Every Breath, New Chances

How to Age with Honor and Dignity: A Guide for Men

By: Lewis Richmond, Peter Coyote - foreword

Narrated by: Richard Crossman

Tools and anecdotes to reframe aging from the best-selling author of Work as a Spiritual Practice and Aging as a Spiritual Practice.

Aging is not just a process, but a journey: a decades-long adventure of new opportunities and surprises. And while loss, tragedy, and decline are inevitably part and parcel of getting older, so too are joys, gifts, and new discoveries. For men in particular, the decline in virility and power that accompanies age is a tough pill to swallow: When these fall away, what remains? And without them, what does it mean to be a man?

As life unfolds, a man's identity is renewed, reviewed, and negotiated: The markers that make him himself at 20 won't be the same at 35, 50, or 70. This book shows listeners how to turn toward these changes, to come into their own as older men by reframing the losses of age as strengths and opportunities for growth.

Drawing from interviews and personal anecdotes, each chapter includes a contemplative practice called Deep Mind Reflection to help listeners navigate aging and topics like divorce and single living; illness, death, and emotions; relating to partners; health, denial, and substance abuse; retirement and encore careers; and reframing a masculine identity once predicated on strength and virility. For every challenge or difficulty men face as they age, there are positive outcomes and fresh possibilities. This book encompasses the totality: fears and aspirations, new careers and next steps, and spiritual preparation for the final decades of life.

©2020 Lewis Richmond (P)2020 North Atlantic Books

Critic reviews

"Make no mistake, this book is not just for men! Every Breath, New Chances is a wise and compassionate companion in the journey of aging. Richmond shares his own experiences of aging and provides Deep Mind Reflection exercises to explore inner feelings and other aspects of aging. He encourages the reader to meet these challenges as a rich opportunity for personal growth and development. For women, Richmond’s insights are not only helpful for better understanding those in their life who are facing the fact that they no longer possess the virility, power, and control they once had, but also for understanding the feminine path of aging. This is a must-companion along the way."—DIANE ESHIN RIZZETTO, author of Waking Up to What You Do

"This is a book you can trust to guide you as you age! Every Breath, New Chances is rooted in real wisdom and full of heart. It deepens many aspects of growing older and being a man without being too simple or too loud. Richmond really wants you to get more out of life. I’m about to turn eighty, and I feel better for having read it.”—THOMAS MOORE, author of Care of the Soul

"To process the mental and emotional challenges he faced growing older, Lewis Richmond says he wrote the book he needed. That sound writing advice has produced a one-of-a-kind toolkit with insights and practices that show others how to bring alive (and thus gain life-changing wisdom from) the book’s profound core message: 'vulnerability is strength.'"—PAULA SPENCER SCOTT, author of Surviving Alzheimer’s