A HISTORY OF HOLDING
BY ALLISON MEI-LI
Now open for pre-orders!
Releasing November 11th, 2025
From desperate search histories to dancing in a sun-kissed kitchen, A History of Holding explores what it means to be a human while raising one.
Rooted between the cosmic and the domestic, Allison Mei-Li’s debut turns motherhood into a meditation on time, love, and loss. Through moments of tenderness and rage, identity and grief, wonder and doubt, it captures a reckoning both physical and existential—revealing how a mother’s life expands and contracts all at once.
Threaded throughout is a constellation of small revelations: the first crack in a child’s innocence, hissing like ice on a pond; a mother rediscovering herself in a stranger’s stare; sunlight catching on tiny shoulders. Here we glimpse the quiet awe and worry woven into the everyday—a map of how love remakes everything it touches.
For anyone who knows the world is as breathtaking as it is brutal, this book is a reminder to keep reaching for the heart of it all, to keep finding meaning in all that we’ve held.
ADVANCED PRAISE
“What a vivid, fearless, compassionate portrait of motherhood. Allison Mei-Li cracks her heart wide open and leaves nothing behind. This is a book to savor, cling to, and gift to every mother you know. A stunning debut.”
—ASHLEE GADD, author of Create Anyway: The Joy of Creating in the Margins of Motherhood
“A History of Holding captures the raw and tender realities of becoming a mother, giving language to the experiences so many women carry just under the skin and fear they’re facing alone. This is a book of longing, grief, and joy so raw it rubs against the most tender parts of the heart. More than anything, this book offers what its title promises: the rare gift of feeling held.”
—ELISE POWERS, author of The Size of Your Joy
“Beautifully written, tender and poignant. Reading A History of Holding feels like holding a crystal of womanhood up to the light—every turn reveals a different facet. Incredibly special.”
—MICHELLE AWAD, author of Soul Trash, Space Garbage
“Allison Mei-Li has such a refreshing way of writing about motherhood. Her poems piece together the heartache, unfiltered joy, and unexplainable time-grief that comes with being a mother. You’ll walk away from this stunning collection with a fuller heart.”
—OPHELIA MONET, EIC of Wildscape Lit Journal
"The perfect read for every mother. Allison Mei-Li finds a way to articulates the tangled web of emotions that every mother feels. This collection is a true reflection of parenthood in the modern world."
—JILLIAN STACIA, author of Setting the Bone (forthcoming)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allison Mei-Li is a writer, mother, and speech-language pathologist based in Southern California. She is a poetry reader at The Turning Leaf Journal and hosts poetry-centered events locally and online. Her work has appeared in anthologies, podcasts, and journals such as Rust and Moth, Coffee + Crumbs, MER Literary, Voicemail Poems, Wildscape, and others. You can reach her at allisonmwriting@gmail.com or on Instagram and Substack: writtenbyallison
ISBN: 979-8-9934233-0-2
Imprint: Third Moon Press
Paperback, 84 pages