On Womanhood: Connecting and Thriving in Every Season

By Focused Writers

There's no one way to walk through womanhood. 

A collection of essays that gifts readers with 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spring Rock Publishing
• Release date: Feb 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9780578364346

Book preview

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On Womanhood

Connecting and Thriving in Every Season

A Collection of Essays

By

Focused Writers

Foreword by Daphne Maxwell Reid

On Womanhood: Connecting and Thriving in Every Season

Copyright © 2022 Focused Writers Membership Community

Founder and Lead Editor: Stacy Hawkins Adams

Writers: Stacy Hawkins Adams, Nailah-Benā Chambers, Margo Clifford, Jacqueline Hunter, Wanda S. Lloyd, Rita Flores Moore, Jacqueline J. Owensby, DaNika Neblett Robinson, Njeri Mathis Rutledge, Belinda Todd, Cassie Edwards Whitlow

Cover Artist: Dawn Edge Campbell

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without prior permission of the publisher. For information, contact Spring Rock Publishing at P.O. Box 25985, Richmond, Virginia 23260. (www.focused-writers.com)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for:

ISBN 978-0-578-36433-9 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-578-36434-6 (ebook)

On Womanhood

Connecting and Thriving in Every Season

A Collection of Essays

By

Focused Writers

Foreword

Gathering my thoughts on the concept of womanhood aroused a joy in me — a joy that has accumulated since I entered adulthood experiencing life as a grown woman with my mother’s love, wisdom, and lessons to anchor me. I was shaped early on by her teachings to recognize my individual blessings and strengths and to use them in the pursuit of finding the purpose for my journey through life. 

I’ve long heeded her words and have shared them many times over with the women I’ve nurtured, mentored, and befriended. My years of living, loving, modeling, acting, mothering, cooking, sewing, traveling, writing, and more have taught me that only time can reveal the myriad of purposes that one’s journey will manifest. When we’re willing to live into our womanhood, we’ll summon the strength, courage, resilience, and sometimes the sense of adventure required to pursue each leg of the journey with the joy of knowing that we are growing in strength and fortitude.

Contained in this anthology are the experiences of women who have chosen to share how life’s glories and challenges—and lessons and blessings—have shaped their journeys into and through womanhood—journeys that are still unfolding. 

You may recognize some similarities between their experiences and yours, and perhaps differences in choices, but what these writers and I hope you’ll appreciate after reading this book is that great value is inherent in our womanhood. We must continue to trust our individual journeys while encouraging our daughters, sisters, nieces, granddaughters, and female friends to recognize their worth and live life to the fullest, daring to accept the power of their womanhood. 

Daphne Maxwell Reid

Actress, Author, Photographer

Contents

Introduction

Choose Today What You’ll Live with Tomorrow

~ Rita Flores Moore

Journey with My Sister

~ Margo Clifford

Taking Care of All of Me

~ Cassie Edwards Whitlow

When Silence Is Not Golden

~ Belinda Todd

The Power of Forgiveness

~ Jacqueline J. Owensby

See Me, Hear Me

~ Nailah-Benā Chambers

A Lesson in Leadership: Nothing Is Wasted

~ DaNika Neblett Robinson

Finding Peace in Tough Choices

~ Njeri Mathis Rutledge

Nana’s Shoulders

~ Stacy Hawkins Adams

My Aunt Terri—Fashion’s Black Stallion

~ Wanda S. Lloyd

Keep Getting Better

~ Jackie Hunter

Afterword

Acknowledgements

Contributors

Introduction

Womanhood means different things to different people, but one thing is undeniable and has even been affirmed by archaeologists, sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and the like: Women are the foundation of civilization’s steadiness and steadfastness—from the roles they play in bearing and nurturing children to the nurturing and caretaking of their families and friends to the teaching of life lessons and cultural norms for youth and other women in their spheres of influence.

I learned about much of this foundation through my graduate degree studies which earned me a Master of Liberal Arts with an emphasis on women’s leadership. What’s also true and more relevant, however, is that as a woman myself, I’ve seen these realities lived many times over, in my personal life as well as in my work as a writer, crafting journalistic stories about women from all walks of life and fiction about women seeking to better understand themselves and others.

Indeed, it is my work as a novelist that most directly led to this intimate book of inspiring essays you’re preparing to read. During one of the most fulfilling seasons of my life as an author, when I was writing multiple books while also working part- or full-time, raising a young family, and volunteering in my community, I was receiving numerous queries from aspiring authors about how to get started and go the distance with their writing projects. I often taught at writing conferences locally and around the nation, yet these individual requests were pouring in at a rate that I didn’t have the bandwidth to manage.

My initial solution was to launch a six-week teleseminar program for aspiring fiction and nonfiction writers that I could teach from the comfort of my home, and they could participate from anywhere in the world. That effort, Author In You, flourished for several years. Still, I found myself answering more and more one-off questions that didn’t necessarily require a lengthy course or a formal writing or marketing consultation, so I decided to launch an online membership community through which participants could pay a small fee to have ready access to me for questions, while also learning from and growing with like-minded individuals. The Focused Writers Membership Community officially took off in July 2015. Fast forward to today (2022), and