The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward by Melinda French Gates
Published by Flatiron Books
Genres: Book Clubs, Non-fiction, Essays, inspiration
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Nonfiction has not been rewarding for me this year. My guess is the petulant part of my brain feels that it is already working too hard to process this country’s current reality and has no room for more information. But then I discovered The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward by Melinda French Gates and while the book’s title did not specifically talk to me, the contents of this slender book not only spoke to, but soothed me.
Melinda is best known as the ex-wife of Bill Gates. Together they created a philanthropic foundation that has helped the lives of millions of people around the world. But in 2020 Melinda reached the painful decision to end her marriage and three years later exit the foundation as well. This seismic upheaval in her personal life led her to explore paths she’d never wandered before. The Next Day is her thoughts on what she’s learned from her past all the way to the present day.
This is a beautiful, quiet little book filled with the kind of insights and thoughts that only come after periods of introspection. Melinda moves from her childhood and the lessons her parents instilled in her to her years as a driven student, ambitious early employee at Microsoft, loving wife and mother, to dedicated philanthropist.
What she shares is her own hard-fought wisdom and that she can do it in such a gentle nonjudgmental way is testament to what a gracious person she is. There are those who would have taken the opportunity to slam their ex-husband for his transgressions, but she doesn’t. She simply states the facts of her marriage ending as the transition that it was. Even though it caused her tremendous pain. The Next Day is not just about the demise of her marriage and its impact on her life’s journey. It begins with her childhood and the lessons her parents taught her and goes right to the present day as a mature, vibrant woman in her 60s who is still navigating her way through life’s transitions.
Where the book called to me was in the recent past as Melinda shed her previous identities and was left feeling unmoored. A woman of goals, suddenly the game had changed completely—husband gone, children grown, work ended—and goals had little meaning. It’s here in The Next Day that Melinda shares her dismantling of the concepts that were integral to her success in life. Namely, the doing, the moving from one thing to the next, the motion. With the help of friends and spiritual guides like Tara Brach she discovers the power to be found in moments of transition. The knowledge that can be found by pausing in the in-between space rather than rushing to the next familiar thing.
Gates makes no claim to having all the answers in The Next Day, she simply shares what she herself has come to learn and how it’s helped her. And so, at a time when even much of my fiction reading is outsized and larger than life, this is a calming, soothing book. A delight to read in the same way that spending time with a good friend is a balm.
I’ll close this review with a poem used by Gates that is an extraordinary call to all women
I hope
when you come home to yourself
there are flowers lining the front porch
that were left from all the women
you were before.
Maia, When the Waves Come
Well that poem gave me chills. I probably wouldn’t have been inclined to read this if not for your review. It sounds like it will be helpful as I am mid-life and struggle with grappling with all the hats I wear (mother, wife, friend, employee, etc).
It might be just what you need, although she’s facing a time when those hats are no longer needed and what do you do then? Either way, it’s a beautiful reflection on all the stages women go through.