College after 40, her first book after 40, speaking engagements, lots of traveling and art… and Carol D. O’Dell says she’s only just begun.  I’ve recently been lucky to interview Carol and for those considering a mid-life career change here is your inspiration.

     Carol graduated (with her husband) from Jacksonville University with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art and English… two years ago.  She had attended seminary when she was younger and became a children’s minister for about 15 years. Then about ten years ago her mother needed full time care - she had Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Carol moved her into her home and at that point, she and her husband started college one night a week.

     Carol has three grown daughters. When they were young she says she was an entrepreneur “by nature and necessity.” Babysitting for other moms, running a pre-school and a summer camp, freelancing for her church and even teaching piano lessons. According to Carol this mentality of taking her skills and using them to not only make money, but to keep herself engaged and creative, finally became a way of life.

     Like many of us, Carol’s children were at an age where they would be leaving the nest when her mother was taken ill and she found herself in the position of full-time caregiver. She was already a writer of short stories, essays and articles, and now she found herself writing every day - journalling her way through caregiving. Those journals became her book - Mothering Mother. 

I also used my other “artistic” adventures to feed my soul - I began painting more serious (I paint landscapes, and Van Gogh replicas), and then took glass blowing and bronze sculpture in college. These artistic endeavors got me through and geve me hope. As brain dead and physically exhausted as I was, art was my tether line.

     When I asked Carol about her mentors, she was very specific. She says her all-time mentor is Madeleine L’Engle, the author of about 50 books, including A Wrinkle in Time (which, by the way, was my first - and favorite - novel in the third grade). Carol spent a week with Ms. L’Engle at a retreat. At that time she was about 78-80.

A great wise woman - and all of us (about 20 women) felt like little chicks gathered around the mama-hen. She was generous and strong. She had a lifelong (since the age of 40) career as a writer/teacher/speaker/mentor. She taught me (through her books) how to be a woman and an artist - and have room for family, too.

     Carol mentions Dotsie Bregel - writer, speaker, and founder of National Association of Boomer Women and Boomer Women Speak - as an online influence. As far as self-help books and authors she says -

I love Art & Fear by Bayles and Orland - that book gets me through my dark nights of the soul as a creator. Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles is to me, the pinnacle of self help - a compilation of years of research about great leaders - men and women who have forged meaning and purpose both privately and collectively. And then I must pay homage to Julia Cameron, Anne Lamott, and Natalie Goldberg. These women gave writers and artists permission to explore their artistic terrain.

     Where does Carol find her most support? She says she has the greatest friends in the world, including her best friend who is a life coach! She has many artist/entrepreneur friends and they all take turns having their “big moments” and cheering each other on. Carol believes that it’s very important to surround yourself with people who believe in you, even though that may mean letting go of the “negative nay-sayers/crazy makers who simply won’t change and don’t want you to either.”

     When I asked Carol about her biggest secret goal - she mentioned her love of an academic challenge and the possibility of a higher degree, and… more books to come.

There’s nothing better than to tell a sweet, funny, gut-grabbing story and hod an audience by your words. Ah!

     Please visit Carol’s website(s) for more information about her book, Mothering Mother: A Daughter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir and her novel-in-progress, White Iris.

• caroldodell.com
• mothering-mother.com

A survey released last week found one reason America doesn’t top the list: Baby Boomers are generally miserable compared to other generations. Further, a public opinion poll released by the Pew Research Center in April found that 81 percent of Americans say they believe the country is on the “wrong track.” The response is the most negative in the 25 years pollsters have asked the question.

 What can we do to get happy? According to Robin Lloyd at LiveScience

One route to more happiness is called “flow,” an engrossing state that comes during creative or playful activity, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has found. Athletes, musicians, writers, gamers, and religious adherents know the feeling. It comes less from what you’re doing than from how you do it….

According to Csikzentmihalyi (prounounced chicks-send-me-high) the flow makes us feel - completely involved, focused, concentrating - with this eighter due to innate curiosity or as the result of training; a sense of ecstasy - of being outside everyday reality; great inner clarity - knowing what needs to be done and how well it is going; knowing the activity is doable - that the skills are adequate, and neither anxious or bored; sense of serenity - no worries about self, feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of ego - afterwards feeling of transcending ego in ways not thought possible; timeliness - thoroughly focused on present, don’t notice time passing; and intrinsic motivation - whatever produces “flow” becomes its own reward.

Are you in the flow?

“We should not judge people rigidly by the years they were born,” she says, “If we want to define people by categories, it should be by behaviors because this is something each of us chooses.”

I took the test and found out that I’m not a Baby-Boomer afterall. I fall somewhere between Gen X and Gen Y.  Click here to take the test yourself. It takes less than a minute.