PODCAST EPISODE № 16

Executive Women and Menopause Series: Part 2, The Spiritual, Mental, and Emotional Aspects of Menopause

by Anita Charlot

Listen to Executive Women and Menopause Series: Part 2, The Spiritual, Mental, and Emotional Aspects of Menopause:

So if you haven’t listened to the first episode in the series, you will definitely want to pause this one and go back to Episode 15, which is my personal journey, and you want to listen to that one first. As a reminder, October is National Menopause Month, and I’m so, so excited about it!

Because of that, I’m dedicating four episodes this month specifically to this topic. This episode is a bit meaty, some might even call it ‘woo-woo’, but it is definitely informative. I would suggest you download this episode so that you have it handy to listen to at any time. Looking forward to sharing my metaphysical side with you. See you inside the episode.

What You Learn:

How to take care of yourself during menopause and why it is essential!
That going through menopause is as strong of a change as starting your first period
Getting in touch with your emotions in order to help yourself during this tumultuous time
How to help yourself heal from potentially traumatic menses and/or menopause

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to part two of the Executive, Women and Menopause Series. This one I’d like to call the spiritual, mental and emotional aspects of menopause. So if you can tell the sound of this podcast is going to be a little different. Today I am recording this, it is Tuesday, October 12, and today is my birthday. So my husband surprised me with a trip to Canada. So we’re here in Canada, in our hotel room, and we have dinner reservations in a little while, and so I wanted to go ahead and get this out to you because I think this is important.
And I didn’t want to wait. Yes, it’s my birthday, and I’m working on my birthday. Well, not really working on my birthday. But I’m putting together this podcast because I am dedicated to getting a podcast per week out to you. And this is such an important topic. I don’t want to skip a week at all for this month.
So if you haven’t listened to the first episode in the series, you will definitely want to pause this one and go back to Episode 15, which is my personal journey, and you want to listen to that one first. As a reminder, October is National Menopause Month, and I’m so, so excited about it!
Because of that, I’m dedicating four episodes this month specifically to this topic. This episode is a bit meaty, some might even call it ‘woo-woo’, but it is definitely informative. I would suggest you download this episode so that you have it handy to listen to at any time.
In case you didn’t know, I am in the process of getting my doctorate in metaphysical psychology.

So what does that mean?

As a metaphysician, I work with and am able to connect to the spirit of the person, the part of them that they are prone to hide to the world. Since I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years, I’m able to read between the lines, and I’m using air quotes, and see behind the mask that most were to protect their hearts and hide their pain. In other words, I am highly intuitive.

I also happen to be an empath, which means that I am highly sensitive to the energy of those around me. You may be smiling in a room full of people, but once I am within close proximity to you, I can feel that the look on your face doesn’t match how your spirit is really feeling on the inside. As a result of this, I am able to connect with the vulnerable parts of you in a way that makes you feel seen, heard, understood and valued. And this is one of the reasons why my clients and I connect. They finally feel like someone understands what they’re going through, and they feel seen and they feel heard and they feel valued.

While these are great skills to have as a business owner, coach, friend, co-worker, they can also be very draining. If you are not intentional about prioritizing and protecting your energy and your space. You can easily find yourself carrying the energy of others and wondering what the hell is going on with you. Now throw in any unresolved emotional baggage, untouched or unhealed trauma, and you have a huge pot of emotional stew.

Sounds exhausting. You’re right. It certainly is!

Wait! There’s more. Now that I painted a very exhausting picture for you of what it’s like to be empathic and highly sensitive and intuitive, throw in a healthy dose of menopause, and you have a woman on the outside who is smiling, while the woman on the inside is screaming, trying to figure out what’s wrong with her and how to fix it.

Not a picture of a peaceful woman at all, is it?

In the last episode, I talked about the physical aspects of menopause, but in this episode I will share with you some of the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects things you should pay attention to, and how to maneuver your way through. It’s impossible for me to give you a one size fits all model or speak to your specific situation. In this episode, however, and in the Mastermind Group that I will be launching in the next couple of months, most likely in January, I will be able to do that for you. But for now, let’s just get right to the business.

