Embracing Your Second Calling: Find Passion and Purpose for the Rest of Your Life »

A woman's guide to the second half of life.

Do you ever wonder if the best of life is in the past? Are you longing for more passion and purpose in the second half of your life? Take a deep breath and prepare for a great adventure as Dale Hanson Bourke resoundingly affirms that midlife is a time for reflection but also a time for action. In Embracing Your Second Calling, she challenges women to respond to God's call specifically for this season of life and offers practical ideas for finding new meaning.

Bourke's vulnerability and story-driven approach offers essential principles and specific suggestions as well as interactive elements including:

• Questions for reflection and going deeper


• Ideas on how to become more involved


• Prayers for wisdom and commitment


• Action steps for moving forward

For women searching for God's purpose and passion in middle age and beyond this book offers an inspirational road map to meaning and adventure.

Publishers Weekly

Like more than 40 million other middle-aged American women, Bourke is coming to terms with aging. A successful businesswoman and author (The Skeptic’s Guide to the Global AIDS Crisis), Bourke was depressed by her 50th birthday. She uses the biblical story of Naomi from the Book of Ruth as a model for life’s second act. Life inevitably entails loss: of youth, social status, physical robustness. But what comes next can be rich and authentic, Bourke argues. The author draws much on her own life and circumstances in sketching an arc for fulfillment through service to what is truly important. Some may find her too self-absorbed, a common complaint about the sizable baby boom cohort. But many of her age peers will find something of use in the many practical suggestions she offers, or nod in agreement with one of many insights. Bourke is at her best when she writes about the trips to Africa she has taken, which moved her quite literally outside her comfort zone. This is a book that women of a certain age may wish to give to friends. (May)

Contents

Introduction....................xiii
1. A New Day Dawning....................1
2. Getting Personal....................17
3. What really Counts....................33
4. Making Peace with the Past....................51
5. Leaving the Baggage Behind....................69
6. Giving Up idols....................83
7. A New identity....................101
8. Without a Prayer....................119
9. You've Got to Have friends....................139
10. Living in the Present....................155
11. Passing it on....................173
12. The story Doesn't end....................191
Appendix: The Book of Ruth....................207
Recommended Resources....................217
Notes....................220
About the Author....................223