Our relationships with our family, friends, and community shape us at our core in profound ways. At their best, these connections can be a source of love, joy, and encouragement, but at times these relationships can also cause pain, harm, and challenges. Below are books that dare to dream of a world where all are welcomed, embraced, and supported by those in their closest relationships.
Nia Chiaramonte, Katie J. Chiaramonte
When Nia Chiaramonte came out as a trans woman to her wife Katie, she knew she would be met with a loving response. But she was less sure what would happen when they began to bring their community alongside them on their journey of identity formation as a Queer family. Embracing Queer Family is a guidebook with tools for learning and reflection for Queer families on how to live into your true selves and strengthen your communities through radical love, acceptance, and mutual healing.
Raising Kids beyond the Binary
The debate around transgender children rages, with some Christians being the loudest voices against supporting these young people. So, now more than ever, people of faith need to be grounded in God's call to love and affirm young people in who God created them to be. Drawing on the author's experience as the mother of a transgender child and her years of advocacy work, Raising Kids beyond the Binary helps Christian parents navigate the emotional, spiritual, and logistical landscape of raising a gender-diverse child. It paints a picture of who transgender, nonbinary, and gender-diverse young people are and what they need to thrive.
Forged families can be authentic and life-giving. In an era when our relationships with our families of origin are more complicated than ever, our forged families can be an essential source of support and encouragement. T.C. Moore's Forged shows us how following the way of Jesus can lead us to this new kind of family and to a faith community that rejects hierarchy in favor of inclusive and loving friendships that last.
We are living in an era of climate collapse, and climate anxiety touches nearly everything we do—including our parenting. This Sweet Earth wrestles with our questions and fears and dares to argue that while the future remains unknown, there is still awe and wonder, love and struggle, gratitude and joy to be found. As we raise our children toward this uncertain future, Lydia Wylie-Kellermann helps us see that those same children shift our posture, slow us down, and invite us to fall in love with the ground on which we stand.
Romal Tune with Jordan Tune
Romal Tune was raised mostly without a father. He began to wonder if other men also longed to have vulnerable conversations with their fathers. So he sat down with seventeen men of diverse ages, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds for "I Wish My Dad" conversations. In the pages of this book, he invites us into the room as the men unpack relationships with their fathers, learn to work through emotional pain, recount moments of tenderness and care, and describe risks they took to heal and connect with their fathers. I Wish My Dad helps fathers and their sons move through the past to find deep connection in the present.
When Christian singer and speaker Staci Frenes learned her teenage daughter was gay, she found her dreams for the future—along with her lifelong faith—collapsing around her. Coming to terms with a new reality offered an invitation to make room for many things: the inevitability of uncertainty, hope in the midst of loss, awkward and tough conversations, an expanding faith, and a greater understanding of how people are more the same than different.
Lydia Wylie-Kellermann (editor)
It is a complex time to be a parent. Our climate is in crisis, economic inequality is deepening, and violence is escalating. How can parents cultivate in their children a love of the earth, a cry for justice, and a commitment to nonviolence? Written by parents who are also writers, teachers, organizers, artists, gardeners, and activists, The Sandbox Revolution offers a diversity of voices and experiences to guide us on a journey of justice-focused parenting.
Pregnancy isn't just a physical transformation; an emotional and spiritual journey is also taking place. You're becoming a mother. In Expecting Wonder, Brittany L. Bergman explores this identity transformation with wit and grace, offering a heart-level guidebook for women in the season of pregnancy.
For decades, our cultural discourse around trans and gender-diverse people has been viewed through a medical lens or a political lens. But those who claim non-binary gender identity deserve their own discourse. In Transit looks forward to a world where being who we are, whatever that looks like, is met with acceptance and love. Being non-binary is about finding home in the in-between places.
As parents, we want to shape our children into emotionally mature and healthy human beings. But we cannot effectively shape our children's emotional well-being until we've addressed our own traumas and emotional needs. In It Starts with You, marriage and family therapist and parent coach Nicole Schwarz introduces parents to the importance of having a calm brain, connected relationships, respectful conversations, and a coaching mindset. Our kids do not need perfect parents, but parents who are willing to learn and grow with them.
Every year more American women become stepmothers, just as Dorothy Bass did. In Stepmother, Bass explores the complicated, and oft-maligned, role. Brimming with practical insights from sociology, history, and clinical studies, Stepmother points readers to the central necessary work—the work done in our own heart—so we can find grace and peace.
Marilyn McEntyre, Shirley Showalter
Loving our children's children well is an art—one we keep learning as they grow. Making memories and fostering relationships with our grandchildren in the midst of a fast-moving culture isn't easy, and a legacy that lasts isn't crafted overnight. Through inspired ideas teamed with simple practices and engaging stories, The Mindful Grandparent serves as your guide and source of refuge for the sacred and sometimes bewildering work of grandparenting.
To view all of our books and resources, visit broadleafbooks.com.
