When Melinda French Gates recounts a story, it feels like a trusted friend revealing a heartfelt secret. Her latest book, “The Next Day: Transitions, Changes and Moving Forward” (Flatiron, 176 pages, now available), does not come across as a traditional memoir or advice manual. Instead, it reads like a stroll with a wise companion who shares valuable life lessons without pretending to have all the answers or tying everything up neatly.
“I wrote this in the middle,” French Gates shared with USA TODAY during a call from her office near Seattle. “I’ve gone through some difficult times, and rather than writing safely from the other side, I wanted to write about when you are in those transitions.”
The book highlights moments from what she calls the most challenging decision of her life—the end of her 27-year marriage to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. It also delves into her experiences leaving home for college, grappling with motherhood and guilt, departing from the Gates Foundation last year, and finding inspiration from Alexis Carrington of “Dynasty” during her childhood.
While candid, the book avoids feeling like a confessional or a sensational tell-all. French Gates shares personal insights thoughtfully, always with the intent to assist others. It emerges as an ideal book for discussion groups and book clubs.
Known as a philanthropist, business leader, and champion for women and girls, French Gates committed $1 billion in 2019 toward enhancing women’s influence and leadership over a decade. In May of last year, she pledged another $1 billion through 2026 to further global progress for women. With three adult children and two grandchildren, French Gates finds herself at another exciting crossroads at age 60.
“Even on your darkest and hardest days, even when it’s scary or it feels horrible, there will be a better time. There will be a time when I will look back at this, and there must be something in here that will be beautiful,” she says. “Maybe I’m learning something. I try to say to myself now in the uncomfortable transitions, ‘It’s good to be uncomfortable.’ I have been through this before. I’ve been through change, not this kind of change. But I was better last time when I came out the other side.”
Throughout life, some women adopt the attitude, “I had to go through it, so you should too,” while others, like French Gates, believe, “I had to go through it, so I’ll work to make sure you don’t.” Her new book makes it clear that she belongs to the latter group, aiming to offer guidance to others navigating change.
One of the things she finds most rewarding is learning about the impact her work has beyond its initial release. Her 2019 book, “The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World,” inspired a wave of stories about inspiring women.
She genuinely brightened when told that her previous book had inspired a nonprofit in Guatemala to incorporate family planning and contraception education for girls completing high school. “I love this,” she says. “You never know how you inspire something when you put a book in the world.”
Initially, “The Next Day” was intended to be part of her 2024 Stanford University commencement address. “Life comes along, it happens to you and things change,” she explains. “There is a lot of beauty and lessons we can learn when the change comes and when transitions happen. I thought, ‘I’ve been through a fair number of transitions now. I’ll take the speech and be much more specific.'”
Though it may seem geared toward women in midlife transitions, the book resonates equally with new graduates and anyone contemplating a career change. French Gates is eager to hear how readers connect with it, saying, “I hope you’ll let me know in a year what comes from this.”
French Gates also reminisces about her childhood in Dallas, where characters like Alexis Carrington influenced her view of women’s roles in business and life. Watching “Dynasty” and “Dallas” back-to-back, she found inspiration in Carrington’s boldness.
“Alexis Carrington was a flawed character. She had sharp elbows. She was ruthless. But I liked that she was a business woman in a man’s world. There weren’t that many female characters who were business women on TV,” she says. “She was also a mom, but what I liked about her was the other women would get dressed up for dinner, and their clothes were beautiful, but she was out in the real world every day. She was competing. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. And I thought, ‘I want to be a working woman like her.'”
Today, her greatest inspirations come from her close circle of longtime friends. “Every Monday morning, whoever is in town, we walk. They have been like truth counsel over time. If I was afraid to take something to them Monday morning, I had to ask myself what is it about my values or what I did that made me uncomfortable with doing that,” she shares.
She includes deeply personal anecdotes, such as the loss of her friend John Neilson, whose wife, Emmy, remains one of her closest friends. Proceeds from the book will fund computer science education in honor of her parents and cancer research in Neilson’s memory.
“I think I helped carry her to the other side of her grief. … (Emmy) is one of the people who helped me cross the chasm of my grief when I made the very difficult decision that I needed to leave my marriage,” French Gates reflects. “There is a vulnerability in deep, deep friends of being known. The fact that you can be known by them and still be loved and still be OK even in some of your worst moments.”
Although Bill Gates has publicly spoken about their divorce, describing it as his “biggest regret,” French Gates approaches the topic more introspectively. She recognized the need to address it in her book because of its public nature and its profound impact on her personal growth.
“I put it from my perspective of what was helpful to me, in hopes to be helpful to others going through it,” she says. She focuses more on the decision to separate than on the divorce proceedings themselves.
“There was a whisper that kept coming. I knew things weren’t right… When more things and more came up or came to light later, in my case, I would have liked to have turned away from them. It would have been easier, it would have been convenient,” she explains. “But there was just this whisper there. This is not OK. I knew at some point in the deep place that I would be betraying myself if I didn’t at least pay attention to that whisper. What the whisper was saying to me was you need separation to make sense.”
She recounts the anxiety of informing her parents, married for 63 years, and the panic she felt considering her ex-husband’s reputation as “one of the toughest negotiators in the world.” She also shares a tender memory of lying in bed with her youngest daughter Phoebe when news of the divorce broke, laughing at memes while feeling far from celebratory.
She recounts sharing her story with journalist Gayle King to encourage others to listen to their inner voice.
Today, French Gates feels invigorated by the work ahead. “I never thought that when I got to 60 that I’d be so vibrant and wanting to work so much and wanting to take on new things,” she says. “It’s actually really, really exciting.”
Above all, she emphasizes the importance of embracing periods of uncertainty without rushing through them. “Make yourself pause and see the clearing. What is it I really want to do next?” she advises. “We have to be purposeful enough to let the pause come and not be afraid of it to rush to the other side.”