Who

Shannon Watts is the founder of Moms Demand Action, the nation’s largest grassroots group fighting against gun violence. She is an active board member of Emerge America, one of the nation’s leading organizations for recruiting and training women to run for office.

What

Whether you want to stand up for yourself at work, launch the business you always dreamed of, or leave a toxic relationship and reclaim your confidence, Fired Up shows you how to identify, light, and feed the fire inside you. 

Why

Shannon says, “I wrote Fired Up because women have a right—even a responsibility—to figure out what makes us come alive. And by choosing to live on fire, you’re not just allowing yourself to live the life you want and deserve; you’re leaving a legacy and lighting the way for other women to do the same. Women become so used to catering to the wants and needs of others that prioritizing our own wants and needs can feel uncomfortable and foreign, but we have a right— even a responsibility—to figure out what makes us come alive.”

“There are so many amazing conversations going on right now in the world about the what—what women are doing in the world at all ages, but there’s very little conversation about the how. Given the current state of the world, it has never been more urgent for women to unearth abilities, values and desires and unleash them personally, professionally or politically. I want women to realize that, regardless of their age, they have the ability to become what I call a Firestarter: a woman who makes the choice to prioritize their desires over their obligations, all of the things society expects us to do instead of the things we actually want to do.”

“Women don’t fear their fire because they’re weak—it’s because they’re wise. We see all the obstacles in our way and decide it’s easier and safer to stick with the status quo—to keep our heads down and our desires in check. The best way to unlearn that conditioning is to imagine what life would be like if the most important question you asked yourself over and over again was, “What do I want?” When your life isn’t dictated by what society says you should be or do, you can live fully, audaciously, and authentically, and that’s a radical, even political, act. Every woman deserves to get to the end of their life and know that they burned.”

& We

…chose Fired Up because she shares with all of us how we, too, can ignite our power and change the world. Enjoy!

Here’s Your Exclusive Excerpt

My story isn’t an uncommon one. So many women, especially when they reach midlife, wake up one day and realize they’re living lives they didn’t want or don’t recognize. If you’re reading this book, I’m guessing that you, too, feel or have felt the same way. Maybe you’re in a job that doesn’t light you up. Or you’re with a partner you’re not connected to. Or you’re navigating life alone, without a circle of supportive friends. Or maybe, like I was, you’re living at the mercy of other people’s wants and needs, with obligations so ­ all-encompassing that you don’t have time to think ­ about—let alone go ­ after—what you truly want. At first, each of the identities you took on or the obstacles you faced might have seemed temporary, but then, over time, they added up, and now, suddenly, you’re feeling lost, unmotivated, ­ unfulfilled . . . or maybe just meh. Instead of feeling alive, you feel at best like you’re on autopilot and at worst as if you’re squandering your life.

Maybe you’re ashamed to want more.

Maybe you’re so consumed by the demands and needs of others that you’ve neglected your own desires.

Maybe you haven’t accomplished the things that really matter to you yet.

Maybe you’re looking back on your life and realizing you’ve just been going through the motions.

Maybe your life is technically fine, but you don’t yet know what you want. Or maybe you know what you want, but you’re afraid it’s too small or too inconsequential to matter.

Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that you’ve neglected your desires for so long that now it’s too late to want or expect more.

But none of these fears are true; you’re not too much, and it’s not too late. I know this firsthand—it took me over four decades to begin living in a way that was invigorating, fulfilling, and true to me. Like too many other women, I’d spent much of my life allowing my fears to limit my life and my desires. It wasn’t that I wanted or needed more stuff; I wasn’t looking for a bigger house or a luxury car or a designer wardrobe. I just wanted that feeling of aliveness that comes from living authentically and meaningfully.

People who have come alive are clear on who they are and what they want. They ask themselves if they’re actually living or if they’re settling for the status quo. They make choices that prioritize their passions and energize them. They recognize the value they bring to every situation. And they pay attention to the voice that tells them there’s more to life than what they’re tempted to settle for (or have been told to settle for).

The voice that told me I couldn’t live authentically, let alone audaciously, threatened to become the narrative of my life. But after my own journey, which included founding and leading Moms Demand Action, where I helped thousands of women transform feelings of hopelessness or powerlessness into feeling fired up in every aspect of their lives, I came to realize that there’s a formula that every woman can follow to come alive, or to live on fire, a radical and even political commitment to building a life from the inside out, not the outside in. Because when women figure out what makes them come alive, they not only improve their own lives but also are more likely to improve the lives of others.

Why fire? Throughout time, fire has symbolized the wisdom, knowledge, and energy that can transform your life through purification, rebirth, and renewal. The life cycle of fire, from the spark that starts it to the ashes it leaves behind, symbolizes for me the process women can follow to bring about transformation in their lives. Fire gives us sustenance and life, it can burn away what no longer serves us, and it throws off the light and warmth that can summon your people.

For our purposes, living on fire is a metaphor for the journey of personal ­ transformation—not the kind of transformation that makes you more youthful or famous or wealthy, but an internal shift that will help you see two things more clearly: what’s limiting you and what’s calling you. Those things will differ from one woman to another. For some, it might mean being more open to new experiences and relationships. For others, it could mean bringing new energy or more intensity to the things they’re already doing. For others still, it could mean deciding to pause, slow down, and consciously do less than they were doing before. Living on fire might lead you to do extraordinarily ambitious things, but it also may compel you to finally act on ordinary things that are meaningful to you. Both are daring, and both are signs of a life on fire.

What you burn for may be as ­ simple—or as ­significant—as having a hard conversation, asking for a promotion, going on a retreat, going back to school, volunteering in your community, having a child or deciding not to, moving to another city, ending a relationship, starting a new career, or putting an idea out into the world. Whether it requires you to do more or less in your life will depend on your fire and your goals. But, inevitably, you will have to do life differently. You’ll need to build a life on your own ­ terms—a life in which you get to decide what you do, where you go, and who you’ll become. You’ll need to take risks and commit to continuing them throughout your life. You’ll need to challenge lifelong beliefs and shed the expectations of others. You’ll need to ­ experience—even embrace—your fears.

And that all starts with examining the experiences and emotions that dimmed your spark in the first place. What caused you to stop nurturing the unique energy inside ­ you—the individual life force that is always there, waiting to be ignited? Because the truth is, no matter how hard you’ve tried to ignore or bury your spark, its energy will find a way ­out—either through anger, anxiety, depression, apathy, or resentment. Mine burned me from the inside out, resulting in a skin condition so severe it put me in an emergency room. But that ­ experience—the realization that I wanted and deserved more from my ­ life—was a turning point that led me to the formula for living on fire, a formula that helped me find the courage to end my marriage, reimagine my life, and eventually start Moms Demand Action, the world’s largest field experiment for helping other women come alive. And since then, I’ve helped countless women nurture and unleash their own sparks to start fires that transform their lives.

I call these women “firestarters”—women who make the choice to prioritize their desires over societal expectations. They own their own narratives and trust themselves above all else, letting their desires guide them in life. They’re fiercely alive and unapologetically themselves, taking risks and embracing failure, and they’re always open to finding their next fire and following ­ it— no matter where it takes them. And often, the transformations in their lives started not with a blaze, but a simple spark of curiosity or ­inspiration—from a volunteer meeting to a blog post to jotting down an idea to even just picking up this ­ book—that grew into a blazing fire.

Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age by Shannon Watts, published by The Open Field, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. © 2025 by Shannon Watts.

FIRED UP by Shannon Watts, read by Shannon Watts and Maria Shriver. ©2025 Shannon Watts, ℗2025 Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved.