It’s 9:00 at night. Dirty dishes, pale blue and caked with remnants of dinner, are piled in the sink. Leila’s son, her youngest child, 10 years old going on 40, is cranky and needs to be put to bed. Leila goes upstairs with him. She enters his room. The walls are covered with an exhibit of artwork created in kindergarten—his chartreuse period. In the corner are two sports posters--New York Yankees and the Boston Celtics--where he has begun to make room for new things. She reads to him. Then they talk a little about his day. She caresses his hair and tells him how much she loves him as his eyelids begin to flutter and sleep transports him to some other, magical, land. Leila sighs and lifts her frame, heavy with weariness, from the bed. She goes downstairs and helps her thirteen year old daughter with her algebra homework, numbers and letters dancing in a cartoon bubble above their heads. She then sits at the kitchen table with her older daughter, listening to her tales of disloyal friends, difficult teachers, unrequited love, the trials and tribulations of high school, of her daughter’s seemingly perpetual angst. Leila tries her hardest to stay focused, to be fully there, all the while knowing that, like the protagonist in that famous Robert Frost poem, she has miles to go before she sleeps. She, too, is a student and has her own assignment to do for her class the following day. It is not until 11:00 when, exhausted, Leila goes into her own room and begins to do her work. She falls asleep with her textbook open on her chest, the dishes still piled high in the sink.

     Leila’s story is not unique. Each year over 30,000 women are estimated to be going back to school to complete a degree they never finished. Perhaps they were told when they were young, either overtly or covertly, that their education wasn’t important because they were girls. Perhaps they were taught that marriage was what was expected of them. Perhaps they got pregnant. Perhaps they got stuck in a dead-end job. Perhaps poverty prevented them from having, let alone pursuing, a dream. They return to school juggling family and jobs and the myriad caretaking responsibilities women so often assume, because it is so often assumed they will. Despite the expense, the obstacles and challenges, the Herculean effort and courage it takes, the number of women returning to school is increasing each year. And yet, even with this dramatic surge, up until this point, there have been no books written to address the special needs of these brave and committed women. We set out to rectify this.

     In June of 2003, at age 42, Barbara went back to school to finish her BA. A hungry learner, she was interested, not just in the subject matter she was studying, but in understanding the process of absorbing and synthesizing information itself. She was especially interested in how women learn. Do we understand the world and make sense of data differently than men? What is the impact, especially on women who are going back to school later in life, of the negative messages so many of us receive about our intelligence and abilities? What is the impact of the criticism and, too often, threat of violence or reality of violence so many of us experience when we decide to carve out time and space just for ourselves? The conversations that ensued changed both of our lives. They were an education in themselves. We decided to write a book so that others could benefit from what we learned.