Barbara Herrick - The Blackberry Tea Club: Women in Their Glory Years

Barbara Herrick wears the middle years of her life with class, grace, and phenomenal insight. She takes readers on a glorious romp down a raging Idaho river, ponders the complexities of her fifty-something mirrored self, and takes time to reflect on those personal decisions that most affected her life and loves, pain and celebrations.

JUDY WARE, PH.D.,

conflict resolution facilitator and writer

Barbara Herrick's book illuminates the joyful possibilities of being a woman growing older in America today. It overflows with the sheer bliss of being alive.

ROSEMARY CUNNINGHAM,

author of Fifty Ways to Feed Your Soul

Barbara does a wonderful job of reframing who we women of the 21st century are becoming and how we got there. And she does it in a manner that combines self-help, inspiration, and memoir all in one. The Blackberry Tea Club defies genre by being intimate and personal while imparting a perspective that challenges widely-held beliefs about what comes with aging. And these are the very beliefs that often become self-fulfilling prophecies that send otherwise healthy, vibrant women to therapists' offices for fear of being abnormal, or worse, trapped in futures they find unbearable.

MARSHA L. ROBERTS, PH.D.,

psychologist

Barbara Herrick's voice is as original and real as the mountains, rivers, and farm country of her beloved Idaho. Her recollections include a grand ride with the tea club members down the Payette River, a clever yet universal foray into ham salad that is regularly punctuated by comments from the Matriarchs, and an extraordinarily true-to-the-bone exploration of her family health physical and mental adding up to a map of the woman complete with a self-study report on her flesh that is at once both funny and honest. Hers is an autobiography of body and soul, miswhacks and wonders that make the glory years a time of fulfillment and fancy.

ALAN MINSKOFF,

author of Blue Ink Runs Out on a Partly Cloudy Day

Barbara Herrick's The Blackberry Tea Club is a heartfelt exploration of an American life that is funny, tender, and graceful. Fraught with gentle lessons, it conveys stone-cold facts of the human condition and teaches us that the Blackberry Tea Club is a society we can all enjoy if we are lucky enough to share Herrick's intriguing and positive perspective on the aging process.

COLLEEN BIRCH MAILE,

editor, SkyWest Magazine

Barbara Herrick writes from her heart, spins words of pure silk, and invites every woman to go for the gold. Hers is a story that bounces through the perilous rapids of early life to discover sublime waters in the middle years. Instead of feeling maligned and misunderstood when arriving at that certain age, readers will celebrate with Barbara who offers a refreshing map for self-respect. The Blackberry Tea Club points the way to renewed energy and buoyancy, and it does so with a giggle and a smile.

SUSAN REULING FURNESS, M. ED.,

marriage and family therapist, seasoned middle-ager
and contributing author of The Writing Group Book

First published in 2004 by Conari Press,

an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

York Beach, ME

With offices at:

500 Third Street, Suite 230

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2004 Barbara Herrick

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Herrick, Barbara.

The Blackberry Tea Club : women in their glory years / Barbara Herrick.

p. cm.

ISBN 1- 57324-965-3

1. Middle aged women. 2. Middle aged women Idaho Biography. I. Title.

HQ1059.4.H47 2004

305. 244 dc22

2004005874

Book design by Maxine Ressler

Typeset in Fournier and Avenir

Printed in Canada

TCP

8 7 6 5 4

www.redwheelweiser.com

www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter

To the Matriarchs in the Sky:

Lorene Evans Herrick,

Belle Evans, Hazel Herrick,

Frances Evans, Tiny Evans, Lily Westfall,

Bernice Herrick, Nira Bond.

And to the Matriarchs still solidly with us:

Rita Brilz, Pearl Cox, Nina Parks, Ruth Wright.

Thank You To Jan Johnson, Kate Hartke, Jill Rogers, and Brenda Knight of Conari Press who opened the doors of possibility and to Dorian Gossy, Kathleen Fivel, and Maxine Ressler for the art of bookmaking.

To my beloved friends and family: Steve Herrick and Maggie Brilz, Julie Herrick, Tanya Johnson, Mark Brilz and Karl Bigler, Bob and JoAnn Andrew, Alan and Royanne Minskoff, Steven and Pam Mayfield, Richard and Judith Steele, Tom and Colleen Maile, Jeanette Germain and Marshall Brown, Mike Christian and Jennifer Marcus, Carol Gerber Allred and Brian Flay, Mike and Marty Downey, Gail Farley and Tod Palmer, Sherry Grabowski, Gina Phillips, Diane Ronayne and Gary Richardson, Marsha Roberts, Mary Owen and Norman Weinstein, Alison Isenberg, Mollie O'Shea, Peggy Farnworth, Tim and Sue Furness, Jim and Judy Ware, Carolyn Barbier and Chip Calamaio, Ellie McKinnon and Roger Kynaston, Sharon Hanson, Jan Alden and Jim Church, Joan Logghe, Kathy Barrett, Juanita Hepler, Gwynne McElhinney and Robert McAndrew, Robin Young, Surel Mitchell, Leslie and Dan Gunnerson, Jamie Dater, Jeanette Ullery, Susan and Don Curtis, Diana Sparks, Ellie Hilvers-Bristol, Teresa Sgalio, Vanessa Klaus, Jody Gibson, Barbara Ross, Pam Spickelmeier, Mike and Lisa Wahowski, Chris Dempsey, John Rember, Tish Thornton, Bill and Judy Studebaker, Gino Sky, Jamie Armstrong, Robert Whitlatch, Rick Ardinger, David Sample, Paul Collins, and Linda Stout.

To my extended families: The Evans, the Marvins, the Westfalls, the Herricks, the Bonds, the Parks, the Johnsons, the Brilz, the Jackman-Hendricks.

To the Log Cabin Literary Center and Fishtrap: two delicious writers' communities in the West.

To the beloved man Keith

C. Herrick

To the grandest man

Kenneth O. Herrick

Mackenzie Herrick and Scott Herrick

The reason for everything

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads

of her life, and weaves them gratefully into a single cloth

it's she who drives the loudmouths from the hall

and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.

In the softness of evening

it's you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,

the unspeaking center of her monologues.

With each disclosure you encompass more

and she stretches beyond what limits her,

to hold you.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

We enter our Glory Years full tilt, our heads and hearts high.

Our midyears are when

we finally find our place and our peace,

when we are powerful, when we are well and well-rewarded,

when we're the best at what we do,

when we discover that life is good,

and we are good in it.

Our minds are deep and clear,

our hearts are fierce and full,

our souls unafraid.

Whether we are alone, in tandem or in family