Customer Reviews

The Second Journey: The Road Back to Yourself

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm not a huge fan of many self-help books because all too often they:

1. Say what people already know and just want affirmed
2. Are light on reflection and heavy on pop psychology or psychology "lite", easy to digest and not very challenging
3. Written by people who come across as experts but impart nothing new or special.

This book is different. As I began to read it, I really enjoyed the way the author, Joan Anderson, shared personal anecdotes about her life to gently lead readers to observe and come up with their own conclusions. Yes, the author does share her own reflections and lessons but it isn't done in a heavy-handed way.

Part of the reason I may have enjoyed this book so much is because I related to the author's life. She wrote of having an aging parent, struggles with writing and success and falling short of people's expectations. However, she does this with such vivid descriptions of her life and activities that I felt like I was right there, in the moment with her.

Basically, this is a book about a woman who has written best-selling books and still struggles to achieve balance. All too often, she overextends herself, gets stressed out and tries to take care of too many people. There are plenty of women in the same boat. I am one of them. This book allowed me to slow down, start to think about what really matters and make some important changes. It did so without being preachy or taking me by the hand and showing me THE WAY. Even if you don't change a thing about your life after reading this, you'll have had the pleasure of having experienced a good writer in top form, vividly recalling parts of her life.

Aimed at women in their midlife (40s, 50s or beyond), I think this book could be read by women of various ages. I wish I'd read it in my 20s. It would have served as a cautionary tale then. Now it was a wake-up call. The author faces a serious crisis and it takes quite a lot for her to face the reality of what is happening to her emotionally.

And that is all I'm going to reveal about this one. Hopefully, that is enough to get you to want to know more.

I came to The Second Journey with hope that I would gain insight into my own life. I was disappointed in the book. Normally I would not write a negative review of a book that is obviously treasured by many readers, but I feel The Second Journey has serious flaws that need to be expressed, considered by others, and perhaps addressed by Joan Anderson in future books.

Here are my concerns:

1. Escape, rather than integration: The book considers the difficulty of sustaining insights gained in tranquility--such as during the author's Year by the Sea--but The Second Journey veers away from confronting that reality. Anderson's weeks on Iona become a new opportunity to escape from life's ordinary demands.

2. Summary, rather than insight: I enjoyed reading about Iona, yet I didn't find sufficient insight into why the experience was so profound for the author. I more or less had to take her word for it. I would have liked more searching, more wrestling with the factors that struck her so deeply. Then I would have liked to understand what from the experience she has been able to take back with her into her daily routine. Again, I had to take her word for it that she has changed; I wasn't given enough information to understand the nature of that change.

3. Circumstances, rather than solutions: Two of the problems that Anderson does confront--reducing the number of speaking engagements and meeting her mother's needs while also meeting her own--more or less solve themselves, albeit with her resolve to accept fewer appearance requests. Many of us are unable to turn down significant parts of our work.

4. Lack of respect for age, rather than appreciation for all stages of life: I reject the idea (suggested in The Second Journey and more directly stated in a Borders Advice for Living video) that her mother has had her chance for life but it's now Anderson's turn. I believe that whatever solutions we find for our own struggles, they can't be based on deciding someone else's life doesn't count as much as ours does.

Joan Anderson courageously opens up her inner life to herself and then to the reading world baring her humanness - her quirks and questions with deep, introspective writing. Thankfully, for me, Joan has a 10-year lead and I have been amply blessed by her searches and journeys to be true and real to herself and to others as life continues beyond the former roles of "good mom/good wife". Here she shares her ten years after becoming the best-selling author of A YEAR BY THE SEA. As life would have it, we continue to be the same person we were before - working the same challenges in perhaps different venues. I appreciate this woman - this human being so very much for her huge honesty and courage to care enough about herself and care enough about truth for her readers who also search juggling old programming and discovering all the ways we learn about connecting to deep true meaning within and in life. Navigating a long-time marriage and the ever-evolving new chapters as we age, our aging parents, adult kids and their families, who we are in this world as a friend, a writer, a teacher, a student in our 50's and 60's. Anderson generously invites me on adventures to islands I likely will never travel but because she so thoroughly shares her experiences, I benefit. I highly recommend this book and her A YEAR BY THE SEA and if Meryl Streep is reading this -- MAKE THE MOVIE!

As always, Joan is open & honest. Her writing is vivid. I had just hoped she would have been farther along her spiritual journey by now. Sadly, she sounds lost.

I had not read the author's previous book, A Year by the Sea. And I wasn't sure if this book would be any different than zillions of other books by female writers who have left the expected path of their lives to explore other routes. (I was probably one of the few people who loathed Eat, Pray, Love!)

However, as I settled into reading this little book, I found myself jotting notes, adding post-its and generally having more than a few small, quiet A-Ha moments.

The author appears to be quite honest in admitting where she herself has gotten stuck and still has work to do, which is encouraging. (and despite the criticisms of others here, I don't think she's putting her interests above others to the point that others' lives are not as important as her. Her mother is seemingly happily living her "new" life. (We don't hear her husband's side of things, but I'll take the author at her word.) The author is not abandoning her. I think the criticism of this author is because some people view women going off to do what they like as somehow selfish. That's part of the problem women have in giving themselves permission to change as their life circumstances change. What's wrong with a woman who has been a mother and whose children are now grown and off, whose marriage is big enough to allow room for personal explorations, and who still takes her personal responsibilities seriously, doing what she needs to do? Nothing.)

If you need something to motivate you to honor yourself and pay attention to your life, this is a good little tome to start with.
If you find you can't give yourself permission to live as you wish, read this.

