Ann Douglas
Author, radio commentator, and speaker, Independent
A bestselling author and a former parenting columnist for both CBC Radio and THE TORONTO STAR, Ann has been called "Canada's most trusted parenting writer." And now, with the release of a brand new book, she's turning her attention to midlife.
Media
It Takes A Village to Raise A Writer
A few thoughts on what it means to me to be inducted into the Peterborough Pathway of Fame. (I am the 2020 inductee in the "Literary" category.)
CBC Radio, June 12, 2016Radio/Podcast
The countdown to summer is officially on, which may lead to feelings of panic, if you're a parent! Yes, it's that time of year when budgets take a beating and to do lists take on a life of their own. Parenting columnist Ann Douglas joins us to offer some advice. Note: I contribute an on-air parenting column to up to 11 weekend morning shows across the country each month.
Precarious employment is a parenting issue
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, December 1, 2015Online
URL: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/precarious-employment-parenting-issue
Remember what it was like back when your child was a newborn—how you used to gaze into his eyes and dream of the day when he’d be old enough to juggle multiple part-time, temporary jobs in the hope of someday, maybe, being able to afford his own place? Okay, you didn’t actually have that dream. And neither did I.
Why our economic future depends on a national childcare programme
Canadian Family, March 1, 2012Online
With a lack of spaces, inconsistent quality control and a reduction of subsidies, Canada’s child-care system is severely under-developed. This puts the economic future of our country in jeopardy and leaves our kids severely disadvantaged.
How do I become a more patient parent? (video)
Today's ParentOnline
URL: http://www.todaysparent.com/family/parenting/how-do-i-become-a-more-patient-parent/
When it comes to parenting, patience really is a virtue. But as every mom or dad knows, it’s not always easy. In this helpful video, parenting expert Ann Douglas tells you why taking a little time for yourself goes a long way to becoming a more patient parent for your kids. One in a series of videos created in collaboration with Today's Parent.
Bullying Prevention Tips for At-Risk Children
Canadian Red Cross, April 1, 2015Online
URL: http://www.redcross.ca/blog/2015/4/bullying-prevention-tips-for-at-risk-children
It’s not your imagination: children who are struggling with mental health, neurodevelopmental, and behavioural challenges are more likely to be bullied—and/or to bully—other children.
Ann Douglas: Balancing Motherhood And Mental Health Advocacy
Bell Let's Talk, January 21, 2016Online
URL: http://blog.bell.ca/ann-douglas-balancing-motherhood-and-mental-health-advocacy/
Ann Douglas is a passionate writer, talented speaker and parenting expert. She is also the mother of four children who have each struggled with different mental health challenges. Inspired by her role as a parent and the journey of being a mental health patient herself, Ann has made it her mission to motivate others in need....We spent some time with Ann to find out more about her experiences and expertise.
Navigating the Messy Middle: A Fiercely Honest and Wildly Encouraging Guide for Midlife Women
by Ann Douglas
Douglas & McIntyre
October 1, 2022
ISBN: 9781771623438
Roughly 68 million North American women currently grapple with the challenges of midlife, faced with a culture that tells them their “best-before date” has long passed. In Navigating the Messy Middle, Ann Douglas pushes back against this toxic narrative, providing a fierce and unapologetic book for and about midlife women.
In this deeply validating and encouraging book, Douglas interviews well over one hundred women of different backgrounds and identities, sharing their diverse conversations about the complex and intertwined issues that women must grapple with at midlife: from family responsibilities to career pivots, health concerns to building community. Readers will find a book that offers practical, evidence-based strategies for thriving at midlife, coupled with compelling first-person stories.
Offering purpose and meaning in a life stage that can otherwise feel out of control, Douglas pushes back against the message that women at midlife are no longer relevant and needed, highlighting the far-reaching economic, political and social impacts of these messages and providing a refreshing counter-narrative that maps out a path forward for women at midlife.
Both a midlife love letter and a lament, Navigating the Messy Middle both celebrates the beauty and rages at the many injustices of this life stage and provides readers with the tools to chart their own course.
"This book tackles the complex and often misunderstood topic of women’s lived experience of mid-life, with insights from interviews with more than one hundred women. In these pages, the reader is invited into a cornucopia of women’s stories, challenging the invisibility often associated with this stage of life, and ultimately drawing us towards a collective reimagining of the female life cycle."
–Molly Andrews, co-director, Association for Narrative Research and Practice
"If you’re a woman facing the beautiful, messy, occasionally harsh realities of mid-life, this book is for you. It offers a candid exploration of what it means to be a middle-aged woman in modern western society, a role which sees us at once indispensable and ignored. It’s an eye-opening read."
