Two landscapes. One human condition.
History
The stories we inherit.
Ordinary people. Complicated choices. Ideals, failures, contradictions, and the evidence they left behind.
Loss
The stories that change us.
What happens when life no longer fits the story we thought we were living—and there is no formula for what comes next.
Human Condition
The reality beneath both.
History and loss can bring us face-to-face with realities larger than the stories we have been living.
We do not choose everything that shapes us.
Yet we are present for what comes next.
Wholeness isn't infallibility.
We inherit things we did not choose. We are shaped by things we cannot undo. And we make choices that become part of the story too.
The work isn’t to portray perfection. It is to be fully present to what is ours—with whatever capacity we have—and to keep choosing what will have the last word.
READERS ON TWICE WIDOWED
“Twice Widowed is a deeply emotional book that grips our hearts and takes us on a journey from heartbreak to heartwarming. Lorrie is a masterful storyteller. ... I was laughing one minute and crying the next.”
hospitality
author, consultant
“Both joy and hurt erupt in full sensation; Lorrie finds words to express the inexpressible. She culminates her story with an awestruck encounter and exchange with mercy. You will be touched.”
Public Speaker, Hospital Chaplain
Professor and Director, Cancer and Cell Biology
“In Twice Widowed, Lorrie writes in such a way that you will experience on every page the joy of living, spontaneous laughter, and the dark pain of loss.”
“On life’s journey, you rarely meet someone like Lorrie who is willing to go public with the most private travails of the soul. ... Lorrie’s story needs to be told.”
Kroger Division President - retired
“
Be A Better Human…
Marie Umidi, writer, director, producer
Lorrie Fields is an exceptional wordsmith. Twice Widowed will not disappoint. Every word, every sentence, and each memory so poignantly told played before me on a full-color screen with all my senses engaged. I don’t think that I breathed much during those first pages. Her brave and raw honesty deepened my understanding of how important it is to not waste our grief. You will be a better human being because of this read.
The same question found me in two different worlds.
As a historian, I have spent years looking at ordinary people—their ideals and contradictions, their courage and failures, and the choices they made when reality complicated the story they believed about themselves and their world.
Then loss brought that work home.
Being widowed twice asked something different of me. I could no longer study the human condition from a distance. I had to live inside questions of identity, control, uncertainty, love, loss, and what remains when the story we thought we were living is gone.
Different scale. Same human condition.
What interests me is what happens next. What do we do with what we inherit, what happens to us, what we discover about ourselves, and what we cannot change?
We may not have chosen what shaped us—or the history we inherited. But knowing those things and reckoning with them can change the future. We are very much present for what comes next.
ABOUT LORRIE FIELDS
Historian. Author. Speaker.
Lorrie Fields is a historian, author, and speaker whose work explores ordinary people and the choices they make when reality complicates the stories they have been living.
She co-authored The Seed of a Nation, based on years of research into William Penn, early Pennsylvania, and the ideas and contradictions that shaped the American experiment. In her memoir, Twice Widowed, she turned that same attention toward a different landscape: her own experience of love, loss, and becoming.
Her work now brings those two landscapes into conversation—not because history and loss are the same, but because both can reveal something about the human condition.
Speaking & Conversations
History, loss, and the human condition give us different ways to ask some of the same questions about how we live with what is true—and what we do next.
HISTORY & THE STORIES WE INHERIT
William Penn and the American Experiment
The World Wasn't So Different: What History Reveals About Us
When Sympathy Organizes the Evidence: Seeing Our Heroes Whole
The Ideals Were Stated. The Work Wasn't Finished
LOSS & THE STORIES THAT CHANGE US
When the Ask Becomes Personal: What Loss Changes in Body, Brain, and Self
Who Am I Now? Identity After Loss
What It Means to Be Present for What Comes Next
THE HUMAN CONDITION
Wholeness Isn’t Infallibility: Living Truthfully With What Shapes Us
What Gets the Last Word? Inheritance, Choice, and the Stories We Live
Different Scale. Same Human Condition
Interested in inviting Lorrie to speak?
Keynotes, workshops, and conversations can be shaped for your audience.