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When I was pregnant with my oldest child, a girl, I had a dream. In my dream, I was in the hospital, postpartum, holding not the one child I knew that I had been pregnant with . . . but two children. Both girls. One of my baby girls was quiet, observant, peaceful. She had big, open eyes that reflected her big, open heart. The other child was physically larger than the other baby and it's complete opposite. Ugly, angry, needy. I sat there holding both babies in their swaddling clothes while the one cried and demanded and writhed . . . and the other lay in my arms quietly observing . . . simply taking it all in. I had what has now become the all-too-familiar feeling of being in over my head - lost even before I had begun. And then, in my dream, my own mother walks into the room with the also all-too-familiar glower she has reserved for me for as far back as I can remember. The look that says "You don't deserve this".

I've never forgotten that dream and until recently, couldn't figure it out. Years later, I do in fact have two daughters and a son . . . born not in that order. My two daughters are almost a decade apart in age the older (bigger) one is definately NOT the noisy, demanding one. No . . . she's definately the open, loving one. (An old soul if ever there was one.)

What does any of this b.s about my dream have to do with Divine Secrets?

Basically, everything.

I have since sorted out this dream . . . my oldest daughter is now 17. A young woman. Just three years younger than I was when I carried her in my womb and dreamt of her and my mother and that demanding other child that needed so damn much all the time.

In the first few pages of Divine Secrets, you are plunged into the life of an interesting, lively young woman and her relationship with her mother. All the bad behavior, jealousy, rage, and hidden wounds.

When I read this book in 2002, I cried because I got that woman's rage towards her mother. I was that woman.

Now I find as my own daughter enters adulthood . . . I identify with the pain of that mother.

By the way, that demanding baby in my dream was me and frankly, that demanding baby in my dream is really a lot of us mothers to some degree or another. Raising our own daughters while trying to finish the job of raising ourselves where our mothers might have failed. Obviously, that analogy doesn't apply to everyone . . . but it's the link between that dream of mine and the thread of understanding that evolves in this book that are the same.