PTW: You’ve talked about spending years resisting this book because you worried that writing it would permanently cement “Black single mother” as your defining label. How did you finally make peace with claiming that identity — and do you think the act of writing it actually changed how you see yourself? JL: For a long time, I was caught between accepting the identity but being deeply afraid of it being my identity forever. In 2021, I finally realized that this book needed to be written and that I was capable of writing it. I felt like the world, Black single mothers most especially, needed a reimagining of that identity and that this group of women that I belong to was deserving of a proclamation of our worth, a defense against the cruel stereotypes and a celebration of our motherhood.