A Life in Light: An Acclaimed Author’s Memoir of Aging with Grace

Episode description:  

A few decades ago, when Mary Pipher was a working mother in the midst of a busy career as a clinical psychologist, she realized she might find some precious time during her days to do what she always wanted to do: To write. She read dozens of books on writing, attended workshops and joined a writers’ group. In 1994 she published “Reviving Ophelia,” her first of 11 books, four of which became New York Times bestsellers. In today’s episode, Mary talks about her latest book, “A Life of Light: Meditations on Impermanence,” an illuminating  memoir that not only offers heartfelt stories, but profound insights and wisdom into loss, change and hope as we age. Drawing on her own life, which began with a hard, dark childhood, she explores what she’s learned about how to balance despair with joy, trauma with recovery,  attachments with separation from the people and things we deeply love. Mary, who has earned the title of “cultural therapist” for her generation, will share the coping skills and resilience she has honed during her lifetime. And she will talk about how each of us can look inside ourselves to write our own story as a life in light.

Guest description:

Mary Pipher graduated in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969 and received her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska in Clinical Psychology in 1977. She has worked most of her life as a therapist and she has taught at the University of Nebraska and Nebraska Wesleyan University. She was a Rockefeller Scholar in Residence at Bellagio and has received two American Psychological Association Presidential Citations, one of which she returned to protest psychologists’ involvement in enhanced interrogations at Guantanamo. She is the author of 11 books, including “Reviving Ophelia,” “Women Rowing North” and her latest, “A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence.” Four of her books have been New York Times best sellers. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times.

Contact:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authormarypipher/

To learn more about Mary Pipher’s books or read her blog, go to: https://marypipher.com/

To read Mary Pipher’s recent Guest Essay in The New York Times, “How to Build a Good Day When I’m Full of Despair in the World, click

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/28/opinion/coping-climate-war-happiness.html