EPI 49 - Hot Flashes to Higher Wisdom: Reframing Midlife

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Welcome back to The Habit Within. I am your host, Camille, and this week's episode, we are going to dive in to one of the most profound transitions in a woman's life. Perimenopause, menopause, the midlife reset, like I like to call it.

And before we dive into this, I want to define a little bit about what perimenopause means and when it begins because I think that there might be some confusion around that. I know for me as a medical provider, I didn't quite understand when perimenopause began either. So now we're recognizing that these hormonal changes, this hormonal transition can begin as early as age 35.

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And with that, we can have menstrual changes. So irregular periods, heavier, lighter, or maybe we even start to skip a period. We could have some mood changes where you feel more irritable or depressed or have some mood swings.

We can have these hot flashes where we just have these unexpected temperature changes within our body where we feel warmer. We might experience night sweats or vaginal dryness and increased vaginal discharge. That can occur as well, especially when you're in the beginning to middle stages of perimenopause.

You might need to pee more often, or you might have sleep problems, right? Where you never had issues with falling to or staying to sleep. And then you notice that you're waking up at 3 a.m. in the morning, and this could be due to hormonal changes. I just want to say that if you are 35 and older and you don't have any of these symptoms, you don't need to have the symptoms.

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What I mean by that is so often we think at a certain period of our life, especially when we're hearing more and more about perimenopause and menopause, if you're in that age bracket, that we can think that, oh, I think I'm feeling something, right? I think I'm feeling a symptom, when 20% of people don't have symptoms at all. So you might be the lucky few who don't have symptoms, or you might have extremely mild symptoms, which also is a pretty large chunk of individuals. Only about 20% have severe symptoms.

Now, there can be mild to moderate fear. It can be different at different stages, and it's all good. I just want to just let you know that just because you are in the age bracket doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have symptoms.

But it's not all about the physical phase, the physical changes that occur. This is also a spiritual initiation, an energetic awakening. And when I think of it like this, it just makes me fall in love with this period of my life.

It makes me fall in love deeper with myself, which is what I'm hoping that you will experience too as you're along this journey. So whether you're experiencing hot flashes or mood swings, or you just feel like a shift is occurring within, this episode is for you. And even if you are already in menopause, this episode is going to be for you as well.

Because we are going to reflect back on the time that we first had our period, Menarche, the day of our first period, and beyond. I want to start by introducing you to the work of Carl Jung, if you haven't heard of him before. He's a 20th century psychiatrist, psychoanalyst.

Jung was particularly famous for his theory of collective unconscious and for his research on archetypes, the shadow, and personality types. And I really love his work around midlife. He describes midlife as this pivotal period of transformation, a time to shift focus from all of the external achievements to internal growth.

So instead of looking outside of ourselves and chasing societal goals like career, family, external validation, he says that this time of our life, we really start to look within, and we start asking deeper questions. Like, who am I without these roles as a caretaker? Who am I without my professional role? What is my true soul's calling? I was first introduced to Jung's work regarding midlife, so I had known about him before. But regarding midlife is when I heard that he said that in your 40s, that women typically want to walk out their backyard and go into the forest and be in solitude.

And that really resonated with me because I had my second kid in my late 30s, which meant that he was a young child, a toddler in my early 40s. And I felt like a different mother between him and my first. With him, I did feel this sense of pushing away.

And I don't want to say that. I wasn't not there for him, but I did notice that there was this internal reflection that was occurring that I didn't have with my other one. That I was more accessible in the evenings with my oldest than with my youngest.

That I had his dad take over a lot of those evening bedtime routines and snuggles and all of the things because there was something that was just pulling me away. And so when I heard that, it gave me some solace that this was just part of the transition. It didn't mean that I wasn't a there present mother.

It just meant that it was different and that biologically that was okay. And of course, that's my experience. You might be a in your 40s or even 50s who have young children and it's different for you and that's beautiful.

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But if you've also noticed that, then I just want to give a voice to it. And Young really saw this vulnerability as a gateway to transformation. That when we start looking within, that that allows us to really transform.

The symptoms of fluctuating emotions or physical discomfort actually allows us, it invites us to slow down and to reflect. So instead of seeing these shifts as huge disruptors, what if we viewed them as an opportunity to uncover deeper layers of ourselves? A key part of Young's philosophy is embracing the shadow. Have you guys ever heard of shadow work? The shadow is parts of ourselves that we ignored or we have suppressed.

