Ep. 71 5 Reasons Why Midlife is Just the Beginning: The Untold Power of Menopause and Reinvention

Meegan Care: Hey my friend, welcome, welcome to the podcast. So glad that you’re here and that you’ve joined us on this day. Today’s episode is five reasons why midlife is just the beginning. And I want to bring this to you because I’m at a place in my life where I’m really feeling that in my body, in my nervous system, and in my brain.

But it hasn’t always been that way. And there have been many times when I felt That life was becoming smaller and less interesting and more of a struggle and just more stress and more of that mundane on and on. So this is a piece of inspiration of taking the blinkers off, that going through perimenopause, midlife, the midlife period, burden brings to us and narrows our vision.

And so today’s episode is all about taking those blinkers off. And just before I get started though, I do want to sincerely invite you to think about joining my course. We start the next round on the 1st of June. If you’re listening to this podcast and we’re beyond the 1st of June, that’s okay. There’ll be another round coming up in normally four weeks time.

And the reason I want to invite you to this course is because of the results that I see for the women that have come on to the course, the Midlife Upgrade course. And that’s my signature program. I’ve designed it for you, a woman in midlife, to help you reset, reignite, Relight that fire within your heart for life.

And the results that women are getting on this course blows me away. The benefits women have received from joining the Course include the sense of reinvention, of re ignition, of their true selves and their vitality, and a capacity to like really see life from just a much more open perspective. The changes that are taking place for women are just incredible.

And we use evidence based tools, strategies and perspectives from a psychotherapeutic and counseling mindfulness context.

So you can be assured that I’m not just throwing a whole lot of fluff at you and racking up your energy system each week. This is deep work and fun work, that helps you to redefine your self concept. Who you are, how you want to show up in the world, and how you connect with other people. And we do it in the container of the course.

So there’s video modules, worksheets, you’re working through one particular area each week and then you have the totally optional but I will say life changing option of joining our weekly conversation calls. They’re coaching calls, they’re conversation calls, they are an opportunity to go a little deeper with the work and to understand yourself better.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I can feel a little bit intimidated showing up to a group event, especially when it’s on Zoom. But I want to tell you that these Zoom calls which are part of the course. are actually life changing. There are connections and bonds formed on these calls that sustain way beyond the length of the course.

So this is my personal invitation to you to join us on the course. I know you will benefit from it and I am there to support you all the way. Check out all the details on my website meegancare co. nz forward slash course You And just reach out if you’ve got any questions at all. Now on with the episode, five reasons why midlife is just the beginning.

You have my personal guarantee on that. Reason number one, this is a time of self discovery and potential reinvention for us as women. It’s a unique opportunity where Yes, your hormones are changing. You’ve got estrogen, progesterone declining. This actually opens the doorway for a change in self concept, a change in who you are, in your very identity and how you show up in the world.

And That is actually a really hard thing to kick start as an adult. So we know as children our brain and personality and psyche go through lots of changes. But when we’re an adult things can tend to stay quite the same and steady as she goes. Well midlife and perimenopause Along with all the changes that bring challenges for many of us is this fabulous opportunity for reinvention, for an upgrade of your own self concept, of how you feel about yourself and how you show up in the world, how you value yourself. If you’re a person that has Children in your life. For many of us at this time, our children are getting older, closer to leaving home, closer to finishing school, or perhaps they have left home. And yes, there is the empty nest challenge, or syndrome if you like, that That we have to navigate, there is grief when our child leaves, all mixed in with excitement, hope, maybe some disappointment that things haven’t worked out yet the way that you had dreamt for your child.

That is all a very normal part of being a parent, of course. But along with that. This shift of identity that is often described as the empty nest syndrome comes a massive opportunity to rewrite your identity and how you show up in the world. Now how you feel about that is something that can be worked on, changed and brought into a positive light and you can make this opportunity for reinvention something that actually works for you. This self identity change that happens what will always come with it, is a period of falling away. of grief, of shedding and of not knowing. That is such an integral part of growth for us as humans and we’ve seen it at other stages of our life and it is normal and expected at this stage of our life as well.

And reason number two, my friend, as to why midlife is just the beginning, is you’ve got this incredible foundation now, of wisdom and experience, right? You’re in your 40s, you’re in your 50s, you have the experience that you didn’t have before. when you were 20.

