Reframing Menopause: Freedom, Not Fear (Episode 333)

Full Transcript: Episode 333

This is the Fertility Friday Podcast, episode number 333.

Lisa: Welcome to the Fertility Friday podcast, your source for information about the fertility awareness method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of The Fifth Vital Sign and the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Journal. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormonal health, and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones. I’m outspoken about hormonal birth control and its impact on fertility and overall health because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process. I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health, because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles regardless of whether or not you want to have babies. I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys. I know, I know, I’m a busy girl, but I manage to fit it all in. This podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles, your fertility, and your overall health, and I’m so excited that you’re here with us today.

Lisa: Today I’m sharing my latest interview with Alexandra Pope. You may remember her a couple hundred episodes ago — in episode 150 I interviewed Alexandra Pope and her colleague Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, authors of the book Wild Power, and we had an incredible conversation, so I’ll make sure to link to that episode in the show notes because you’ll probably want to have a listen to that. But in today’s episode, I’m interviewing Alexandra Pope once again, and we are talking about menopause. Don’t skip this episode just because we’re talking about menopause, particularly if you’re not there yet. This is a conversation that you’re going to want to hear. And one of the reasons why is that what I find is that most of my clients, most women in general, have never really heard menopause spoken about in a positive way. It’s always talked about in this really negative way, with an underlying assumption that you’re going to have all these health problems and it’s just going to be horrible and you’re going to be a mess. And then there’s no real discussion as to what life looks like once your menstruation is stopped, once your reproductive years are over. Because we live in a culture that’s very much like your menstrual cycle is only about having babies, it really leaves us with the impression that once we stop menstruating, we’ve just shriveled up and we’re now just waiting to die or something. Now that might sound harsh, but at the end of the day that’s kind of how our culture portrays it. So the reason you’re going to want to tune in to today’s episode is to really get into the juicy wonderfulness that occurs post-menopause. I personally am not there yet, but I’ve been privy to enough of these conversations to actually have a sense of curiosity, wonder, and some degree of excitement for what that phase of life holds when it’s ready. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to rush the process. I’m not saying I want to go through menopause early, but when it’s time and when my body is ready to go through that phase, I actually feel a sense of excitement and wonder and curiosity about it, because I recognize it as a truly amazing transition in life with a lot of incredible potential. So if that sounds strange to you and you’re not really sure why someone might feel that way, this is the episode you’re going to want to listen to about menopause. So without further ado, let’s jump into my conversation with Alexandra Pope.

Lisa: And I’m excited to welcome back to the show, Alexandra Pope. Alexandra is co-founder of Red School and co-author of Wild Power: Discover the Magic of the Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power. Together with her colleague and co-author, Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, she is pioneering the new emerging field of menstruality, creating a new lexicon and approach to women’s health and wellbeing, creativity and leadership, and spiritual life based on the power of our menstruality consciousness. She brings over 35 years of experience teaching worldwide on the psychospiritual process of maturation that unfolds from menarche to menopause and beyond, and is committed to training the menstruality leaders of the future. And with that, I’d like to welcome Alexandra to the show.

Alexandra: Thank you very much, Lisa. It’s lovely to be back with you.

Lisa: Well, I always love having a chance to talk with you. And today we’re talking about menopause, which I’m really excited to talk to you about. I think because of my age where I’m at, I haven’t focused a lot on menopause, because I do have that intuitive sense that as I draw nearer I will be naturally inclined to focus more on it at that point, so that’s kind of why I’ve softly approached it here and there. But even before we started recording, in our pre-chat we touched on a really important point that I’m excited to get into today, which is how menopause is viewed in our culture. I work with women of, I wouldn’t say all ages, but from age 18 usually up until even mid-40s, and I’ve had the occasional client at the top of that range or a little bit older. And ultimately, we’ve all been raised and conditioned to think menopause is this horrible thing, and almost to think that it’s not even natural, that on some level we shouldn’t even be going through it. So I think that’s a good place to start today’s conversation.

