The story behind my first book “We Are All Made From Stars”

It still feels surreal to write this: my first children’s book is coming out. It’s called We Are All Made From Stars. It’s deeply personal, and I’m so proud of it. Pre-orders are live now, and if you’d consider buying one (or a few) and telling your friends about it, that would mean the world to me.

And if you can, try and buy your books from independent bookstores. They’re magical places and we need to do our best to support and protect them.

In early 2018, my mom was diagnosed with late-stage stomach cancer. Despite intense treatment and wonderful doctors, she died only five months later. In that time I had to come to terms with a lot – especially my very strange relationship with loss, death, and grief. My daughter Emma wasn’t even three, and she had just lost her grandmother and our family dog within a month of each other.

Having grown up in a small, very catholic town in post-war Germany, death felt terrifying and permanent. It didn’t help that the adults around me didn’t have a good relationship with grief either. Stuck somewhere between a matter-of-fact “deal with it, life goes on” and the recital of religious narratives about an afterlife. I’d never learned how to hold loss. How could I — for myself and for Emma — make sense of something so enormous while still honoring what we actually know about how the universe works? And what space, if any, does spirituality have in that?

I turned to my longtime coach, mentor, and friend David Surrenda, one of the wisest people I know and also a child psychologist. David suggested I read a book: Who Dies? by Stephen Levine.

So there I was, flying back and forth between the East Coast and Germany in the humid early summer of 2018, reading a book about death and dying. Trying to figure out how to deal with it all “like an adult”. As I turned the pages, my sense of how life works slowly expanded. I learned how indigenous and ancient cultures hold both the impermanence and the magic of life — and how grief doesn’t have to become an all-consuming black hole. It can instead be a reminder of the love that both was and still is.

What stuck with me the most was where the science and the ancient teachings touch, if not overlap. The first law of thermodynamics says energy can’t be created or destroyed. We’re all made of atoms that once belonged to something — or someone — else, atoms that came together at just the right time and place to make a person. A mind-blowing fact that also holds a spiritual truth we tend to forget.

As I walked (literally, so many walks) through my own grief, fear, anger, sadness and regret slowly turned into wonder and gratitude. How wonderful is it that we get to be alive? That we’re made of the same stuff as stars? That we get to sing, dance, laugh, cry, hug, and love? And that, as little as we know about the universe, our energy and atoms don’t disappear — they go on and make new things.

So I decided to write a celebration of life in the form of a letter to my daughter. A poem, a reminder and an invitation to live consciously through all the small and big moments we get to experience.

In early 2019, I printed a first version as a dummy — no pictures, just text — that Emma helped me make. She even fixed a word or two. Turns out, our children are so much wiser than we are. We read it together, many times. Talking about what the words meant shaped how she understood the way life “works,” and it made room for the big emotions, the tears and the joy, often at the same time.

However, not knowing what to do with the text, I put it in a drawer, both digital and physical. A few years later, during the pandemic and after another big loss in our family, I went back, rewrote parts of it, and finally decided to figure out how to make it a real book. Because Emma remembered, and I felt that this book needed to exist.

Enter my good friend Markus Albers (accomplished author, wonderful human) who I went to for advice and who introduced me to Gestalten in 2023. A few months later I was on a video call with my now-editor Friederike, and a few months after that, in early 2024, we signed the contract.

Making the book was fascinating and felt so rewarding. Friederike understood from our very first conversations what kind of book this text wanted to be. She helped me make sure every word in both the English and German version was just right.

And Marc Majewski’s illustrations — I’ve admired his work for years; his book Butterfly Child is incredible — carry the essence of every word, often better than the letters can. Each time you read it, there’s more to discover in the details, the colors, the brushstrokes.

I owe an immense amount of gratitude to Little Gestalten. Taking a chance on a first-time author isn’t easy, and on a manuscript with a topic like this one even less so. As a German designer, Gestalten has always held a special place for me — and they were one of the few publishers doing children’s books in both German and English, so as a bilingual family, Emma grew up with nearly their whole Kleine Gestalten catalogue. I’m a huge fan!

One thing I’ve learned: pre-orders matter more than you’d think. They show publishers and distributors that there’s demand, and they help get publishers in other markets (read: languages) excited to translate and publish the book. So the single best thing you can do to support it is pre-order now — and leave a review.

Pre-order on Little Gestalten or Bookshop.org

Eight years, and we wouldn’t be here without many people. At the risk of forgetting someone, my gratitude — roughly in order of appearance — to Markus Albers (for pushing me and making the intro), Cat Noone and Robin Clabby (who read very early versions), Lukas Bischoff (who I met in design school and brainstormed early illustration ideas with me), Jess Brown (best friend and hype man), Claire Cullen (my partner and best cheerleader, especially when doubt creeps in), David Surrenda (whose wisdom has guided me for more than 13 years), Friederike Christoph, and of course Marc Majewski (the best collaborators I could’ve ever wished for).

I can’t wait for this book to land in people’s hands. If you read this far: please leave reviews, send photos, share them on social media. Marc and I are also planning a few launch events in Europe, the U.S., and Canada — so if you love the book and happen to own a bookstore, reach out. And I’m finishing two more children’s book manuscripts, so if you’re an agent or publisher, I’d love to hear from you.

My hope is simple: that this book brings you and especially your children joy. That it makes you look up, down, left, right, and inward to feel the magic of life. And that in moments of loss, it reminds you that we’re all “wiggling through the universe.”

P.S. My mom decided she wanted to be buried in a forest, at the roots of a tree by a small stream.

Kudos to you for making it all the way to the end. Please share your feedback, questions or any topics you’d like me to touch on.

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