And that is something that is so, so valuable. It may not be valued in the culture that you are a part of. In many cultures, wisdom and experience is very valued, not so much in our western culture. However, That doesn’t take away from the truth that your wisdom and your life experience is incredibly valuable.

and is a foundation and offers you leverage for making decisions about your life, about new directions going forward. Because you’ve lived a life, you’ve seen what is important, you’ve maybe gone through phases in your life where you think, I don’t really want to be that person anymore. That is not what I value anymore.

And so you have all that experience to launch forward from into this next stage of life. And reason number three is that we become freed from societal expectations. And with that freedom comes a feeling of great liberation.

Now along with that, I hear from many women, and of course I’ve experienced it myself, start to feel a little more invisible, a little more overlooked. And some women I’ve talked to have said that this is a major problem for them, that they feel completely invisible in the workplace, socially. They feel overlooked and invisible. So that goes hand in hand with the societal structure that has been with us for hundreds of years, that has viewed women as a commodity, as something that has value, because they bear children, right, or for sex. Now, when we come into our wisdom years of midlife, we are no longer seen that way.

And so what can happen is that we then become overlooked and forgotten. And as challenging as that is, there is gold within this. And the gold is that we can become incredibly liberated through that journey. Of outgrowing the maiden, of being the maiden archetype.

And because you’re not so much seen in that way, yes, there’s the challenge for some of us, if that’s what our self worth and our ego was based on, as being seen as a valuable woman for your physical appearance, then going through midlife and coming into your wise years, we can lose touch with a sense of value for ourself because it was based on something that is not helpful for us long term, right?

It’s based on women as a commodity in terms of the way they look and show up in society. But that’s a broken model that doesn’t serve us at all. And thanks to nature, and thanks to aging, We get to be free from that and it can be incredibly, incredibly liberating. And so there’s many calls now for dropping the marketing phrase as an example of anti aging.

Anti aging skincare, anti aging diets, anti aging exercise plans. The call is to value aging for what it is. And this is showing us that there’s a shift coming, there’s a change happening. So for us as women in our midlife, and we now shake off the maidens cloak and crown. We are no longer her. We know that for our gender, there is the archetype of the maiden, the beautiful young woman, and then there’s the archetype of the crone. The old, wizened, wrinkled, stooped, dangerous crone, right? But there’s nowhere in between, generally speaking. And, so we can cast aside both of those archetypes, because they’re not useful for us, and we can take up the archetype of whoever you want to be. the wise woman, your own superhero, you get to choose who you want to be at this stage. And yeah, there’s a lot of societal conditioning that we need to cast aside around appearance. And value and how one equates to the other. And we can do as much inner work as possible on ourselves. But the cultural conditioning is still out there. It still exists. But when you create that change at that deep level of yourself, and you become way more accepting of who you are, of the changes of your physical appearance, of your skin, of your hair, how you show up in the world, and are okay with that. As we each do that, We are creating, not only change for ourselves, we’re creating change within the world around us. And I, I love that for us. So that we have this opportunity to learn how to value ourselves from the inside out. Rather than on how we’re received. And it can be a rude shock, actually. Realizing that I am now overlooked.

I am now not seen in the way I used to be seen in social gatherings. That special attention is no longer given to me. That I used to take for granted and that I find it like, cosmically amusing, and so interesting for me, just on a personal level, because it was something that I took for granted, and now that it’s no longer there,

and as it was no longer there, I, I question my value, although inherently, I’m pretty steady in my internal value. I started to notice this layer where I valued myself. And that had been built up based on other people’s perception of me. Feedback, attention, interest. And now that that has changed, and is changing, and will continue to change, so this time, my friend, is a time where you can really break free from societal expectations and norms. And a lot of those, because they’re so embedded in who we are as a culture, as a group of people, we don’t really know that they’re there until it starts to shift and change, until midlife starts to happen.

And as you start to notice that it’s there, That might feel like there’s some dissatisfaction, or some regret, or I wish it would stay the same. But once we accept that this is changing, and nothing I’m going to do is going to alter that fact, then I’m free from it. I’m free from what held me in society’s expectations.

Free to truly be me. And I might not know who that is yet, But this is the task of midlife, is to find this out. And to do that, we need to break free from our conditioning.

