Praise for The Watch

I knew Paula Sager’s father Bob as the wise, humble, and scrupulous man who loved his family and country and was generous to both. Paula’s memoir, beginning with a wristwatch and ending with a swan, reveals the extraordinary experience they shared after he became sick. Time disappears; their reality becomes mysteriously and beautifully something known only to the two of them. As the horizon beckons her father onward, Paula achieves a clarity about life, death, and love and an affirmation that “all earthly beings are participating in something vastly larger and more intertwined than any of us can fathom.”  This memoir holds a powerful message for the reader; I’ve already started my second round.

— Bill Moyers, journalist and public commentator 

The Watch is a deep and personal inquiry into grief, love, and the nature of consciousness. A beautiful, spacious and evocative read. A celebration of the fullness of life, where everyday details become portals to universal questions. 

— Anne Egseth, author This is All He Asks of You 

This quiet and shimmering memoir of loss and love reminds those of us who practice medicine that the process of dying is not only corporal but also spiritual, and to ignore the latter is to miss our deep commitment to and the honor of accompanying the patient through a time of great loneliness.

— Michael D. Stein, author of Accidental Kindness: A Doctor’s Notes on Empathy

I am in love with Paula Sager’s questions: Can you be present enough for this? And this? What supports you in being present? How do we say goodbye to those who are leaving our known world? How do we stay connected to those who leave?  This thoughtful memoir invites us to bring such wonderment into our own bodies, to be curious about our own relationships with our beloveds, with time, with mortality. It is not easy to be wrestled by unanswerable questions, but as Paula’s father would say, “That’s the beauty of it.” And this is a beautiful telling, a sacred endeavor exploring the thresholds of birth and death, what comes before, what comes after, and that most difficult and most glorious betweenness we call now.

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of The Unfolding and host of The Poetic Path

In this luminous meditation on the death of a beloved parent, Paula Sager gracefully dances between embodiment and contemplation, between heartbreak and gratitude, between memory and presence. Her vivid depictions of lives being fully lived, from kayaking the Atlantic waters to shopping for a watch in a suburban mall, make this book sing, and render her father’s dying a holy, holy thing.                               

— Mirabai Starr, Author of Wild Mercy and Ordinary Mysticism

— Sandy McDougall, Certified End-of-Life Doula

Sandy, mentor and supportive guide for families and individuals navigating the end of life journey, shares her thoughts about The Watch.

This clip is an excerpt from a conversation between Paula and Sandy about staying close to our own experience. You can watch the full conversation here: Grief and Wonder

Paula Sager writes that finding a book feels like being found.  The Watch will find all of us who contemplate the passage of time and the persistence of love for those present and not. This beautiful book doesn’t give us the answers, but instead offers us enormous consolation in the gifts of our own insight and wonder.

— Hester Kaplan, author of The Edge of Marriage and winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction

The Watch is a tender and beautifully written account of the author’s relationship with her father, and the time leading up to and following his death. Moving with grace between the gnarly realities of dealing with cancer in the family, and a wider perspective that embraces past and future within the present, Sager is “left with a clear knowing: Now is the time to savor being in this body, in this life.”  This book is indeed a celebration of life lived to the full, moment by moment, even as it traces the path of grief at the loss of a loved one.

— Linda Hartley, author of Wisdom of the Body Moving and Embodied Spirit, Conscious Earth.

While offering glimpses into her deeply personal experiences with loss, grief and growth, Paula Sager gives readers the space and inspiration to reflect upon their own mysterious relationship to time and to their loved ones. You will be comforted and moved by Paula’s open-hearted revelations large and small.

     — Priscilla Warner, author New York Times bestsellers, The Faith Club and Learning to Breathe

The Watch: Time to Witness the Beauty of It All is an extraordinary and heartfelt account of the author’s relationship with her dying father. Drawing on years of practice in the Discipline of Authentic Movement, Paula Sager takes the reader on a deep dive into the mysteries of memory and intuition, exploring what it means to be human, and what it means to love another. Beautifully written and deeply wise, this is a story we can all learn from. 

— Elizabeth Shick, author of The Golden Land, winner of the AWP Prize for the Novel

With intimate storytelling and philosophical depth, Paula Sager offers a poignant exploration of life’s deepest truths revealing how the journey of one can catalyze change in us all. The Watch is more than a book—it’s an invitation to pause, to feel deeply, and to experience love, loss, and our shared humanity with fresh eyes and an open heart.

        — Lisa Napora, PhD, founding director of The Mindfulness Alliance and WeShift Institute facilitator.