Alexandra: That is a great place to start, Lisa. I feel so strongly about this, because for me there is a whole organic order to our menstrual cycle journey. Menopause is a chapter on the path of our life, but it’s presented as this sort of great hiatus, or disaster zone. It’s almost like you get to menopause and you fall off the edge of the planet, never to be seen again. It’s completely and utterly bonkers. You’ve got a whole other life stretching out before you post-menopause — don’t consign that to the dustbin. In fact, I like to call post-menopause life “freedom country.” It really is. And the process of going through menopause helps you to discover that freedom, to really root down into yourself. And I feel that the reason menopause is so misunderstood or feared is because we’re not rooted in our bodies, we’re not rooted in the menstrual cycle process, we’re disconnected from that. And that’s why I was keen to talk with you, because you do such fabulous work teaching women — and other menstruators — how to chart their cycles, how to know their bodies, how to use their menstrual cycle to create wellbeing as well as to have contraception and to support conception if they want to conceive. Your work is exquisite in this process of learning how your body works. And when you are rooted in your menstrual cycle, living it each day, paying attention to it — and of course all the work that I do with my colleague Sjanie at Red School is on the psychospiritual dynamic of the cycle — when you combine all of that and you’re rooted in your menstrual cycle journey, that journey shifts your experience of your menstrual cycle and of yourself as you mature, and you are, as I like to say, prepared for menopause, Lisa. You’re prepared psychologically, and I can talk more about that in a moment, but also you’re prepared in the sense of knowing your body and what your health needs are, because as we both know from the title of your wonderful book, The Fifth Vital Sign, the menstrual cycle is our stress-sensitive system. It’s giving us information about our overall health and wellbeing. So when we’re paying attention to it, we’re paying attention to our health, and when things start to go awry with the cycle, that’s a signal that your body needs something, you’ve got to care for your health. And as you address that, you are actually setting yourself up for a healthy menopause, because menopause is also a kind of report on your overall health and wellbeing.

Lisa: I was thinking about what you said and thinking about how to deepen into that a little bit, and my thought is that there are kind of two ways that monitoring your cycles — not medicating your cycles away — can help you navigate through the period before menopause and menopause itself. Having a healthy cycle in general, meaning your cycle falls in normal parameters and your periods aren’t awful, in and of itself can improve your experience going into menopause. But I was also thinking that learning to pay attention — when you have your cycles and you start to see those stress signals, whether it’s diet, whether it’s the dance you play as you go through life, if you’re drinking too much coffee or not getting enough sleep and you see your cycles affected — you learn to make those corrections through the years. I feel like when you hit menopause, you’re also used to adjusting your lifestyle so your symptoms lessen. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on those concepts.

Alexandra: That is absolutely right, Lisa. You’re attuning all the time when you’re doing cycle awareness — attuning to yourself, and paying attention to where you’re moving outside the riverbanks of yourself, because you’ve had too much coffee or not enough sleep, and you get a kind of rain check on that. You get to know your constitution, your energy levels, and what your nervous system can tolerate, because cycle awareness is sort of nervous system pacing as far as I’m concerned. That’s happening on the physical side, but you can’t really separate physical and emotional — there’s a whole emotional journey you’re going on with the cycle, and I think of the cycle as growing you down into yourself more and more over the years. It’s helping you get to know yourself, your energy, your nervous system, your nature — it reveals that over time, and this is the most exquisite preparation for menopause, because you’ve got this lovely acuity to yourself. And then as you get closer to menopause, you’ll start to feel things change, notice interests change — there’s more of a discerning energy that comes in. It’s almost like feeling the quality of the air check change, a little bit like right now in the northern hemisphere we’re moving from summer into autumn, and it’s so distinctive. It’s a little bit like that — when we’re rooted in cycle awareness, we start to notice the quality of the energy, the quality of the way we see the world, and what we’re wanting to tolerate and not tolerate. And you will just know and feel, “I am changing, I am a little bit different,” and it’s not menopause yet — your being is adjusting. It’s so interesting, in my late 40s I was 48, and I remember having this very distinct thought — I was a psychotherapist, I had a private practice, I was living in Australia, life was good — and this thought came in out of left field that I was going to leave Australia and stop being a therapist. And I looked back and think that was the signal I was on the edge of the menopause transition. I wasn’t in it, and I didn’t go into menopause proper for another three or four years. It took me seven years, and when I did give up my practice and move back to the UK, I was coming out the other side of menopause. It was amazing.

Lisa: That’s a beautiful example of tuning in to that inner wisdom and paying attention to those signs that we all get. One of the things you describe so beautifully — for me I’m just kind of taking it all in because I have not reached that stage. Can I ask how old you are?

Alexandra: I’m 37.

