My Dear Lucy,
I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather,
C.S. Lewis
A simple letter to a child became one of the most famous book dedications of all time.
As readers—and I think we all have this in common—when we see a beautiful or especially witty book dedication, we think “I could do that.”
When it was time to craft the dedication for It’s Over or It’s Eden, I knew this was a moment. A moment to state the beautiful. Make the amazing happen. Put down my own unique dedication in literary history.
I set my hands to the keyboard…and got tripped up. I realized that before I could write something that would move hearts, I had to…choose a person. Someone to dedicate the book to. Not just anyone, a person worthy of the moment.
It didn’t take long until I realized who the heart of the book was dedicated to all along.
My sister, Nicole. My editor and first reader. Without Nicole, there would have been no book. No Arwen, no Eden, and definitely no ending. Nicole was the one who told me I could write a book, then spent months helping me make it better. It’s no accident Nicole now works as a book coach.
And, many of the themes within It’s Over or It’s Eden are due to life experiences we shared. She understood in a way no one else would.
For my second book, Dangerous to Heal, I landed almost immediately upon my husband who has endlessly championed my work—even when it got weird—and was there for all the adventures in life—even when they got hard.
My third book was a bit harder.
Negotiated Fate was a continuation of a story, one about a woman who was facing more than she knew she could bear. One who chose the power of perseverance again and again, if only because there was no other path forward.
I chose to dedicate that book to two individuals, my daughter Lydia, and my paternal grandmother, Jean. I never met Jean. She died when my father was a child. I’ve often wondered about her. What she would have been like, how our relationship would have been—how everything about my father’s family would have been different had she lived.
And Lydia. I had five days with my eldest daughter, Lydia. Unlike Jean, I can’t come to know her through stories passed down by family. In fact, I am one of the few who carries her history forward. This past August, we passed the nine year mark of her absence, and I miss her as much as ever.
I wanted more time with both of them.
Though they’re not with me, that doesn’t mean they’re not a part of my life. I think of them often and those thoughts drifted into a story about a woman separated from the people she loves.
