16 books written by my podcast guests

What if the path to inner peace leads to outright disaster?

Donna seems to have it all – a generous husband, two healthy kids, a Jersey shore home – but something is missing.

When she signs up for yoga teacher training, her carefully cultivated life begins to crumble. Her husband is having an affair. Dangerous childhood secrets resurface. Her career goes sideways. And she doesn’t even like yoga…yet.

As Donna reels and heals, she discovers love, rescues dogs, and confronts another crisis of faith when her mother falls ill.

A devastating but funny, life-affirming love story, We’ve Got to Stop Meeting Like This is for anyone who has ever dared to fight for what matters – and believes it’s never too late to find love or enlightenment.

Pro Age Life and Health Coach Julie Scott has written an inspiring, accessible, down to earth, motivating, honest and REAL book about how to embrace the aging process with optimism, vitality, excitement and possibility topped off with a ‘can-do’ attitude. Even if you’ve given up and decided it’s too late and are ready to fold up and die, this book will inspire you to jump back in and create a life that you love living – at any age! By sharing her own journey of “waking up” in her 40’s, Julie shows how she’s navigating mid-life and beyond by identifying her old “No I Can’t” beliefs and replacing them with powerful “Yes I Can!” beliefs. Come along for the ride into the rest of your life with eyes wide open, full of curiosity, healthy and excited for what’s possible and what’s to come. YES YOU CAN!!

In Kathleen’s home, red jeans were a sin. Parties were punishable with violence. Fear was part of the daily norm. Growing up in a Catholic cult, under the unforgiving eye of her abusive father, Kathleen knew from an early age that if she were to survive, she’d have to do it on her own.

But when the time came to escape, she found herself in a damaging spiral of self-destruction. At rock bottom, and with nowhere to go, Kathleen stepped off a bus in the last place she ever thought she’d find peace: a remote community in rural Canada. Spending a year in almost complete silence, Kathleen feared this experience would prove to be just another step in her unraveling. Instead, with her demons quieted, she emerged with a fresh understanding of self, an empowering new purpose, and a sense of worthiness that she would never let be challenged again.

Wholly Unraveled is Keele Burgin’s gripping and inspiring journey of self-discovery and of finally finding her voice against nearly insurmountable odds.

What if you went to the post office thinking you were picking up a package, but instead you received a box containing your brother’s cremation remains? What if, during that same year, you were diagnosed with breast cancer and had to undergo a double mastectomy – all while simultaneously dealing with the challenge of transitioning your confused and dementia-suffering mother into an assisted living facility?

These three life-altering events happened to Rosie Mankes, but rather than telling the story of a life overturned by hardship, she instead celebrates the magic of breaking free and finding joy, sharing how readers can do the same. Transforming despair and despondency into service to others, Rosie’s memoir is raw, honest, funny, and emotionally relatable all at the same time.

“Don’t Eat the Scraps” describes the crucial and (as of now!) unknown theory of a behavior that men exhibit in the first six to eight weeks in dating. Women everywhere find themselves scratching their head, asking themselves the chin-quivering question, “Where did it all go wrong?”

In a lighthearted, provocative and hilarious way, Jules lays out all the things that women need to know in order to navigate, step-by-step, through the first months of any relationship, armed with some of the soundest Jules’ Rules dating advice they’ll ever receive to overcome future hurdles (and scraps!). It is a one-stop guide to thriving in the murky waters of the dating world… and have a few out-loud chuckles along the way.

In this life-changing book, Rachel Lankester unpicks the accepted status quo and negative stereotypes associated with women’s midlife and aging. She offers us a radical research-based rebranding of midlife and menopause, highlighting the possibilities inherent in this transformational time in a woman’s life.

Far from menopause being the beginning of the end, it can be an exciting catalyst for a more fulfilling next chapter. In this fresh approach to midlife, menopause, and aging, the reader is empowered and provided with resources to get the messy stuff sorted; then guided through a step-by-step blueprint to create a truly magnificent midlife—and beyond.

Whether you’re perimenopausal or post menopause, or you just want to understand what women face, this book will challenge you to think differently about aging, and what midlife and menopause represent. Be prepared not scared!

Retirement, divorce, career change, moving, and kids leaving the “nest” are transitions that can be exhilarating…terrifying…or both! There may be times you look in the mirror and you don’t even recognize the person staring back at you. That loss of identity is far more common than you think. Who you are today is often deeply rooted in the past…your spouse, your children, your career, or your community involvement.

So, when a transition occurs, it can be a confusing and lonely place. But here’s some great news! There is a path out of the darkness and into the light of freedom, fulfillment and joy. Your reality may be limited to the here and now. But your future reality can be something totally different because it has yet to be written.

And guess what? You are the author of your own life’s story. You have the pen! What an incredible opportunity in front of you.

No more diets, guilt, or shame. Instead—a step-by-step process of self-discovery to heal your relationship with food and your body.

Geneen Roth says: “I took Joy’s original Thin Within workshop in 1977. Her brilliance changed my life and was the beginning of developing my own thoughts and program for breaking free from compulsive eating.”

Ever since Eve was banned from the garden, women have endured the oftentimes painful and inaccurate definitions foisted upon them by the patriarchy. Maiden, mother, and crone, representing the three stages assigned to a woman’s life cycle, have been the limiting categories of both ancient and modern (neo-pagan) mythology. And one label in particular rankles: crone. The word conjures a wizened hag—useless for the most part, marginalized by appearance and ability.

