About The Author


Sheri has built a career around high-performance environments, spanning military service, emergency response, aviation, and education.

As a Certified Flight Instructor and airline trainer, she has developed and delivered programs that have influenced pilots and aviation safety on national and global scales.

Alongside her aviation career, she spent more than 15 years training in the circus arts, including a decade coaching flying trapeze, acrobatics, and strength conditioning. She also performed professionally, reflecting a lifelong pursuit of physical and mental challenge and growth.

A lifelong educator, Sheri has taught across multiple fields in professional, community, and academic settings. Her work includes contributions to aviation safety, public policy, and programs supporting children with special needs and their families. She volunteers teaching English locally and internationally.

Originally from Southern California, she has lived and worked across the United States and around the world. She now lives in Washington, DC, where she focuses on writing, education, and community engagement. In her free time, she can often be found walking long-distance routes in Europe each summer, exploring new places, or continuing her studies in wine, yoga, history, and beyond.

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The Second Bounce

A Middle-Aged Trapeze Artist’s Journey through Life’s Unexpected Landings

By Sheri M. Baxter

Overview


The Second Bounce isn’t about bouncing back.

It’s about what happens after the fall—when you’re thrown back into the air and forced to find your footing without control—despite doing all the right things.

Using flying trapeze as both metaphor and lived experience, the author explores her own falls through stories from the Marines, her career as a pilot, and being abandoned around the globe.

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Description


The Second Bounce isn't about the fall.

And it's not about bouncing back.

In flying trapeze, the second bounce is the moment after the net absorbs the impact, launching the performer back into the air before a second and final landing. It is a moment that rewards awareness, adaptability, and resilience—not because something went wrong, but because even a perfect performance can produce an unexpected response.

Through that metaphor, this memoir chronicles a life filled with disruption, reinvention, and unexpected detours. From being abandoned as a young adult just as she was preparing for college, to navigating the challenges of military service, aviation, public service, and a life across continents, she repeatedly finds herself confronting circumstances she never anticipated and cannot fully control. Y

ears later, after building a life around physical performance, fitness, and movement—including more than a decade coaching flying trapeze and eventually performing as a professional trapeze artist—an unexpected medical condition takes away the strength and physical identity she had relied upon for decades. Forced to rebuild once again, she discovers that resilience is not about toughness, determination, or simply getting back up after a fall.

It is about learning to adapt when the rules change entirely. Blending humor, self-reflection, and hard-earned perspective, The Second Bounce offers a fresh look at resilience, identity, and the moments that define us long after the crisis itself has passed. This is not a story about overcoming obstacles. It is a story about learning how to live when life refuses to follow the script.

Perfect for fans of:

  • Inspiring female memoirs celebrating resilience and reinvention.

  • Unconventional life paths spanning military service, high-flying corporate aviation, and the circus arts.

  • Stories of medical resilience and navigating sudden, life-altering identity shifts.

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Book details

  • Genre:biography & autobiography
  • Sub-genre:Personal Memoirs
  • Language:English
  • Pages:296
  • eBook ISBN:9798317845933
  • Paperback ISBN:9798317845926

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