Lisa: Oh right, yeah — no, you are a little way off. But not that far from the beginning of it, which is interesting. So I’m very interested to hear your experience of it but haven’t yet got to that point. When you described that subtle changing of season, and having that knowing, and also this is coming from a woman who had been charting and paying attention to her cycles for years and years — you were trained, if you will, to pay attention, and by that time tuned in to your intuition. In the work that I do, I bring this to a lot of women at various stages — I’m always thrilled when I’m working with someone who’s 19 years old, that’s so cool. But I also work with a lot of women in their late 30s and early 40s, and one of the very common comments I hear — I’ve even worked with a woman post-menopause who really just wanted to participate because she felt she had missed out. This is a very common thing — “I wish I would have known this now, but I’m 40, imagine if I would have known when I was 20.” So my question out of that: for the woman who’s listening who spent 10 or 15 years on the pill and is learning now how to tune into her cycle and starting to chart, who feels she may have missed out on all these years of cycling, what advice would you give her to start tuning into that, given she may not have as many years left “in the bank,” so to speak?

Alexandra: I’m very clear on this, Lisa. I always say to those women, you’ve had a life — you’ve been on the pill and maybe you now regret it or maybe you don’t, but you’re very happy now to be doing fertility awareness, and that is great, dive into it and claim it wholeheartedly, but don’t stay in the land of regret. You have lived a life, you have done things, you do know things about yourself anyway, and that’s important to realize, because I have women turning up at my menopause workshops who are close to menopause or even in it, and they knew nothing, and there is so much grief. I have to remind them that you have lived a rich life — it may have been complicated, there may have been disappointments and things you didn’t achieve — but you have still done things, and you do know some things about yourself. And you’re going to get a big education in yourself when you go through menopause. So if you missed out before, don’t worry, you catch up when you go through menopause. But it’s very important, wherever you are in this journey, to dignify yourself, full stop, regardless of what you’ve done. I am fierce on this point, Lisa.

Lisa: I’m glad to hear you say that, because it’s certainly a challenge, and of course it’s appropriate to grieve and feel the feelings you need to feel, because it’s frustrating — it’s no fault of your own that our culture doesn’t celebrate and respect this. And this is why you do what you do and why I do what I do — we’re doing our part to bring this awareness to as many women as possible in lieu of an actual culture that cares.

Alexandra: Exactly, yeah, and we’re the sort of pioneers really, and all those women who’ve come to it late are the ones who are going to pass the message down the line. We’re all at different stages and we’ve all got an important role to play in changing this cultural conversation.

Lisa: Well, and it’s kind of up to each woman to decide how she’s going to interpret that, because on the one hand you could lament over the frustration of not learning it when you were 20, and on the other hand you could rejoice in the fact that you did learn it now, at whatever age you are, and enjoy the amount of time you have. What I hear from so many women as well is, “Now that I know, I’m a force to be reckoned with,” and any woman or child within two feet of them, they love it. There’s one thing I think we should address before we move forward — the practical aspect of the term. There was a time before I had a deeper education where I thought the term menopause meant this long period of time — menarche is the word for our first period, and menopause is the word for our last period. So typically when we’re talking about this period of time, there’s a distinction between that and the roughly ten-year period before you actually have that, where your body starts to wind down. If you want to expand on that, and also I think we should talk about how we associate everything to do with this phase with the negative things we’ve heard about that time.

Alexandra: Okay, well, yes — the word menopause refers to your very last bleed, and you don’t know it’s your last bleed until it’s quite a way past it. You go six months later and think, “I think that was the last bleed.” It’s not like the first bleed, where there’s such a clear marker — you’re always kind of wondering if it’s going to come. So it’s sort of after the fact. But for me, that’s the physical event of menopause. There is also what I call — one of my students calls it — an “existential menopause,” because the symptoms aren’t a big issue for her, but she’s going through deep self-examination, and her cycle has essentially stopped. So she is firmly in menopause in her mind, and to my mind she is too, because there’s a psychological and spiritual dynamic that you’re going to go through, and that takes time. Just as your body has to wind down and adjust, your psyche is going through a similar adjustment — it’s going through a death and rebirth, in short. That occupies you energetically, emotionally, spiritually. I like the image of the caterpillar going into the chrysalis and then coming out the butterfly — that chrysalis time, for me, is menopause. That can be anything, two or three years, that process where you feel as though you are away, even though you’re in the world doing things. And then one day you go, “I think I’m back in the saddle again.” It’s this feeling of agency — there’s a time where you just don’t really have agency for things. And then one day it’s almost like you wake up and go, “Okay, I’m ready now, I’m ready for freedom country, I’m out the other side.” So that takes time. Now I have to tread carefully here around languaging, and I think it’s really important that women use language that works for them, that arises out of their experience. I prefer not to use the word perimenopause, for many reasons, but one is that it’s true that in your late 40s or 40s things start to change, but it’s not menopause — it’s your 40s. And if things are changing strongly, that’s a sign you need to up the self-care, you need more rest, you need to improve all the usual culprits, because your psyche is your early warning system for how things are doing. So I think my fear is that when changes happen in your 40s, women think, “Oh God, I’m going into early menopause,” and possibly feel disempowered, like it’s the beginning of the end. It’s not — you attend to what’s happening, because psychologically, yes, your body may be changing, but you’re not prepared for menopause, you’re not in menopause, and you’ll know it psychologically when you are. So there is a gray area — let’s just assume your actual last bleed is in your early 50s, which is kind of the average — so your 40s, for my money, should not be tainted by menopause. Your 40s are your 40s, and they have their own mission, actually, to prepare you for menopause. There’s deep psychological work going on, important growing-up work, maturation work, taking responsibility for yourself, really honing — it’s like mastery, you’re really developing a mastery of your life and who you are. And you don’t want menopause coming in and disrupting that — protect it. And if your cycle is going a bit wonky, really dig deep and address it, because you’re doing fabulous things for when you actually get to menopause. It’s a bit like me — I said at 48 I got that message, I did not think of myself as in menopause, my cycle was regular, but I got the early morning call to get my ducks in a row for menopause, because at menopause you change everything, and you do want to be prepared for that. I always feel I want to say to women, have some money in the bank, build a savings account, because when you get to menopause you are going to want to just take some time off for a while, and you do need to have some money in the bank to do that.

