Women in the Middle®: Loving Life After 50 - Midlife Coach Podcast

Today we're talking about why our sibling relationships might be the longest and least understood relationships of our lives and why that's so important.
My guest today is Catherine Carr, an award-winning documentary maker, presenter, and podcast producer with over twenty years in audio, including work for BBC Radio 4 and the World Service through her own company, Pocket Productions. She's the middle child of three, which led her to create the podcast Relatively, dedicated to sibling relationships.
Her first book, Who's the Favorite?, argues that our brothers and sisters shape us as much as our parents do. Sibling relationships often outlast every other bond in our lives, yet we rarely talk about them beyond childhood squabbles.
Drawing on over seventy sibling interviews from her podcast, along with psychology research and pop culture, Catherine explores the roles we get assigned, the friendships and rivalries, the shared history, and the estrangements, and makes the case for building stronger relationships with our siblings going forward.
This episode is easy to relate to, so please enjoy this interview!
Listen to the full interview here!

You can, but do you want to? Women over 50 are often incredibly capable. You know how to handle things, solve problems, take care of people and get stuff done. But after decades of being the woman who can, it's easy to stop asking a completely different question: "Do I actually still want to?" In this episode, we explore the difference between capability and desire and also why something doesn't have to become unbearable before you reconsider it. 
Listen Here.

Today's guest did something unexpected when she chose to leave her judgeship and follow a new direction in poetry. Her name is Jacqueline St. Joan.
Jackie is a retired lawyer, judge, and law professor, as well as an early feminist activist, community organizer, memoirist and novelist whose path to the bench was anything but planned.
She started her career as a secretary, went to law school at 28 as a divorced mother of two, and ended up representing domestic violence survivors before becoming the first judge in Denver's centralized protection order court. Her outspoken feminism brought public scrutiny though her rulings were consistently upheld and she was voted back into office.
Her shift away from law began after her father's death, when she started writing about their complicated relationship. A trip to a writers' conference in Aspen turned that project into a lifelong pull toward poetry, then fiction. Jackie stepped down from the bench gradually, working part-time as a mediator and law professor to stay financially stable while building a writing career.
Her memoir, Your Verdict: A Judge's Reckoning with Lawand Loss,  (Golden Antelope Press) was recently published. Jackie is also the author of two novels, My Sisters Made of Light and The Shawl of Midnight.  Jackie served as a Denver County Judge from 1987-1994.  Jackie was also recently inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.
Please enjoy this fascinating interview here!

Being intentional about the kind of daughter you want to be with your aging parents is important. While we're busy noticing our own aging, our parents are aging too, and that realization tends to sneak up on us. 
This episode moves past the logistics of caregiving (appointments, prescriptions, forms) and into the relationship underneath it. We need to ask ourselves an important question and it's not "what does a good daughter do" with senior parents. Instead, a better questions is "what kind of daughter do YOU want to be" with your aging parents. 
Discover how my regret-proofing framework can work to support you during this time of your life. Learn how to become intentional in a relationship you can't control, with the person aging in front of you. This is a great way toregret-proof your life!
Learn More Here.

In this episode, you'll learn from Fredrik Härén, "The Creativity Explorer," a Swedish creativity expert who has spent 25 years traveling to 75 countries interviewing people to learn as much as he can about human creativity.
Fredrik is the author of ten books, including "The Idea Book," which was included in "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time," and he has been invited to speak more than 2000 times in 75 countries on six continents. As The Creativity Explorer, he aims to discover more about creativity, be it from innovators in Silicon Valley or nomads in the desert of Mongolia. His latest book is called "The World of Creativity" – a journey across 37 countries to discover the secret of creative minds.
You'll also discover how a mispronunciation from his young son led to his signature nickname, and why he believes "explorer" captures the creative mindset better than "expert" ever could. Along the way, you'll pick up the etymological roots of curiosity across English, Icelandic, and Bulgarian, and understand why questioning, rather than answering, may be the real engine behind creative thinking.
Finally, you'll come away with an unconventional philosophy on timing and opportunity, including the surprising nautical origin of the word "opportunity" itself. The conversation closes with a preview of his new book, The World of Creativity, and his core piece of advice for women navigating midlife.