Listening to My Life: My Journey Through Fear to Trust

"What kind of woman is an advocate for women's rights in public and an abused wife in her own home? I am that woman. How could I have such a strong professional voice and a weak personal voice?"



Listening to My Life invites us to journey with a woman, raised with all the strict gender role expectations of the fifties, who came of age in the hotbed of social revolution that was San Francisco in the sixties. Martinelli shares the profound impact of these conflicting cultures on her life and on her identity as a woman.

She juxtaposes the portrait of a woman who was passionate, self-confident, and strong in her professional life, with that of one who was at the same time fearful, insecure, and self-doubting in her personal relationships. She is brutally honest about the childhood experiences that formed her beliefs in herself and the coping behaviors she developed to survive.

Martinelli shares the spiritual journey she embarked upon in her mid-fifties and how it transformed her life as she learned to trust her inner wisdom. This is the journey of an independent woman who once believed it was up to her alone to take care of herself, to becoming a woman who has learned to trust that there is something greater guiding her life.