Good Life Project

Between 10 and 15 percent of mothers and 1 in 4 fathers are currently estranged from a child. If those numbers feel shocking, the harder truth might be this: most of the moves parents instinctively make once estrangement begins are the exact moves that keep the door shut.

Dr. Joshua Coleman has spent more than four decades as a practicing psychologist and is a Senior Fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families. His own daughter once cut off contact with him. That experience, and everything he has learned since, shaped his work helping families find their way back to each other. He is one of the most trusted voices in the country on family estrangement and reconciliation.

In this conversation, you will explore:

Why estrangement rates are at historically high levels and what massive cultural shifts are driving them
The five defensive moves parents make that almost always make things worse, including why fighting for fairness is the most damaging trap of all
What a genuinely healing apology actually sounds like, and why most apologies miss the mark entirely
Why radical acceptance and hope are not opposites, and how to hold both at the same time
How the principles of repair transfer to sibling estrangements and to grandparents cut off from grandchildren

If someone you love has pulled away and you cannot figure out why, or if you are the one who has needed distance and are wondering what repair could look like, this is the conversation for it.

You can find Joshua at: Website | Instagram | Family Troubles Substack | Episode Transcript

Next week, I am going solo, actually for the entire week, for a two-part midyear summer series about really taking a fresh look at where we are right now. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it.

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Here is something most people never see coming: the hardest part of caring for an aging parent is not the logistics. It is the grief. The grief for who your parent used to be, for the life you thought you would be living by now, and for the version of yourself that is quietly disappearing inside a role you never planned to fill. Couple that with being there for kids, even adult kids, and it can feel like a lot.

Candace Dellacona is a New York City estate attorney known as "a family's lawyer," advising families, athletes, and entertainers on estate planning, asset protection, and the full arc of what it takes to navigate a family through its most vulnerable seasons. Not just the logistics, but also the many, more nuanced shifts in identity, relationships, and responsibilities. She is also a member of the sandwich generation herself, which is what led her to launch The Sandwich Generation Survival Guide podcast. She brings both the legal expertise and the lived experience to this conversation.

What you will explore in this conversation:

Why the sandwich generation is far broader than you think, and why it applies to you even if your parents are healthy right now, or your kids are grown
The four shifts that happen inside you during a caregiving season, identity, ownership, grief, and loneliness, and why we almost never talk about them
Why the conversations about aging, death, and documents are almost always saved for the worst possible moment, and how to have them earlier in a way that actually feels like love
The three-person team that can change everything, and what each one actually does
The unexpected beauty that enters the equation in a caregiving season, the reconciliation, the closeness, the chance to usher someone you love through

If you have a parent who is still healthy and you have never had a real conversation about what happens if that changes, this one is for you.

You can find Candace at: Website | The Sandwich Generation Survival Guide Podcast | LinkedIn | Episode Transcript

Next week, I am sitting down with Dr. Joshua Coleman, a psychologist who has spent years studying something that is reshaping American families in ways most of us have not fully reckoned with: family estrangement. Why it is rising, what is actually driving it, and what to do if you are on either side of it. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you do not miss it.

Check out our offerings & partners:
Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There is something your brain is spinning right now, that you may never have been given a name for or a way out of. The thought you keep replaying. The conversation you keep recasting. The reel that loads up again and again without resolution, making you feel worse each time and no closer to clarity. That is rumination. And according to the neuroscience, it is the single greatest pre-diagnostic factor for depression and anxiety we have identified, and we are all doing it more than we ever have.

Donna Jackson Nakazawa is an award-winning science writer whose work sits at the intersection of neurobiology, emotion, and mental health. Her new book, Mind Drama, is the most rigorous and humane investigation of rumination yet written: what it is, why your brain does it, what it is actually trying to tell you, and how to use a specific neurobiologically grounded framework to loosen its grip.

In this conversation, you will explore:

Why rumination is a survival response gone rogue, and why knowing that changes how you relate to your own spinning thoughts
What a brain scan of Donna's own ruminating mind revealed, and what those red swirls in the default mode network actually mean for your daily life
Why midlife may be the season when old ruminative patterns return with the most force, and what that signal is asking you to hear
The research showing that women ruminate at significantly higher rates than men, why this is, and what the neuroscience says about the acting-in pattern and its link to depression
The MIST framework: a four-step neurobiological practice for naming the mental movies, emotions, and somatic sensations underneath your rumination so the brain can actually let go
Why rumination is never random, always circling the question of whether you matter to the people who matter most to you

If you have ever told yourself to stop thinking about something and found you could not, this conversation is for you.