Lisa: This is some important wisdom. I mean, what I think is really missing from this conversation — in the work that I do, I’m teaching women to chart their cycle in a very specific way, so it’s different to just monitoring and noting your period. You get really into the weeds with your cervical fluid and all of these details, and I walk a fine line between straight-up “oh my gosh, I only saw the mucus twice today” versus fluidity and just having that knowing. There’s value to both, and I think it’s helpful to learn that complexity and then grow into it. It’s hard to explain this to a woman who has only charted three cycles, because those three cycles are “that’s it,” right, this is so important — but 400 cycles later, you look at it a bit differently. So I would be trending lightly, but with that backdrop, when you’re going through your 40s and you start to see some of those changes that are perfectly normal, of course we start to freak out, because your cycles might get a little shorter, you might see a little less mucus. I think you’re much more likely to notice that what you could do in your 20s has a much more significant and abrupt effect on whatever is going on in your life. When I was in my 20s I could do whatever I wanted — I could drink, stay up all night, eat all the sugar, and not gain a pound. And now, even at 37, I know how to put on 40 pounds and it wouldn’t even take that long, the same thing I did in my 20s. I can’t get away with not getting enough sleep anymore. So I think what I’m getting to is that we’re not taught that this transition period — because just because you start to see changes, you’re not in menopause, because menopause is the word for your last period. So when we talk about that pre-menopause phase, that phase is a legitimate normal phase, so things are supposed to change. Maybe you want to talk a little bit about that, and also the fine line between what would be a normal change and when we should really be paying attention — because we are told that menopause, and the word is used incorrectly to mean the whole time, is supposed to be horrible, and you’re going to have hot flashes and vaginal dryness and painful sex and be miserable and moody, and that’s basically the extent of most women’s knowledge about this phase of our lives, and also that you can’t have kids anymore. So as soon as you start to see this change and shift in your cycle, it’s like, “oh my gosh.”

Alexandra: Exactly, yes — oh my gosh, yes, we do change each decade of our lives, we’re getting older. It’s true, you can’t get away with stuff like you used to. There’s sort of some doors that are closing, but each decade opens up other doors, and that’s what I mean when I talk about the 40s having their own kind of consciousness and mission and purpose that has to be fulfilled, and I don’t want it tainted by menopause. But the thing to bear in mind — you would know this because of all of Dr. Jerilynn Prior’s work around progesterone — she has clocked that our progesterone starts to reduce in our 40s, and she is actually calling this perimenopause, I believe. And progesterone is a wonderful hormone that does all these great things, not the least of which is helping us with stress, which is why we can’t tolerate stress in the same way in our 40s, and why we have to get a good night’s sleep, and maybe we can’t abuse our bodies with alcohol in the same way. So yes, we’re going to be relating to ourselves differently in our 40s, but that doesn’t equate to menopause. It’s difficult, because I also have a horrible feeling that for some, menopause is coming earlier — I may be going off on a slight tangent here, but I feel that menopause symptoms are increasing and coming earlier, and that women are going into earlier menopause, and that surely has to be a symptom of the huge amount of stress we’re holding in our beings, which is a cultural thing — no one should blame themselves here — but the other thing I’m very concerned about is the level of environmental pollutants and how that affects our hormonal system. I just want to signal those things, and however one has some control over those things if one makes some very clear choices around one’s health. If you’re feeling like you genuinely are going into an early menopause in your 40s, I would really address those kinds of things — all the things you speak of in terms of creating health in your book are very important for supporting that. I think I’ve slightly drifted from your question, let me see if I can get back into it.

