I distinctly remember creating our family profile book during the adoption process and writing that I wanted to raise my children to be proud of who they are and proud of their adoption story. Moreso than raising my children to have a lot of outward accomplishments, this notion of fostering their pride was really important to me—still is. There’s something about pride coming from within—as a sort of manifestation of a person’s feelings of self-worth—that strikes me as being one of the most valuable attributes a person can have. 

It’s like queer pride—the notion that regardless of what messages society sends about the queer community, queer people can and should feel proud of their identities. It’s like this glowing light that lives inside people and protects their belief in themselves so that no outside force can take it away. And sure, sometimes we think of pride as a bad thing—we think of people who think too highly of themselves, or people (like my character, Meera), who let their pride get in the way of asking for help when they need it. But overall, I think pride is something that most people could use more of these days—I know I certainly could. 

I struggle with pride. It’s something that often eludes me. And in some ways, that’s not a bad thing—I don’t walk around boasting about myself or believing that I’m better than other people—but for the most part, it sucks. Because even when I know I’ve accomplished something—even when I know I should feel good about myself, feel proud—I struggle to internalize my accomplishments. 

After I finished writing the first book in the Raek Riders Series, I probably should have felt proud. I mean, I’d written a book!—my first ever book, and it hadn’t even taken me an entire lifetime. But I didn’t … I felt like—so what? It was just one book. It didn’t necessarily say anything about me or mean anything. Maybe it was a fluke … Maybe I would deserve to feel proud of myself if I repeated the experiment and finished book two. So, I wrote book two, and guess what? Still no pride … 

Even after I’d written the entire Raek Riders Series—in less than a year, while mothering full-time and enduring a long-distance move—I still didn’t feel proud of myself. I didn’t tell anyone who would listen about what I’d done. I didn’t value myself enough to recognize how hard I’d worked. Instead, I thought that maybe if I could land a literary agent I’d feel proud of myself—maybe if I became a successful author and people liked my books, I’d feel proud of myself … But that defeats the point of pride! 

Pride should come from within—pride should fill us up and bolster us against the harshness of the world, not be one more thing that depends on whether we make money or get some sort of external recognition. I should have been able to feel proud of myself for what I’d done. Heck—I should have felt proud of myself the second I sat down and wrote my very first sentence. Because it was a really freaking exhausting year, and rather than use my free minutes of time to sleep like I probably should have, I worked on my books—harder than on anything else I’d ever done in my life. 

So, why couldn’t I feel good about my accomplishment? How come I could recognize it in my head and listen to my husband say what a big deal it was, and I still couldn’t feel it? I mean, who really knows, but I’m sure it has something to do with my childhood—I won’t bore you with too many personal details. The bottom line is, pride is important—something we all need to be able to feel and fill ourselves with—so, I’ve been doing some work to make sure that I can feel it. And I do feel it, now—even though I haven’t published yet or made any money or gotten any reviews—I feel proud of how hard I have worked on this series and everything I have accomplished this past year. 

Anyway, this was really a long-winded explanation as to why I’m dedicating book three to myself. It may seem obnoxious to some, and that’s fine. Still, I’m dedicating book three to myself because, well, book three is my favorite and always makes me laugh—but also because I sometimes need the reminder to feel proud of myself. And if my books aren’t successful or get negative reviews, I might need that reminder even more.