Allison Aubrey has probed for plain-spoken truths from so-called "power players" at the World Economic Forum in Davos. When COVID swept the planet, she reported more than 200 stories on the global pandemic. And for her investigative work on the link between pesticides and the decline of bees, she won a James Beard Award.
But one of her more challenging conversations (which lasted a nanosecond) occurred at the kitchen table.
“It was a very typical summer morning. I was tap-tapping on my computer. My daughter – she was 13 at the time – came sauntering into the kitchen. I had just woke up. I was bubbly. ‘Good morning. How are you?’ I asked. And she was, ‘No. Stop looking at me.’”
But in a wide-ranging conversation with George Prentice, Aubrey talked a bit about how that moment laid some of the path to her new book, “Your Turn: How to Create a Midlife You Love.”
“I believe it was a relatable moment. She’s my baby. It’s… her job, right? It is the job of our children in adolescence to push away and start creating their own self-identity. And we have language for that. We give our teens a wide berth for this phase of discovery. But what happened in that moment is I realized that I was looking in the mirror. I was going through the same process. I was starting to ask my own questions. Who am I now? If the busy years of mothering are coming to an end, what’s happening to my body and what is my purpose going forward? And I felt these are intensely as she did.”
Find reporter George Prentice @georgepren
Copyright 2026 Boise State Public Radio
