By Dani Addante
I was very excited when I heard about this book. This is a book solely about Heavenly Mother! It’s written by McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spalding, the writers of the Girls Who Choose God series and Our Heavenly Family, Our Earthly Families.
This book has amazing artwork on every page, showing women of all different races and nationalities. Even though this book is written for girls, I learned new things about Heavenly Mother as I read. This book even offers ideas on recognizing Heavenly Mother more in our lives.
There are many wonderful quotes throughout this book, about Heavenly Mother and what women have inherited from Her. One of my favorite quotes in this book is about our Heavenly Parents being equals and also about Heavenly Mother being involved in our everyday lives. That’s something I hadn’t really thought much about, but it definitely makes sense.
The book mentions that Heavenly Mother “co-designed the Plan of Salvation” (15). Another page talks about taking care of the Earth and refers to Heavenly Mother as a “creator” (17). I loved these quotes because, though we talk a lot about the Plan of Salvation at church, it seems that we rarely hear anything about Heavenly Mother’s involvement in the Plan. But it definitely makes sense that she would’ve been involved. She is our mother, after all.
One thing I found intriguing was this: “The Prophet Harold B. Lee once told a story about how Heavenly Mother stopped a man from smoking” (18). I had never heard of this before, so I’m curious to read the reference for it. I imagine that if this happened, then there must be many other examples of Heavenly Mother helping people in their lives.
One of my favorite pages in the book spoke about the matriarchal line. It suggests writing down your matriarchal line. This touched me because I’m so used to seeing in the Scriptures only the patriarchal line listed. It feels like a powerful thing to list the line of matriarchs.
I love that the book talks about women’s eternal destiny as well. The book gives an amazing quote by a BYU professor: “Your destiny is not counselor-hood. Your destiny is Godhood” (30).
Towards the end of the book, it talks about changes that we can make with these truths we know about Heavenly Mother and our divine destiny. Some of the suggestions involve mentioning Heavenly Mother during prayers, referring to her in hymns, recognizing her hand in our lives, and having an FHE lesson about Her. The book also suggests actions to improve equality, such as developing skills to help you have a future equal partnership and also dating boys who value women as equals.
“In every gospel setting that is appropriate—talk about Heavenly Mother. Don’t leave Her out!” (41). While I do feel a little inhibited about talking about Her at church, since I worry that people would not appreciate talk of Her, I feel inspired to do my best to help others feel Her influence.
This is a wonderful book for girls and women, and I believe men and boys should read it too! Heavenly Mother is a Goddess, the Mother of all of us, and whenever we talk of Heavenly Father, we should remember Her as well!
