A new map through the maze of menopause and beyond.
An inspiring read! --Kristine Carlson, New York Times best-selling author
Radiant Wise Woman empowers women forty and better to navigate the challenges of this potent yet often misunderstood passage from perimenopause into menopause and postmenopause. In chapters that blend groundbreaking research and expert guidance with revealing stories and practical exercises, this candid guide shatters outdated myths about aging and gives women the tools they need to resolve issues from hormone imbalance to low libido. It reframes menopause--not as an inevitable decline--but as the greatest opportunity for the full flowering of women's health, creativity, and optimism.
Irwin advocates for a dramatic new pro-age vision, offering reverence for the wisdom females carry in their bodies. In-depth interviews unveil the rarely discussed experiences of women who reach their sexual peak after menopause and the surprising truths they discover about their “second spring.” Moving beyond damaging stories about aging, this book helps women release their fears about getting older so they feel emotionally free, with a renewed sense of purpose and self-worth.
This book provides comprehensive resources and a reassuring look at the confusing symptoms of the menopausal years, empowering women to prepare for midlife changes and make informed decisions on issues related to menopause, perimenopause, postmenopause, sexual health, nutrition, mental health, spiritual growth, and emotional wellbeing.
In Radiant Wise Woman you will find:
· Secrets to feeling vibrant, healthy, and more attractive than ever
· Natural relief for hot flashes, anxiety, and sleepless nights
· Simple strategies for rejuvenating your sex life & embracing pleasure
· Three powerful allies every woman can call on for loving guidance
· Advice for men seeking to support menopausal women
Wherever you are in the menopause journey, unlock new possibilities and enjoy your happiest, healthiest, most fulfilled life at any age.
Irwin’s love and energy for her older peers comes through clearly and infectiously throughout the text. Her conversational tone is inviting, her advice easy to process, and the experiences that she shares, both her own and those of her group members and coaching clients, are relatable. Her conceptualization of the three female energies and how they manifest throughout life is a unique take on a well-worn female empowerment trope that readers should be able to put into action. The most powerful messages prioritize internal work and personal growth, doing internal work of healing old trauma and connecting to the untamed self via nature, and expanding embodied joy, an idea tightly entwined with encouragement to keep pursuing sexuality and sensuality. Advice to find an “angel posse” puts a spiritual spin on the importance of community during aging.
For all its inspirational power and welcome mythbusting, Radiant Wise Woman is less helpful on the physical aspects of the menopause transition, leaning on personal experience with bio-identical hormone replacement while skipping most of the biological background and blaming familiar feelings of exhaustion on spiritual disengagement. Still, the effect overall is an uplifting contrast to the negative cultural messages often pushed on older women.
Takeaway: Readers discouraged by our culture’s sidelining of older women will find empowerment and inspiration in this mythbusting guidebook.
Great for fans of: Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s Women Who Run With the Wolves, Jean Shinoda Bolen’s Goddesses in Everywoman.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
“Lee Sumner Irwin dispels the limiting messages women have been told for generations about what it means to get older. Radiant Wise Woman, an inspiring read, brings us to midlife wonder realizing that we have our best years yet to live.”
