Throughout all of history, women have always been bearers of wisdom and catalysts for change. This Women's History Month (and beyond!), Broadleaf Books celebrates women who reclaim their sacred strength through storytelling, faith, justice, and healing. These voices challenge injustice, nurture belonging, and invite us into transformation—within ourselves, our spirituality, and our world.
When everything feels gray and hopeless, curiosity emerges as an unexpected path back to color and life. Through personal stories, spiritual reflection, and practical ideas, Sacred Curiosity reveals how curiosity slows us down when life feels overwhelming, builds bridges across our deepest divisions, pushes past shame toward liberation, and rewilds our domesticated spirits. In this book, Britney Winn Lee invites us to follow breadcrumbs of wonder toward a more generous, hopeful way of being.
What if desert elders from more than a millennium ago could walk beside us and nourish our spirits now? Desert spirituality doesn't mean going it alone; it means finding companions to walk with us. The Way of the Desert Elders is a spiritual expedition into the stories and wisdom of ancient, desert-dwelling Christians, who show us how to forge faith at the edges of empire.
We absorb the world around us through stories. It's how we make sense of our surroundings, our communities, and ourselves. But the stories we tell ourselves are not an end-all, be-all. Instead, they're all part of a larger, ongoing, unfinished narrative—one that we must continually refresh. That's where Story Work comes in. Through essays and prompting questions, GG Renee Hill invites readers to breathe new life into the stories we carry. Hill invites us to the transformative practice of creative self-discovery through storytelling—treating our life experiences as creative material that we have the power to shape.
Despite being the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the US, Black women face systemic barriers that threaten to derail their dreams, including lack of funding, racial and gender bias, and a lack of senior advocates in corporate spaces. Blending heartfelt storytelling with field-tested strategies, Never Wear Red Lipstick introduces you to the Paint Your Lips Red principles: ten truths to help Black women embrace their power and lead with boldness. From overcoming betrayal in the workplace to prioritizing wellness, from claiming spiritual inheritance to redefining what it means to be a real boss, this book speaks to every woman who's been told she has to shrink to succeed.
More than twenty-five years ago, Rebecca Bloom left her post as an employee benefits and compensation lawyer at one of the most well-known New York City law firms to pursue her passion for women's health advocacy. In When Women Get Sick Bloom offers much-needed insight to women and their supporters, diving into essential topics such as building support networks, taming the insurance beast, communicating with doctors, and staying mindful. She exposes the way the healthcare industrial complex disadvantages women, and gives women tools to make the best decisions for them in all areas of their healthcare journey.
Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods
Christian patriarchy teaches that women are dangerous, manipulative, and untrustworthy. Whether painting women as the archetypal old witch in the woods or the biblical temptress, toxic religion vilifies their wisdom and uses fear to maintain male power. And these harmful stereotypes aren't just historical; they persist in modern religious, societal, and political rhetoric, where confident women are called "nasty" or "radical." Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods is a road map for readers to challenge limiting beliefs, confront systemic injustices, untangle from patriarchal Christian attitudes toward women, and tap into the deep well of feminine wisdom.
Beginning in around the third century CE, a group of monastics known as the desert mothers and fathers retreated to the deserts of northern Egypt, Syria, and Palestine to pursue lives of silence and prayer. A key phrase, repeated often among the sayings of the desert mothers and fathers, is "Give me a word." Fast-forward many centuries to the present day, and we find the practice of seeking a word being reclaimed by the spiritually minded in new ways. Give Me a Word will gently lead you through the process of receiving your word, testing its resonance, and embracing its meaning.
Nothing in Shannon Harris's secular upbringing prepared her to enter the world of conservative Christianity. Soon her husband's bestselling book I Kissed Dating Goodbye helped inspire a national purity movement, and Shannon's identity became "pastor's wife." The Woman They Wanted recounts the remarkable story of her courtship with Joshua Harris, her grappling with conservative Christianity's patriarchy and narrow definition of womanhood, and her journey to break free and reclaim a more authentic version of herself.
A grandmother's theology carries wisdom strong enough for future generations. In the pages of In My Grandmother's House, now in paperback, public theologian Yolanda Pierce builds an everyday womanist theology rooted in liberating scriptures, stories from the Black church, and truths from Black women's lives. The Divine has been showing up at the kitchen tables of Black women for a long time. It's time to get to know that God.
Why should we make art while injustice and suffering wreak havoc? How can we justify making beautiful things? From award-winning author Mitali Perkins comes an essential companion for writers, artists, and other creatives who long for a more just world. We must keep making art infused with truth, beauty, and goodness, not to ignore a world in distress but for the sake of loving it. With vivid stories, practical ideas, and reflection and discussion questions, Just Making will inspire you to keep making beauty in a broken world.
What does it mean to be a mother in an era of climate catastrophe? In prose that teems with longing, lyricism, and knowledge of ecology, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder writes of the silent flight and aural maps of barn owls, of nursing whales, of real and imagined forests, of tidal marshes, of ancient single-celled organisms, and of newly planted gardens. The creatures inhabiting these stories teach us about centering, belonging, entanglement, edgework, homemaking, and how to imagine the future. Rooted in wonder while never shying away from loss, Mother, Creature, Kin reaches toward a language of inclusive care learned from creatures living at the brink.
Rocks. Cast iron skillets. Portraits. Calendars. Shoes. The regular objects of our lives can be conduits of God's love and grace—if we notice them. In Souvenirs of the Holy, join Laurie M. Brock on a journey of spiritual direction through everyday things, and discover the sacred in the ordinary. Reflect on the items in your life that connect you to a God who dwells within and beyond the material world. With creative ideas for praying with objects, this book is ideal for book clubs, church circles, and small groups seeking deeper, more tangible spiritual experiences.
Shelia Burlock, Sylvia Burlock, Melissa Burlock
Learn how to love and care for your natural hair spiritually and practically. Uplifting and authentic, My Divine Natural Hair helps Black women embrace the God-created beauty of natural hair through inspirational readings and salon chair guidance on how to heal, consistently care for, and grow their coils.
The Christian industrial complex teaches us that whatever is centered, celebrated, and large is a movement of God, and that Jesus is at work in existing structures. So why are we surprised that many churches are obsessed with power, size, and reputation—and that people are leaving them in droves? Lost, Hidden, Small, a stirring book of spiritual formation, asks us to consider: What if the abundant life lies in finding what's been lost, uncovering what is hidden, and learning to hope in what is small?
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