An inclusive anthology of reflections on the spiritual gifts and challenges of raising young people.
Inspired 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. 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, breaking inlike fireworks in the midst of casual conversations, in an email from a birth mother that turns the world on its end. She found that the young lives that intersect or get invited into relationship with our own, however we make or made our way to each other, have the power to change us, all of us, 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 role 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.
Edited by:
Vanessa Rush Southern (Vanessa Rush Southern)
Imprint: Skinner House Books
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 140mm,
ISBN: 9781558968868
ISBN 10: 1558968865
Pages: 128
Publication Date: 15 December 2022
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction 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
Vanessa Rush Southern is the senior minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco and has served congregations in Boston; Washington, D.C.; and Summit, New Jersey. She is the author of two books, This Piece of Eden and Miles of Dream, and has been published in the Dallas Morning News, Scroll India, and Woman's Day Magazine. She is married to Rohit Menezes and mother to Leila Menezes.
Reviews for Little Did I Know: An Anthology on Loving and Companioning Young Lives
“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
