A coming of age at fifty-five by New York Times bestselling author Jane Green
I was fifty-five when I finally stopped pretending.
What if real freedom isn't about reinventing yourself … but about letting the woman you buried years ago grow wild again?
To the world, Jane Green had everything: bestselling novels, a beautiful home, the perfect family. Inside, she was disappearing, squeezed into the roles of wife, mother, provider, eternal people-pleaser while her marriage cooled, her children flew, and her own dreams gathered dust.
Then she stopped squeezing herself into shapes that didn't fit.
Rewilding is the raw, exhilarating story of what happened next. Of rediscovering the loud, messy, paint-splattered art student she once was. Of choosing meaningful friendships over obligation, creativity over perfection, and the truth over silence. Of learning-messily and joyfully-that home isn't a place you build for other people. It's the life you dare to live for yourself.
For fans of Glennon Doyle, Elizabeth Gilbert and Brene Brown
"For years, Jane Green has painted the interior lives of captivating women through her novels. In Rewilding, the portrait turns inward, and it is the most compelling story of all. The threads that shaped her unforgettable characters trace back to their true source: Jane herself. I curled up in bed and devoured it straight through. It is an important read for any woman at the very beginning of building her family, a heartfelt mentor reminding us to hold tightly to our intuition and our identity through motherhood, long term partnerships, and career. I closed the book hoping I could keep just a little of her magic with me. Jane Green's most compelling heroine yet is herself."
"Jane Green makes reinvention feel both daring and doable. A tender, empowering, compulsively readable memoir about listening to the part of you that knows-then acting on it. Part wake-up call, part field guide, Rewilding is a brave, generous blueprint for changing your life. A clear-eyed, big-hearted story about choosing yourself without apology or excuses. If you're standing at the edge of change-marriage, identity, midlife, motherhood, any of it-Rewilding will make you feel less alone. Funny, honest, and deeply reassuring. A love letter to authenticity."
"I read Rewilding in one sitting and am still unsure how Jane Green succeeded in combining such disarming honesty with her unmistakable grace and warmth…maybe that's what rewilding actually feels like. Whatever this magic is, it worked on me."
"Jane Green burns it all down in Rewilding: the illusions, the expectations, the life she thought she had to live. What's left is something raw, fierce, and brutally honest. This is a book about getting lost and refusing to stay that way. About breaking open and finding something wild, real, and true inside the wreckage."
