Birthing Books & Babies that Heal the Ancestral Line —w. poet Victoria Coster
We get to be a part of many wonderful people’s book journeys.
this week we’re celebrating the birth of our heroine victoria coster’s memoir in poems, we make diamonds: on motherhood & the ghost kingdom.
Having supported Victoria to write and sculpt this work into the book that lives today, I’ve had a front row seat to the profound journey that this memoir in poems relates. To hear the full story on how the book was conceived, and created, you can join us for the latest episode of The WHOLE HOUSE Podcast: “Birthing Books and Babies that Heal the Ancestral Line with Victoria Coster,” where we go deep into the creative and the physical birthing process—twin portals for our deepest transformation and becoming as medial women.
From the vague anxieties of the early pandemic to the fraught dark nights of early motherhood and beyond, this book is a memoir and a mirror that pushes the bruises of motherhood and bears witness to the ghosts that it conjures— across time and in the body. It’s a book that’s full of guts, and grit, and grace ... of vision and viscera. And a truly soulful and delicious read.
We’re so excited to share a poem from the book here with you—and we invite you to buy a copy of We Make Diamonds for yourself this festive season—and a couple more for your mom friends.
Victoria Coster is the author of We Make Diamonds (2025). Find her at her website or on Instagram.
About the Author
Victoria Coster writes for the woman caught between holding it together and letting it fall apart.
Poet, mother, and real estate agent, she lives in a house named Finistère — “the end of the land” — with her husband and two boys, where memory grows wild and truth shows up barefoot.
Her debut poetry collection, We Make Diamonds, is a luminous excavation of motherhood, identity, and the echoes of grief that follow us home. It’s the kind of book you finish and immediately text to a friend: You need this. Take your time.
She believes in writing like you mean it — raw, rhythmic, unafraid. The poems aren’t gentle, but they hold you like someone who’s been there.
ABOUT THE BOOK
We Make Diamonds is a memoir in poems, capturing the quiet ache of motherhood, memory, and loss. In these pages, fragments become confession, and quiet becomes clarity. This is a book for anyone who has held a child, missed a loved one, or found themselves caught between
remembering and letting go. It’s for the mothers who live in pieces and the daughters who remember
—for anyone who has learned that even the hardest pressure can leave something precious behind.
READ THE POEM >>>
FALLEN
I remember her hands grazing
a found ultrasound. We’d been
organizing her nostalgia drawer.
She stayed with his image for
several minutes, silent. Ran her
fingers along his profile. Booped
his black-and-white button nose.
The date read March 1990.
The last time the night flower
came back, she cradled the
emptied cave of her belly with
emptier hands. She smiled
morning fog, kissed vapor.
Smelled the storms only after
they came. “A bad night’s
sleep,” her fingers twisting her
shirt sleeve, her crêpe skin
black and blue where the IV
had been. “Let me have my
coffee in peace.”
There was room for him
in all our houses. He would have
grown up to be a good man.
Complicated, smart, as haunted
as any of us.
I place a hand over you, still
safely inside. It’s okay. We’re okay.
Your dad takes my hand.
It is not your story. Not our story.
Still,
I
miss
the
skinned
knees
who
never
shared
a
backseat
with
me.
Last night we made
a point to find more reasons
to laugh, so you could feel
joy on the inside.
At the ledge of our own parenthood, I only begin
to realize how
little I understand.