I am so excited to finally spill the beans about this project I've been keeping under wraps for the past year. My fourth book, The Creative Family Manifesto will be released on October 10th (and is available for pre-order now)!
But to tell you the whole story, I really need to back up about twelve years or so. That's the time when I was a young (oh so young) mama of two little boys and a brand new baby girl. My days were very different than they are now - oh those precious (and exhausting!) years of babies and toddlers and young children! Committed to being at home with my crew, and using the limited resources we had available to us, I searched for ways to entertain, educate and enrich our days together, all with the aim of seeking connection - to each other as a family and to the earth around us. Through this blog (also in it's infancy in those days!), good fortune, a very dear editor who found me, and a whole lot of hard work with babies at my side constantly....I wrote The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections. Looking at it now brings a flood of memories - of all the things we were doing in those early family days (and many that remain). Family Drawing Night, Gratitude Alphabets, Nature Tables, and on and on. That book, published ten years ago now, was the little project that started so much. It holds such a special place in my heart for all the beauty and goodness that it's brought my way. Not only did it lead to a book that was translated into at least four languages, more writing and a work path that I couldn't love more (or have imagined at the start), but it has connected me with so many of you through the years, and I couldn't be more grateful for that. I truly believe there is more that connects us than divides us, and each and every time I travel or bump into one of you in the grocery store, I am reminded of that fact. The world is full of goodness.
On this, the tenth anniversary of the book, I am incredibly humbled and honored that my publisher believed so much in the message of this book that they wanted to revisit it, revamp it, and re-release it to the next generation of young families looking for connection with one another. The entire book has been edited a bit, I've written a new introduction, there are sweet new illustrations by Julianna Swaney, and a foreword by Kirsten Rickert that makes me cry each time I read it (it won't make you cry, I promise....it's just me. I'm a cryer, and she's a dear who captured our family in such a true way).
As I said, it's available now for pre-order, and soon will be available everywhere in stores. I'll be celebrating this launch in the coming months, and hope you'll join me if you can. Starting with a trip to Colorado, details below! (Stay tuned for Maine events!)
I'm excited to launch this new book into the world, to give it new life in the hopes that it will find its way into the hands and homes of more families looking for connection and shared creativity. These days we have with our young children together are so fleeting, so precious, and so important in oh so many ways! As I see my oldest kids beginning to flee the nest, amidst all the worry and wonder about what will happen and what we might have done wrong, I look at the foundation of our family values. At the heart of it, creativity, in its various forms, still remains our core. I am seeing it manifest into the wonderful young people they are in the world, and I couldn't be more proud. Of them, and dare I say, this wee little book that started it all.
