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What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self
By Ellyn Spragins
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Ellyn Spragins was only 32 when she lost her mother in a plane crash. Now, it's during difficult times that she feels her mother's loss most keenly -- and yearns to know how her mother navigated through such troubles in her own life. This yearning inspired Spragins to ask famous and successful women to reflect on their own lives, and to write, first a magazine article and then, a book collecting these women's thoughts.
Spragins asked 41 women, from gymnast Shannon Miller to former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, the question: "If you could somehow postmark a letter back through time to your younger self, what age would you choose and what would the letter say?" The wisdom they share is often striking in its simplicity: "Always follow your heart," says Vanna White to her 24-year-old, pre-Wheel of Fortune self.
What I Know Now is really two books in one: both a glimpse into the lives of extraordinary women and a compendium of insights on life from those who have achieved some measure of success. And what's obvious in the end is that success is in the eye of the beholder, and what's essential to one woman is unimportant to another: says Nora Roberts to herself at age 31, "Laundry will wait very patiently."
-- Kat Tancock
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