Tapping into my spiritual side, I’d like to take you back to puberty, the onset of your cycle, where this all began. Remember how your hormones are all over the place back then, fine one minute, crying the next, happy one minute, angry the next. The bloating, the headaches, the dreaded cramps! People would say, oh, you’re coming into your womanhood now. You can now create lives. Well, I like to think of menopause as another form of puberty, only this time, the onset of menopause is like the end of being able to create one life and the beginning of creating another. Just like you didn’t know your body anymore during puberty, your body becomes foreign to you yet again. It feels like it’s fighting against you, yet this time, you don’t automatically get to stay home from work because it’s that time of the month. You do not get the same support as you did, well, at least some of you did, in celebration of becoming a woman. 
Here in America, there is no standard rites of passage that’s widely celebrated by women for teens for the onset of her menses, or for perimenopause, menopause, or the end of menses. So listen, honey, it’s not your fault. Your confusion of how to manage menopause, of what is happening to you, or how to protect yourself and prepare for it and how to get support through it is perfectly normal.

And you know what? It’s okay.

You’re okay, and you’re not alone. I’m with you. I’ve been where you are and I’m still growing through it. I want to share with you as much as I can now, and then if you want more support, education and inspiration, you will want to keep an eye out for more information on the upcoming membership from a metaphysical perspective. Each month during your your period, you are given an opportunity to shed and release the previous month emotional, mental and spiritual pain. The physical part of this is your body is shedding the uterine lining since there was no need for you to hold on to it in preparation for carrying the child, while on the spiritual plane, the metaphysical plane, the energetic plane, every month, there is an opportunity for you to release any negativity, any unresolved pain, any issues that you had going on that month, whether they were mental or emotional. This is a time when the always off pain and deeply repressed emotions are brought to the surface into our conscious awareness so that we can acknowledge them, grow through them and then release them or let them go. This is truly a death and rebirth opportunity.

If we believe what the patriarchal and uninformed women share with us about that time of the month is something that is negative, something to fear, something to dread or something to be ashamed of, then we do not give ourselves the proper care and nurturance or seek the right support during this time. Due to the cost and disregard for the range of emotions we experienced throughout the month. anger, sadness, fear, insecurity, an entire cast of others, our spirits are not at rest. During that time of the month, we may feel heavy with sadness cry at the drop of a hat. Our hormones are simply just simply all over the place.

What would be helpful during this time is to plan to be alone with as few activities as possible. The goal is to create a safe and nurturing space for yourself in which to sit with sort out, acknowledge and give your time to reflect and love on yourself and be as current yourself as possible. With all of the hormonal changes, the body’s natural process of releasing the uterus, it could feel like a slow death. It did for me. I had terrible cramps. I’m talking about the kind that made me stay home from school and work. 
Facing the last month’s pain is not an easy thing to do. It causes us to relive those challenging moments, which in the short term, will cause more pain. However, taking the time to deal with it, and face it head on allows us the opportunity to release the old and start the next 28 days fresh with a clean slate. As a result, if practiced regularly, we can become more intuitive and more sensitive during this time. They need it monthly spiritual and emotional cost is blowing up at any perceived slight overreacting to a current situation due to residual energy from the past experience. In other words, not being in command of your emotions, and that’s what we’re all about being, right? As executive women, as young one, we want to be in command of our emotions, and the only way to do that is to really get in touch with them, to sit with them. To identify them, to acknowledge them, and to give ourselves permission to have them. Let’s not ignore them anymore.

What if you’re already going through menopause? What if you lived a lifetime without the knowledge or opportunity to heal from your monthly trauma? How does this affect you mentally, emotionally spiritually, when speaking from experience, it will be a rough road. I won’t go into all of the details I shared in Episode 15, but for some of you, this may sound a bit familiar. Menopause from a spiritual and metaphysical perspective is a time when everything is brought up to the surface. Perimenopause, which is the time leading up to the end of our cycles, is a time of great change mentally, emotionally and spiritually. They say that once a woman reaches her 40s, there is a spiritual and emotional imbalancing that takes place. You start to take a good look at your life, your job, your businesses, your friendships, your relationships, you start to see things for how they really are. You lose patience for those things that do not feed your spirit, or stop your hot flashes, or bring you peace or balance or hormones or put an end to the internal tornado of emotions that you have going on on the inside. Other people’s problems become less important, and you begin making some major changes in your life, shaking up several relationships, probably several foundations and redefine what the next chapter of life will look like. This is a time when you get to come into your own.

A few of the mind challenges are brain fog, confusion, moodiness, irritability, and depression. All of these are normal. Fear the body changes are covered in Episode 15 along with my own personal recommendation, so be sure to check that out if you haven’t done so already.

