“Sue Monk Kidd! Ashley C. Ford! Cameron Esposito! Bozoma Saint John! The gang’s all here—in this book of essays, 16 writers reflect movingly on all different ways to be in loving relationships. If you are looking for a little bit of gentleness, a warm word from writers you can trust, well, here it is.”—Glamour

“This gem of a collection includes deeply personal, restorative, and funny essays by some magical people: Amena Brown . . . on her period playlist, Cameron Esposito on the horrors of fitting in and group fitness, Ashley C. Ford on what can come after heartbreak, Austin Channing Brown on the time the word ‘ambitious’ hit differently, Priya Parker on the wisdom of a group and the wisdom of the self, Jillian Mercado on losing and gaining your freedom, Natalie Guerrero on dismantling silence, and more.”—goop

“Each essay is infused with sincerity and introspection, creating a connection with readers as the contributors reveal their vulnerabilities with candor and emotion. . . . A cathartic collection with broad appeal.”—Kirkus Reviews

Autorentext
Jennifer Rudolph Walsh has sat at the nexus of entertainment and media for nearly thirty years. She was WME’s sole female board member and global head of its literary, lectures, and conference divisions, and she represented such luminous clients as Oprah Winfrey, Brené Brown, Alice Munro, and Sue Monk Kidd. In 2016, she co-founded Together Live, a traveling intersectional women’s tour driven by the mission of finding purpose and community through authentic and heartfelt storytelling. Over four years, the tour visited thirty-five cities, lit over fifty thousand souls on fire, and produced three seasons of a widely streamed podcast. She serves as a board advisor to SeeHer, the National Book Foundation, and her alma mater, Kenyon College. After a lifetime in New York City, Jennifer relocated to San Francisco to walk beneath the redwoods with her family and three dogs.

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**Sixteen innovators, creatives, and thought leaders—Austin Channing Brown, Sue Monk Kidd, and Luvvie Ajayi Jones, among others—share intimate stories of uncovering beauty and potential through moments of fear, loss, heartbreak, and uncertainty.

“You’ll find kindred spirits in these tales of resilience, transformation, and joy.”—Time

Over the course of four years, the traveling love rally called Together Live brought together diverse storytellers for epic evenings of laughter, music, and hard-won wisdom to huge audiences across the country. Well-known womxn (and the occasional man) from all walks of life shared their most vulnerable truths in a radical act of love, paving the way for healing in the face of adversity.

Now, off the stage and on the pages of Hungry Hearts, sixteen of these beloved speakers offer moving, inspiring, deeply personal essays as a reminder that we can heal from grief and that divisions can be repaired. Bozoma Saint John opens herself up to love after loss; Cameron Esposito confronts the limits of self-reliance in the wake of divorce; Ashley C. Ford learns to trust herself for the first time. A heartfelt anthology of transformation, self-discovery, and courage that also includes essays by Luvvie Ajayi Jones, Amena Brown, Austin Channing Brown, Natalie Guerrero, Sue Monk Kidd, Connie Lim (MILCK), Nkosingiphile Mabaso, Jillian Mercado, Priya Parker, Geena Rocero, Michael Trotter and Tanya-Blount Trotter of The War and Treaty, and Maysoon Zayid, Hungry Hearts shows how reconnecting with our own burning, undeniable intuition points us toward our unique purpose and the communities where we most belong.

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Introduction 

Jennifer Rudolph Walsh

If I told you that my parents got divorced when I was nine years old, it would communicate a fact—but it wouldn’t help you know me better. What if, instead, I told you this: One morning when I was nine years old, my dad told us we were having a family meeting after school. I was so excited, I could barely breathe. I had never been to a meeting before and it sounded important. Between classes, I asked some friends if they’d ever been to one, and my friend Pamela explained to me that a family meeting is when you decide where you are going on vacation. Wow! I thought. My first vacation! She told me about an amazing ride at Disney World called It’s a Small World and sang me the song about a small world with a shared sun, where a smile meant friendship to everyone. It sounded like heaven.

When I got home from school, I found a yellow legal pad and wrote a detailed list of the reasons Disney World was an educational place. I arrived at our family meeting ready to advocate for my choice with all my might. When, instead of calling the meeting to order and asking where we’d like to go on vacation, my parents calmly sat down and told my siblings and me that they were getting divorced, my mind went blank. All I can remember now is how desperately I hugged the legal pad to my chest, wishing I could make it disappear. I had never been so wrong about something so big. That moment was a tectonic shift not only in my understanding of my family, but in the way I trusted myself and the world. What else did I think was permanent that might change in an instant? How else was my innocence leaving me exposed to pain and confusion? I can still feel the legal pad’s solid edges pressing into my hands—the physical, almost shameful evidence of a world I no longer inhabited and never would again.

I expose my vulnerability by telling you about my Disney World list instead of just saying “When I was nine my parents got divorced” because I want to share more of myself—my history, my soul, my heart. And I believe that sharing my full humanity honors you, in your full humanity. After a lifetime of listening and thirty years working as a literary agent, professionally midwifing thousands of people’s stories, I’ve learned firsthand that bravely sharing our truth and encouraging others to share theirs creates a type of magic that has the power to heal and connect us more deeply to one another. 

Sharing our authentic stories can be transformational. Someone may look very different from us on the outside, but what our true stories reveal is that, on the inside, we have all experienced similar feelings of heartbreak, failure, betrayal, longing, triumph, and joy. We all want the same things—to be loved, to be seen, and to belong. We all have dreams that our lives will make a difference. Our stories illustrate that.

It’s all too easy to compare our insides to other people’s outsides, imagining some version of a perfect life others are living, while we are left with our imperfect ones. In that disconnect between our perception and reality is a void where loneliness, anxiety, and depression often grow. But there is an antidote—one we all have access to. Sharing the real stories of our hearts, our vulnerable and hungry hearts, allows us to connect to others—insides to insides. When someone hears our story, we feel seen, we know we matter, and we instantly realize we’re not alone. That’s why I call it magic. Because it is.

My purpose has always been to amplify people’s voices, to build a giant megaphone for people to be heard far and wide. “This book will change everything” is something I have said and meant too many times to count. Great books are like that—totally transformational. I cannot imagine where I would be had I not been found—like a search and rescue team locating me on a snowy mountain—by books. Growing up, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker…