Dear reader,
While I was starting to dream up my next book, one of my closest friends was pregnant. And the further she got into her pregnancy, she told me, the angrier she found herself. The realities of being a woman of the world were so baked into her at that point—as they are for so many of us—that she didn’t spend much time thinking over, worrying, or raging about any of it. Until she started realizing she was having a daughter. A daughter who would have to face all of the unfair, painful, terrifying things about being alive on this planet. And what had felt acceptable for my friend to experience herself felt unbearable as a future for her new baby. She wanted something better, something more for this person she loved so much.
That’s sort of what love is, I think: an inclination, a need on someone else’s behalf that outweighs your own. Sometimes we know how to fulfill those needs, sometimes we don’t, and sometimes it’s simply an impossible task.
I thought a lot about this while I was writing Great Big Beautiful Life. It might be the cornerstone of the whole book—the way that children inherit the world we give them, for better and worse, then grow up and pass it all along to the next generation. Sometimes we call it legacy, and sometimes it’s more of a family curse. Sometimes, maybe usually, it’s both. We do the best we can, in the circumstances we’re given, and we hope that it’s a little better, wiser, kinder than what came before us.
In so many ways, this book is a huge departure for me, but in this essential way, I think it’s a natural continuation of what I’ve always done. It’s a story of imperfect people, trying their hardest, getting it right some of the time and very wrong at others, and then looking for the hope and courage to try again, to make a better world for those they love. Ultimately, I think—I have to believe—that’s what most of us are doing.
I hope that Margaret, Alice, and Hayden’s story leaves you a little stronger and more hopeful than when you started reading it. I hope it makes you pick up the phone to call someone you love. And most of all, I hope you have a wonderful time reading it.
Welcome to this great, big, beautiful life!
Xo,
Emily Henry
