Shari MacDonald Strong is a freelance writer who lives in Portland, Oregon. Her essay “On Wanting a Girl” appeared in the Seal Press anthology It’s a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters (edited by Andrea J. Buchanan). She writes the “Zen and the Art of Child Maintenance” column about motherhood and spirituality for Literary Mama (www.literarymama.com), serves as editor of the creative nonfiction department at Literary Mama, writes an ongoing column for Mamazine (www.mamazine.com), and is the organizer for Mother Talk™ events (www.mothertalk.org) in Portland, Oregon. Shari worked as an editor and copywriter in the publishing industry for fifteen years (most recently as a freelance contractor for a division of Random House), and her writing has appeared in a number of publications including Geez magazine (www.geezmagazine.org). She recently has appeared as a guest blogger at Leslie Morgan Steiner’s “On Balance” blog at www.WashingtonPost.com as well as at Austin Mama.   Foreword by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Executive Director of MomsRising.org and co-author of The Motherhood Manifesto