So Said the River: Life, Loss, and Pie on the Colorado

By age 30, Colleen Miniuk had checked all the boxes for success: an athletic scholarship to Stanford University; a business degree from the University of Michigan; a high-paying, steady job in the booming tech industry; a big house in the suburbs with a Mercedes-Benz in the three-car garage; and a brilliant, kind, successful husband. She had made it in life according to even the highest of societal and personal standards. But her relentless need for more, more, always more accomplishments only made her dissatisfied and unhappy.Then, a month before her 40th birthday, her husband asked for a separation. To cope with the devastating loss, Colleen did what she always did: she tried to achieve something to prove her worth. She, along with her mother, Jacque, set out to paddle the 141-mile length of Lake Powell, a reservoir along the Colorado River on the Utah-Arizona border in November 2015-despite Colleen's lifelong aversion to water. Like her marriage, the trip did not go as planned.How do you find fulfillment, especially while navigating life's hardships? How do you become a free-flowing river when you've run into a dam and life tries to turn you into an impeding reservoir?During her wild and raw adventures on the Colorado River, Colleen challenges beliefs about expectations, achievement, and perfectionism; confronts fears; and finds the courage to live deliberately and authentically. Out of the storms and rapids, she discovers that "happily ever after" sometimes looks different than what we have been told. So Said this River shares one woman's riveting and inspiring journey of self-discovery that encourages others to create their own definition of success and inspire confidence in those who have chosen, or may choose, non-traditional ways to live one's life.