You Part Two: Aligning Your Head, Heart & Hormones in Middle Life

From the author of the iconic The Care and Keeping of You, an essential, affirming quick-start guide to perimenopause for women ages thirty-plus

Books about women in middle life tend to either be comprehensive, clinical tomes or memoir-driven dives into the emotional fall-out of the years around “the change.” You Part Two is an accessible, breath of fresh air that bridges these two categories, offering practical, simple, illuminating advice from someone who has been there, and who can speak directly to women.

Just over twenty-five years ago, Schaefer took on the monumental task for the American Girl Doll Company of writing a puberty primer when she wrote The Care and Keeping of You. That now iconic volume still sells over 100,000 copies per year, and the first girls who were ushered into puberty by that warm, affirming, and slightly irreverent primer are now entering perimenopause—and are likely just as overwhelmed, nervous, and under-prepared. 

Written with the same kind, supportive, funny, and a little bit punk-rock voice, accompanied by black-and-white illustrations and charts, You Part Two opens up topics including changing hormones, metabolism, skin care, and fitness needs along with the shifting importance of female friendships, fertility issues, facing and embracing an empty nest, divorce, caring for aging parents, and major career changes. 

A book to revisit for guidance, refreshers, pointers, and reassurance, this is the perfect read for those who feel like reading Catherine Newman is a coffee date with a friend, who thought Miranda July’s group text in All Fours captured what they could never put into words, who sobbed during Jessie Buckley’s Oscar acceptance speech, and who need a fresh access point to an entire category of middle-life reading and reckoning.