NAVIGATING LIFE

A wise, inspiring, piercingly honest user’s guide to life, written for the author’s daughter and reflecting tough lessons about family, work, and marriage.

We all learn a few useful things at school but most of what matters, what makes you into a functioning human being, able to hold your own in conversation, find your path, and secure a meaningful job, no teacher will ever tell you. This diamond-sharp, gut-punchingly honest book of hard-earned wisdom is one mother’s effort to equip her daughter for survival in the modern world.

Margaux Bergen began writing this book when her daughter Charlotte turned nine and gave it to her right after graduation from high school, when she was setting off for her first day of college. “I am not writing this to groom or guide you to professional or academic success,” she writes. “My goal is rather to give you tools that might help you engage with the world and flourish…Think of this as a kind of developing bath-time wisdom.”

Wise, heartbreakingly funny, and resonantly true, NAVIGATING LIFE has invaluable lessons for students of life of all ages. It will challenge you to lead a more meaningful life and to tackle the bumps along the way with grace, grit, style, and ingenuity. What The Blessings of a Skinned Knee did for the early years of parenting, NAVIGATING LIFE does for the next, far more perilous chapter, when new graduates are cast out on high seas and have to learn to sink or swim – and find their way.

This is a book for both parents and children, with a raw, scorchingly witty sense of humor – and amazing honesty. With its combination of inspiration and truth-telling it is geared toward graduates and will come in a small-trim, gifty package. Reading it is like having a conversation with your best friend: sharp, revealing, truly wise, and has a great voice with the combination of humor and insight of Lena Dunham or Meghan Daum.

Margaux Bergen was born in Paris and raised in the UK (she is half-British). She has spent the last twenty years developing global marketing and branding strategies for high-profile nonprofits, working as vice president of strategic communications for Vital Voices, communications director for the Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty, and in a variety of positions at the World Bank. She is an Oxford graduate and the mother of three children who are all now making their way through college and setting off into the world.