FYI: I don't understand criticisms of any author that are based on what a reader THINKS someone should have written. It's not OUR book, it's the author's. You either like it or you don't but really, is it valid to criticize based on what you'd like to have had in it? Makes no sense to me.

I've read a number of fiction books lately that had huge publicity and great reviews. Hated several of them because they didn't work for me. Doesn't mean they were bad books. Doesn't mean I should be telling an author HOW to tell her story, fiction or otherwise.

Something resonates for you, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, why blame the author?

I was disappointed with this book. The numerous references to Ms. Anderson's prior book made me feel like she was simply trying to advertise it. The book was disjointed and didn't really speak to me. When she suddenly wound up at her special place in Iona, I didn't feel that her writing made me want to go there.

Having read and enjoyed Joan Anderson's A Year By the Sea, I was very excited to begin this book, and especially so because Iona is a sacred place - the perfect destination for someone seeking a spiritual renewal. Having read over halfway through the book before she arrives on Iona, I was very much disappointed in the last few chapters.

My doubts began when she stated that the Argyll is "the island's only hotel". The St. Columba Hotel, right next to the Abbey, was originally a manse for the Abbey, and has been renting rooms to travelers since the mid-1800's. I have stayed there twice out of the three times I visited Iona. It is a larger hotel than the Argyll, where I have also stayed.

Her mention of St. Columba and his role in the spread of Christianity was very slight, and her description of her stay on Iona expressed none of the holiness in evidence in the Abbey, the high standing crosses, the Nunnery, or the beauty of the island and the sea.

I don't doubt that she found it a peaceful place, but she clearly missed the whole point of a visit to Iona: discovering the "thin place" where the veil separating heaven and earth is very thin.

I kept wanting the book to give me more... to tell me how I got off-track, where the track was, and what lay along that track. Joan Anderson has the same questions that many women ask. Her first book inspired many to examine their lives and goals and relationships.
Reading this book shows that she's on the same journey as the rest of us and doesn't really have any magical answers. Although she had made progress in discovering herself in A Year By the Sea, in the ten years after that book she falls into another trap. I remember the feeling from my own career; the feeling that being needed by others was all-important. We become so addicted to that feeling that we create elaborate scenarios making ourselves essential to holding it all together. In this book, she starts to question her books and workshops that now trapped her in ever-escalating demands.
Taking three weeks on a Scottish island, she tries to find perspective.
Ultimately I found the book imperfect, but perhaps that's the message. We are all involved in a journey and it's important to pause now and then to be sure the track for that journey is the right one for us individually.

It is what someone once called the Earth Mother syndrome, this innate affliction that women have to want to care for everything, solve all problems, and be the beginning and end for their spouse while leaving nothing left for themselves. When it gets to be too much, some women resort to drastic measures to get their lives back in balance. Joan Anderson, acclaimed author of A Year by the Sea, went so far as to escape her circumstances in a way that only most people dream of: She ran away. In her new book, The Second Journey, Anderson continues her voyage.

Anderson's series of books chronicles her year-long escape, her journey back to her family and marriage, and the struggle she has keeping the balance she found. After the success of her first book, for which she appeared on Oprah and did a series book- and talk-related tours around the country, Anderson finds herself caught up again in a whirlwind of responsibility that has become too much. Top that with the continuing reliance her aging mother has on her, the fragile relationship she has with her in-laws, and the ever-evolving role she has as wife, mother, and friend. The Second Journey shows how she has learned to overcome it all.

As an installment novel that builds upon her earlier work, The Second Journey reads at first like an advertisement for A Year by the Sea. The first two chapters speak almost entirely about Anderson's success. So much so that it seems more like an advertisement than an introduction. After reading the first chapter and then realizing that chapter two talks about more of the same, it leaves one feeling like dismissing the book. Yet that would mean missing out on what comes next. That is where the drama begins and where Anderson really shows her talent for writing and telling a compelling narrative about her life.

The Second Journey, in spite of its shortcomings, is a memoir worth reading. It is especially appropriate for summer reading, a good book to take on vacation, because so much of it talks about escape and simply getting away from it all. The book is also classified on its cover as "self-help." Anderson has a rich history and a series of other publications that help women get their lives on track and help them claim victory over their life. On the final pages of The Second Journey, Anderson offers an afterward of sorts that describes different journeys. There are "second journeys," "accidental journeys," "counterfeit journeys," and "spiritual journeys." Each of them describes the type of path one's is life on and gives guidance to think about, perhaps, the path on which one would really like to be.

Anderson also acknowledges the influence of another book, The Second Journey: Spiritual Awareness and the Mid-Life Crisis, that initially led her to take a closer look at her life. She had not yet reached veritable "crisis" that comes with mid-life, but she was intrigued nonetheless at what the future might hold. Anderson's book includes a brief "itinerary" as well of what that second journey might look like and, borrowing from Women Who Run with the Wolves, outlines how a woman might conceptualize the many phases of her well-lived life.

Anderson's book is a powerful feat, and though its focus is on the lives women, her book has been shared with men as well who need a bit of inspiration. In all, The Second Journey is book well worth the read.

While I have truly loved all of Joan Anderson's books, this Second Journey is so welcome because of the tendency we all have to "slip back" into old habits after breakthroughs. Every time I realize a personal truth and attempt to own it consciously, the Universe provides tests (obstacles), to see if I can really integrate this truth into my everyday life. It was so refreshing to know that Joan experienced this also and I am so grateful she wrote about it. This book was truly special!