Bringing my newborn son home from the hospital was joyous, terrifying, and exhausting in equal measure. I worried my son wouldn’t sleep and then when he did, that he wouldn’t wake up. I worried that he wasn’t nursing or pooping or burping enough. I worried about tiny hiccups and big milestones and asked questions like, Is it normal that he only sleeps with his head turned to the left? “Oh yes, that’s normal,” the doctor would say. Or, “Sure, my daughter did the same thing,” a friend would confirm.

But what about those times when something isn’t normal? When there’s that nagging sensation that something just isn’t right, and you feel it? As the mother of your child, you know it.

That space of knowing, but not knowing for sure, is where Karen DeBonis takes readers in her memoir, Growth: A Mother, Her Son, and the Brain Tumor They Survived. Readers learn a lot about the trajectory of the book in its title, but this knowledge does nothing to make DeBonis’s story less compelling. This propulsive, chronological account of the erratic symptoms and deterioration leading up to the discovery of her son Matthew’s brain tumor is interlaced with an incisive examination of DeBonis’s identity as a mother, a wife, and an advocate for the well-being of her family.

DeBonis recounts her early days of motherhood with striking honesty—highs and lows that parents will undoubtedly understand and identify with. A difficult, colicky baby who makes DeBonis question whether she is a sufficiently loving mother becomes a bright and curious toddler, a “little Einstein” with an easy, pleasant disposition, and one who gets happy faces and accolades at his daycare.

Matthew’s behavior and disposition begin to inexplicably change as he  moves through elementary school, though, and the first notable symptom is persistent eye-rolling, something that is ultimately dismissed by their pediatrician as a “habit tic”—one of those “normal” things kids can go through. But in time, more tics emerge, things like tapping and wrist-rolling and face-scrunching. Matthew’s grades in school decline dramatically, and he struggles to focus on homework and other tasks that were once simple and routine. He’s uncharacteristically lethargic and forgetful. He’s clumsy and unable to keep up with his peers in sports. Possible diagnoses are discussed, like OCD, ADD, Tourette’s, and even Muscular Dystrophy. The family sees a psychologist. They try Ritalin. Still, Matthew struggles, and his struggles are not just his own, but his mother’s, to bear.

The action in the book occurs primarily in the 1990’s, a notable time because of how the landscape of parenting has evolved since then. For instance, DeBonis notes that a likely diagnosis of postpartum depression during Matthew’s colicky babyhood slipped through the cracks. “I thought I was alone,” she writes. “I didn’t know other new mothers experienced intrusive thoughts like mine, or extreme sadness, anxiety, and exhaustion. I didn’t know I could have been diagnosed and treated.” Without Google or any of the other now-familiar tools of the internet, DeBonis didn’t have the resources and knowledge that many 21st century parents take for granted. The same is true as she navigates Matthew’s growing litany of symptoms and her own increasing stress and depression. When she reads of another child’s terrifying diagnosis of a genetic disorder called Leukodystrophy in an issue of Good Housekeeping, she can’t instantly get more information, even though the symptoms are strikingly similar to her son’s. She can rely only on her intuition, the books she reads, and the doctors and specialists in an often-opaque healthcare system whose wheels turn at a frustratingly sluggish pace.

It is hard not to feel DeBonis’s desperation as her family is continually subjected to what she eventually calls a “diagnostic dartboard.” Complicating this years-long pursuit for answers is her own reluctance to assert herself at the times when Matthew’s medical care falls maddeningly short of what their family needs and deserves. DeBonis reveals throughout her accounts of doctor visits her tendency to be a people-pleaser and her desire, above all, to be liked. She describes a lifetime of low self-esteem and a learned demeanor of “thank-you-so-much-if-it’s-not-too-much-trouble” that came from her own parents’ tendency to avoid conflict and criticism, something she flashes back to throughout the book. For a long time, she accepts the answers she’s given (or in many cases, not given) at Matthew’s numerous appointments. She says early in the book, “I got in the habit of dimming my inner distress beacon.” When her son’s symptoms progress and they see a neurologist, she perceives the many questions she wants to ask at the tail-end of the appointment as “an inconvenience.”

As anyone navigating a medical mystery like this one knows, a diagnosis, no matter how hard-won, does not signal the end of the story. In the final third of the book, DeBonis deftly carries the reader into the days and years that follow Matthew’s diagnosis and brain surgery, a complicated turning point for her as the fog dissipates and she begins to see their journey more clearly. “I whispered when I should have roared,” she says as she looks back. Her writing is resoundingly honest about the ways women, especially mothers, can struggle to find their voices in a healthcare system that repeatedly diminishes their legitimate worries or tries to silence them altogether. Growth is a poignant memoir not just for parents or those experiencing illness, but for anyone who has considered their own humanity and resilience in the face of great hardship. DeBonis’s frank, tender examination of her role in Matthew’s care and the subtle unspooling of her self-awareness reveals the ways that our most challenging circumstances can bring about profound transformation.