So by integrating these aspects, that recognizing that we are all of our parts, that we are all of our shadows, we create wholeness and clarity. And I do a lot of this work with my clients one-on-one, the shadow work. This midlife phase is not a decline.

It's an invitation to evolve into the most authentic version of yourself. Looking back on this now, I can recognize that my midlife transition happened when I was turning 40. Not cliche at all, right? But this was when I was having my spiritual initiation and an energetic awakening.

And it's when I experienced one of the biggest shifts of my life. I was on the brink of 40 and I felt this massive pull to become somebody new, to become this new version of myself, to step into the higher version of myself, if you to live a life more fully aligned with my deeper purpose. But something was holding me back.

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Something energetically was holding me back and then something physically was holding me back and that was alcohol. I knew I wanted more. I was exercising and eating well and making surface level changes, but I wasn't experiencing the joy, the energy, the connection that I desperately craved.

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And drinking was this tether. It just kept me back into the cycle of stagnation. It kept me back into that old self of mine.

And each time I drank, I stepped further away from clarity and the courage that I needed to take bold action. So it might not be drinking for you, but can you identify something right now that's tethering you back to your old life? Something that you can identify that if you broke, that could really allow you to step into this new transition with more ease and not like you're carrying a bag of bricks with you. When I finally let go of alcohol for those five years, everything shifted.

Suddenly I could see the bigger picture. I handled challenges like my health concerns and perimenopausal symptoms with more grace and resilience. I'm still learning about the grace and resilience through it, but I'm doing so with clarity and connection.

It's that same clarity and connection that I had been yearning for. And it's here. It's arrived.

But I was able to recognize and notice that it had arrived because I had changed a massive part of me. I allowed for the transition to happen instead of forcing myself to stay the younger version of myself. So letting go of drinking was like fixing a leaky roof.

For years I had been putting buckets under the leaks instead of addressing the source of the problem. Once I repaired the roof, my entire house changed. My mind, body, and spirit felt stable and secure.

So what is that leaky roof for you? What small but impactful change could you make to align more fully with the life you deserve? Now for many of us, our relationship with our bodies is nuanced. It has been shaped by cultural narratives that teach us to see our cycles and our symptoms as inconveniences. Maybe we had some big T or small T traumas that occurred in our life that dissociated ourselves from our bodies.

So think about your own history gently. When you had your first period, was it a source of pride or embarrassment? Did you experience painful symptoms, unplanned pregnancies or pregnancy losses? How have you been viewing your body during perimenopause or maybe menopause? These stories matter because they shape how we view ourselves and our bodies. But what if we could rewrite the script? Would it have any significance in perimenopause or menopause? Instead of cursing our symptoms, what if we viewed them as messages from our body? An invitation to slow down, to pay attention, to honor the incredible complexity and strength of our physiology, to revere our body.

I mean, did you know that our uterus expands over 500 times its size and that it is the strongest muscle in the body? Or that our clitoris with its 8,000 nerve endings is the only organ designed purely for pleasure. Even the menstrual cycle itself acts as a health barometer. It reflects shifts in our physical and emotional well-being.

If we're stressed, we might miss a period or have heavier periods or maybe we have hormonal imbalances or maybe we're ill. That can affect our menstrual cycle. Revering our bodies instead of resenting them can transform the way we experience this phase of our life.

If we can embrace it as this beautiful transition and unraveling, think about what's on the other side of this for you, for us. So menopause, I'm just going to invite us to think about it and maybe a little bit differently. Maybe you've never thought about it this way before, but perimenopause isn't just a physical change.

It's an energetic and spiritual initiation. So let's see if we can reframe some of these really common experiences. So let's look at hot flashes as a spiritual purging.

Think of hot flashes as your body's releasing old energy to make room for new possibilities. Maybe with mood swings, maybe we can look at that as emotional invitations. So maybe when emotions surface unexpectedly, maybe it's asking for your attention and reflection and ask like what's coming up for you and what might it be teaching you.

So for me, this would be with the rage that I experience that comes out of nowhere. I just get extremely angry. Instead of saying, oh god, this is a part of perimenopause.

