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Sign up todayIf I Knew Then
Finding wisdom in failure and power in aging
Narrator
Jann Arden
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Length
3 hours 14 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“ There comes a time in all our lives when we say, “If I knew then, ...” In this memoir, Jann Arden takes us there with humor, warmth, and honesty. Her words resonated deeply with me, a woman “of a certain age”. She reflects on growing up and growing older, on the ways her body has changed, on her father’s alcoholism, on her parents’ dementia and Altzheimer’s disease and deaths, and on the wisdom she has gained along the way. Some of us can relate very intimately with her story; others can relate to the humanity of it - to the conflicting emotions, to the loss, love, change, and growth. And above all, to the humor and hope. This is an entertaining and thought- and emotion-provoking quick listen.”
— Nancy • Raven Book Store
Bookseller recommendation
“There comes a time in all our lives when we say, “If I knew then, ...” In this memoir, Jann Arden takes us there with humor, warmth, and honesty. Her words resonated deeply with me, a woman “of a certain age”. She reflects on growing up and growing older, on the ways her body has changed, on her father’s alcoholism, on her parents’ dementia and Altzheimer’s disease and deaths, and on the wisdom she has gained along the way. Some of us can relate very intimately with her story; others can relate to the humanity of it - to the conflicting emotions, to the loss, love, change, and growth. And above all, to the humor and hope. This is an entertaining and thought- and emotion-provoking quick listen.”
— Nancy • Raven Book Store
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Jann Arden—bestselling author, recording artist and late-blooming TV star—is back with this funny, heartfelt and fierce memoir on becoming a woman of a certain age. The power, gravity and freedom she's found at fifty-seven are superpowers she believes all of us can unleash.
Digging deep into her strengths, her failures and her losses, Jann Arden brings us an inspiring account of how she has surprised herself, in her fifties, by at last becoming completely her own person. Like many women, it took Jann a long time to realize that trying to be pleasing and likeable and beautiful in the eyes of others was a loser's game. Letting it rip, and damning the consequences, is not only liberating, it's a hell of a lot of fun: "Being the age I am—that so many women are—is just the best time of my life."
Jann weaves her own story together with tales of her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, and the father she came close to hating, to show her younger self—and all of us—that fear and avoidance is no way to live. "What I'm thinking about now aren't all the ways I can try to hang on to my youth or all the seconds ticking by in some kind of morbid countdown to death," she writes, "but rather how I keep becoming someone I always hoped I could be. If I'm lucky one day a very old face will look back at me from the mirror, a face I once shied away from. I will love that old woman ferociously, because she has finally figured out how to live a life of purpose—not in spite of but because of all her mistakes and failures."
JANN ARDEN is a singer, songwriter, broadcaster, actor, author and social media star. The celebrated multi-platinum, award-winning artist catapulted onto the music scene in 1993 with her debut album, Time for Mercy, featuring the hit single "I Would Die for You." A year later she had her international break-out hit, "Insensitive." She has written four books, the most recent being the Canadian bestseller Feeding My Mother: Comfort and Laughter in the Kitchen as My Mom Lives with Memory Loss. A multiple Juno Award-winner, Jann continues to record and tour; in 2020 she was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. She is also the star of her own hit TV sitcom, Jann, which debuted in 2019, and will air a new season in 2020, and the host of the weekly Jann Arden Podcast.
JANN ARDEN is a singer, songwriter, broadcaster, actor, author and social media star. The celebrated multi-platinum, award-winning artist catapulted onto the music scene in 1993 with her debut album, Time for Mercy, featuring the hit single "I Would Die for You." A year later she had her international break-out hit, "Insensitive." She has written four books, the most recent being the Canadian bestseller Feeding My Mother: Comfort and Laughter in the Kitchen as My Mom Lives with Memory Loss. A multiple Juno Award-winner, Jann continues to record and tour; in 2020 she was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. She is also the star of her own hit TV sitcom, Jann, which debuted in 2019, and will air a new season in 2020, and the host of the weekly Jann Arden Podcast.
Reviews
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER“Storyteller. Counsellor. Life coach. Canadian singer Jann Arden wears all those hats—and more—in her latest memoir . . . If I Knew Then will strike vibrato chords with readers. Like her song lyrics, Arden’s phrasing is simple, authentic and rich. It resonates. She wears her wounds on her sleeve, and isn’t afraid to show her scars." —Winnipeg Free Press
Praise for Jann Arden:
“The type of free-spirited, brutally truthful woman who can stand toe to toe with any man or woman. Funny and not afraid to sprinkle an interview with helpings of words your mother would never allow in the house, Arden is two parts poet and one part your crazy aunt.” —The Toronto Sun
“[Jann Arden is] abundantly and humorously generous with herself in public. . . . No doubt Arden holds some secrets, some passions, some pain close to the vest, but, like the best gossip in the neighbourhood, she diverts our attention with titillating yarns.” —Toronto Star Expand reviews
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