2023: The year in review

In like an activist, out like an author and podcaster

Wow — 2023 was a big year and with lots of ups and downs… It all started in January when I publicly announced I’d be stepping back from my leadership role with Moms Demand Action, a position I’d held for 11 years since starting the organization after the shooting at Sandy Hook School in 2012. For over a decade, I was honored to serve as a fulltime volunteer and work shoulder-to-shoulder with so many amazing women, survivors and caring Americans.

I’d actually made the decision to leave in the summer of 2022 while standing in the Rose Garden at the White House watching President Joe Biden sign the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law. “This is it,” I thought. “The bookend to my Moms Demand Action journey.” I told my team a few months later.

The Cut: Shannon Watts Looks Back on 10 Years of Moms Demand Action - On what comes next after stepping back from Moms Demand Action.

The Story Exchange: Moms Demand Action Founder: ‘Women Are the Secret Sauce to Organizing’ - After a decade of standing up to the gun lobby, Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts announced she’ll be stepping down from the helm at the end of this year.

In like an activist, out like an author and podcaster

I was honored to be awarded some big honors on my way out, including making the Time’s 100 Most Influential and the Forbes' 50 over 50 lists.

TIME: Shannon Watts has taken up the mantle of gun-safety advocacy with the hope that in a generation, this uniquely American crisis will be an appalling relic of the past.

MSNBC: Here’s why Shannon Watts thinks women are better leaders than men - The outgoing founder of Moms Demand Action made Know Your Value and Forbes’ “50 Over 50” list, and shares how she’s paying it forward to the next generation.

My decision to step back wasn’t without suffering, though — who would I be without my identify of founder of Moms Demand Action? I thought I’d take a year off to figure it out, but then I got a call from Maria Shriver suggesting I write a book about women and leadership for her imprint, Open Field. And that is how this Substack started.

Decades ago, I went to college to become a journalist, but ended up going into public relations, a career that gave me the skills to start Moms Demand Action. But I’ve always been a writer at heart. My book “Fight Like a Mother,” which came out in 2019, was all about activism. My new book, which will come out in 2025, will be about the amazing things women do when they figure out what lights them up.

In the meantime, here are some of my most popular “Playing with Fire” posts:

What I learned as a white woman in the gun safety movement

Life after leading Moms Demand Action

Are you there God? It's me. I’m in menopause.

Reflections on being burned in effigy

Scenes from my marriages

One incredibly exciting thing that happened this year was getting a message from the one and only

Elizabeth Gilbert

inviting me to write a “Letter from Love” as part of her project encouraging people to “come together to discover their inherent value and exquisite preciousness, and to learn how to write and speak to themselves from a place of love and friendliness.” Liz has written love letters to herself for over a quarter of a century and she’s taught the practice to people all over the world, from middle school children to Fortune 500 executives.

Read my letter here: “You are worthy of love — not because of what you can do or what you can offer or how you are helping — but simply because you exist. You can stop fighting and you will still be loved. You can stop fixing and you will still be loved. You can stop doing and you will still be loved.”

I’ve admired Liz’s writings and teachings for years, and immediately subscribed to “Letters from Love” when she created it. But writing my own letter from love was much more difficult than I’d imagined it would be. Read about the process of writing and recording my letter here.

And as if that interaction with Liz Gilbert wasn’t enough for one lifetime, she also included my Substack post about being “touched out” in her list of favorite posts from the year.

This new Substack community also allowed me to start meeting with all of you “in person” this year, and I was blown away by the incredible stories of YOU starting your own fires in our very first “Playing With Fire” Zoom meetup. I plan to do more of these in 2024 and hope you’ll keep showing up and sharing what’s lighting you up.

If you missed our first meetup, you can watch (or listen!) to the replay here.

And, finally, I announced this year that I’m launching a new podcast called Firestarters! On Friday, Jan 12, I’ll be share my video conversation with journalist-turned-activist Gretchen Carlson for paying subscribers. On Jan 16, the audio from our conversation will be available on Substack and all of your favorite podcast apps.

Stay tuned throughout the rest of the month as I release more conversations with Firestarters, as well as bonus episodes sharing my own thoughts for paying subscribers. Listen to the trailer for Firestarters here.