From an emotional, spiritual and metaphysical perspective, if you did not grow up understanding the gift you were given every month, consider this your adult puberty, keeping in mind that there will be years of unresolved issues, pain, perceived and real slights that will never address that will demand your attention now in order to move into the next phase of your life. Old memories rise to the surface. Old exes cross your path and somewhat old wounds or reopen old resentments eventually reveal themselves. It’s as though Pandora’s box has been on earth and pried wide open, you can’t escape it. Your relationships will definitely be challenged as a result of it and for some time, you will feel like you are losing your mind. You will feel off balance. You will feel highly sensitive, you will feel angry, depressed, sad, morsel bitter, and a whole host of other emotions. The fact that your significant other is not living in your body means that they have no idea what you’re going through. Even if you are in the same sex union, every woman’s menopause of things is different. The key is to give yourself grace, get educated, seek support, and share as much as you can with your partner so that they don’t feel shut out.

Next week, I will share with you the importance of thinking that head to menopause when dating. I will also share with you what to expect while married and in full blown menopause. These are things I wish someone had shared with me. They would have saved me and my husband a steep learning curve. A good friend of mine and mindfulness business coach for social entrepreneurs introduced me to this wonderful sommatic phsycotherapist who also happens to be as passionate about menopause, as I am, be sure to tune in to this month’s candid conversation as we discuss our plans to change the narrative around menopause by, using air quotes here, rebranding it, if you will, as a rites of passage to wisdom.

In case you have been questioning your sanity lately, I want you to know that you are okay. It’s going to be okay, and the more you learn about the mental, spiritual, emotional and physical experiences of menopause, the better equipped you will be. I don’t have all of the answers. I’m just a woman that is experienced enough in her life, and love life, to share my journey with you. It is my desire that not only will you download, listen, read, listen and take notes from this episode, but that you will help me spread the word about menopause to women, young and mature so that together, we can improve the quality of life for other women in our services.

We need to know what to expect, we need to know that it’s okay. We need to know that we are not crazy. And we need to know how to love and nurture ourselves and others, other women just like us through this process. I have so many dreams of creating a program for young girls, middle school, starting in middle school, just imagine, what would life be like if we knew that our cycles were a gift to ourselves to be cherished? And to be to be sacred should be a sacred time? It wasn’t negative. What would life have been like? How do you think you will be as a woman today? Would you have more confidence? Would you? Would you take better care of your body? Would you? Would you be able to intuitively figure out what’s going on with your emotions? Would you take that time every month to set aside to really focus on you? Would you help your friends in your circle during that time? Would you support them? What would what would life have been like for you, if you were taught that that was a gift? I often wonder what life would be like for me. I know I can promise you that I’ve been through hell, these past five years, peri, post, in the middle of it, you name it. And I’m still blowing through the effects of not really understanding my body and the role, the spiritual, emotional and into energetic and mental world that my cycle played in my life.

I missed so many years.

I had a lot of stuff to wade through. I had a lot of things to work through and grow through, but I’m on that path. And now that I am on that path, I want to set you on that path as well. Doesn’t matter where you are in your journey. It does not matter at all. You can always begin right where you are today.

Thank you for spending time with me, and for putting up with this. This topic all month is just something that is on my heart. It’s my life. I’m living it, and I cannot believe that I had to figure this out all by myself. I don’t want you to have to do that. You definitely want to tune in for the next couple of weeks. Because honey, let me tell you, I’m going to be dropping some gems, and our candid conversation this month is going to be off the chain. Now it’s time to go to dinner with my husband and celebrate our union and my 56th birthday.

Until next time!

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Executive Women and Menopause Series: Part 2, The Spiritual, Mental, and Emotional Aspects of Menopause

PODCAST EPISODE № 16

Executive Women and Menopause Series: Part 2, The Spiritual, Mental, and Emotional Aspects of Menopause

by Anita Charlot

Listen to Executive Women and Menopause Series: Part 2, The Spiritual, Mental, and Emotional Aspects of Menopause:

What You Learn:

Featured on the Show:

Episode Transcript

Enjoy the Show?

IF YOU LIKE IT, SHARE IT

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"Can He Handle Your Grind?"

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PODCAST EPISODE № 16

Executive Women and Menopause Series: Part 2, The Spiritual, Mental, and Emotional Aspects of Menopause

by Anita Charlot

Listen to Executive Women and Menopause Series: Part 2, The Spiritual, Mental, and Emotional Aspects of Menopause:

What You Learn:

Featured on the Show:

Episode Transcript

Enjoy the Show?

IF YOU LIKE IT, SHARE IT

Get the free video training..."Can He Handle Your Grind?"

podcast

stay in touch

Get the free video training...
"Can He Handle Your Grind?"