Patti Clark is an accomplished speaker and workshop leader dedicated to helping people through various life transitions on their journey to an extraordinary life. For more than thirty years, and over several continents, Patti has been sharing her knowledge and wisdom with others. Her new book, This Way Up, is her latest endeavor. She is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, has a B.A. in Social Sciences from U.C. Berkeley, and an M.A. in Education. She has taught English at several universities around the U.S., most recently at U.W. Madison. Patti now travels around the globe facilitating workshops, and is about to launch a new series of interactive workshops online. Patti spends part of her time in the United States, and part of her time in New Zealand. She and her husband and their two sons live near the beach on the Coromandel Peninsula.

Women spend so much of life nurturing and giving to others that when they find themselves alone—because of an empty nest, the end of a marriage, or the death of a partner—they often struggle with feeling purposeless. This Way Up: Seven Tools for Unleashing Your Creative Self and Transforming Your Life provides a step-by-step way out of this sense of loss and into a life filled with enthusiasm, creativity, and joy.

This story of healing centers on the essential wisdom of introspection and on the importance of following one’s dreams. Join the protagonist, Katya, a widow whose two sons have recently left home, as she learns seven tools for uncovering her best self: visualization, heart-centered goal setting, positive focus, meditation on love; meditation on forgiveness, gratitude, and taking action on inspiration.

Katya’s experience highlights these insights in an easily digestible, highly relatable format that readers can systematically apply to their own circumstances as they work through This Way Up’s twelve weeks’ worth of day-by-day journaling exercises, thought-provoking questions, and reader support. For any woman who yearns to lead a fuller life but doesn’t know how to begin, this book is an ideal starting point.

Meg thought giving up alcohol would lead her to a life of comfort, wisdom, and happiness. Years later, she still hasn’t gotten there. What is it that she’s missing?

When her father—a raging alcoholic himself—dies, Meg, an only child, has to fly to California from her home in New Zealand to clean up the mess that was his life. Once done, left with her father’s car and a few thousand dollars, she decides to take some time for herself—embark on a solo trip across the US that she dubs her Recovery Road Trip.

She has no idea that this one decision will change her world forever.

As Meg travels from state to state, making new friends and having meaningful encounters with strangers, she discovers the person she buried long ago, as well as the freedom and creativity she once found elusive—and finally begins to feel that sense of serenity and joy she’s been seeking. Part recovery journal, part travel log, and part woman’s search for self, Recovery Road Trip takes readers on an odyssey across America and into a recovering women’s exploration for meaning.