–Catherine Clark, co-founder, The Honest Talk
"This is the midlife book we’ve been missing! Ann Douglas demystifies midlife and launches a conversation with inclusion, justice, compassion and honesty at its core. Navigating the Messy Middle will be well-loved, dogeared, underlined, and passed from friend to friend. It will encourage continued conversations between women who, after reading this book, will know for sure that they aren’t alone."
–Sara Smeaton, midlife coach
"In this comprehensive overview of mid-life, Ann Douglas weaves a powerful tapestry of narratives, rich with the colours of many voices. The result is a precious gift for women feeling lost, desperate, or alone in midlife, since Douglas reveals, vibrantly, how peril is outweighed by potential and that midlife can be a “journey of becoming.” This is an important and much-needed book."
–Beth Powning, author of Edge Seasons: A Midlife Year
"The best thing about Ann Douglas’s perspective, as always, is her understanding that one-size-fits-all advice fits no one. Instead, in Navigating the Messy Middle, readers will discover an empowering guide to finding one’s own way through the ups and downs of midlife, a time when seeking strength in connection, embracing the changeability of the physical self, and focusing on one’s real values and priorities can create a powerful moment of (finally!) becoming."
–Kerry Clare, author of Waiting for a Star to Fall
"If we’re lucky, we all occasionally have one of those evenings with friends where we vent about everything rattling around in our brains and lives, and realize that the answer to the question “Is it just me?” is a resounding no. This book is one of those evenings between two covers, delivered with Douglas’s signature wisdom, perspective, warmth and wit."
–Shannon Proudfoot, former Ottawa bureau chief, Maclean’s
"In Navigating the Messy Middle, Ann Douglas gives us the context, the compassion and the courage needed to understand the challenges, gifts and opportunities that midlife presents. It reads like both a manifesto and a heart-to-heart with your closest friends."
–Brandie Weikle, editor and publisher, thenewfamily.com
"Our culture paints a vague yet bleak picture of menopause, and the result is a population of women who see their first hot flash as the beginning of the end. But midlife is about more than menopause. It’s nuanced and multifaceted, and where there can sometimes be misery, there can also be magic, as Ann Douglas illustrates persuasively in her new book, Navigating the Messy Middle. Written clearly and compellingly with a mix of science-backed information and real-life stories, Navigating the Messy Middle will inevitably find a wide, appreciative audience. Reading it made me feel seen, understood and empowered, and my anxiety about this period in my life has been replaced by curiosity and optimism. If you buy one book about midlife, make it this one."
–Kim Shiffman, editor-in-chief, Today's Parent
"Applying surgical myth-busting to harmful narratives that disappear middle aged women, Ann Douglas takes us on a life-affirming journey. Reading it has been a bit of an emotional journey. I think most women will have the same reaction - feeling seen, validated and celebrated!"
–Kelly Carmichael, former executive director, Fair Vote Canada
"I have appreciated Ann Douglas’ insights on parenting for many years. She is kind, honest and clear-eyed, and much less patronizing than other relationships writers. She puts these skills to great use in Navigating the Messy Middle, which comes at a perfect time for me, as I try to evolve into the next stage of my life. The book shows middle-aged women that we’re not alone, while encouraging us to prioritize what makes our unique selves satisfied and happy."
–Denise Balkissoon, Ontario bureau chief, The Narwhal and former executive editor, Chatelaine
"In Navigating the Messy Middle, Ann Douglas challenges the prevailing narrative that women in midlife are a product past their prime. Combatting this culturally prescribed march toward invisibility, Douglas centres a diversity of women who, through sharing their stories, weave a broader, kinder, more accurate, and more inclusive narrative that is ripe with the realities, possibilities, complexities and contradictions experienced by women in midlife."
–Kathryn Adams-Sloan, chair of the Women’s Caucus to the Canadian Association for Social Work Education
Happy Parents Happy Kids
by Ann Douglas
HarperCollins Canada
February 19, 2019
9781443425759
Happy Parents Happy Kids is the ultimate no-guilt guide to boosting your enjoyment of parenting while at the same time maximizing the health and happiness of your entire family. You can find ways to take care of yourself while you’re busy raising a family—just as you can choose to use parenting strategies that work for you and your kids. This practical and encouraging book will help you
· Discover what less-stressed-out parents know about minimizing the fallout from work-life imbalance (to say nothing of all the other things our generation of parents can’t help but feel anxious about)
· Tackle the challenges of distracted parenting(in a way that helps kids to develop healthy relationships with technology)
· Balance your hopes and dreams for your children with the demands of the rest of your life
· Manage screen time for your whole family with simple and effective strategies
· Learn mindfulness strategies that can make parenting easier and can be effortlessly worked into your daily life
· Live healthier (including a crash course on the science of habit change)
· Become a calmer and more confident parent so that you can stop feeling bad and raise astonishingly great kids
The takeaway message is clear, powerful, and potentially life-changing. You can lose the guilt, embrace the joy, and thrive alongside your kids.
