Unbound : Finding Freedom From Unrealistic Expectations Of Motherhood

In UNBOUND, Jamie Sumner gives a hope-filled voice to the silent ones, the women in the Christian community whose picture of motherhood is strained by difficulty, otherness, and even despair. She helps women find hope and companionship by detailing her own difficult journey and highlighting women from the Bible who triumphed in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

Women, especially Christian women, do not talk enough about the reality of motherhood: the enormous struggles it takes to get there, the loneliness of it, the unspoken or unmet expectations. We are often too afraid, ashamed, or unwilling to share our stories of disillusionment or pain. We quietly absorb the posts of sonograms and happily messy houses on Facebook as we inwardly wonder what’s the matter with us. We listen to friends coo about their child’s latest success as we watch our own terrorize their sibling or scream for an hour. We struggle to raise kids with special needs, physical disabilities, and social challenges, caught by surprise that this is what motherhood looks like.

With honesty and vulnerability, Jamie Sumner walks readers through each chapter of her own journey to motherhood through infertility and special needs parenting and pairs it with that of a woman in the Bible so that readers can find comfort, hope, companionship and honesty rooted in biblical truths.

The book is broken into four parts: The Wanting, The Waiting, The Getting and The Appreciating. UNBOUND will share the heartbreak of infertility and offer encouragement from someone who has had to wait for the fulfillment of motherhood; detail the specifics of infertility treatments, miscarriage, and raising special needs children through a Christian lens; honestly discuss the expectations versus the reality of being a mother; and highlight specific biblical women in each chapter who did not fit the expectations of their times through verses, scriptural anecdotes and guiding questions.

UNBOUND shows you through Scripture how to be thankful for each step wherever it leads. Happiness is found as we release into His hands our own well-laid plans for His better, and more beautiful one, no matter how different it may look from what we first imagined.