Böcker av Sharon Blackie

'Engaging and inspiring, Sharon Blackie's beautiful book will empower people to find wonder in everyday life.' Clover Stroud

A radical rewriting of the future for all women approaching their mid and elder years.'There can be a perverse pleasure, as well as a sense of rightness and beauty, in insisting on flowering just when the world expects you to become quiet and diminish.' Sharon BlackieFor any woman over 50 who has ever asked 'What now? How do I wish to age?' comes a life-changing new book showing how your second half may be your most dynamic yet.Rich with the combination of myth, landscape and eco-feminism that took her earlier work If Women Rose Rooted to cult status, Hagitude reclaims the mid-years as a liberating, alchemical moment - from which to shift into your chosen, authentic and fulfilling future. Drawing inspiration from mythic figures and archetypes ranging from the wise woman and the creatrix to the henwife and the trickster, as well as modern mentors, Sharon Blackie plots a liberating new path into elderhood.Hagitude is a radical rewriting of the future for all women in their mid and elder years, its pages rich with possibility, the promise of adventure and influence, and an emphasis on a woman's value and impact in the second half of life.

From an established writer of empowering literature comes a first fictional collection - of transformational power. Written with visceral intensity the landscapes provide readers with portals to worlds where anything is possible. Drawing on N. European folklore rather than Greek myth or male-interpreted fairy tales, these are the original feminist voices. Sharing revenge and rebirth, capturing love and shaking off the past, changing the elements and shedding skins, they are heroines all. Each shapeshifting woman has an extraordinary story of change and survival to tell, and each story is born out of a regional folk tale. Ranging from Iceland to Ireland, Scotland to Scandanavia, Croatia to Cornwall this is a compelling journey in the company of a masterful storyteller.

An inspiring and beautifully written collection of ancient stories retold to celebrate older women. From early childhood, we learn about the world and its possibilities through myths and fairy tales. The heroines, though, tend to be young, golden-haired princesses, and the evil-doers often older women: either wicked witches or unforgiving matriarchs. But from midlife onwards, women today are searching for positive versions of themselves, and this dazzling array of not-to-be-messed-with older characters provides them. They outwit monsters, test and mentor younger heroines, embody the cycles and seasons of the earth, weave the world into being - and almost always have the last laugh. Many years of research have gone into this new gathering of ungainly giantesses, sequin-strewn fairy godmothers, misunderstood witches, fierce grandmothers, hairy-chinned hags and craggy crones. These wise women manifest their wisdom in different ways, and so offer us inspiration for how we too can walk boldly and live authentically in the second half of life.

Cat Munro's safe, carefully-controlled world as a corporate lawyer is disintegrating, and she is diagnosed with panic disorder just before her fortieth birthday. In a last-ditch attempt to claw back control, she faces up to her greatest fear of all: she decides to learn to fly. As she struggles, high above the Arizona desert, to let go of old memories and the anxieties that have always held her back, Cat faces a choice: should she try to piece her comfortable old life back together again, or should she give in to the increasingly urgent compulsion to throw it all away? Several thousand miles away on the north-west coast of Scotland, Cat's mother Laura faces retirement and a growing sense of failure and futility. Alone for the first time in her life, she is forced to face the memories of her violent and abusive marriage, the alcoholism that followed, and her resulting fragile relationship with Cat. But then she joins the local storytelling circle. And as she becomes attuned to the myth-laden, watery landscape around her, she begins to reconstruct the story of her own life ...