Home About Fawn Fawn's Blog Books Speaking Press Clips Contact Fawn       Press Clips     Herald Tribune Some Hard Won Wisdom By Susan L. Rife There are hundreds of self-help books and dozens more business management volumes for women on the shelves these days. Fawn Germer has written one that shows how real women in real circumstances have confronted and conquered obstacles in their working and personal lives. "Hard Won Wisdom" (Perigee, $23.95) is an emotional survival guide written by an investigative reporter, now turned author-motivational speaker-personal coach. The book emerged from Germer's frustration with newspaper office politics and the dearth of information to help her cope with it. "I was getting bloodied by office politics and I felt very isolated," said Germer, who lives in Tampa. "I was a strong woman who'd had great mentors as a journalist and almost all of them were men. When I emulated them as a manager, it wouldn't work, because I'm a woman." As journalists often do, she went out to find a book on alternative approaches. She found guides on how to dress, how to talk, how to break through the glass ceiling, but "nothing to tell me that it was OK to be me and nothing to tell me how to take all of my ambition and internal power and turn it into something that mattered to me." She thought that surely the women whom she admired would have something useful to say, and began to compile their words of experience into a book. "I appealed to them on a very sincere, real level, which is (that) we need to mentor other women," she said. "We need to know what you have learned so we can benefit from that." She interviewed more than 50 prominent women in person or by telephone on such topics as gaining self-esteem, risk-taking, leadership, failure, sabotage, balancing work and family, and coping with the old boys' club. "They all fit different pieces," she said. "They all seemed to know something that I needed to know." Among her interview subjects are journalists Helen Thomas and Cokie Roberts, CEO Carly Fiorina, Academy Award winning actress Frances McDormand, former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, Iditarod champion Susan Butcher and attorney Sarah Weddington. Self-esteem seemed to be the consistent thread among all the women, Germer said, who was struck by "interviewing so many of these other woman and finding out about their self-esteem issues, to find out that someone who's extremely accomplished and held up as a role model, is just the same as the rest of us." Writing the book has had a profound effect on Germer's life. "I am a completely different person. I am doing what I was meant to do, and so it's not work. I am happy every day, I feel that my life has built up to this moment and that I have learned so much about these other people and they've got their own sets of insecurities." Interested? Fawn Germer will sign copies of Hard Won Wisdom (Perigee, $23.95) from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday at Books-A-Million, 4225 14th St. W., Bradenton, and from 1 to 3 p.m. Oct. 17 at Circle Books, 478 John Ringling Blvd., St. Armands Circle, Sarasota.     Click here to read more     Click here to read more     Click here to read more           Copyright 2007 Fawn Germer. All rights reseved.