After a two year hiatus, Reframe Your Life is back. It took a special guest to get me to record another episode. Ann Douglas was Canada's go-to expert on all things parenting for decades. Now that her kids have grown up and left home, she's turning her attention to the glorious messiness that is midlife.

And she hasn't just been researching it; she's been living it: trying to find her way through all that messiness-career curveballs, mental and physical health challenges, a house fire, relationship highs and lows, the death of a parent, and so on.

Ann is the author of twenty-five non-fiction books, including many bestselling titles in the parenting category, such as The Mother of All® series, and a passionate and inspiring speaker who delivers keynote addresses and leads small-group workshops at conferences & online events.

The book recommended in this episode:  One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle (affiliate link)

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We had a great time talking to Cait Flanders author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Year of Less. It may seem like an odd time to publish a book about opting out and yet, as we discovered, this is the perfect time to get serious about leading an intentional life.

Find out more about Cait here. Follow on IG @caitflanders

Find out more about Sandy here. Follow on IG @sandyareynolds 

Find out more about Patti here. Follow IG @pattimhall

About the book:

It has long been thought that artistic output declines in old age. When Emily Urquhart and her family celebrated the eightieth birthday of her father, the illustrious painter Tony Urquhart, she found it remarkable that, although his pace had slowed, he was continuing his daily art practice of drawing, painting, and constructing large-scale sculptures, and was even innovating his style. Was he defying the odds, or is it possible that some assumptions about the elderly are flat-out wrong? After all, many well-known visual artists completed their best work in the last decade of their lives, Turner, Monet, and Cézanne among them. With the eye of a memoirist and the curiosity of a journalist, Urquhart began an investigation into late-stage creativity, asking: Is it possible that our best work is ahead of us? Is there an expiry date on creativity? Do we ever really know when we’ve done anything for the last time?

The Age of Creativity is a graceful, intimate blend of research on ageing and creativity, including on progressive senior-led organizations, such as a home for elderly theatre performers and a gallery in New York City that only represents artists over sixty, and her experiences living and travelling with her father. Emily Urquhart reveals how creative work, both amateur and professional, sustains people in the third act of their lives, and tells a new story about the possibilities of elder-hood.