Overview

When Marilyn Sewell retired after seventeen years as senior minister of one of the nation’s largest Unitarian Universalist churches, she expected to excel at this next chapter as she had in every other. Instead, nothing prepared her for the emptiness, loneliness, lack of purpose, and the loss of the community that she experienced when she hung up her robe, turned over the keys, and walked out the door of her beloved church. Adrift, she found herself awash in profound questions of being: Who am I, without my identity as the minister of First Unitarian? Where will I find community that holds me? What, if anything, could life possibly hold for me now? Searching for signs and solutions, she discovers practical advice for retirement but little to soothe the grief that has invaded her body and spirit. Unmoored, with a deep sense of loss and crippling anxiety, she is pushed to go deeper than she yet has gone, deeper than she wants to go, to get at the roots of her despair. She spends seven years wandering through the thicket, examining the family history that brought her to this place, looking at what has driven her lifelong frantic work ethic. The writing itself begins to reveal the answers she is seeking. Ultimately, Marilyn realizes that she must radically change. She still has gifts to give, revealed only when she stops her fanatical drive to produce, when she learns to get quiet, to breathe, to listen, to be present to the nanosecond that life is, to respond to the moment—to embrace and live out a second calling.

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Reviews

Marilyn Sewell’s remarkable new book, Life Reimagined, illuminates the challenging realities of retirement. What makes the insight in this book come alive is the generous offering of Rev. Dr. Sewell's own arduous journey adjusting to life beyond her fulfilling career as a minister. This is the rare book that faces head-on the real difficulties of this passage. Her profound insight into the challenges of developing intellectually, emotionally and spiritually sheds light on the path to making those years a time of personal growth and satisfaction. -- Philip Kenney * author of The Writer’s Crucible * Marilyn Sewell—minister, spiritual teacher, and veteran of the joys and sorrows of life after career—offers a compelling new book on what she calls the surprisingly difficult journey of retirement. Honest, insightful, and full of heart and wisdom, Life Reimagined is highly recommended for all who are thinking about retirement or have entered that chapter of life—especially those who strongly identify with their work and find their deepest purpose there. -- Tom Krattenmaker * columnist for OnlySky magazine and author of Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower *

Author Information

Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell served as Senior Minister of the First Unitarian Church of Portland, Oregon, where she retired in 2009 and was named Minister Emerita. She is the editor of two collections of women’s poetry, Cries of the Spirit (1991) and Claiming the Spirit Within (1996), as well as Breaking Free (2004), a collection of women’s essays. Her memoir Raw Faith (2014) serves as the back story to the eponymous film—a documentary based on her life and work. Learn more at www.marilynsewell.com.

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