Lisa: No, I think that’s a really important point, and I’m glad you acknowledge that, because I don’t work with enough women in that age group and haven’t had the experience in that particular age group to make a statement like that. There are certain trends I’ve seen typically in younger women — I feel that from when I started in fertility awareness, a lot more women are on birth control for longer periods of time, and that lends itself to a more significant transition period when you’re coming off of hormonal contraceptives. The jury’s out, I don’t know what type of effect that has on menopause. There’s a myth out there that if you’re on the pill for a long time you’re not ovulating and so it preserves your eggs, and that’s not a real thing — sorry for anyone listening if I’m the one who mentioned that to you — there’s no evidence in the research that that is the case at all. There are practitioners who say that, but your observation that women overall may be experiencing these symptoms sooner, and it could be related to environmental toxins and stress — it’s not out of the realm of possibility, given that we’re seeing such a rise in infertility, women with cycles that aren’t normal. I feel like all of these are greater signs of our general decline in health.

Alexandra: I would agree with you, Lisa, I really feel that very strongly, and it really concerns me. But I really want to say, if you’re a woman for whom this is happening, there are ways and means of really supporting yourself to change that, to improve that situation, and it does take commitment. It also takes a degree of privilege, actually, in the sense of wealth to be able to do the health things that are needed — I’m very conscious of that, and it’s worth naming. I also want to say that I suffered with very poor health in my 20s and 30s, with allergies and chronic fatigue, and I used to have terrible insomnia and night sweats in my early 40s — I could have started calling that menopause, it never crossed my mind for one minute, but today people might say, “oh my God, I’m having night sweats,” and it never crossed my mind because it wasn’t menopause, it was the fact that my body was just not well. I’d been on a huge health drive for a lot of my life, and I changed all that — I had endometriosis, which is why I started this whole work in the first place, and I healed all that with natural means, it didn’t happen overnight, but I doggedly stuck with improving my overall health, so that when I came to menopause I actually did not have a hot flush until the very end, when I was making the transition from Australia to England, and I think I was exhausted, and when your thermostat is out it’s because your adrenals are tired.

Alexandra: And so it’s interesting — I just didn’t get a hot flush, I just thought, “gosh, is this a hot flush?” I was excited because I’d never experienced one. But I went through very distinct psychological things that I felt prepared for, though that didn’t mean I didn’t feel angry or grief-stricken at times, or do a huge review of my life — it usually comes up wanting, like, “what have I done with my life, it looks like nothing,” and you have to almost go, “wait, wait, wait” — I actually had friends remind me, “Alexandra, you did this, you’ve done that.” It seemed as literal as that, like you seem to abandon everything about yourself, because this is the death moment. So I did all that, but I still felt sort of resourced in some way psychologically, as though this were normal, in inverted commas — that this is initiatory, this is the nature of what I must go through, and I have to meet it, and it is in the meeting of it that something wakes up in you. And it did with me — I had kind of revelations, really, it is revelatory if you stay close to yourself. But you have to give menopause time and space.

Lisa: Well, let’s go a little bit deeper into the energetic shift that takes place, so, from my seat, as someone who’s not gone through menopause, I made a couple of observations, so you can take them with a grain of salt, but I always joke that women who have gone through that transition and really step into their power, they lose their filters and just say whatever they want. So when you’re in the presence of a woman who’s gone through that, this has been my experience, you just don’t know what’s going to come out of her mouth. I’m still in my 30s, I’m still on my p’s and q’s to some degree — I still don’t put every single opinion on the table, believe it or not, even as vocal as I am — but the transition, you said something earlier that made me think about this, and correct me if I’m wrong: from an energetic perspective, if you think about what your body is doing during the reproductive phase of your life, your body is this incredible vessel, this creative vessel that has this amazing energetic component that can literally grow life, an extraordinary and amazing thing. And when you transition out of that — I get that sense, because we’ve talked at length about the seasons of the menstrual cycle, and I’ll put our previous call in the show notes so listeners can hear it if they haven’t, because it’s a wonderful analogy — I get that distinct sense that this is also, instead of a cycle, this is our life cycle, this is our kind of switching into that different season energetically, moving from this giving-life phase where we’re giving our energy to everybody, to where we don’t have to do that anymore — we get to keep it. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on whether I’m on the right track with that assessment.

