Last October, L\u00e9a Cl\u00e9ment, author and blogger, interviewed me about my book on perinatal grief. I am sharing this interview with you today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My novel is being translated into English, my website is ready, it\u2019s time for me, after 6 months spent on the social networks in your company, to tell you a little more about myself and my writings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLily B. Francis delivers in her novel \u201cPoussi\u00e8res de toi\u201d a moving testimony on perinatal death which affects nearly 7000 families in France every year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The death of a newborn baby in a maternity ward is not a normal event and yet women regularly go to the maternity ward to deliver a dead or rapidly dying child. The simultaneity of an expected life and death at the same time brings parents into the intolerable and unthinkable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her novel \u201cPoussi\u00e8res de toi\u201d, Lily B. Francis talks about this delicate and still taboo subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am Lily B. Francis, a freelance author with a passion for\nreading, art and history. I have been writing for over 20 years. I have been a\nfull-time author for the past 3 years. After studying history, I worked for 10\nyears in real estate, then I took the risk of leaving everything to live from\nmy passion, writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I published a series of 4 books (romantic comedy), Chronicles of a Machiavellian Princess, then two other more personal novels, \u201cPoussi\u00e8res de toi\u201d, which deals with perinatal mourning, and \u201cReviens vite\u201d which evokes, through 3 characters, several forms of loss in the course of life: the loss of a love, the loss of dreams, and the loss of self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first I wrote because reading had become frustrating. So I started writing the stories I wanted to read. And then, writing became a necessity, like breathing. If I don\u2019t write I am suffocating. Writing, for me, means freeing myself from what is on my heart, and breathe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83d\udcad You published \u201cPoussi\u00e8res de toi\u201d in 2018. Can you tell us about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I had a medical interruption of\npregnancy in 2011, I was very confused, I couldn\u2019t understand why no one had\ntold me that you could get pregnant and not have a baby. I felt an overwhelming\nloneliness in the silence that surrounded me, and I told myself that one day I\nwould write about this subject.\u00a0Thus was born Poussi\u00e8res de toi, a novel\nabout perinatal grief that follows the journey of Alice, a young woman trying\nto recover from the loss of her baby at 5 months of pregnancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book is written for all those who\nwish to understand what parents facing perinatal bereavement go through, and of\ncourse it is addressed to these parents so that they can find an echo to what\nthey have been through, and tell themselves that they are not alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To take into consideration the loss of these babies, because even if they did not really live, they really existed in the hearts of the parents. And no longer to remain silent on the subject. Obviously, it is delicate to talk about it, it is an intimate pain, but at least show consideration for this loss, acknowledge that it has happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83d\udcad What is the best compliment that can be said about this novel?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most beautiful compliment is when people thank me for putting into words this pain and loss. When a mother contacts me in a private message to say: \u201cTHANK YOU for talking about it, everyone has forgotten my baby and I still think about it every day\u201d it justifies all the difficulty I had in writing this book. I have received many private messages following the publication of Poussi\u00e8res de toi, from mothers who have experienced perinatal bereavement and who never talk about it to anyone around her, not even to their partner. And this has comforted me in the publication and promotion of my novel. That kind of loneliness has to be broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n