These are my hormones. Maybe what I can say instead is what is this trying to tell me? Where do I need to slow down? Where do I need to give myself more love and attention so I can give others more love and attention? And then maybe we can think about these energetics with the chakra connections. And maybe we have an area that's a little bit more stagnant.

So let's think of it as a river and we have boulders that are blocking our river. So it's still flowing, it's just not flowing as strongly. Or maybe we have a large tree that's fallen into our river.

And so if we think of this and we link our hot flashes to our solar plexus, for instance, then that's linked to power and transformation. So if we're experiencing hot flashes, maybe spend some time clearing the solar plexus or putting our attention at our solar plexus with breath and with meditation to help move the energy a little bit more clearly. Or maybe within our heart chakra, we're noticing mood swings.

So when I have those moments of rage, when I mentioned, okay, so maybe I need to give more attention to myself. Maybe I need a true emotional release through tears, or maybe a lot more acts of self-love and kindness. And then maybe we can think of this transition and our ability and our need to be more creative and have more emotional flow and connection.

And that can be often connected with our sacral chakra. And so if we can clear and release the energy that's in our sacrum, then we can flow more creatively and in our own self-expression. Because this is the beautiful time in our lives where we aren't afraid to have self-expression.

Or maybe we notice that we still are feeling like we can't self-express. Then maybe spending some more time and work in the sacral chakra area. But this phase is also an opportunity to embody the wise woman archetype.

Okay. It's a time of deep wisdom and self-nurturing. You know the answer with it.

And so allowing yourself to be silent or receiving the support to help you access your wise woman archetype will be just what you need to help you through this transition. So how best can you support yourself during this transformative time to where you can step through these gates with ease and comfort and recognizing that symptoms might occur and allowing those symptoms to be there. And as always you guys know the importance of bridge medicine for me.

So if you need some support through supplements or through light wave patches or through bioidentical hormones then yeah do it. But you can't miss this other piece that's so important. The holistic practices to align your mind, body, and spirit.

The mind aspect is really looking at journaling and reflecting on those emerging emotions or patterns. Being really self-aware is the key to change. Notice how your symptoms might be guiding you to slow down or make changes.

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When you look at your body how can you support your hormonal health with whole foods? How can you have gentle movement practices like yoga that can help harmonize your energy? And recognizing that the high cardio states that used to work for you might not be working anymore. That increases your cortisol too much. It's not helping support your hormones.

And looking at gentler practices like walking can actually help and benefit you more. And then nurturing the spirit through meditation and breath work. Anchoring yourself and connect into your inner wisdom.

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Rituals and this could be anything like symbolic acts, lighting a renewal candle, or writing and releasing old patterns. And then always our connection to nature. Connect to the earth, to the sun, to the grass, to just being outside, to the wind.

This phase is such a beautiful opportunity to rewrite your story and align with your deepest desires. So there is going to be an option for you to access a worksheet. And in this worksheet there will be a lot of questions and activities that you can really reflect on.

Some of these would be like really reflecting on your first experience with your period and how it shaped your relationship with your body now. Maybe looking at what your leaky roof is that you might be ignoring. That if you removed it could really help this transformation and transition occur with more ease.

Or maybe it's what daily ritual could you use to honor your body during this transition. The main call to action this week woman is I would love for you to choose one small step to honor your body. Whether it's journaling, trying a new ritual, maybe doing some mirror work where you stare at yourself in the mirror in your eyes and give loving affirmations.

Y'all it's actually way harder than it seems. I do mirror work and there are times where I just want to look away. Or maybe you just simply notice and appreciate your body's wisdom.

Like oh okay I'm a little bit more sweaty under my pits today. I'm gonna honor that. Or wow I'm a little bit more moody today.

I'm just gonna go ahead and honor that. And of course if you're ready to go deeper into any of this then please reach out to me and we can explore how I can help support you during this transformative time in your life. But y'all perimenopause is so much more than physical symptoms.

It truly is an opportunity for this profound spiritual growth and self-discovery to occur. By embracing this phase with openness and curiosity you can create a life filled with purpose, connection, and vitality. Because really if this is our second half, our second act, then we have so much more life to live.

Imagine what we can create if we step into the courage and the wisdom that this time offers us. So as always thank you for joining me on this journey and if you could hit follow on the podcast so you are the first to know when episode drops each week. All right see you next week!