Susan Pohlman A Time To Seek: Meaning, Purpose, and Spirituality at Midlife

Susan Pohlman encourages, coaches, edits for, and supports other writers in many extraordinary ways—that is when she’s not editing or writing her own projects. Her first book, published in 2010, titled, Halfway to Each Other: How a Year in Italy Brought Our Family Home, tells the story of how she and her husband re-created their marriage through the adventure of living abroad.

Italy is Susan Pohlman’s place of magic. It’s also where she learned the truth of the saying ‘home is where the heart is,’ because home is where you are able to be honest with yourself.

Her second book, published at the end of 2020, was written above the firm foundation of a solid marriage and with the unusual kind of gratitude that happens when the time comes for children to go far away from the nest—and prove that they’re capable of living on their own. While it is great to have a loving, sustainable partnership with someone who shares a significant part of your life history, the ‘empty nest’ ensures a time of challenge. Those who can take some time to figure it out are fortunate.

Susan Polman shares her fortune with and for others in A Time To Seek: Meaning, Purpose, and Spirituality at Midlife.

A few words from the book’s prologue may inspire you to think about planning to take a ‘writing trip’ as soon as the pandemic is in the rearview mirror. “When I found myself restless and unsettled as I turned 50, I decided to again use travel to work through the transitional themes of grief, surrender, love, faith, letting go, and acceptance. Travel is a magical way to seek, and adventure is a powerful and compelling teacher. The outer journey stimulates the inner journey.

When we slip out of our cultural constraints and experience our great world in new ways, we find ourselves opening to possibility, imagining a life of greater meaning, and seeing our lives from a new perspective.”

Because she’s worked with so many writers in her career, Susan knows that an author’s bio on the back cover of a book is generally 50 words or less. Writing about the self is difficult. Writing a short bio for a book cover can be downright strenuous. If a 50-word biography is difficult to write, try writing a 50-word synopsis for a book like this one: "Woman. Wife. Mother. Friend. Seeker. Writer. Almost 50. Empty nest. Aging, ailing parents. Changes in marriage, friendships, body, career. Then, the gift of an airline ticket for travel to Italy to, at first assist a child settle into a college semester abroad, and second to rediscover, and discover self...and spirit."

There are six keywords in those 50: woman, travel, rediscover, discover, self, spirit. If you are any of those words, and if you are wishing for some time of your own to seek, start by reading Pohlman’s story. What you’ll receive is inspiration to travel and write, new ways to ask (and answer) questions about yourself, and, courage to move forward into new literal and figurative territories. You’ll also get a good story told with the feel of a memoir and behind-the-guidebook’s-pages insight into traveling alone.

Susan Pohlman is a writer’s writer. Let her way with words, and her way with travel, take you on a deep dive into how midlife can be at least as beautiful a place as is ... Italy.

Mary L. Holden is a freelance editor and writer in Phoenix, Arizona.