by Tara Friedman
August 5, 2025
Tara Friedman currently resides in Eastern Pennsylvania with her husband and family. When not writing or teaching, she is happily immersed in a variety of outdoor activities. She proudly serves as English faculty at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. While she presented and published on critical thinking and writing center theory and pedagogy, her current research focuses on resilience in children and young adults, literature and the environment, and American humor.
Trying by Chloe Caldwell; Graywolf Press; 208 pages; $18.00.
Chloé Caldwell unearths a raw and vulnerable truth about the reconstitution of self in her moving, stylistically bold memoir Trying. Following the critical acclaim of Women, Caldwell’s latest work transports us through trials of fertility, infidelity, loss, and ultimately, self-discovery. Comprised of individual vignettes in three acts, Caldwell works to break down the fourth wall, dedicating scenes to document personal heartbreak and shatter cultural expectations of womanhood. With her characteristically wry and grounded prose, unnerving attention to detail, and emotional resonance, the author delivers a beautiful reclamation of desire and identity, one of trying, failing, and becoming once again.
Caldwell’s observations illuminate the complexities of self-doubt and relationships and embrace the discomfort and ambiguity inherent in these lived experiences. She writes, “Supposedly the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over but expect different results, but isn’t that precisely what trying to get pregnant and failing is?" Feelings of physical, mental, and emotional pain surround the author as she details her experiences with trying to conceive. Caldwell patiently underscores how familial and cultural expectations of motherhood create shame around struggles with infertility, how “. . . after a certain number of months into years, [family and friends] stopped asking . . . Things become silent the way a city does in a snowstorm." Caldwell uses her writing to confide in readers, as if they are privy to her most personal thoughts, juxtaposing the quiet recesses of her mind with clinical frustrations and cultural critiques on why she is denied access to the exclusive club of motherhood.
Infertility is wrought with an all-encompassing, silent grief, and the gut-wrenching battle plumbed for understanding in the pages of Trying, as Caldwell carefully intertwines moments of stagnation and self-worth: “I write in my journal: My self-worth is tied up completely in my fertility." Caldwell gives herself permission to ask: what do we do when we try, and we don’t succeed, surrounded by a culture that esteems motherhood even at the cost of womanhood. The price of self-worth feels too steep – too much. Once she’s tried everything from acupuncture to intrauterine insemination to mindfulness retreats to get pregnant, Caldwell comments, “because we all know, if we try to get pregnant and don’t, someone will tell us why it is our fault and what we did wrong." The onerous blame of infertility pulses deafeningly throughout many scenes. During a trip as mundane as the grocery store, Caldwell wonders, “who else is surviving [this] hell alongside me." With this reflection, the author speaks directly to her audience, to anyone who may feel stuck or worthless while fighting battles unbeknownst to many. Caldwell’s writing denounces those who cast blame, and at the same time substantiates the fragility of those silently suffering.
In the face of such solemnity, Caldwell’s reflective writing still blends candor and humor throughout dozens of vignettes, offering an immediate and intimate narrative that is profoundly specific and deeply relatable. When discussing infertility, Caldwell laments feeling like an outsider when celebrities, family traditions, apparel, and even jewelry depict motherhood: “I stroll into a gift store, only to be assaulted with mom phrases. The necklaces read: MAMA, WORLD’S OKAYEST MAMA, C-SECTION, MAMA BEAR, MAMA-TO-BE. My favorite is the martyrish tote bag: NOTHING IN THIS BAG BELONGS TO ME. Mom Life. Then put something of yours in the goddamn bag." Caldwell presents these moments in her life in the fragmentary, diary-like structure that she endures them and crafts nonlinear narratives that provides emotional catharsis in the liminal spaces between scenes.
After years of battling infertility, and infidelity and addiction in her marriage, Caldwell reveals a thought-provoking shift: her own queer reawakening. Turning to a supportive online community, Caldwell listens to one woman’s account of trying to conceive through IVF: “She explains that she’d rather do things that make her body feel whole and intact, activities like dancing, hiking, swimming, walking, cooking. This comment rearranges my whole brain." In perhaps her most poignant offering, Caldwell conscientiously chooses herself, giving permission for others to do the same. When bodies become battlegrounds in the fight for motherhood, when women digest the regurgitative expectations surrounding our worth to society, it is without incident that many begin to lose themselves, what excites them, makes them feel desirable, whole. She writes, “This is a controversial opinion: Having your life blow up is somewhat fun. It means you’re in reality all the time. Friends come into focus. Writing comes into focus. Dormant desires come into focus. Complacency, contentment, is gone. It’s like being a child again, like being in a foreign country, like being reborn." Caldwell’s acceptance of her new identity and true desires is non-performative and honest and best demonstrates her authorial control of the narrative and her life.
Caldwell has achieved what many authors dedicate careers to accomplish: her wise and at times audacious snapshots fill holes in the marrow of our bones. She denounces the silence and shame around infertility, addiction, and queer representation, and celebrates nonlinearity with grace and acceptance. The author builds trust in individual identity and the power of community: “One thing I know is that I trust my body, intuition, writing, in ways I did not when I began this book."
Reading Trying comforts like a best friend’s shoulder to cry on and breathes life into the innermost spark of desire, even amid personal devastation and unimaginable loss. Toward the end of the memoir, Caldwell asks her father about one of his favorite reminders: “‘Lean forward and run down the hill,’ . . . I ask him if this is because of my age. Like I’ve been climbing the hill and now in my late thirties, I’m going down. ‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s like, make a decision and just do it. Stop thinking about should I or shouldn’t I, and just act’." Instead of a commentary on aging, her father’s edict subdues her stagnation and self-doubt and fuels action on her authentic desires. When we spend too long grappling with the expectations of others, Caldwell’s Trying reminds us to trust in the quiet pulse – beat, beat, beat – of our hearts.
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“Lean Forward and Run Down the Hill” with The Pulse of Desire in Chloe Caldwell’s Trying
NONFICTION REVIEW
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