The Marriage Sabbatical: The Journey That Brings You Home Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Marriage Sabbatical: The Journey That Brings You Home Book

Any woman who yearns for a break from the demands of home and family to nurture her soul--but thinks she "couldn't possibly"--will discover a healthy new perspective on her not-so-radical desire in this enlightening book. The key is in the book's subtitle, The Journey That Brings You Home. With six simple words, Cheryl Jarvis illuminates her driving message: "A woman who takes time away to rejuvenate, to grow, is in the end bringing that back to the marriage and her family." Drawing from interviews with 55 women who experienced sabbaticals of various lengths and purposes, Jarvis relates the inspiring stories of those who endured criticism (often from surprising sources like closest friends) to pursue their long-nurtured dreams. True to her journalistic background, Jarvis supports each key point with exhaustive research. Chapters with simple titles such as "Motivations," "Fears," and "Husbands" gracefully justify the need for women to undertake private journeys and are ripe with examples from history, mythology, fiction, nonfiction, religion--the works. (Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton all spent months at a time away from their husbands.) But the backbone of Jarvis's book is the personal tale she relates throughout its 300 pages. It's the story of a starry-eyed bride who--like many young women--nearly loses herself (quite willingly) in her mate's professional goals and recreational pastimes, cuts corners in her own successful writing career to raise kids (again, willingly), and then realizes that her family ties are strangling the life out of her. The result: a three-month stint at various writers' colonies, a fresh outlook on life, and a fantastic first book from an insightful--and much more confident--soul. --Liane Thomas Read More

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  • Product Description

    When Cheryl Jarvis was thirty-six, a wife, mother and TV producer, she was asked to work halfway across the country for three months. After pleas from her sons, she declined the offer but made an unsettling discovery: She had really wanted to live and work alone for a while. She had really wanted to go. Twelve years later, she made another discovery: A dream deferred did not mean a dream diminished.

    The Marriage Sabbatical begins as her story, an absorbing account of her three months away from home and the powerful discoveries made as a result. But it is far more than a personal narrative. Based on her interviews with fifty-five women, Jarvis breaks new ground as she asks a bold and to some a radical question: What happens when married women take some time and space away?

    The Marriage Sabbatical is a journalistic exploration of married women leaving home to pursue a dream, conquer a challenge, nurture a talent, or find themselves. They hike the Appalachian Trail, drive cross-country, teach overseas, join a dig. In solitude they paint, write or study. Eloquently describing how desire becomes a departure date, how women reconcile their decision with family obligations, and finally, how they come home again, Jarvis examines what a marriage sabbatical means in the context of a committed relationship, explores its role as a catalyst for personal and marital growth, and provides new understanding of the psychological conflicts it stirs.

    Placing married women "leaving home" in the larger context of female independence, Cheryl Jarvis proposes that a married woman's need for time away from her husband is not a dismissal of him but a redefining experience for her.

    Describing a concrete and creative way that some women have found to keep both their marriages and themselves, she shows how nurturing individual dreams can strengthen self, enliven relationship, and modernize an age-old institution. For the women you'll meet in this moving book, a marriage sabbatical is a planned and finite period of time in which to leave their ordinary world for an extraordinary experience, a journey ultimately meaning not only rejuvenation but empowerment.

  • 0738203394
  • 9780738203393
  • Cheryl Jarvis
  • 1 January 2001
  • Perseaus
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 288
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