What the Hummingbirds Taught Me is a story about losing a mother, becoming a mother and arriving at a vital understanding: the future of our planet hangs on how we care for all mothers, who house the nervous system of the next generation.

When Abigail Somma's mother died, a hummingbird appeared at the funeral and flitted above the coffin, all eyes following its delicate movements. This hummingbird opened the door to a decade of mysterious signs, improbable coincidences, and one woman's decision to follow their lead, through grief, a surprise twin pregnancy, secret debt, an unexpected life in Vienna and all the ways early childhood shapes the next generation.

While memoir carries the storytelling, this book is also a call to action.

Drawing on neuroscience, attachment research, comparative policy and lived experience, Somma makes the case that underinvesting – both financially and emotionally – in maternal and childhood wellbeing creates massive biological and societal debt. She argues that the personal and the political are not different stories: they are the same story told at different scales. Through the 'clues' she follows, the metaphysical dimensions of consciousness intersect with the structural realities of early childhood development and social policy. The ultimate discovery: global security begins in the nursery, one developing brain at a time.

What the Hummingbirds Taught Me is for the reader who wants both: the story and the argument, the spiritual and the structural, the mother and the global policy professional. It offers a unifying theory of why the world is the way it is and what it would take to change it.