Narrating Midlife

Lori West Peterson is associate professor of communication at St. Edward’s University.Christine Elizabeth Kiesingeris lead facilitator and curriculum developer for Leadership Wilkes-Barre.

• Chapter 1: Echoes of Your PresenceChapter 2: And Then There Were TwoChapter 3: Solid as Cracked Granite: Living Alone at Mid-LifeChapter 4: The Goal at the End of the American Dream: Talking about Work, Retirement, and MarriageChapter 5: Requium for My Fond Memories of My Son: An Autoethnographic Journey of My Empty Midlife as a Bicultural DiasporaChapter 6: Reframing Motherhood: The Therapeutic Value of NarrativeChapter 7 Beginning Again: Diagnosis as Breach, Survival as a New NormalChapter 8 Ripping Off the Bandaid: Cancer at MidlifeChapter 9 Failure at Forty: A Genealogy of an Unanticipated MidlifeChapter 10 Sexuality as Spirituality: A Phenomenology of SynchronicityChapter 11 Reflections on a Mid-life Crisis: My Chang(ed)(ing) Life After Severe Traumatic Brain InjuryChapter 12 The Midlife Experience: Thirty Years in the Making

Narrating Midlife: Crisis, Transition, and Transformation is a welcome and vital addition to the literature on interpersonal, family, health, and organizational communication. The contributors of the stories in the collection navigate their way through the confusion, challenges, and competing demands they experience as they move through midlife. This is a soulful collection of deeply personal, evocative, and vulnerable autoethnographic stories that will make readers more mindful of the necessity and difficulties of dealing effectively with the expected and the unforeseen.