About:

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 came to interpret as guideposts. They led her through grief, a surprise twin pregnancy, secret debt, and an unexpected new life in Vienna—and into a deeper understanding of how early childhood shapes the next generation.

What the hummingbirds taught her became an argument: how the nervous system stores unprocessed pain and fear, which in turn shapes 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 socioeconomic systems, America and Austria, 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.