In Conversation with: LaYinka Sanni, author of A Beautiful Homecoming
You have to be your biggest advocate for your vision for the book — layout, cover design, quality, even the edits to your voice! You’re not a pushover in the process, so don’t allow yourself to be one
Hello and assalamu alaykum,
I hope you are all well and still finding time to write. This month’s interview features LaYinka Sanni, author of A Beautiful Homecoming. It’s a self-help book for every Muslim woman who has become buried beneath her labels — mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, employee — and who wants to reconnect with who she is and finally embrace all parts of herself. I hope you gain valuable insights from this conversation to aid you on your writing path.
Bio:
LaYinka Sanni is a transformation coach & change facilitator who supports women on the journey of reconnecting with their authentic selves. She is a purposeful storyteller who creates safe spaces for women to explore, heal, and grow, helping them shed limiting beliefs and step into who they truly are.
Name: LaYinka Sanni
Book title: A Beautiful Homecoming
Genre: Self-Help
At what point did you decide it was necessary to write A Beautiful Homecoming?
I’d really love to attribute writing the book to a lightbulb moment, but in reality it blossomed from the seeds my good friend, Na’ima B. Robert, had inadvertently planted as she spoke about her book coaching clients leaving legacies through their work. I thought about my return to Allah and how my ability to coach and support women obviously ends at that point. ‘What if it didn’t have to, though?’ was a question that quietly bubbled in my mind, and it’s from that the idea of the book started to form. Thoughts of my death led me to consider how I could distill some of my work and my programmes so that the opportunity to transform women’s lives in some way doesn’t die when I do.
The book addresses the fact that many women feel lost beneath their roles and labels — why do you think this is such a widespread struggle?
Oooooh, I love this question! The first thought that comes to mind is: the weight of womanhood is heavy. I know that can sound like a Debbie Downer statement, but I actually think it’s reflected in the many ways Allah honours us as women, acknowledges the vulnerabilities He created us with, and ultimately covers us with His mercy. But that’s Allah. Humans don’t carry women with the mercy Allah does, and we feel that weight and sadly become buried beneath it because we give so much of ourselves for the service, support, and nurturing of others. It also doesn’t help that we’re often products of cultures that celebrate the self-erasure of women in their service of others. We grow up with the messaging, we witness the ‘rules’, and we maintain the status quo… until we no longer can.
What questions do you seek to answer through your work?
I feel the primary and main question is: ‘How do I choose to honour myself, my Lord, and the assignment He’s placed me here for?’ — I don’t know why typing that brought tears to my eyes, but there we are!
What was your writing process like?
Oh, man! It initially felt like trying to squeeze blood from a stone, and I made this clear to my mentor!
After I had the idea of writing the book, I took it to Allah in istikharah. From there, I started idea-dumping based on topics I spoke a lot about at the time, themes that kept coming up in coaching sessions, and the journey I wanted to take readers on. I still have pics of the journal I scrawled in! Once I was happy with that, I reached out to a first draft mentor and signed up to get my messy first draft done. It felt so hard! I’d lost touch with writing long-form content and words just wouldn’t flow. One morning, I woke up and called my mum, telling her, “I’m going to Istanbul today! Please handle the kids!” By the evening, I was sipping tea on a hotel balcony, willing words to start forming. Slowly, they did, and my first words of the book were penned along the Bosphorus. Talk about extreme measures to change one’s environment! From there, I wrote slowly and resorted to self-hypnosis to get my unconscious mind onboard that we needed to get words flowing at a more reasonable pace (no joke — I affirmed to my mind that words flowed like a faucet that had been opened, and it worked, alhamdulillah!).
If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice at the start of writing this book, what would it be?
Trust yourself and your voice. Whew! I had a ton of thoughts that I had to write a certain way for this body of work to be ‘credible’ (aka ‘enough’) — serious and clinical. It just wasn’t me, as someone who previously wrote lots of creative non-fiction.
What advice would you give to writers who wish to write about healing but worry about being vulnerable?
Hmmmm. Sharing your story is powerful, but you have agency to tell the parts of your story you wish for the world to read — it doesn’t have to be everything nor in detail. Vulnerability is often equated with ‘baring all’, but I think that’s a shallow way of viewing it. Vulnerability is being honest and candid. It’s being human. It includes joy and pain, and the ways we choose to share that with others can honour our right for privacy, too. It’s possible, and I hope I demonstrate that in the book.
What was your biggest learning during the publishing process?
I have a background in publishing, so I was afforded with inside knowledge that many authors might not have. But one thing I’ve learned is that you have to be your biggest advocate for your vision for the book — layout, cover design, quality… heck, even the edits to your voice! You’re not a pushover in the process, so don’t allow yourself to be one.
What book gave you the confidence to write without pretense?
I’d say Brené Brown’s ‘The Gift of Imperfection’ and Stephanie Foo’s ‘What My Bones Know’. They both spoke to me deeply and led me to affirm the importance of getting over myself. When I put my nafs and ego to the side and (re)connected with the ‘why’ and ‘who’ for the book, it gave me the confidence to keep it 100. No one benefits from us playing small.
What publishing path did you choose for A Beautiful Homecoming and what influenced that decision?
I went the traditional route. I actually wrote the book in 2020, and it’s now being published in 2025. Part of that timeline was how long it took for me to hear back from publishers (when they replied!), and also my firm decision to not self-publish. Not because I couldn’t — I’ve self-published before — but because I didn’t want to. I was very honest with myself about my capacity and what I was and wasn’t inclined towards, and I just wasn’t inclined to take ownership of every part of the publishing process. I’d been there and just didn’t have the bandwidth to do it this time around. Another factor in going traditional was my desire that the book reach as many hands and homes as possible, and I knew I’d be limited in that if I went the self-publishing route.
What are you reading at the moment?
A mahoosive smile came to my face reading that question! I’m currently reading 3 (yes, three!) books at the moment: ‘Yellow Face’ by R.F. Kuang, ‘An American Marriage’ by Tayari Jones, and ‘Omar Rising’ by Aisha Saeed. After running a now discontinued non-fiction book club for 3 years, stepping back into fiction feels like being reacquainted with an old friend. I’ve missed her.
As usual, if you found this post beneficial, please share with your family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances!
Best wishes,
Halima from Qalb Writers Collective