Alexandra: You are absolutely on the right track with your assessment. It’s really nice hearing you say it — estrogen makes us nice, it makes us pull our punches, and now we don’t have that estrogen in the same way, so we say it how it is. You are right, we lose our filters and we step into our power, and it’s quite a responsibility, actually, which is why I think the psychological process we go through at menopause is very important, because we can still abuse power post-menopause. I’ve lost my filters to a greater extent, but I’m still thoughtful because I’m smart, I choose my moments, because this is important — we do come into our power, Lisa, but power is a responsibility, I have to use that power thoughtfully and wisely. I feel like I have this very powerful, very sharp sword, and I am, as you say, unhinged in the sense that I no longer care what people think — that word has negative connotations, but if you’re not sufficiently present with your freedom, you can lob off heads you didn’t mean to, direct your power into places and people who did not deserve it. I really have to, because my tolerance levels have dropped and I don’t suffer fools so gladly now. But everyone’s human, and I need to hold my power for those who can take it and need to hear it, not for those who are more vulnerable than me. I could just splatter my energy everywhere, and honestly it’s not a good look, it’s not good for me, it’s not good for people. But there is, if I come into real presence with myself, which is what the process of menopause will do — it will bring you into this very fine alignment, this exquisite discernment about who you are and who you are not. So I’m very targeted now about where I put my energy, because I don’t have the physical chi I had before, but I have a kind of psychological chi, a psychic chi, so when I do act, it has a potency about it in the way it didn’t before, and I want to use the chi I have economically, to the point, because I still want to achieve within my particular area, so I have to be very discerning and disciplined about how I use my time and energy. But yes, I am in myself now, I am who I am, Lisa, and there was a glorious moment in menopause where I went, “oh, so this is who I am” — it was things I knew, but I suddenly deeply got, “oh, this is my nature.” Because I tried to fit into things a bit, to be a kind of respectable human being, professional, especially in my role as a therapist, and it’s important to do those things, but I really got my particular style, my particular nature, my particular brilliance, and that was the biggest liberation of all. I talk about post-menopause country as liberation country, and for me the thing that is liberating is knowing who I am and who I am not — that has just freed me, and on top of that, anointing who I am as just fine, that’s the other goal of menopause. You must come out of menopause having said, “you know what, you’re okay, you’re good, you’re cool, you’re all right, you’re enough.”

Lisa: This is why I was so excited for this conversation, because I have been in this field long enough that I’m not afraid of menopause, and I don’t see it as a bad thing — I’m actually excited to see what’s going to happen.

Alexandra: Yeah, yeah, you are ready for it, and of course when it’s time, living your life with every intention of keeping yourself healthy and ovulatory for as long as it suits your body has a lot of benefit.

Lisa: Thank you so much for that description — I feel like everybody who’s listening should just go back, whatever that was, five minutes, and listen to it again and again, because that was magical. From your perspective, of course it’s a time of transition, and that’s really what I was getting from you earlier in the conversation, when you were talking about some of the changes, and even a little while ago when you mentioned this “foggy” period, where you’re not really one but not really the other.

Alexandra: Yeah, I just call it the transition time, and it’s probably the hardest time actually, to be honest, because once you’re in menopause you’re sort of held by menopause — menopause has its own kind of dynamic that’s holding you, and I write about the five stages of menopause, it’s kind of like a map, and when you understand that and you understand you’re going to move through these elements, you feel sort of held in something in the way you feel held in your cycle when it’s happening. But when your cycle is breaking down and it’s not menopause yet, that’s a real no-man’s territory, that’s kind of weird, and I think women are often most lost at that point, actually.

Lisa: Well, and you mentioned that it’s this natural stage of preparation, this initiatory stage that takes you into it, and then when you described menopause — when you are there — whatever analogy suits you, if you’re hatching, if you’re awakening — it really sounded like you step into your power, deepen into your knowing of yourself in a new way. I loved how you described the change in energy — there was a shift in your energy in terms of how you described your chi, but it wasn’t in a negative way, it was just that the energy you have, you have to be more protective of it. I love when you said estrogen makes us nice, and also that analogy that with great power comes great responsibility. But really, the idea that you are powerful, this is a time when you’ve come into your wisdom — it is a natural phase of our lives, where if we are ready for it and aware that it’s a natural phase, and we’re rooted and grounded in who we are, then we have the potential to expand and become a greater version of ourselves. And that is never talked about — anywhere it’s just almost this idea that you’re a prune, you’re shriveling up, you’re basically useless because you can’t have babies anymore, because that’s all you were here for anyway, which is basically how our society treats women and does not acknowledge this incredible stage. So now, for all the listeners, when you are in the presence of an amazing woman who has gone through her transition phase and is stepping into her power, and you can feel that — this is what I think we should remember about it, and this is literally the reason why I don’t fear menopause, and I try to impart these positive notions of menopause to my clients, and now on the podcast, because it really, in many ways, is a stage to look forward to.

