Why the Middle Matters

The best-selling author of Never Unfriended reflects on the middle years of life and embraces the meaning found in the ordinary. The middle years of life get a bad rap and tend to be described as flavourless. The thrill of the chase has slowed down and we settle into familiar routines. But if we take a second between school bus schedules and finding new Instant Pot recipes to actually see it for what it is, we’ll find the wildly ordinary glory steeped within the squishy bits. In this collection of bite-sized essays, Lisa-Jo Baker invites women to get a good look at their middles and gives permission to embrace them–beyond what the media, the mirror, the magazines, or our teenagers say. Through gutsy, beautiful storytelling, she admits out loud what most women are thinking about marriage, parenting, failure, and how badly we all want to buy those matching Magnolia Market mugs. Her delicious stories come from not being afraid of who she is. Because Lisa-Jo knows that although the middle is a place where we might have outgrown the shape of our jeans, we have finally grown into the shape of our souls.