Career Pivots + Second Acts

From Farmer to Author With Anna Featherstone

It’s easy to romanticize the “simple life” (I’m guilty of it pretty much daily) but what happens when the simple, sustainable, satisfying life you set out to create turns into…something else entirely? Australian author and sustainability advocate Anna Featherstone experienced exactly this while she and her husband were running a “small” farm that, along the …

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Behind-the-scenes of a future bookstore: Sunday Morning Tea

Have you ever dreamed of doing something completely different – like, say, opening a bookstore? Learn more about the bookstore my sister Kathreen and I and our partners Eric and…well, Eric, are opening in the northern Michigan town of Manistique sometime this spring/summer, in this special Sunday Morning Tea, live from the mid-renovation building! Watch …

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From bureaucrat to bookstore owner at 55

“Owning an bookstore is literally my dream.” Since announcing our plans to start our own indie book shop with our partners in northern Michigan, my sister Kathreen and I have heard those words many times. But if you’re not accustomed to thinking of yourself as a business owner, making the leap from a 9-5 job …

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Writing new stories in midlife, with novelist Kristen Mei Chase

Strained mother-daughter relationships. Second-chance romances. Overcoming childhood trauma. And, finding your true self in midlife. What do these things have in common? They’re all themes in Kristen Mei Chase’s debut novel, A Thousand Miles to Graceland, as well as in her actual life. Listen in as Kristen and I discuss midlife mom-daughter relationships, parenting teenagers, …

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Self-acceptance -vs- self-improvement: do they have to compete?

“You’re enough.” “You’re amazing.” “You’re beautiful, just as you are.” Also: “Employ a growth mindset!” “Do better.” And, “This is your year to slay!” Everywhere we look, we see conflicting messages: you’re wonderful and deserving of acceptance just as you are, but – pssst – honestly, you could do a lot better. And at no …

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If you could live anywhere: empty-nest moving fantasies and what it means to bloom where you’re planted, with Melody Warnick

Do you fantasize about moving across the country – or globe – the minute the kids move out? Are you happily settled in your current town or city? Or, is your answer a bit more nuanced? While the place we live can have a major impact on the way we live, the truth is that we have …

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