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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
The Miles We Run by Alison Beder Solway is a memoir in which she details her path to motherhood alongside the miles of running a marathon. Alison talks about her childhood health issues, including the diagnosis of osteomyelitis and the resilience required for her recovery. As an adult, she had a complicated pregnancy that led to a diagnosis of heart failure, forcing her to deliver her daughter, Hannah, prematurely. Later, Alison and her husband Kenny face infertility and the emotional rollercoaster of IVF treatments. These, in turn, become surrogacy attempts, replete with obstacles, setbacks, loss, and huge financial strain. Their perseverance leads to the birth of their son, Aidan, via surrogacy, and later to the birth of twin sons, Rowen and Caleb. Each phase is marked by the mileage of a marathon and prompts for readers to engage in themselves.
In The Miles We Run: Lessons From The Arena Of Resilience, Alison Beder Solway allows us into some incredibly private moments. Her writing is conversational and heartfelt and feels like a chat with a good friend. This makes it so that readers can connect on a genuinely human level and also makes Solway very relatable. The standout for me, as an outsider who knows little of surrogacy, is in the issues that came up with potential surrogates, and the fact that it wasn't simply a decision of a surrogate but often a collective understanding that involved their significant other. It was also a surprise that after all the issues with the first surrogacy, she wanted to do it all over again! Overall, Solway's memoir is unique in the context of a woman who went down this route to motherhood, as well as everything that led to it, with the bonus of her marathon training for a full and inspiring read. Recommended.
