At the age of five, Jes­si­ca Fein’s daugh­ter Dalia was diag­nosed with a rare degen­er­a­tive dis­ease that would claim her life at 17. Before that moment came, and inspired by Dalia’s own irre­press­ible spir­it, Fein and her fam­i­ly would dis­cov­er how to live in the present when the future can’t be fixed. 

In this heart­felt yet clear-eyed mem­oir, Fein maps both her jour­ney to becom­ing an adop­tive mom and the roller coast­er ride of lov­ing and car­ing for a ter­mi­nal­ly ill child. A cli­max of the book is the family’s deci­sion to help their dis­abled daugh­ter cel­e­brate her bat mitz­vah, the sup­port they received from their syn­a­gogue com­mu­ni­ty, and the mean­ing and joy that came from reshap­ing dreams by focus­ing not on what their daugh­ter had lost — her abil­i­ty to walk, to read, to speak, to even breathe on her own — but on the things she was able to do. Breath Tak­ing shows us that even in the face of tragedy, we can still choose how to live.