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I Give You My Word
by Signe Eklund Schaefer
Publication Year: 2019
During the 1970’s and 80’s, Signe Eklund Schaefer and her young family moved often, within the United States and abroad. Handwritten letters, now relics of a pre-Internet world, were vital to her ongoing connection with friends and to her evolving sense of self.
From the surprising discovery of these old letters she has woven a moving account of the reflections, mutual support and multi-dimensional exchanges between women friends, which offer a record of women’s lives five decades ago, and speak powerfully to contemporary social concerns.
Exploring relationships, motherhood, children, personal development, career and friendship itself, the letters touch on the emerging women’s movement, efforts for world peace, and individual spiritual striving, The Epilogue offers new letters from these articulate and impassioned women, now in their 70’s and 80’s.
From readers:
This book is an ode to friendship! I Give You My Word is a celebration of the musings, the questions, and the knowings we offer each through words. And it is a reminder of how the words of a friend can accompany, unveil and ignite both who we truly are and who we are wanting to become.
– Jennifer Brooks Quinn, Biographical Counselor and Adult Educator
These very human voices gave rise to memories of my own along with thoughts of those things that have changed and those that have not – yet. Most of all I am left with the certainty of our need for one another and how the strength of one circle of friends, sharing the essential questions of life, has the power to reach out across the world to create more connections and to touch the lives of so many.
– Patricia Rubano, Director, Biography and Social Art Program
Signe Eklund Schaefer | About the Author
Signe Eklund Schaefer is the author of Why on Earth? – Biography and the Practice of Human Becoming. She was the founding director of a professional development program in Biography and Social Art, one of several activities of the Center for Biography and Social Art. A teacher of adults for many decades, she has been a student of life for as long as she can remember. Her desire to know more about the multiple dimensions of human development led her as a young person to the work of Rudolf Steiner and to Waldorf education. She directed Foundation Studies at Sunbridge College in New York for over twenty years, and was on the faculty of Emerson College in England before that. She co-authored Ariadne’s Awakening, a book on gender questions and co-edited the parenting book More Lifeways. A mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, she now lives in Great Barrington, MA with her husband Christopher Schaefer.
