The Yellow Toothbrush
The Yellow Toothbrush
Eight years ago writer, mom, and oma Kathryn Gahl found herself on a train she didn’t want to be on, with a ticket she didn’t buy. The Yellow Toothbrush is her journey of mercy. From her daughter’s father’s mother, pregnant in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, to falling in love with her daughter’s father in Greenwich Village in the 70s, to raising her daughter in a farmhouse with a garden in Wisconsin, to visiting her daughter in prison and what happens after that, Gahl connects the dots of trauma and shows us over and over again the light of love and not giving up.
A note from Two Shrews: We never thought we’d want to publish this story. It sounded too heartbreaking to read, let alone sell; it turned out to be too big, too truthful, and too beautiful to put down. How do you get people to read something they think they don’t want to know? How do you get people to care about the consequences of legal inequality and postpartum mental health? Knowing we must, we are trying to figure out how. We invite you to join us.
Kathryn Gahl’s heart shows us what’s possible when people choose compassion, and her words show us how.