Book excerpt: Cakes for the Queen of Heaven explores the relationship between women's religious history and the personal issues that arise in women living in this patriarchal society. Women struggle with issues of body image, troubled mother-daughter relationships, sexual freedom and access to power. We need to know that there was a time when the female body was sacred; that there once was a long-lasting religion in which the chief divine actors were a mother and her daughter; that in very ancient times women had significant power in their societies; that although patriarchal societies have oppressed women for centuries, there have always been strong and talented women. Our female history has been erased and trivialized for too long. In this book we meet ancient goddesses and their stories from around the world, real women in ancient Sumer, in Greece, in Judaism and in Christianity. In Cakes for the Queen of Heaven the past is before us, the women are there, and they help us change our lives.