Books
The Second Story: When the Life You Built No Longer Feels Like Enough
If you’ve ever woken up in the middle of the night and wondered, “Is this all there is?”—you’re not alone.
At sixty-one, Shari Caudron has everything she’s worked for: a meaningful career, a loving marriage, a home in the foothills of Colorado. But beneath the surface, something is missing. The harder she tries to fill the void, the further she drifts from herself. When a personal growth workshop cracks something open, she can no longer outrun the truth: the life she spent decades creating no longer feels like her own.
The Second Story is an honest, often wry account of what happens when the strategies that once helped us succeed—proving, pleasing, performing—stop working. What begins as a search for how to age well becomes a deeper exploration of how to live well.
More than a midlife memoir, The Second Story is a companion for anyone who has ever felt lost inside a life that looks fine from the outside. It’s a story about letting go of the narratives that shaped us so we can finally stop performing and start living.
Coming September 22 from Hazelwood Press
Click here to read Chapter 1 of The Second Story
Join me for a free launch-day workshop: The Stories We Live By
“The Second Story explores what happens when outward success collides with an inner longing for something more…it reminds us that aging isn't a crisis to overcome but an invitation to become more fully ourselves.”
— Chip Conley, founder, Modern Elder Academy; author, Learning to Love Midlife
“Shari Caudron’s memoir might just change your life. Many of us spend years trying to become the person we think we're supposed to be. Caudron asks a more challenging question: What happens when that version of ourselves no longer fits us?
“Essential reading for everyone over 40.”
— Steven Petrow, columnist for The Washington Post; author, The Joy You Make
“Caudron imbues this memoir of searching for relevance and purpose at age 61 with candor and sincerity… she writes with a rare frankness about feelings and vulnerabilities that often prove difficult to talk about… Her open, relatable journey has power.”
—Book Life Reviews, Publishers Weekly
This book is for you if…
— It feels like your soul is longing for something more, but you don’t know what that is…
— You’re tired of proving your worth and pleasing other people…
— You keep waiting until <fill in the blank> happens to be happy…
— You’ve built a life around striving and success, but they’re not working anymore…
-— Your life is full, but you feel empty…
— You’re resisting the mere idea of aging and what comes with it…
— You’ve been continually trying to fix yourself and nothing is working…
— You feel you don’t measure up…
Earlier Books
“Subcultures that inspire rabid devotion—from Barbie collecting to ice fishing—are examined with wit and compassion.” —Entertainment Weekly
"Who Are You People is fun, funny, and fearless…"
—Dinty W. Moore, author of The Accidental Buddhist
Who Are You People?
A Personal Journey into the Heart of Fanatical Passion in America
You know those people who get passionately, fanatically, obsessively into things? People like doll collectors or Star Wars fans or that lady down the street with gnomes all over her yard? Award-winning journalist Shari Caudron noticed them too and she was, well, jealous. Not having such a passion herself, she wondered: who are you people?
Seeking an answer, she set out on a cross-country journey to learn what passionate fanatics had that she didn’t. Could she tap her own wellspring of enthusiasm by studying the enthusiasms of others?
Winner of the Colorado Book Award
What Really Happened
Unexpected Insight from Life’s Uncomfortable Moments
Guilt, envy, procrastination—and why a fully grown woman should not be forced to sleep with fifty other adults in a hostel with communal showers—are just some of the topics in this debut essay collection.
With gentle insight and self-deprecating humor, Caudron helps us understand that every experience – no matter how difficult or embarrassing – can show us something about ourselves.
Humor finalist, Book of the Year awards.
Currently out of print.