mm..meh. This is the kind of book that might have been meaningful to me about 20 years ago but now it's just not resonating with me. ( )

mm..meh. This is the kind of book that might have been meaningful to me about 20 years ago but now it's just not resonating with me. ( )

Three meaningful themes emerge in this account of one woman's midlife passage: the struggle for authenticity, the importance of naming experiences and sharing life stories, and the merging of masculine and feminine energies. It is empowering to read an account that implies, "This is my personal experience, and this is how I believe it reflects the experience of others." In liberating herself, Bolen seeks to liberate others, all the while encouraging women to share their thoughts and feelings, give words to their experiences so that no one need be alone. She shares the story of the disintegration of her marriage, and with surprisingly little detail manages to evoke feelings of recognition and understanding. She shares the story of her friend celebrating her menopause with separation from her husband and yielding her reproductive system to advanced cervical cancer that had invaded her lymph system, not yet knowing if she would be in the 50% who would survive for five years. There is a small cast of characters, yet without discussing menopause or hot flashes, Bolen describes a process that is common to many women at midlife. Not only is her journey one of hard-won insight, it is also a description of a real-life pilgrimage to sacred places. Her pilgrimage experience creates an archetype for menopausal women. Standing barefoot on the High Altar at Glastonbury, she experiences the merging of God and Goddess—the divine flow of masculine and feminine. A year later she looks back and knows that at that moment she was experiencing her last bleed—it was her moment of menopause. Her integration of the Grail story creates a work that should be just as meaningful to men as women, particularly the last half of the book. Powerful, comforting, loving. Each time I finish a book, I think of someone I know that would benefit from reading it. Crossing to Avalon goes on my list for "Everyone Over 40 and Nearly Everyone Else." ( )