself while constantly talking about needing to heal herself was frustrating, as was the rejection of evidence-based medicine.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 21, 2018 Suzanne Terry rated it it was ok

TLDR: Did not like it. I stalled on it for a month once I'd gotten about halfway through and then hate-read the second half. Technically, I'm counting this as my "Book With a Cover You Don't Like" category for the #BookRiotReadHarderChallenge2018 because I let this one sit on my shelf for months, avoiding it, knowing that heading back into postpartum territory could be triggering for me. Well, happy to report that Molly Caro May's memoir didn't bring me back into that traumatic place but it did ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Mar 30, 2019 tisasday rated it liked it

A very strange and intriguing block of lyrical non-fiction.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Feb 09, 2018 Stephanie Allen rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-medicine, feminist, memoirs, women-s-health

This is a very important book. There is so little in literature about the post-partum experiences of women. This is a hold-nothing-back account of a woman desiring to be embodied in a body that some would consider "damaged" by childbirth.

As a future OB-Gyn this journey was very eye-opening for future experiences with patients. This book also made me further realize the dearth of support for pregnant and post-partum women in the American system. There is no space for women who don't "bounce back ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Nov 19, 2018 Bethany rated it really liked it

May's exploration of post-birth new motherhood is what all new moms need to read, to gain an understanding that we are all emotionally connected in the struggles that await us after giving birth. While every birth, child, woman, and recovery is different, our path toward a new identity - emotionally, physically, mentally, and physically - unites us.

Caro May bravely shares her own struggle as a woman, mother, daughter, and partner. She talks about the things we should all be talking about: the h ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Feb 24, 2018 Jamie rated it really liked it

This book explores in head-nodding detail the part of motherhood and pregnancy that goes ignored - that postpartum period where everything you expect can be flipped on its head. I had an easy pregnancy, a painful and overwhelming but not overly traumatic labor, and then a gruesome couple of months where I tried to heal. But no one talks about the mother. No one allows the wholly singular physical and emotional pain to be expressed because look at that baby. I'm in love with the first half of BOD ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 02, 2018 Lea rated it it was amazing

This book connected me to motherhood in new ways and spoke right to the core of Me. It wasn’t an easy read but I took comfort in the morsels and will for a long time to come I’m sure. Thanks Ramona for letting me read your copy.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 11, 2018 Maggie rated it it was amazing

Excellent. Raw, real + unfiltered. I'm grateful for this book--it felt like a beautiful dream to read it, even amidst the nightmarish moments, because it's so lyrical, honest + forgiving. This is a superb piece of memoir. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Feb 09, 2019 Kristin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: memoir-bio-testimony, motherhood-parenting

A very raw, powerful work of memoir.

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jun 04, 2019 gwayle rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfic, e-book, babies

Body Full of Stars is a memoir about the author’s difficult postpartum, chronicling her struggles with incontinence, hormone imbalance, and thyroid issues, as well as an accompanying array of emotional breakdowns and strained relationships. I wouldn’t wish her experiences on anyone, but difficulties postpartum are all too common and not talked about enough.

However, I’m not going to sugarcoat it: I almost put this book aside many times. I’m not certain why I continued; I think at some point I jus ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Feb 08, 2020 Esther rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I devoured this, not without once or twice thinking, “check your privilege, already” but I’ve needed to be called out on my own moments of privilege, too. So, there’s grace for that.

Much of my own physical collapse has happened before I entered motherhood but the journey continues and so this memoir felt safe and nurturing to those of us mucking through the fog.

The beauty of the desire to heal and its ability to continue on the arduous journey is revealed in both the author’s own self as well ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

May 04, 2020 Lauren Salisbury rated it did not like it

Shelves: nonfic, memoirs, ebooks, parenting

This filled me with rage but not in the way it was supposed to.

There was an excessive amount of apologizing for the husband who presented as an insensitive jerk. For what it's worth to whoever needs to hear it: no, watching your partner have a traumatic birth is not worse than experiencing that birth FFS. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jun 15, 2018 Marilyn Guggenheim rated it it was amazing

