With the publication of The Dark Womb, Karen O’Donnell inaugurates the definitive end of the taboo on discussing reproductive loss theologically. O’Donnell weaves autoethnography, feminist analysis, biblical interpretation, and cultural critical into a theological account that challenges us to rethink a providential God, given the suffering of bleeding, miscarrying bodies. No more religious platitudes. O’Donnell leads us from the darkness of reproductive trauma into the deep of an apophatic remaking of the self and of God.

- Margaret D. Kamitsuka, Oberlin College, USA,

"Karen O’Donnell draws on her own embodied experience to break the silence with which theology has typically treated miscarriage and other forms of reproductive loss. She bears witness to God’s presence and voice in these situations in a most profound and compelling way. In doing so, she mothers a theology capable of lifting others out of the exhaustion and invisible grief that so often follow in the wake of these traumas, and of ‘un-saying’ the confused theologies they so often face. "

- Siobhán Garrigan, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland,