Blooming with Books: Say Yes to What's Next ~ Review

Say Yes to What's Next
By Lori Allen

How to Age with Elegance and Class
While Never Losing Your Beauty and Sass

Say Yes to What's Next offers insights to women who are in the 50+ category, women whom society has decided should just step aside and let the rest of the world pass them by. All too often women listen to this and believe that they aren't worth the effort. They sacrifice their appearance in the hustle and bustle that their life has become. They even sacrifice their health because there is too little time to make room for one's self.

Lori disagrees with this and encourages women to take some of the efforts they put into their family towards themselves. Yes, your children doing well and succeeding is important but not at the cost of you. Make an effort to look your best. You are worth more than the bargain-basement table.

Work on your health, all parts of it are important and work together for a better you. Your health has three different parts - physical, mental, and spiritual. As Lori puts it your life is your journey through these three. It is a journey based on the choices you make daily. Don't neglect your physical health, when you make time for it your mental health will benefit. And make time for God daily to strengthen your spiritual health - God's ears are always open to your concerns.

As you have aged so too has your marriage and your husband. With the passing of years, your situation may be in flux with retirement and/or an empty nest situation. Putting your focus on yourself may seem selfish to your husband. In fact, he may feel threatened by this change in how you are behaving. Talk. And more importantly, take time to listen. This simple activity can open a new level of relationship between you. Something that you lost while raising your children and working (yes, stay-at-home-mom counts as work). This is a chance to reconnect as a couple and rediscover who you both are now.

Your children are now grown and most likely out of the house. It is time to let them make their own decisions and if they are married allow them to make decisions as a couple. Don't offer advice that is not asked for it will be seen as a criticism of them and relegate your adult children as children to their way of thinking. Don't do it or you just may not see too much of your grandchildren - if or when they join the family.

Be a friend. Reach out to your old friends who you may not have had time for over the years. Reconnect and support one another. Friends help you when you need them most and the more friends the better.

Do you understand your financial situation? If not please do so, a change of your martial or working situation can be a rude awakening if you are not at least somewhat familiar with your checking account.

Say Yes to What's Next will help you as you transition from mom back to you. It will offer advice and explain why it is important - Lori uses her own life experiences as a baseline. No two people experience life the same but her tips will at least give one a starting point for getting from here to there. And this would be an excellent book to read and discuss with your friends either in a book club or in an informal setting.

Now I will admit I don't find myself in many of the situations in which Lori presented. But I can apply the information she does present to my own life situation and prepare for my own what's next.

I was provided a complimentary copy of this book with no expectations but that I provide my honest opinion. All thoughts expressed are my own.

Hardcover: 240 Pages
Publisher: Thomas Nelson (July 14, 2020)

About the Book:

From the star of Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta, now filming its eleventh season for TLC, comes a book and a life-makeover movement for women approaching fifty and beyond.

Move over, girlfriend, Lori Allen is here to help you say yes to what’s next! Star of Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta, Lori Allen uses her confidence, wisdom, and signature humor not only to help young brides on their most important day ever but also to model to them and their mothers how to live out the coming years as the best of their lives.

Lori Allen is owner/operator of one of the biggest and busiest bridal mega-salons in the country, Atlanta’s Bridals by Lori. But she’s also a wife, mother, grandmother, and breast cancer survivor.

Whether you’re feeling invisible, disappearing into the fabric of your couch a little more every year, or simply being indecisive about what’s next, Lori offers herself as the poster child of what to do, not do, and how to see your way through the unexpected.

In Say Yes to What’s Next she addresses essential issues, such as

don’t let yourself go,
marriage is awesome, but it’s no fairytale,
keep your mouth shut and your heart open to your kids (and they’ll bring you grandkids),
make time to parent your parents,
maintain a close circle of girlfriends,
get off the couch and live your passion,
take charge of your money, and
what to do when life gives you a faceplant.

Say Yes to What’s Next is a life makeover and therapy session from a relatable you-can-and-you-should-do-this straight-shooter as Lori helps women shape their own futures with confidence, style, and sass.

Purchase Links

Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble

About Lori Allen

Lori Allen opened Bridals by Lori just two weeks after graduating from the all-female Columbia College in South Carolina. Four decades later, she is one of the world’s foremost experts on bridal couture and the central figure of TLC’s reality show Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta, filmed on site at Lori’s bridal salon and shown in more than 120 countries.

Lori’s role as a bridal expert, successful female business entrepreneur, TV personality, and breast cancer survivor has led her to interviews by top-tier media outlets, including CNN, ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Today, and the Wall Street Journal. She currently resides in Atlanta with her husband, Eddie, and, thankfully, not far from their son and his wife, daughter and her husband, and granddaughters.