Product Description

Still Going It Alone addresses issues common to women who have been at the task of single parenting for some seasons. These unique women now face the prospect of sending their children off to college, to a distant career site, or to be married and must continue to fulfill their ever-altering parental role. Moms with grown children also realize the need for wise financial planning and career re-assessment. Each single mom understands they may never re-marry, that growing old and retiring alone is a very real possibility. For many, the future looms in uncertainty. This resource book will provide practical hope and continually redirect women to the source of all comfort, God and His word.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1508375 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 126 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Howe (a reviewer for PW) wrote her first book, Going It Alone, for newly divorced moms who faced raising their young children alone. Now she helps mothers take steps farther down the road as children leave the nest and begin families of their own. It is my hope and prayer that this book offers single moms a safe place—a community—where they find rest and renewed hope, strength, and shelter, the author says. She addresses many unique challenges facing single moms as they enter a new phase of life: an empty house, helping young adult children set goals and building new relationships with them, in-laws, new career options, finances, grandparenting and more. Her chapters on caring for elderly parents and aging are especially helpful. Howe laces her book with real-life stories and adds hands-on action steps in each chapter's Ready, Set, Adjust! sections. Chapters also include a prayer and final thought taken from a pertinent book. Howe targets an audience not often aimed at and hits it dead on. (Dec.)
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About the Author
Michele Howe is a manuscript review editor for the Christian Communicator and a copy writer for New Growth Press. She has reviewed books for Publishers Weekly, FaithfulReader.com, Aspiring Retail, TeenReads.com, KidsRead.com and Foreword Magazine, and has published over 1000 articles/reviews. Her work has appeared in Midwest Living, Radiant, Discipleship Journal, Christian Single, Christianity Today, Group, Virtue, Christian Parenting Today, and Parentlife. She writes a women's lifestyle column, Embracing Life's Curves, and also writes an inspirational column, "Prayers to Restore the Soul,." Michele has published eight books for women including: Going It Alone: Meeting the Challenges of Being a Single Mom, Prayers for Homeschool Moms, Prayers for New and Expecting Moms, Prayers of Comfort and Strength, Prayers to Nourish a Woman's Heart, Successful Single Moms, and Pilgrim Prayers for Single Mothers.

Customer Reviews

Wise, Warm & Wonderful
This book is unique in the literature of single parenting: The first book we've read (in 25 years as family counselors, specializing in single parents and divorced adults) that talks about single parenting AFTER the kids are grown and gone.

Author Michele Howe is well known to us from her previous books (you can find them right here on Amazon!) that are excellent resources for any single parent. Now she has created a brand new book that serves a niche market NO ONE has served before.

"Still Going It Alone" is wise, warm and wonderful. Here's the kind of candid and sincere advice you might get from a close personal friend, if you had one, who was experiencing the empty-nest syndrome as a single mom. She'd confide in you, enlighten you and encourage you --- which is just exactly what this book does for the reader.

This is a five-star book and would make a wonderful gift for any single mom you know who has grown (or almost-grown) children to care for.

Dr. David & Lisa Frisbie
The Center for Marriage & Family Studies
Authors of ten books, including:
Raising Great Kids on Your Own: A Guide and Companion for Every Single Parent

Something for midlife moms!
Finally a book for that large segment of midlife moms who are still parenting but their children are older. Most books address parenting young children, but Michele has hit the mark with a large and growing audience. This is much needed and welcome by us who find these years daunting. Michele writes with a sweet spirit and touches the issues moms face with practical and Biblical advice.

A Lot of Food for Thought for Every Mother and is Well Worth Reading
STILL GOING IT ALONE is an ideological book providing direction and guidance to parents as well as narratives of the real-life experiences of many mothers. Inspirational sections at the end of each chapter, titled "Every Mother's Prayer" and "Thought for the Day," offer Christian-based spiritual guidance. Author Michele Howe tackles the many issues related to raising older children and acclimating to the inevitable change of the empty nest, particularly in the case of the single mom. Howe approaches parenthood as a privilege and a multi-faceted responsibility that never ends, and illustrates beautifully the bond between parent and child at any stage of life and the value of family in every mother's legacy.

The best thing about this book is that it offers insightful, ethical, sound advice for dealing with a variety of situations in life, and the personal narratives are real-life experiences that each of us can relate to and smile at. I would expect these stories to hold great humor and irony for many moms who have been through similar experiences with their own kids. And for those who have yet to experience them, we can only laugh, try to gain some wisdom and hope for the best.

One mother's son, for example, drops out of college after losing his hard-earned scholarship because of simple lack of direction. He takes out student loans that he has yet to pay back, but then decides to abandon all education or job plans and dash off to Europe with his buddies to do who knows what while his friends go to school. One can only imagine the angst of his poor mom as he glides through young adulthood seemingly oblivious to reality. This particular mom chooses to kick him out and make him pay his own way rather than foot the bill for the ridiculous trip while he puts his life on hold.

One mom who wishes to teach her adult daughters about the responsibilities and challenges of marriage decides to start a weekly role-playing session with them, where they act out the role of a married couple while splurging on fudge ice cream. Another mom whose daughter was suddenly off to college went to clean out her room and found that she felt empty and saddened by all the seemingly discarded items strewn about haphazardly. However, upon looking more closely at her daughter's various possessions dating from young childhood all the way to adulthood, she gained a larger perspective of a childhood well spent and a job well done, and, with that, peace and fulfillment.

This well-written book is unique in that it is based on an ideology of hopefulness and acceptance in the face of adversity, focusing on substance and reason rather than emotional affectation. It is written for a specialized audience, particularly Christian single mothers, and offers a distinctive spiritual background to parental approaches. Howe does an excellent job of exploring many subjects that people don't commonly think about, like caring for an aging parent or how to deal with your in-laws. STILL GOING IT ALONE offers a lot of food for thought for every mother and is well worth reading.

--- Reviewed by Melanie Smith