Description
Book SynopsisInspired by the pandemic and her own teenage daughter's upcoming departure from home, editor Vanessa Rush Southern set out to collect an anthology of reflections on the spiritual gifts and challenges of raising young people and the ways that those who nurture and teach children are nurtured and taught themselves. In reflecting with others, she found an array of life experiences, choices, struggles, and insights. She found joy and deep meaning pressed up against all the hard parts, tumbling out between diapers and carpool runs, bursting like fireworks in the midst of casual conversations and rainy days. She found that the young lives that intersect or get invited into relationship with our own shape and change us and those we love in ways both startling and universal. This inclusive and diverse anthology includes all kinds of families, chosen and biological, extended families, single parents, divorced parents, and more-a beautiful spectrum of people reflecting on the place children and young people have played in their lives and in their larger search for meaning. LITTLE DID I KNOW goes well beyond the sentimental to an honest reckoning with the vulnerability and beauty of parenting and caregiving.
Trade Review“Vanessa Rush Southern’s beautiful anthology encompasses many perspectives on parenting, from writers who choose not to parent—and those who can’t—to those who do, sharing the complexities, joys, and sorrows of shepherding young lives. The book reflects the choices we make around children, and the ones that life makes for us, with wisdom and tenderness. —Susan Spencer, former editor in chief, Woman’s Day and author of When Action Follows Heart: 365 Ways to Share Kindness
Table of ContentsIntroduction
A Season of Advent . . . and Authentic Beginnings by Manish Mishra-Marzetti
Fertile Dreams by Vanessa Rush Southern
Two Pink Lines by Kate Landis
A Helicopter Pilot by Cheryl M. Walker
Letter to Lyla by Marlin Lavanhar
A Friendly’s Ice Cream Baby by David O. Rankin
To Life Ordained by Jane Rzepka
Setting a Course for Love by Peggy Clarke
View from the Dining Room Table by Sarah Lenzi
You Have No Idea by Lindasusan V. Ulrich
Naming and Claiming by Heather Concannon
Andre by Richard Davis-Lowell
Eyes Like Mine by Marcia Stanard
When It’s Quiet by Rebekah A. Savage
Witnessing Grace by Peggy Clarke
Diaper Wisdom by Christian Schmidt
Bad Parenting Award by Jane Rzepka
Our Funny Valentine by Parisa Parsa
Harbors by Marta I. Valentín
Jesus Christ Superstar by Aisha Hauser
We Bring Food by Emily Gage
Love’s Pronoun Is Plural by Elea Kemler
Life So Sacred by Sarah Gibb Millspaugh
Feminist, Newly Born by Manish Mishra-Marzetti
Pandemic Journal Entry 201 by Robin Tanner
Imani’s Question by Cheryl M. Walker
The Bed by Marlin Lavanhar
Veil by Kim Wildszewski
Another, Truer Song by Elea Kemler
Bit by Bit by Kim Wildszewski
Carried Up to Bed by Elizabeth Lerner Maclay
Almost Goodbye by Vanessa Rush Southern
We Will Tell Them by Robin Tanner
