The Making of Mia started as a book of stories of children I have taken care of over the past two decades. It evolved quickly into telling my life’s story through their stories and then lessons started emerging and being weaved into the pages.
In reading my book you will be transported into the life of a three year old version of myself missing my mommy as she is away giving birth to my second sister. You will learn about attachment, belonging, the power of memory. You will feel the anguish of being Morgan, a girl who I cared for at my licenced in-home daycare as she deals with living with a dad gripped by the power of alcohol and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in Chapter 10. You will be surprised to be blessed to experience the kindness of a daycare cook in making extra food so that I won’t go to bed hungry as a teenager living thousands of miles away from home in Chapter 12. Your heart will break as you read chapter 38 when a homeless man told me not to give up. Your heart will skip a beat and you won’t be able to keep from smiling when you experience the thrill of being brought flowers by the young Justin Ayers in Chapter 47. And you heart will feel a level of compassion you have never felt when you read about Rachelle in chapter 26 who was gravely injured by her mother.
Even books as beautiful as The Making of Mia have a purpose and it is to show each of you how dearly important it is to allow curiosity and play into your lives. So, so much of social media today says we need to live our lives according to various scripts, speaking in certain ways within certain parameters. The result has been division and a shattered feeling of belonging. My goal in this book is to bring peace and freedom.
While this book is for everyone, I speak most directly to parents and early childcare providers. Throughout the book there are journal prompts and projects to enhance the impact of each chapter.
I have five primary sources of wisdom and inspiration that I keep going back to throughout this book, Zendaya, Julia Roberts, Cindy Crawford, Kahlil Gibran’s “On Children” and the work of social scientist Brené Brown. I thank each of them immensely for the impacts they have made on my life and especially the charm they each bring to The Making of Mia.
Thank you for picking up my book and welcome to my heart!
I want Mia to be you, to be your child, to be the students in the preschool classroom.
The Making of Mia now is a book that really looks into the hearts and lives of little children I worked with to the extent that you feel what it would be like to be them.
I also ended up talking about their parents.
Doing this really made it more understanding of where belonging starts and the role it plays in the making of ourselves and the dear ones we care for.
Writing this book has been far more meaningful and transformational for me than I ever thought it would! When I started The Making of Mia I thought it would be a fairly light read with some fun ideas for setting up activities in preschool classrooms to enable children to learn through play.
Mia is not the first child that I took care of.
Because I have such a clear memory of her and often have wondered what happened to her I thought I needed to write about her.
She is the epidemy of many daycare kids and has many of the needs and concerns, the imagination to learn through play, a sense of belonging and such a story.
The Making of Mia is for people to pay attention to their own hearts as they interact with the world just as I have.
© Sarah Ayers Publications