Alexandra: It is, and in fact there is — I remember a moment where I felt I had outgrown the cycle and I didn’t need it. It’s interesting, I now joke about the menstrual cycle as my “training wheel” years, getting me learning to ride the cycle of myself, and now I don’t need those training wheels anymore, I know who I am, I can freewheel along without that prop.

Lisa: Wow, so you really outgrow it.

Alexandra: It’s like, “oh God, I’m bleeding again, do I need this anymore?” Now I’m a different person. It’s so interesting, because you are maturing, and when you’re in your early 40s, or wherever, you don’t have that level of maturation to feel you’re not ready to let go of your cycle — that’s why age is a significant component.

Lisa: I love your phrase, “a greater version of yourself,” it’s really lovely hearing that fed back.

Alexandra: You do come into a greater version of yourself. I feel we’re not taught to trust our bodies, Lisa, and therefore trust ourselves, because if we were to give credence to what we’re experiencing as meaningful, we would feel ourselves ripen organically, we would know what we need to do, and sometimes what we need to do is challenging, because we make decisions in our lives that then perhaps don’t work out the way we had wanted, and we have to wake up to that fact as we get older, and make difficult decisions — perhaps leave a relationship or walk out on a career you put your life’s blood into, and you suddenly realize, “this was actually never me, what was I doing.” But the point is, these thoughts come from within you, and if they’re coming from within you, there’s a preparedness to meet it, because life is a long, creative process of evolution, and each evolutionary leap requires a disturbance to break the old order for the new to come through, and this is an evolutionary leap, menopause. It does undo the old order, which is why it feels like the ground goes from under you initially, and everything that had meaning no longer has meaning for you — it may come back, but you don’t know, and this is entirely right, but if you understand about your cycle, if you understand about initiatory dynamics — these are the conversations that should be happening out there in the world — then you feel dignified, and you go, “okay, I’m entering the rite of passage of menopause.” We go on vision quests, which are rites of passage — this vision quest happens in our very own being whilst we’re going about our daily business, and we have to dignify this now and go, “this is a sacred rite of passage I am going through,” and the moment you dignify it, you give it a new level of meaning, and you put yourself back in the driver’s seat of it, instead of feeling quite at the mercy of it. I mean, yes, death is death, of course, I’m very aware of that initial phase of falling off the edge of the cliff, but the thing is, if it was properly recognized as a rite of passage, and if women were educated in this, we’d go, “yeah, I’ve just entered menopause, I’m falling off the edge of the cliff, time for me to abandon normal life” — this is the point where you go, “I have to leave, folks, I’m going on my sacred quest of menopause, and I’m not going to be around for a while, because I have to go into the underworld of myself, I’ve got to die for a while and forget who I am and wait in the dark for the new seeds to sprout.” It’s like the seasons — you go into the winter for a while, the end of your menstruating years, and just like winter, the surface is completely quiet, but underneath the surface there’s all this mystical, magical repair going on, and you just have to hang out. It looks like nothing’s happening on the surface, but you just know you can’t move, you just don’t want to go anywhere, you don’t want to do anything, you just need to be left alone. It’s that kind of feeling, and it’s because there’s this deep inner process going on and you’re being occupied by something, and you just need to be with it. So much of the reactivity and angst at menopause is because women are trying to do normal life, or people are expecting things of them, in the same way, when they’re going through a profound process. And then after a while there’s a sort of repair phase you go through, because you realize you get this huge insight into the condition of your body and your life, and you’ve got to do some repair work, and go, “what was I doing that for in my life.” I threw out so much, let me tell you — literal things, I cleared out, and people will get cleared out, jobs will get cleared out, everything will get cleared out — clothes, books, and I adore books, you just want it all to go. And then you’re kind of waiting for the return, and it is a visionary time, you’re in liminal space, you really do go into an expanded consciousness, and you’ll just get downloads, you’ll just get knowing, and for a while you can’t do anything about it — you say, “yeah, that’s a great idea, that’s definitely what I need to do,” but you can’t move on it, because the chi isn’t there yet, you’re waiting for the well to fill up. So one of the most profound things to do at menopause is just rest — let go, rest, let the body do the work, let the earth do the work in winter instead of pumping it with fertilizers, just let the earth repair. That’s what’s happening in your psyche, you need to rest.

