Milk Teeth

What happens when one motherhood begins just as another is lost?

In a world that glorifies motherhood and shuns grief, Milk Teeth explores the visceral collision of becoming a mother while mourning one. Told through a hybrid form as fragmented and nonlinear as grief itself, this bold collection reclaims story from silence and reshapes the narrative of maternal identity.

Navigating postpartum depression, complex grief, and the ache of “secondary losses,” Milk Teeth challenges the myth of the maternal monolith. With lyrical urgency and structural innovation, the author exposes the systemic forces that shame, silence, and isolate women—especially in their most tender and transformative moments.

At once a love letter to mothering and a lamentation of loss, Milk Teeth is a raw, necessary contribution to the conversation on grief, memory, and the power of telling our truths.

“Something deep and important settled in my bones as I read Milk Teeth: Becoming a Mother Through Loss and Rediscovery–a sense of not-aloneness and of being seen in my own perpetual wrestling with life and change and motherhood and bodies and grief. Rayya Liebich navigates these topics and more in the same way the reader navigates the book itself, diving in and out of different forms of expression, from the visual to the poetic. Drawing on memories, cultural references, and her own hopes for herself and her family, Liebich is both vulnerable and powerful in the deep honesty twining through these pages.”

Christina Myers, Author of Beyond Blue: Stories of Heartbreak, Healing, and Hope in Postpartum Depression

Sparkling with originality, Milk Teeth is what memoir can become in the hands of an exquisite poet. It is a literary mosaic, a ululating lullaby, a sculpture of roaring love. Rayya Liebich is an extraordinary writer. This little book pulses against my heart.”

Alison Wearing, Author of Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter and Moments of Glad Grace. She is the creator and director of Memoir Writing Ink and the founder of the International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir.

“Milk Teeth is a doorway into motherhood, both mothering and being mothered. In this unique, non-linear memoir, Rayya celebrates the sweetness of motherhood with rare honesty and poetic wisdom. Her writing is like a magnifying glass, revealing the details most of us miss.  Each word is set with intention like a mosaic masterpiece. She cracks open the door to her soul and welcomes us in, letting us see her pain, grief, triumph and love in their full, wholesome truth.”

Zaynab Mohammed, award-winning performance poet, author of Are You Listening? and storyteller of Lebanese, Iraqi and Palestinian heritage, born on the coast of BC, Canada. Her work expands into filmmaking, visual and installation art.

Milk Teeth

ISBN: 9781998129751

$24.95 CAD | Paperback / softback

Height: 7.75"

Width: 5.5"

Pages: 192

Publication Date: April 28, 2026

Rayya Liebich is a writer and educator of Lebanese and Polish descent. Devoted to the tools of poetry and non-linear forms of nonfiction to transform loss and to tell authentic stories, she is the author of three chapbooks: Tell Me Everything, Khalas/Enough and Litany of Words I Cannot Read and a poetry collection, Min Hayati, published by Inanna Publications. Winner of the International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir, Briarpatch’s Writing in the Margins Contest and The Federation of BC Writers Lit Contest, Rayya’s words can be found in The Rumpus, Geist, Room, Protean Magazine, Hippocampus and elsewhere. She believes in the power of words to change minds and hearts and in the responsibility of artists to be truth-tellers. Find her online at https://www.rayyaliebich.com and on Instagram @rayliebich.