Embracing Your Second Calling by Dale Hanson Bourke

A BOOK REVIEW:

What's this book about anyway???

It says it's about finding Passion in the 2nd part of your life...(aka midlife).  Are your kids grown? Is the nest empty?  OR are you simply at the adult moment when you are ready to redirect and reevaluate some or all of your goals, your purpose, your significance?  

EMBRACING YOUR SECOND CALLING by Dale Hanson Bourke is a self proclaimed "Women's Guide" to the time of life that brings us to a place of reconsidering what our priorities and wants and goals really are and how we want them to play out now, that we aren't feeling invincible any longer.

This book actually started out gloomy to me.  The referral to kids being grown and everything sagging and coming to terms with the fact that maybe that's how God wants us to be now really was off putting to me.  I mean..come on, it sounded sorta depressing.  But   I read on.  

As I continued to read it was unfolding as more of a story about her experience.  One in which she was very presumptuous as to imply that her motives were every other woman's  motive.  This really irritated me for some reason.  She said, " WE worked because...we had been well educated and encouraged not to "waste" our education, and because the lifestyle we wanted to live required the income from two careers."  Now, it's not that this is not true in some cases, but to say as a whole, that is why WE work is frustrating. I know many women who simply enjoy their careers. Their motivation isn't their lifestyle..but they enjoy a nice lifestyle as a result of their success in a career they enjoy.  I'm just saying, I had to comment on that particular thing.  :)

I really wanted to like this book.  I just didn't care for it though.   Quite simply I disagree with what she says on success and significance.    To me..it's not about raising kids, having a career and THEN in your second calling doing something of significance.  Why wait?  I'm not supporting the concept of drive your self insane trying to do everything RIGHT NOW.  I just  really think that they do not have to be at odds with each other and can co exist in your life...  For me...this just wasn't a book that applied to where I'm at in life...and I didn't really get it.  I didn't Get it...could have summed up the whole book....  It seems this book, instead of being billed as a GUIDE BOOK for women would have better been classified as a story about her life, a memoir or something of that nature.  It guides us through her life..generalizing her journey as every woman's journey...just didn't get it.

To comply with new regulations introduced by the Federal Trade Commission, I must post that Thomas Nelson has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book to review.