Yes, Again: (Mis)adventures of a Wishful Thinker

by Sallie H. Weissinger

Overview

Winner of the Story Circle Network’s The Gilda (Radner) Award and the Next Generation Indie Book Award.

For fans of Eat, Pray, Love and Wild comes a laughter-through-tears memoir. With heartfelt emotion and spirit, Sallie Weissinger, a late-in-life widow, recounts the highs and lows of navigating the tricky online dating world of the 2000s. Interwoven throughout her adventures in search of a new relationship are stories from her childhood as a military brat, her southern heritage, her various marriages, and the volunteer work in Central and South America that helped her move forward through it all.

Weissinger keeps her sense of humor as she meets men who lie, men who try to extort money, and men with unsavory pasts. When she experiences even more loss, her search for a partner becomes less important, but—with the help of friends and dogs—she perseveres and, ultimately, develops her own approach to meeting “HIM.”

Blending the deeply serious and the lighthearted, Yes, Again shows us that good things happen when we open up our minds and hearts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647423155
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	10/26/2021
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Sallie H. Weissinger is a native of New Orleans and was raised as a military brat. She has lived in Europe, Asia, and various US states, but these days she considers three cities “home”: New Orleans; Berkeley, California; and Portland, Oregon. She worked for more than twenty years with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, then became a Spanish interpreter and translator for various medical nonprofits. Today, her greatest passion is spending time with her luminous husband. She also enjoys volunteer work, singing, walking and hiking, speaking and teaching Spanish, reading and writing, hanging out with her rescue dogs, and dancing to rock and roll and Motown music in her living and dining rooms. This is her first book. She lives in Berkeley-Albany, CA.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 "Love Will Find a Way" 1

Chapter 2 "Over the Rainbow" 13

Chapter 3 "I Still Haven't Found What Fm Looking For" 25

Chapter 4 "Don't Give Up" 35

Chapter 5 "With a Little Help from My Friends" 43

Chapter 6 "Take It to the Limit" 63

Chapter 7 "Somewhere Beyond the Sea" 71

Chapter 8 "Many Rivers to Cross" 77

Chapter 9 "Ring of Fire" 85

Chapter 10 "Just Breathe" 101

Chapter 11 "II Silenzio" 121

Chapter 12 "Bridge over Troubled Water" 131

Chapter 13 "Cup of Kindness" 139

Chapter 14 "I Can See Clearly Now" 153

Chapter 15 "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" 163

Chapter 16 "There's Always One More Time" 181

Epilogue: "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man" 195

Editorial Reviews

2023 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner in Memoirs (Personal Struggle/Health Issues)
2023 Sarton Awards Gilda Prize Winner

“A funny, touching, and ultimately uplifting story of a woman searching for love and purpose.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Sallie Weissinger celebrates her seventy-fifth birthday in Yes Again by taking the reader on a tour of her big heart and where that heart has taken her. This glorious story of a life lived in love is the perfect read because it’s hilarious, honest, and full of hope. We are all lovers, or we wish we were, and Sallie shows us how: never give up, occasionally give in, and don’t stop believing. Brava!”
—Adriana Trigiani, best-selling author of Tony's Wife

“This memoir gives us the fascinating story of a woman’s quest for a meaningful life. It is by turns charming, hilarious, heartwarming, and tragic, and yet, in the end, it delivers hope. I don’t ask for more.”
—Lynn Freed, award-winning novelist, short story writer, and essayist

“I have spent decades writing about how to live well. In her book, Sallie Weissinger writes about something maybe even more important—how to love well. And she does so spectacularly. Hers is the book for everyone who has loved and lost, and wants to love again.”
—Eugenia Killoran, coauthor of The Pritikin Edge: 10 Essential Ingredients for a Long and Delicious Life

“Linearity works for many things; however, in Sallie Weissinger’s potent book (and even more potent life) she shows us how tapping into grace can be a tangible way of entering into mystery, meaning, and direction. By recounting times of staggering loss, loneliness, self-doubt, perseverance, and openness to the ineffable, Sallie demonstrates how the journey of life can be a glorious pathway for those with a bit of daring!”
—Bill Say, MA, life coach, Process Work Diplomate, and instructor at CIIS, JFK University, and the Wright Institute

“After reading Sallie's soulful book, I have to say this gifted writer got the love she wanted the old-fashioned way . . . she earned it!”
—Lacy J. Dalton, singer and songwriter

“This glorious story of a life lived in love is the perfect read because it is hilarious, honest, and full of hope. Brava!”
—Adriana Trigiani, best-selling author of Tony’s Wife

From the Publisher

2021-08-19
A memoir about a 70-something widow navigating the world of 21st-century dating.

In her nonfiction debut, Weissinger interweaves stories of her early life with tales of participating once again in the dating world, many years after her husband’s death. She’d lost her spouse to esophageal cancer when she was 57, and her account in these pages details her search for someone else to invite into her life in her 70s. But on what terms, she wondered, and to what end? Was she looking for someone as just a buddy, as a more serious companion, or as a potential husband? These questions almost immediately seem coy, because as the narrative progresses, her search for romance become clear. Over the course of the book, the author tells of how she spent time on internet dating sites, such as Our Time and Zoosk, and relates stories from her experience that readers of any age who’ve also tackled the dating scene will find familiar. Interspersed among these accounts are reminiscences drawn from Weissinger’s nondating life. She writes about her rocky relationship with one of her daughters; her experiences with her late husband, Matt, including some very moving passages about his final days; and her many activities later in life, from volunteering at animal shelters to working with medical organizations as a Spanish-language translator. However, the primary focus of the book remains the author’s search for a new significant other in her life. The wry, upbeat humor of that search is the key attraction of the book. Throughout the narrative, Weissinger consistently portrays herself as a dogged optimist—someone who’s always hoping and striving to see the best in people. This quality comes out in her nondating stories, too, and most clearly in several of her anecdotes about her adult children and her experiences in Latin America. However, the war stories from online dating carry the narrative. Weissinger is low-key and funny about the men that she encountered, including a guy with a tattoo that linked his eyebrows, “bearded Santa Claus types wearing John Deere caps and drinking beer,” a “dude with obviously dyed, coal black Dracula-style hair” (“a black it had never been in his twenties,” she gently adds), and “the one whose selfies made him look like a wanted criminal on FBI posters.” These lighthearted misadventures are skillfully counterbalanced with emotionally revelatory passages about her time volunteering in the Dominican Republic. At first, she asked herself, “Hadn’t I aged out of this kind of adventure?” But soon, she describes herself as feeling “stripped of superfluous trappings, in touch with the essence of what matters in life, close to my skin, and accepted into others’ skins and lives.” There are a few passages and threads along the way that feel a bit predictable, but her portraits of the many people she met on her journeys are rendered with contagious sympathy and energy, which makes for a confident, quality remembrance.

A funny, touching, and ultimately uplifting story of a woman searching for love and purpose.

Kirkus Reviews