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 b ..read more

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 ..read more

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 th ..read more

Art crashes into life for author Erica Cantley when she finds herself behind a podium in front of a class of high school seniors, teaching HAMLET as her father died, thousands of miles to the south in Costa Rica. Interspersing interactions with her teenage students and memories of her father, desperately sick and difficult to reach in his adopted jungle home, Cantley guides her students through HAMLET -- written four centuries ago -- while reflecting upon the impending loss of a parent in the never-ending now. The result is a powerful memoir of a love that will not die, the timeless story of t ..read more

Our guest this week  is Anne Bokma . She is an award-winning freelance journalist and the author of My Year of Living Spiritually: From Woo-Woo to Wonderful—One Woman's Secular Quest for a More Soulful Life published by Douglas & McIntyre in October 2019. A leading expert on North America's 80-million strong "spiritual-but-not-religious" demographic, Anne was the award-winning "Spiritual But Secular" columnist for the United Church Observer (now Broadview) for four years before writing her popular My Year of Living Spiritually blog for the magazine. Anne also leads workshops and gives ..read more

An unexpected and belated mid-life love affair with birds and nature and finally discovering one’s place in the world – Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder illuminates the joyful experience of a new discovery and the surprising pleasure to be found while standing still on the edge of a lake at six a.m. When Julia Zarankin saw her first red-winged blackbird at the age of thirty-five, she didn’t expect that it would change her life. Recently divorced and auditioning hobbies during a stressful career transition, she stumbled on birdwatching, initially out of curiosity for the strange breed o ..read more

We all have books that have greatly influenced us.  Dr. Sharon Blackie's bestselling book, If Women Rose Rooted is on Sandy's list of books that came along at just the right time in her life.  Having the opportunity to interview Dr. Blackie was a gift! If you aren't familiar with her, it is our privilege to introduce you! Dr. Sharon Blackie is an award-winning writer and internationally recognised teacher whose work sits at the interface of psychology, mythology and ecology. Her highly acclaimed books, courses, lectures and workshops are focused on the development of the mythic imagi ..read more

Christa Couture reframes the experience of loss for us in her beautiful memoir, How to Lose Everything.  In this interview we talk about the questions she gets asked most frequently, her story of loss and the writing process.  Synopsis of her book:  From the amputation of her leg as a cure for bone cancer at a young age to her first child’s single day of life, the heart transplant and subsequent death of her second child, the divorce born of grief and then the thyroidectomy that threatened her career as a professional musician, How to Lose Everything delves into the heart of los ..read more

It's been said that 'life is a search for a good night's sleep.' If you have ever been sleep deprived you might relate. Sleep disruptions are more common than we realize. Sleep Coach Beth returns to Reframe Your Life to discuss her beautiful new book. It's not just a pretty book though, it is a practical resource to help you get the rest you need. You'll want to hear her publishing story as well. You never know what can happen on social media! For more on Beth check out this previous episode: Episode 79 | Reframe Your Nap.  And find out more about Beth at her website. If you are intereste ..read more

You are going to love this author and her latest book! Alison Wearing is a Canadian writer and performer. In addition to award-winning articles, short stories, essays and solo plays, she is the author of three critically-acclaimed memoirs. Honeymoon in Purdah became a national bestseller and was published in seven countries. Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter was both a bestselling memoir and a multiple award-winning solo play. Her new book, Moments of Glad Grace, has been heralded as "a wise, funny, and tender book, beautifully written and perfectly executed from first to last sentence" by Yan ..read more