You can find Donna at: Healing Together Substack | Instagram | Episode Transcript

Next week, we are sitting down with Candace Dellacona, a trust and estates attorney who is also personally in this season, to talk about the caregiving years, and what it costs you when you are pulled in every direction at once, not just logistically but in terms of who you are and who you thought you would be by now. If you are caring for an aging parent, a younger dependent, or both at the same time, this one was made for you. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts, so you do not miss any upcoming episodes.

Check out our offerings & partners:

Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most of us believe more options equals better outcomes. Research says no. In much of life, the opposite is true, and the gap between what we believe and what the data shows is one of the more quietly consequential misconceptions shaping how we live right now.

David Epstein is the author of Range and the new book Inside the Box, both New York Times bestsellers. He spent years studying human performance and creativity, and this conversation picks up where Range left off. If Range was about why broad exploration matters early in life, Inside the Box is about what you actually do once you have all that range. The answer turns out to be counterintuitive: you box yourself in.

In this conversation, you'll discover:

Why people with more options to watch are consistently more bored than people with fewer, and what that reveals about how your brain actually works
The difference between satisficing and maximizing, and why maximizers make worse decisions, feel more regret, and are less happy with their lives despite spending more time and energy on every choice
How Keith Jarrett recorded the best-selling solo jazz piano album of all time on a broken, out-of-tune instrument he almost refused to play, and what that says about where creative breakthroughs actually come from
The paired constraints process used by Monet, Dr. Seuss, and Isabel Allende, and how you can use the same structure to unstick your own creative projects
Why our attention switches tasks every 45 seconds on average now, down from every three minutes 25 years ago, and what it's actually costing us in terms of stress, creativity, and the simple experience of loving our work

This is a conversation for anyone who has ever felt scattered across too many possibilities, half-committed to too many things, and quietly wondered if the constraint they've been avoiding might be exactly the thing they need.

You can find David at: Website | Instagram | Range Widely Substack | Episode Transcript

Next week, we're sitting down with Donna Jackson Nakazawa to talk about why rumination feels so productive even when it's actively working against you, and what the neuroscience actually says about how to loosen its grip. She has a framework for this that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since we recorded. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss it.

Check out our offerings & partners:
Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There is a feeling many people in midlife carry that does not have a name, a clear cause, or anyone to blame.

It shows up when you have been the dependable one long enough that dependable starts to feel like a cage. Or when you have handled everything capably and walked away feeling hollowed rather than proud. Or when you have given more than you have received for so long that the imbalance stopped feeling like generosity and started feeling like the terms of your life.

In this solo episode, Jonathan Fields examines what he calls diffuse resentment, a specific, accumulated form of feeling that is distinct from the anger or grievance most people recognize as resentment. It does not have an address. It does not require a villain. And because it feels illegitimate, because the voice in your head says you made these choices, you have so much to be grateful for, it tends to go unexamined, parked, managed, and silently expensive.

In this solo episode, Jonathan draws on his own experience, research from psychologists Jennifer Lerner, Laura Carstensen, James Pennebaker, and Nick Epley, and thousands of conversations over 14 years of doing this work, to offer a way of looking at this feeling directly.

In this episode, you will explore:

The five territories where diffuse resentment most reliably lives, the calcified role, the invisible labor ledger, the deferred self, relational drift, and the unlived path
Why midlife is specifically when this feeling tends to become unavoidable, and why it often intensifies precisely when things are going well
What the research on emotional suppression actually shows about the cost of carrying unexamined feelings
Two movements (not steps) for beginning to look at this honestly, and why the first must come before the second is possible
What becomes available on the other side: accuracy, energy, and a different quality of closeness in the relationships that matter most

If you have been explaining away a feeling you cannot quite name, this episode is for you.

Episode Transcript

Next week, we're sitting down with David Epstein to talk about something that runs against just about everything the self-help world has told you about freedom and options: why the constraints, limits, and boundaries you have been trying to escape are often the very conditions that make creativity, focus, and satisfaction actually possible. It is a genuinely counterintuitive conversation, and it is the kind that stays with you. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it.

Check out our offerings & partners:
Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.