Fumbling and Soaring by Gina Miller-Meinema Release Date: June 4, 2016 Publisher: self publishing Standalone Number of pages: 182 Kindle Edition Source: Amazon purchase Non-Fiction/Motivational Rating: PG Read 6/5/16 to 7/3/16
What does a wife, mother, and nurse do when she yearns to pursue her dream job while her husband is unemployed and has not worked in a year? She gathers her family closer under her wings, and she jumps.
Fumbling and Soaring is about how Gina Miller-Meinema mostly hit the snooze button on her internal alarms, ignored the signs, and disregarded her life-teachers until she was thirty-six years old.
It is a compilation of stories about how Gina snapped awake and stayed awake long enough to listen, be alert, and do what needed to be done despite her fears, or even her comfort, which urged Gina to stay put. Be practical. Be responsible. Live life the same. Don’t ever change.
Well no more!
Each chapter is an anecdote on its own, but weaves into one narrative about how Gina finally quit nursing to be a writer during a time when she was the only source of income for her family. They tell the tale of lovely and amazing people, coincidences, butterflies, and birds that led Gina to this life-altering decision where she decided to take a chance on herself for her own happiness, and for her family’s happiness too. It is one story, in one person’s life, about fumbling towards flight and learning to soar.
Today is my big sister’s birthday. She lives in Arizona while I’m in Michigan so I don’t get to see her much and I miss her like crazy. I’ve talked about her numerous times on this blog, including this post from when she was published in a literary magazine last year. This book, Fumbling and Soaring, was published before all of that and I realized I have never posted my review of this book on my blog. Mostly because I wasn’t regularly blogging at the time of publication. What better time to tell you all about my sister’s writing than on her birthday? So here’s my review from a couple of years back of my sister’s wonderful book…
This is an extremely hard book for me to review. You see, the author is my big sister. But that’s not why it’s hard for me. I feel I can give an honest opinion. It’s that I read chapters and segments of this book throughout the whole process, just never the whole thing all put together…until now. I am beyond loving the final product of all the author’s work.
Are you wandering through life trying to convince yourself that there is nothing you can do to change the way things are? Are you stuck in a job you hate? Or maybe you don’t hate your job but still dream of another career that you know you’d be happier with. Well, ladies and gents, this book will be your inspiration to do what is right for you.
Through personal stories and anecdotes, Gina leads you through her journey of finding her correct path. She helps the reader learn to open their eyes to the world around and pick up on the clues the universe is trying send out.
On a personal note, the author is one of the kindest and most giving people I have ever known and nobody deserves happiness more than she does. I know with any success she is to achieve through her writing or other means, she will be paying it forward. That’s just who she is and who she has always been.
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