None of us has ever truly fit the old-crone image, and for today’s midlife women, a new archetype is being birthed: the creatrix.

In Creatrix Rising, Stephanie Raffelock invites us along on her own transformational journey by providing probing questions for reflection so that we can flesh out and bring to life this new archetype within ourselves. If what the Dalai Lama has predicted—that women will save the world—proves true, then the creatrix will for certain be out front, leading the pack.

If you’ve ever felt that something was “off” in your life and you needed a change but didn’t know where to begin, this book is for you. A Change Would Do You Good is a content-rich guide that combines research and ancient philosophy with proven strategies for overcoming limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging behaviors.

From flexing your brain to infusing meaning in your work, this engaging book explores five areas of change. Learn to:

Change Your Mind: practice mental agility

Change Your Attitudes: feel good enough

Change Your Habits: meet your health and financial goals

Change Your Work: find meaning and purpose in your life

Change Your Relationships: lead with empathy and compassion

Kriste was overweight and turning fifty. Her approaching birthday milestone was a harsh reminder that life was moving quickly, and time was running out to become the woman she once imagined she’d be. Out of shape, uninspired, and riddled with self-doubt, Kriste was determined to make the changes necessary to tackle the next half of her life with grace, bravery, and self-love.

In this honest memoir, follow Kriste on her fifty-week journey out of her comfort zone and on the path to becoming a woman who faces her fears, tackles weight issues, finds her voice, and scrambles up mountains.

Fat Mom on a Mountain is an honest portrayal of a mother who is trying to find herself by peeling away the layers she accumulated through life. Raw, sarcastic, and emotional, this book will leave you inspired and ready to conquer a mountain of your own.

Drinking from a Different Well: How Women’s Stories Change What Power Means in Action is dedicated to young activist Greta Thunberg — and encourages older women to aid our younger cohort in reversing the damage competitive narratives pose to our collective survival. Author Annette Simmons stresses the importance of perceptual agility, gender awareness, empathy, and self-validation in making space for women’s narratives in decision-making.

The book looks at the genius of women’s narratives about power, and tracks how men often misunderstand female contexts. It maps out a cohesive way to blend male and female power in the workplace, and to redefine success in a way that protects people, profits, and the planet.

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If you were about to leave this world. Would you have any regrets?

Despite all the changes going on externally in your life and internally in your over 50 body you want more. You’re ready to live life without apologies. You realize that there a lots of things you want to do and accomplish and the clock is ticking.

As a women in your 50s or over, you’ve done so much for others and are ready to focus on you. You know this can’t be it. You know there has to be more to life as it is and you are ready for it but not sure how to go about it.

Kwavi uses the power of questions to help you discover the important steps needed to design the next chapter of your life on your own terms without regrets.

In 2020 the world went to hell in a handbag. This isn’t exactly headline news – although it was then. I went from perfectly locatable in the Cotswolds to utterly baffled in the American wilderness when I embarked on a quest to walk from Mexico to Canada for reasons that escape me. It was most probably nothing more dramatic than a mid-life crisis.

Everything you ever taught me is my journey, relying on nothing other than the twelve steps of recovery, teaching me to take it one day at a time, one step at a time, and one bloody ginormous mountain at a time as I staggered my way along the Pacific Crest Trail. As mid-life crises go, I remain utterly clueless why mine took me from my sofa to the Canadian border via the fridge, powered only by two chubby legs and a fat arse.

This riveting memoir by Laura Davis, the author of The Courage to Heal, examines the endurance of mother-daughter love, how memory protects and betrays us, and the determination it takes to fulfill a promise when ghosts from the past come knocking.

When she published The Courage to Heal in 1988, Laura Davis helped more than a million women work through the trauma of childhood sexual abuse. But her decision to go public with her grandfather’s incest deepened an already painful estrangement with her mother, Temme.

Over the next twenty years, from a safe distance of three thousand miles, Laura and Temme reconciled their volatile relationship and believed that their difficult past was behind them. But when Temme moves across the country to entrust her daughter with the rest of her life, she brings a faltering mind, a fierce need for independence, and the seeds of a second war between them.

Spirit Traffic recounts how, at the age of 50, the author learned to ride a motorcycle, overcame the terror of navigating her steep dirt driveway in Vermont, and, three days after her son’s college graduation, set off with him and her yoga-teacher husband (his stepdad) on a 10,000-mile two-wheel adventure that took them all into uncharted territory—both as novice riders, and as a family. As if in the saddle of her dual-sport BMW, the reader will experience the good, the bad, and the heartbreak of her journey as a soon-to-be-empty-nester grappling with impermanence, sexuality, hot flashes, high winds, and tailgating tour buses.

Spirit Traffic is at once a colorful travelogue of a bucket-list bikers’ route across America and an unflinching memoir of a middle-aged mom conquering her fears (on and off the bike), unpacking a complicated childhood with an addict father and stoic mother, and ultimately, learning to let go of her only child. (Think Blue Highways meets Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance meets Operating Instructions meets Wild.)

With its first-person accounts of legendary rides such as the Burr Trail, Hell’s Backbone Road, and the Pacific Coast Highway, Spirit Traffic will find a ready audience among bikers. But as a midlife memoir, Spirit Traffic will also resonate for anyone who is navigating the departure of a child, negotiating the dynamic tensions of family, or simply yearning for life’s next adventure.