Sleep Solutions for your Baby, Toddler and Preschooler: The Ultimate No-Worry Approach for Each Age and Stage
by Ann Douglas
Collins
The Mother of All Baby Books
by Ann Douglas
Wiley
The Mother of All Baby Books
by Ann Douglas
HarperCollins Canada
The Mother of All Pregnancy Books
by Ann Douglas
HarperCollins Canada
The Mother of All Pregnancy Books: An All-Canadian Guide to Conception, Birth and Everything In Between
by Ann Douglas
Wiley
The Mother of All Pregnancy Organizers
by Ann Douglas
Wiley
The Mother of All Toddler Books: An All-Canadian Guide to Your Child's Second and Third Years
by Ann Douglas
Wiley
The Unofficial Guide to Having a Baby
by Ann Douglas & John R. Sussman
Wiley
Trying Again: A Guide to Pregnancy after Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Loss
by Ann Douglas & John R. Sussman
Taylor Trade Publishing
August 4, 2016
Mealtime Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler and Preschooler: The Ultimate No-Worry Approach for Each Age and Stage
by Ann Douglas
Wiley
Parenting Through The Storm
by Ann Douglas
HarperCollins Canada
Parenting Through the Storm: Find Help, Hope, and Strength When Your Child Has Psychological Problems
by Ann Douglas
The Guilford Press
Before You Were Born: The Inside Story
by Ann Douglas, Eugenie Fernandes & Gilbert Duclos
Maple Tree Press
Biography
Ann Douglas has spent over two decades of her life writing and speaking about parenting. She's the author of a bestselling series of pregnancy and parenting books (over half a million copies sold to date) and an accomplished speaker who is known for sparking conversations that matter about parenting and mental health. And now she is shifting her focus to writing books for and about women at midlife.
Her forthcoming book -- NAVIGATING THE MESSY MIDDLE: A FIERCELY HONEST AND WILDLY ENCOURAGING GUIDE FOR MIDLIFE WOMEN -- offers practical, evidence-based strategies for thriving at midlife, coupled with the compelling stories of more than one hundred midlife women who share their hard-won wisdom on everything from managing worries and regrets, to chasing after long-held hopes and dreams. NAVIGATING THE MESSY MIDDLE celebrates midlife’s unique messiness and gives midlife women the tools to imagine a new and better path forward. The book -- which will be published by Douglas & McIntyre -- will be available in Canada on October 1, 2022, and in the US on March 23, 2023.
Recognition/Reconnaissance
Peterborough Pathway of Fame (September 2020) | Professional
The Pathway of Fame -- which is located in Del Crary Park in Peterborough, Ontario -- honours individuals who have helped to put Peterborough on the map by contributing to the wider culture in some way. Ann Douglas was honoured in the "literary" category.
Resource Links, Best of the Year | Professional
2003. "Body Talk"
Silver Award Winner, National Magazine Awards | Professional
Editorial package (part of a winning team), 2010. "Captain Cottager." Cottage Life.
Peterborough Business Excellence Award | Professional
Micro-business category, 2005.
Lifetime Membership : Professional Writers Association of Canada | Professional
June 2013
Invited to Discussion with Governor General David Johnston | Professional
April 2012
Finalist, Red Cedar Awards (BC) | Professional
2004-05. "Body Talk"
Finalist, National Magazine Awards | Professional
Service: Health and Family, 2014. "I Will Survive." Canadian Living.
Canadian Children's Book Centre "Our Choice" Selection | Professional
2003. "Body Talk"
Past Talks
Parenting Through the Storm
Mom's for Mental Health Fundraising Breakfast sponsored by Bell Let's Talk
Youth Services Bureau, Ottawa, January 22, 2016
Parenting Through the Storm
Community education workshop and webcast
Alberta Children's Hospital, Calgary, Alberta, October 27, 2015
Parenting Through the Storm
Workshop for family support workers who work with families who have a child who is struggling with a mental health, neurodevelopmental, and/or behavioural challenge.
Early Childhood Development Support Services, Edmonton, Alberta, October 26, 2015
Keynote presentation and workshop
Edmonton Literacy and Learning Day
Edmonton, Alberta, October 24, 2015
Big-Picture Parenting
Mindful Parenting Conference
Whitby, Ontario, November 7, 2015
CAMH Portico Launch
Presentation at special event in conjunction with Bell Let's Talk -- to announce the launch of the CAMH Portico Network.
CAMH, Toronto, January 21, 2016
Bell Let's Talk Event
Bell Let's Talk Campaign 2016: Bell Employee Workshop
Bell Headquarters, Mississauga, January 26, 2016