Body Full of Stars captures the gorgeous wonder of new life and love, and shows how these are inescapably entangled with hard work that pushes us to our limits. These days when pregnancy, childbirth and parenting take their place with weddings as a kind of competitive sport among us entitled middle-class Americans, Molly Caro May’s memoir takes readers to the messy, beautiful reality of the essential grind. “Essential” because the humbling moments of body fluids and arguments we want to forget, Body Full of Stars captures the gorgeous wonder of new life and love, and shows how these are inescapably entangled with hard work that pushes us to our limits. These days when pregnancy, childbirth and parenting take their place with weddings as a kind of competitive sport among us entitled middle-class Americans, Molly Caro May’s memoir takes readers to the messy, beautiful reality of the essential grind. “Essential” because the humbling moments of body fluids and arguments we want to forget, highlight the precious moments of spontaneous bonding that we want to last forever. “Grind” because--spoiler alert--talking and playing with children while getting ordered around by them and serving as a model of responsible adulthood can reach excruciating levels of tedium. May’s grind is not boredom, but the more serious challenge of the physical and mental toll new parenthood exacts, particularly when ideas about womanhood complicate the picture. I felt myself luxuriating in sweet scenes of daily life with her baby daughter, even as the book also struck me with an awareness of internalized culture such as this:

[A]t church, my mother and I stood in wooden pews and sang ‘One Bread, One Body,’ the song that made us both cry a little....[A]s I knelt in prayer, my thoughts would tumble over themselves until I ended up stranded and alone on a pile of debris wondering why we were praying over a man’s body. Didn’t every person come out, actually, from a woman’s body? Where were the women, what about Eve, the snake, what the hell?”

As a mother a few years past the all-consuming days of raising tiny people, I was transported to those gauzy moments of baby joy and also breathed a sigh of relief those years were behind me. The subtitle “Female Rage and My Passage into Motherhood” makes a promise of honesty that some readers might react to, and whether that reaction is negative--especially if that reaction is negative--I encourage those readers to look at what makes them want to look away. For the most difficult and self-focused scenes are the most instructive parts of this memoir because they expose the struggle between service and autonomy for women, and focus awareness on what we demand of ourselves.

I myself experienced envy and compassion and solidarity while reading. I envied May’s close relationship with her mother where mine was fraught and geographically distant by design. I envied her for her baby daughter because mine died in November 2006 during my eighth month of pregnancy (her name was Elise, and I relish the rare chance to write her name between these parentheses). I felt compassion for May’s postpartum woes, where her pelvic prolapse and incontinence further complicated the loneliness of motherhood. But solidarity forms the heart of this book, where May embraces her emotions as a way to understand and love more fully. She faces down conflict where I would run away or try to stuff down my rage, only to have it emerge as irritability, lashing out, self-blame. She sees how her baby’s father struggles alongside her and in conflict with her in their newly triangulated family. Connections with the self and loved ones, the world inside and outside get upended and reconfigured. “ ‘I have my own trauma about what happened during that first year after Eula was born. I tried to help you but you wouldn’t let me,’ ” May’s husband says to her. She observes that “Even when I wanted to hurt him, I never wanted to hurt him. He never judged. He retreated to protect himself….I move toward him and we fall into each other’s arms. His relief relieves me; his face is open and wide for the first time since my pregnancy. I think he has been heard. I won’t apologize for my feelings or rage. Just like he doesn’t need to apologize for his. He was mean too. But I am sorry for expecting him to rescue me. I am sorry for having pointed a significant portion of my anger at him. My unprocessed or misdirected anger hurts him and drains my brightness….It’s okay to feel angry. It’s not okay to attack people” (p.252).

Body Full of Stars is a book for anyone who wants to understand how they evolve in intimate relationships and their sense of self. It is a love letter to May’s family and support network, a tribute to the mother-child bond, and a celebration of earthly and spiritual humanity in all its complexity. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jun 05, 2018 Kayla Hollis rated it it was amazing

As a momma who suffered postpartum depression, particularly in the form of rage, I needed this book so much. Some parts were not completely up my alley - the author is a lot more into nature and being connected to the earth than I am - but I appreciated the perspective anyway; it was beautiful. I'd venture to say that any mother who felt differently than they were "supposed" to after giving birth- i.e., not glowing and basking in happiness and love over her new child 24/7 - would find something ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jun 14, 2018 Erika rated it it was amazing

The beautiful, but not glamorous, look into the postpartum period of pregnancy, and a woman's hormones in general. Very insightful read, and left me with a list of questions to research as well as a feeling of solidarity. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Aug 15, 2018 Joan Ifland rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The dear complexity of mothers

This book captures the vagaries of the new mother. Threads of life past and future catch up and spin out with disorienting fierceness just when we are most vulnerable. This book let me know and accept my new motherhood 35 years later.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Mar 13, 2019 Jane rated it it was amazing

This isn't just a pregnancy or motherhood book, it's a book about being female. It's all very personal and for me entirely relatable. Vulnerable, honest, and true. I wish someone gave this to me a long time ago. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review