Sandra Stanley and Allie Stanley Cooney Meet in the Middle on Faith-Based Book for Mothers and Daughters
Eleven years ago, Sandra Stanley turned the corner into her daughter Allie Stanley Cooney’s messy bedroom, prepared to ask her to clean it up, when she discovered her then 18-year-old sitting on the floor writing. It’s a poignant memory for Stanley, one of the last she has of Allie in her childhood bedroom before she headed off to college. It was also a moment that, unbeknownst to them at the time, planted seeds for the book they would eventually co-author, “Meet Me in the Middle: 8 Mother-Daughter Conversations about Life and Faith” (Zondervan, $19.99), published last August.
As Mother’s Day approaches, the mother-daughter duo takes comfort in the close relationship they’ve nurtured, one that continues to grow and deepen as their family expands. The lessons they’ve learned along the way are reflected in “Meet Me in the Middle.”
This isn’t Stanley’s first book. The wife of Andy Stanley, founder and senior pastor of North Point Ministries, a nondenominational megachurch with several campuses across north metro Atlanta, Sandra, 58, has written a couple of 28-day devotionals and cowritten a book on parenting with her husband. But she always knew she wanted to write a book with her daughter.
“I recognized in Allie as a young teen that she had an amazing proclivity for writing and creating content,” said Sandra. “We just had to wait for the right timing.”
As it turned out, the right time was in 2022, soon after Allie and her husband Clay Cooney, a young adults pastor at North Point Community Church, welcomed their first child, daughter Haven.
When Haven was just a few days old, Cooney recalls holding her and saying to her mother with awe, You’ve loved me this much the whole time?
“It was a moment of realizing how much I wanted to get it right with my daughter, and I wanted to help others get it right, too,” said Cooney, a stay-at-home mom who lives in Marietta.
It turns out, the piece Cooney was writing on her bedroom floor that day 11 years ago would become part of “Meet Me in the Middle.”
Titled “Allie’s Rules for High School,” it’s a list of 20 guidelines she composed to help girls have a successful, enjoyable high school experience. It includes advice like, “If you’re wondering if you should break up with him, break up with him.” And “Selfies are for faces.”
Same topics, different perspectives
The list appears in the book, which features a “For Moms” section written by Stanley, and a “For Daughters” section written by Cooney. Both sections include eight chapters that cover the same topics, but from different perspectives. The faith-based book is written for preteens and teenage girls, and their mothers, with the goal of facilitating dialogue on identity, friendships, stress and fear. And it includes activities that mothers and daughters “meet in the middle” to complete.
Like her parents, Cooney is a natural-born leader. An alumna of Auburn University and Dallas Theological Seminary (where Stanley also got a degree after attending Georgia Tech), Cooney worked in student ministry for six years. While she was a student at Milton High School, she led a small group of middle school girls at church, helping them navigate issues preteen and teen girls face. The experience helped inform “Meet Me in the Middle.”
While their respective chapters, Stanley and Cooney discovered they approached their writing in totally different ways. Stanley preferred quiet spaces and took up to two weeks to draft a chapter, while Allie preferred bustling coffee shops where she could knock out a chapter in two hours.
As the two swapped prose and bounced content ideas around, memories bubbled up from Allie’s younger years.
“Raising a girl was different, especially with her being the youngest and having two older brothers,” said Stanley, who has two sons, Garrett and Andrew. “As a mom, you witness the hormone stuff differently with each of them. One went quiet, another would be more emotive and come out with rage, and with Allie, she wanted to talk about what she was feeling and there were occasional tears.”
Allie, smiling, is quick to add, “I’ve just always had a lot of feelings.”
The two were mindful in their writing to create conversations between mothers and daughters, as opposed to moms preaching to their children.
“A parenting fail of mine when Allie was a teen was that I wanted to make everything a teachable moment,” said Sandra. “Then one day, while riding in the car, Allie confessed that sometimes she didn’t want to ask me a question because I’d give her more information than necessary. It was a super helpful wake-up call for me, and I got better. In our book, we encourage moms to be vulnerable with their daughters. The goal is to provide an opportunity for intentionality and connection.”
Andy Stanley, who has authored more than 20 books, is among the mother-daughter writing team’s biggest fans, naturally.
“I’ve had a front-row seat as two very different personalities have successfully navigated their differences to create a mother-daughter relationship that is remarkable,” he said. “They know what they’re talking about.”
Becoming a mother and a grandmother
Stanley and Cooney don’t currently have plans to write another book, but they’d like to in the future. In the meantime, they’re eagerly awaiting Allie’s second child, a boy due in July, the same month Andrew is expecting his first baby.
“Becoming a grandmother is not overrated,” said Sandra, who is also grandmother, or “Deeda,” as she is called, to Garrett’s daughter, Reese. “When you hear people talk about how wonderful it is, they’re right. I enjoy them so much, and I don’t feel the weight of turning them into great humans like I did with my own.”
As for becoming a mother, Allie, who has her mother’s brown eyes and passed them on to her own little girl, said it’s brought so much into focus.
“I realize now how much my mom has carried this whole time, being in charge of so much, and we, as kids, receive it all,” said Allie. “Now being a mom and doing the planning and all the thinking ahead, it creates more appreciation for my mom who was always making things special, homeschooling us and giving us an education and cooking healthy food.”
Sandra remembers feeling the same appreciation for her mom when she became a mother.
“I would call her to apologize and thank her for so many things during those early years,” she said.
Sandra and Allie will spend Mother’s Day weekend together traveling to Visalia, California, to speak about “Meet Me in the Middle” at a mother/daughter event but will return in time to gather with the whole family after church on Sunday.
Before “Meet Me in the Middle” was released last August, Allie made a post on Instagram to answer the question, “How is it writing a book with your mom?” She replied that it was a lot like being raised by her.
“She pushed me and challenged me and ultimately made me a better human and mom throughout this process,” Allie wrote. “My mom is someone who champions others, is remarkably patient and deeply wise. So, writing a book with her and being raised by her was simply a joy.”
