When Your Heart Says Go - by Judy Reeves (Paperback)

About the Book

Nearing fifty and grieving the death of her husband, Judy Reeves sells everything, buys an around-the-world airline ticket, and sets off on a solo journey. Months of solitude and loneliness in foreign countries challenge her to examine her old ideas and explore her heart's deepest longings as she searches for who she might become in her new life.

Book Synopsis

What sort of mad longing besets a woman--nearing fifty and recently widowed--to sell everything she owns, buy an around-the-world airline ticket, pack a single suitcase, and set off alone on a year-long journey without a plan or agenda? When Your Heart Says Go answers that question.

Set in 1990-'91, Judy's story takes readers from San Diego through eleven European countries, the then-Soviet Union, and finally India, during the lead-up to the first Gulf War.

Explorations of foreign locales and interactions with strangers and acquaintances who become a lifeline to friendship are interspersed with occasional flashbacks to Judy's life with her beloved husband, Tom, as well as his illness and death. Descriptions of sites historic and current serve as both daily life and background for Judy's struggle to find her way as a sober, single, independent woman in the vast world as it edges toward the collapse of the Soviet Union and war in the Middle East. The outer journey serves as a container for the inner; the more Judy experiences of the world, the more she learns about herself--and the closer she gets to realizing her lifelong dream of being a writer.

Review Quotes

"Reeves recounts in loving detail the globe-hopping she embarks upon to chart a new path after the death of her husband. It is in these details--a perfect cappuccino at a café in Amsterdam, a moonrise in Mykonos--that she reveals how we carry on after loss--and take loss with us as we carry on."

--Sue William Silverman, author, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences

"In gentle, gorgeous, and elegiac prose, Judy Reeves pulls the reader into a journey of quiet courage and insight that shines from her paragraphs in this memoir of midlife journey. Against a backdrop of foreign countries, her reverie on recovery--from alcohol, intimate losses, young widowhood--shows emergence in a woman who has spent the thirty years since then guiding others through reflection and self-inquiry. Reeves' contributions as a teacher of the writing life are known to thousands: this is her origin story."
--Christina Baldwin is the author, Life's Companion, Storycatcher, and other titles

"As Judy Reeves goes lightly and quickly across Europe and India, her private grief for losing her husband sharply interrupts the journey. This diary-like memoir is haunted by his death and the nagging refrain that Reeves is unsure she's a writer while she journals her wonder, often in exquisite detail, at the undiscovered world. Her 'search for meaning and connection' is to find and let go of connection, to begin asserting her feminist self, and to finally own the necessity of being alone--a précis for the writing life that is and also awaits her."

--Thomas Larson, author of The Memoir and the Memoirist

"In scenes of quiet brilliance, Judy Reeves crafts a dazzling memoir of a woman in search of herself after the death of her husband. As she travels around the world--Paris, Athens, Moscow, Bombay-- we discover the geography of her life, with its griefs, sensual joys, challenges, and dreams. This is Eat, Pray, Love for women who know that the greatest journey of all, is the one that points inwards. I savored every page."

--Mary Reynolds Thompson, author of A Wild Soul Woman and Reclaiming the Wild Soul

"Never have I felt so carried off inside a dream with all the sensual details, encounters with fellow travelers and citizens of society than when reading When the Heart Says Go. Both a love story, and a tale of grief Judy writes with achingly provocative descriptions of her around-the-world trip, taking us along on her intimate journey to heal from a tragically lost love. I fell in love with every word, just as she fell in love with who she would become."

--Amy Wallen, author of How to Write a Novel in 20 Pies and When We Were Ghouls

"There are many compelling travels in Judy Reeves's captivating memoir. She introduces us to people, places, trains, and moments that define her year of travel. More so, she takes us up close into her inner journey of grief, loneliness and deciding who she was going to be and how she was going to live her life after the death of her husband. Reeves's writing speaks to something universal about loss, longing, and the human spirit. While reading her story, I was drawn into myself--a sign that a gifted writer is leading the way."

--Lynda Monk, Director, International Association for Journal Writing, IAJW.org

"Written in luscious poetic language by a master wordsmith this memoir is filled with exquisite sensory details, colorful settings, and interesting personalities she encounters along the way. I highly recommend it!"

--Jill G. Hall, author of the Anne McFarland Series

"Through eloquent and finely articulated details of her travels, painting images from words and hoping to insulate herself from the depth of heartbreak, Reeves realizes that no matter how many different landscapes she traverses, outer change is a futile substitution for inner healing and freedom from unbearable loss. When Your Heart Says Go captures the meandering lostness of losing one's beloved, and the compassionate joy which eventually emerges to hold it. Reeves's book is a reminder of the truth of life creating itself newly."

--Laura Basha, PhD, author of The Inward Outlook

" Reeves shares from her heart as she processes the death of her soulmate, taking us along on an adventurous around-the-world journey. She writes deftly and poetically from exotic cities where she not only discovers herself again but ultimately her calling in life."

--Leslie Johansen Nack, author of Fourteen

"What an inspirational journey! In her memoir When Your Heart Says Go, Judy Reeves's vivid descriptions take us with her as she encounters the places and people that help her open up and become a fuller person. Reeves's beautiful book is a testament to the power of writing as well as the human capacity for resilience."

--Sandra Marinella, author of The Story You Need to Tell

"Go on a mind-expanding, heart-expanding journey with Judy Reeves as she recounts her worldwide journey of exploration after the death of her husband."

--Eric Maisel, author of The Coach's Way

"When Your Heart Says Go by Judy Reeves, is one of the most hypnotic and lyrical memoirs I've read. Judy weaves memory seamlessly--the blue skies of Delft, the seascapes of Dubrovnik, childhood moments, the highlights of Moscow and Paris. The love of her husband and the still sharp bare landscape of losing him are threads throughout, inviting us to join her inner journey to Self. Her memoir reminds us to reflect on our inner and outer journeys to discover the core of who we are. Highly recommended!

--Linda Joy Myers-founder of The National Association of Memoir Writers, author of Don't Call Me Mother, Song of the Plains, and the historical fiction novel The Forger of Marseille