Coming October 2026

When Abigail Somma's mother died, a hummingbird appeared at the funeral and hovered above the coffin. It was the beginning of a decade of mysterious signs and improbable coincidences she understood as guideposts. They led her through grief, a surprise twin pregnancy, secret debt, and an unexpected new life in Vienna, into all the ways early childhood shapes the next generation.

What the hummingbirds taught her became an argument: how unprocessed pain and fear shape our planet, traveling vertically through generations and horizontally across populations. In one person, we might call it trauma or anxiety. At scale, we call it global instability. Drawing on neuroscience, attachment research, and her experience raising children in two very different socio-economic systems, America's and Austria's, Somma makes the case that the primary place to invest in safety and security is earlier than anyone is looking: in the nursery, one developing brain at a time.

Part memoir, part call-to-action, this is a book about losing a mother, becoming one, and discovering that how the world treats the people who build its people will decide everything.