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A Second Blooming: Becoming the Women We are Meant to Be

Edited by: Susan CushmanForeword by: Anne Lamott
Product Code: P542
ISBN: 9780881466126
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Availability: In stock
Price: $18.00

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A SECOND BLOOMING is a collection of essays by twenty-one authors who are emerging from the chrysalis they built for their younger selves and transforming into the women they are meant to be. They are not all elders, but all have embraced the second half of their lives with a generative spirit. Anne Lamott writes about finding herself by rejecting her false selves. Mary Karr shares wisdom from her journey to sobriety. Natasha Trethewey writes about the importance of collective memory to the restoration of the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Katrina. Sally Palmer Thomason explores spiral dynamics and sacred geometry in “The Triskele.” Susan Marquez writes about her daughter’s new life as an actor and motivational speaker after falling from her five-story apartment in New York City. Alexis Paige tells the story of her new beginnings following both incarceration and rape. Kim Michele Richardson’s “Abuse: A Survivor’s Message to the Vatican” is a plea written by one who suffered ten years of abuse in a Catholic orphanage. Emma French Connolly retired from her position as a deacon on the staff of an Episcopal church in Memphis in her sixties to open Uptown Needle and CraftWorks in New Orleans. Other contributors include Jennifer Bradner, Julie Cantrell, Beth Ann Fennelly, Nina Gaby, Jessica Handler, Suzanne Henley, Jennifer Horne, River Jordan, Cassandra King, Ellen Morris Prewitt, Wendy Reed, Kathy Rhodes, and NancyKay Sullivan Wessman. These women of all ages have made it over a wall to find their true selves. As Agatha Christie says of the second blooming, “…a whole new life has opened before you…. It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.”
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Reviews

Review by: Lee Gutkind, editor of Creative Nonfiction - February 1, 2017
Reading the essays in A SECOND BLOOMING I was immediately reminded of Winston Churchill’s memorable appeal to the British people in 1941 in the darkest days of the German Blitzkrieg: “Never, never, never give up.” Susan Cushman’s anthology brings that message home to all readers, women and men, in a collection of powerful, lyrical, unforgettable prose.
Review by: Pamela Cable, best-selling author of THE SANCTUM, SOUTHERN FRIED WOMEN, and TELEVENGE - February 1, 2017
You will find yourself somewhere in Susan Cushman’s A SECOND BLOOMING. I discovered pieces of me within these testimonies. The women in this book don’t preach. There are no sermons. Turning their adversities into advantages, each one has lived to testify to the severe depths at which they traveled to get where they are. It’s not an overstatement to say I loved this book. I didn’t find instruction or admonishment but I did find a greater sense of comfort, familiarity, and empowerment. And God. He’s present in every chapter. These inspirational stories breathe frost and fire, offering hope and second chances. Beautifully written and heartrending, A Second Blooming is a must read!
Review by: Nicole Seitz, author of THE CAGE MAKER, TROUBLE THE WATER, and SAVING CICADAS - February 1, 2017
A SECOND BLOOMING reads like an urgent prayer. Inside, courageous women writers relate painfully honest stories sure to inspire not only survival but thrive-al. Filled with heartbreaking transitions from past selves to new, it’s a must read for any woman tattered by life and circumstances, eager to rise from the ashes again.

Goodreads reviews