Feminist Prayers for My Daughter is not my “book baby” — but she does make me proud.

I am not the kind of writer who calls her book her “baby” or likens its publication process to that of giving birth. I understand the metaphor, I really do, though the length of gestation is more akin to an elephant pregnancy than a human one. It’s just that I’ve carried and delivered four actual babies and, reader: it is not the same thing. Not even close. I’m sorry to denegrate a beloved writer cliche, but there it is.

Here’s the kind of writer I am: I am the kind who mentally and emotionally moves from one project to the next after completion like some kind of attachment-disordered college playboy. By the time a book sees the light of day I have, quite frankly, already lost interest in it. Is this because I have ADHD? It’s possible. I prefer to think of it as being blessed with the posession of an abundance of creative energy but tomato, tomahto. I would make a terrible book mother, is the point, so good thing I don’t claim to be one.

I suppose this is my long, sorry excuse for why I’m just now writing a blog post about Feminist Prayers for My Daughter when she’s already been out in the world for two months. (See? Deadbeat mom right here.)

Feminist Prayers for My Daughter (2023) and Rewilding Motherhood (2021)

All snark aside, I really am proud of this book. Not because I think I got every prayer just right; not because I don’t critique past-me’s lazy language choices here and there; not because this book is the apex of my career. No, I am proud of this book because there is genuinely nothing quite like it out there — and there should have been, long ago.

I think the mark of a good piece of writing, whatever the form, is not whether it is technically perfect but whether it takes shape and comes to life in the hands of a reader; whether it transcends speaking to them and somehow speaks for them. That’s how I felt watching Rewilding Motherhood launch into the world, and I have the honor of getting to bear witness to that magic a second time around. Because the stories of how this not-a-book-baby has come to life at the fingertips of her readers? That’s what makes me proud to have authored it. What a lucky life I get to lead. What a lucky girl I am.

Thanks for letting me do what I do.

SKE