And reason number four, is that your brain is going through this incredible upgrade. As your hormones change and the role of estrogen lessens in your body, so the estrogen in your body starts declining anywhere from your mid 30s onwards and becomes lower.

Estrogen drives emotion. Estrogen drives caretaking. It is so linked with our emotional beingness that as this starts to change. The pathways in your brain also start to change. So your brain is going through an upgrade, and yes, there are the very uncomfortable symptoms that come along with that upgrade of perimenopause and early postmenopause, of brain fog, of loss of confidence, of loss of identity.

There are many, many others. What we are starting to understand is that your brain is actually going through an upgrade it is getting better, more resilient, stronger, And therefore your psyche and your personality can become more secure and way more resilient because of this upgrade.

So if you’re in the middle of an upgrade, think of it like a renovation that you might do on your house. You know, when there’s dust flying, things have pulled out, it’s a mess, and you’re like, Oh my God, is this ever going to look good again. I cannot live here anymore. And then when the renovation is finished you look around and you have this beautiful new kitchen, living area, bedroom, bathroom, and this beautiful new space to live in.

Will your brain And your psyche is going through an upgrade, is going through a renovation. So whilst it might be really messy right now, and you’re really not enjoying living, living there, it’s going to get better. It is really going to get better.

So there’s a massive opportunity for growth here.

And reason number five is that because of this incredible opportunity that nature is giving you to upgrade your psyche and your self concept and of course as a result of that your life,

any focus that you now do on your personal growth and on your well being. will gain more traction than if you had done that prior to perimenopause. Because when the physiology changes, because of the hormonal changes, then of course the brain and the nervous system and then the psychological structure of who you are can more easily change.

Because change that comes from a closed system, a settled system of psychology is harder to instigate if everything’s going well. That’s why when challenges come up in our life, we create change around them. If grief happens, we grow tremendously from that, or we can do. When we go through midlife, because the structures are being kind of torn down in a way because of the hormonal changes, and I’m talking psychologically here, then we have this amazing opportunity for growth that wasn’t, say, there five years ago

and so any work you do at this time or any personal development that you do, the results that you’ll get from that increase exponentially. So what I’m saying in simple words is that this is a really profound time for change. If you want to make those changes, if you’re feeling

that life is for you. not where you want it to be, but you don’t know yet how to create change, know that although you don’t know how to create the change that you want, you are in the prime time for change in your adult years. And the fact that you want to create change, that you have an intention for change, growth, and evolution is the spark that starts That electrical current running through your life, and this is why we see Divorce rates are really high in midlife.

People are ready for change. Now change doesn’t have to mean that you leave your relationship. It might, and that might be the most powerful life giving change for the both of you, for you and your partner, but it doesn’t always mean that of course.

Because the truth is no one else is going to prioritize you, your well being and your growth. It is going to take you drawing a line in the sand, putting your foot down and saying no more. I’m ready for this to change. No one else is going to give that to you. People do not. We do not. No one else is going to give that to you.

You are going to need to give that to yourself. And like I said, it doesn’t matter if you don’t even know what that next step is. The fact that you create that clear intention for change is enough to get the ball rolling. When life then opens doors for you, take those changes, take those steps forward in that direction, even if it seems wobbly and scary and you’re not sure where it’s going to lead, life responds to us.

So when we create a clear intention, then doors start to open.

And don’t do what I did when I was in my 20s and really unwell with Crohn’s disease, I I waited and waited until I got sicker and sicker and sicker, until I just couldn’t function anymore, and my body could not even get out of bed, before I created the change. Hear

those signals from your body and from your psyche,

that are calling you forward for growth. And hear them before they get to you. So loud as mine did when I was sick with Crohn’s disease that I couldn’t do anything else but listen to them. Grab those signals now and create change in your life now. And your next step might be that you write down the areas of your life that you’re unsatisfied with, that you want to create change in.

And you might circle those areas. Two of them. You might circle one of them as a priority and you might write down underneath that I am ready and willing to create change in this area of my life. And you might also write down, show me the next steps

and life will show you the next steps.

All right, my friend, I hope that has been helpful of inspiration. If you enjoyed the podcast, please share it with your friend. I so much love hearing from you when I’m out and about that you’ve been listening to the podcast or the episode that you’ve enjoyed. It really does feel like we’re growing this empowered community I thank you for listening and I thank you for just being who you are in the world. Go well and we’ll speak again next week.

M