Dear Everyone,

My book is finally here! I say that, as if I have been waiting on someone other than myself, when in reality, I’ve been waiting on me. Waiting to feel ready, to feel fearless, to feel it’s time to give it wings and let it fly.

This month, I will release my debut work, a narrative nonfiction titled “Dear Everyone,”. Within these pages, you’ll find both the best and the worst parts of me – my questions, my contradictions, and my identity as a woman laid bare. I never imagined my art form would take the shape of such deep excavation; my heart, my past, and my most troubling experiences and radical thoughts about womanhood all sifted through with one intention: to be undeniably authentic.

I’ve always believed that whether one person or one million people read it, it will be most important to me. It was a necessary piece of my story, written at a crossroads in my life when becoming who I thought I should be and who I actually wanted to be were no longer one in the same.

It began with sixty letters – letters that cracked open everything I thought I knew and forced me to wrestle with the questions that lingered just beneath the surface. In Dear Everyone, you’ll find my story intertwined with those letters, and perhaps you’ll find a mirror for your own.

The Questions that Shaped the Pages

In my mid-twenties, questions came faster than answers. What does it mean to be a woman, here in the modern day? How does that differ from sixty years ago? Why, in so many ways, is it so different, yet so very much the same?

What does it mean to live in your truth? To be authentic? Why did I crave the corporate climb – the salary, the titles, the validation of proving myself better than everyone else?

Why do so many of us women still ask for permission to choose ourselves? Why do we strive to “have it all” instead of what we actually want? Why has motherhood been framed as a resignation rather than the profoundly creative calling it can be?

And when our past collides with our present, which cycles do we continue and which do we break? What sacrifices are we willing to make, and which ones aren’t we?

Why does being on the precipice of motherhood present such an identity crisis? Why are we so unprepared for this calling? Why is there, at times, so much shame in having to admit that we changed our minds about the life we see for ourselves?

The Journey Inward

The path to answering these questions was not glamorous. It did not come to me in the ways I imagined it would. In many ways, I thought I could ignore it; I thought I could breeze right past it like I had so many other challenges that came my way. It took an enormous amount of healing, soul searching, and looking in the mirror. Finding forgiveness in my past, forgiving my parents, and sending a ladder down to my inner child to save her from the dark, lonely place where I hid her away.

Your story may look different than mine. But in every conversation I’ve had, whether with readers or friends or strangers, I’ve realized these questions belong to all of us. Too often they go unspoken. Too often we exchange authenticity for expectation. Our intuition is muffled. Our strength is layered beneath fear. And in the process, we forget the beauty of our uniquely female ability to feel – to know what makes us alive, creative, purposeful, and whole.

This book was my attempt to unearth that truth.

An Invitation

To me, this book is only the beginning. My hope is that if and when you read Dear Everyone, you will start a dialogue with me, or your mother, or your grandmother, or your girlfriends, or your book club, or your neighbor, or the girl at the bus stop next to you. I hope you will find more connection, more authenticity, and more beauty in being a woman, in owning your calling, and in freely choosing the life you actually want.

It’s all waiting for you.

Thank You

To my beta readers, proofreaders, editors, friends, and family, thank you. To those who have cheered me on, promised to read, followed me on social media, joined with me in conversations about womanhood, and encouraged me to see this through to the end, you’ve made this completely possible. You’ve made me brave. You’ve made me trust that putting myself on display will land softer than I for so long feared it would.

Stay tuned for release details on when and where you can purchase Dear Everyone, in both paperback and ebook.

With love, sincerity, and honesty,

Henley

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