{"id":1105,"date":"2022-02-10T14:10:06","date_gmt":"2022-02-10T12:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/midlifehours.com\/?page_id=1105"},"modified":"2025-10-07T02:03:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T00:03:00","slug":"book-reviews-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/midlifehours.com\/index.php\/book-reviews-2\/","title":{"rendered":"2025 Book Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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New Zealand’s chillly winter is slowly<\/em> making way for Spring. I spent many hours tucked under a cozy blanket or between the pages of my journal, fingers wrapped around the heated coffee mugs and bowls of hearty home-made soup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My winter reading and writing were mostly shaped around midlife transitions and learning more about the landscape of this powerful season. I stumbled on some powerful books that led to several ‘aha moments’ in my ongoing journey towards peaceful, yet empowered living in this chapter. Here’s three books that kept me glued to the pages:<\/p>\n\n\n

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In When the Heart Waits<\/em>, Sue Monk Kidd invites readers to embrace the uncomfortable stillness of life\u2019s waiting seasons as sacred ground for transformation. Through her own story of loss, longing, and spiritual reawakening, she shows how patience, solitude, and deep listening become catalysts for renewal. For those navigating midlife transitions, her wisdom echoes the heart of The Midlife Homecoming<\/a><\/em> series\u2014a reminder that waiting is not stagnation, but the soul\u2019s quiet work of healing, integration, and becoming whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read full review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Falling Upward<\/em> is a soulful guide to the second half of life. Rohr reminds us that the second half of life is a deeper, inward growth journey \u2014 no longer built around the structures that framed the first half. Rather, leaning into the evolving self and integration our past experiences with the midlife self, gathering all the fragments of our story into a more spacious, compassionate whole. What I appreciate most about Richard Rohr\u2019s Falling Upward<\/em> is his open-hearted lens on transformation. He invites us to see life not as a single path toward perfection but as a spiral of unfolding \u2014 where every fall, every failure, even every contradiction, becomes part of our becoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rohr doesn\u2019t ask us to abandon faith or tradition, but to widen them \u2014 to hold mystery, paradox, and multiple truths with equal reverence. This generosity of spirit feels deeply needed in a world that grows more polarized by the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This message deeply resonates with The Midlife Homecoming<\/a><\/em>, my reflective series on navigating the transition to a new life chapter with compassion and clarity. Both journeys ask the same quiet question: how might we live from a deeper center, unafraid to be unmoored \u2014 yet anchored from within? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re keen to learn more about how Rohr’s insights align with the series, read full article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Drawing deeply on Jungian psychology, Hollis explores the midlife passage as a threshold between the life we were taught to live and the life that calls from within. He reframes the so-called \u201cmidlife crisis\u201d as a summons from the soul \u2014 a call to integrate the shadow, reclaim authenticity, and live with greater consciousness and purpose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This insight echoes the heart of my new series, The Midlife Homecoming<\/a><\/em>, which invites us to reweave the often wounded adult self into wholeness and learn to belong without losing ourselves in our closest relationships, and the societies we inherit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See a full book review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Favourite 2024 Reads<\/h2>\n\n\n\n