I began today walking my dog across a field of fallen leaves rimed with sparkling frost. My camera could not seem to catch the multicolored light, even when I crouched down on the ground, at which point my giant rescue mutt thought this was a marvelous game and tackled me. So I put away my phone, and tried to just breathe in the crisp, clean air of winter's arrival. I am a child of New England, and so I love winter with the passion of someone exiled to live in the south, and with the anticipated grief of all humans living through climate change.
Note that my mood has been, well, moody. The war rages on. The dark closes in. The final days of any year can trigger depression. And so we try to lift our spirits with sparkles-leaves edged with sparkling frost, Hanukkah candles, strings of lights, sugar crystals on cookies, sparks from the Yule log.
But today, at least, I have cause to celebrate! After ten long years of trying to dream it into existence, the audiobook edition of Being Both was published today. You can now borrow it at your library through Libby, or download it through Barnes and Noble, or Google Play, or Audible, or anywhere else you find audiobooks. This is your chance to hear me narrate my own story, and the stories of so many others, including a new Author's Note reflecting on the past decade.
Immediately on release, the audiobook went to #2 on Amazon's Hot New Releases in the Religious Education category. (There is no interfaith or multifaith or interreligious category, which is frustrating). Finding Being Both can still be a mystery. Where is it shelved in bookstores? Parenting? Religion? Memoir? From the outset, this book about people who defy categorization, has defied categories. And yet, it persists.
Please help spread the word, and bring affirmation and support to interfaith families who might listen to, rather than read, books. Let your clergy friends know. Let your therapist friends know. They all need to understand the people-parents, children, clergy-who speak up and speak out in this book.
And thank you, again, to everyone who has supported Being Both for the past decade now. I remain convinced that love that crosses boundaries, love that models peacemaking, is needed now more than ever.
Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, coach, educator and activist. She's the author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2015), and The Interfaith Family Journal (2019).
