The Duty to Presence

"The women are everywhere in this book. Their names are sprinkled across its pages, but more than that, their influence can be felt in all my ideas, and in the rhythm and body of my words. They are the single biggest influence on my own feminism, which is a shared feminism (I hope), and this book is nothing if it is not a kind of feminist manifesto (I hope). Much of the work here is about me trying to reconcile our shared feminism with my evolving into motherhood, a journey that sometimes represented some contradictions for me, but in the end turned out to be an enriching, complex layering of my feminism, like plants growing together in a garden. Feminism, for me, is always becoming, never still, always self-critiquing, sprouting and blooming, dying, becoming seed again." (Lily Robert-Foley).