Another I is Beginning
I'll admit — the cover and book title of Traveling With Pomegranates lured me into buying it. Travel? Pomegranates? Where do I sign up? However, after reading the first page, I knew I was in for something transformational…on so many levels.
Sue Monk Kidd, one of the authors, is perhaps best known for The Secret Life of Bees, a New York Times bestseller and a movie. However, in Traveling With Pomegranates, The Secret Life is just barely a nugget of an idea in Kidd's mind. She longs to become a novelist, but like so many writers, Kidd is plagued with uncertainty and doubt. At the same time, she is struggling with becoming an older woman and, as she explains, "the overtures of an ending."
Meanwhile, Ann Kidd Taylor (her daughter who co-authored the book) is spiraling into a depression. During a college trip to Greece, she feels inspired and maps out her whole life, beginning with a graduate school application. She is on top of the world — certain and confident — and, then, BAM! Her plan is foiled when she is not accepted into the program. As she describes, she suddenly feels abandoned by her life, her future self, and the promise of the life she thought she had discovered.
The two of them set out on a trip to Greece together…and what happens over the next 282 pages is simply inspiring. This is a story for mothers, daughters, women…AND for anyone who has felt the extraordinary pressure of figuring out life and feeling "homesick for their place in the world." Their self-discoveries will resonate with anyone who has ever had to redefine her/himself.
I'd love to quote every other line in the book…instead, I insist you read it. And highlight. And contemplate. However, here are a few of the sentences that are still echoing for me:
I don't want to miss out on what the Greeks call zoe. Life. I want to live all of it, the whole glorious hazard. (Ann)
I experience the silence..and here is what rises in me: There is a time when you are simply seized by tenderness for the world, that's all. (Sue)
"Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong." David Whyte (Ann)
The view is a constant distraction. There is wisdom in this sort of loitering…I watch until the light becomes a piece of fringe on the horizon. (Sue)
Whatever it is I'm born to do, my fear of failing at it has almost become greater than my desire to figure out what it is. (Ann)
What I would like to be free from: the part of me that dares too little and fears too much. (Sue)
Knowing how capable I was of doubt and how cold my feet would get, I wrote a note to myself: Sue, this is a really good idea. Before you dismiss it, remember how you felt when it came to you. (Sue)
Once the words are out there, they start to live and breathe in unpredictable ways. (Ann)
"Another I is beginning." George Sand (Sue and Ann)