Lisa: I feel like I’ve had some deep insights into menopause in our conversation. As you were talking and describing it, it would seem that every menstrual cycle that you have is a mini version of this — every menstrual cycle, when you go through your seasons, your premenstrual and your autumn and then your winter, it’s a smaller version of that, depending on what’s going on in your life. It can be extremely emotional, and I’ve mentioned on the podcast before that the cyclical nature of my cycles has certainly led me to make changes — relationships, careers, different things — because there’s at least one point in my cycle where the frustration will be too great to ignore. I describe it like a secretary coming into your office every month and just throwing everything on the desk and saying “deal with it,” and then closing the door and running off. So the way you’re describing it sounds like a seasonal point in your life where this is all brought up in a much deeper way, and obviously it’s not a menstrual cycle, so it’s not just a couple of days and then it’s over — it’s whatever period of time it takes. So it does sound like this incredibly profound opportunity in your life, if you think of it as this rite of passage, and I really hope, and I know, that this conversation will really shift the way that pretty much everybody who listens to this episode thinks of menopause, and for that I am just completely thrilled.

Alexandra: Oh, thank you, Lisa, it’s so lovely to hear you say that, and to have the opportunity to speak about this. I think there’s one more thing I want to say here — I want to empower women to nominate for themselves when they feel they are in menopause, because often they say to me, “what are the signs you’re in menopause,” and I just want to say, you’ll know, you’ll know, but pace yourself. I want to say, don’t push yourself into menopause early — don’t, when the first signs and changes come, think “this is menopause,” just pace them for a while. But there is a moment where you will know, you know what — we’ve left normal country, we’re now out in this unknown, right now, this is it. And there is one thing I jokingly say, which is that I can spot it in women who are getting close to menopause — they become “dangerous,” they suddenly can’t censor themselves, they just don’t give a — you’ll know what I’m going to say next — the filters drop away. I can see it happening, and I go, “yep, she’s that,” I can totally see it. It’s like you get this power and insight while also losing your filter, and you haven’t quite learned how to navigate it yet — whoops, don’t catch her on a bad Thursday. It’s really funny. So it’s for you to decide and to nominate, but I just hope that for those of you listening, you feel reassured, and I want to really encourage you to trust your lived experience of what’s happening for you, take time to be with yourself, you’ll know stuff.

Lisa: That’s it, Lisa — all right, should we end there?

Alexandra: Yeah, I feel touched — like I was going to say, because it could just be redundant, the only other thing I was going to say was, for the younger women who are listening, thinking “wow” — because I would have been the same, so for us who are still a bit ahead, or even for the women who are a bit closer to this time, what would be — we’ve probably said everything that needs to be said, but what can we do in preparation?

Lisa: I’d love to answer that.

Alexandra: Love your menstrual cycle, cherish your menstrual cycle, respect your menstrual cycle, pay attention to what comes up, and care for yourself — you can’t get too much rest, in my book. Take care of your stress levels, because that is the thing that can really mess up menopause for you if you arrive at menopause all adrenalized and overstretched. So learn to really discover your own riverbanks and learn to flow within those rather than spilling everywhere, and when you’re practicing cycle awareness, you’re really learning to stay within the riverbanks of your nervous system and energy levels. That is what I would recommend.

Lisa: I’m glad that I asked, I could talk to you all day, and every time we have an opportunity to talk I just feel like I’m getting the opportunity to tap into your wisdom. So thank you so much for coming on the show, I really love our conversations every time. Could you share with the listeners where they can go to learn more about you, what you do, your books, and also your upcoming program?

Alexandra: Absolutely, Lisa. We have a website, Redschool.net, where you can find out about all our programs — we’ve got a lot of online stuff, of course in this time of COVID, we have trainings for people who want to go deeper in this work, but we also have shorter programs, and one of those is a six-week live online menopause course. The free call is on October the 20th, and the first session begins on November the 4th, and if you’re really wanting the heads-up on the deeper process of what I’ve been referring to here, this course will really take you through that, and you can join it even if you’re not in menopause, because it sets you up well, and importantly you have lifelong access — you can jump on the course now and keep revisiting it, do it live again each year, or check in with it whenever you want. There’ll be a link for that with the podcast. And then there’s our book — if you are happily menstruating away, the thing you need to read is our book, Wild Power: Discover the Magic of the Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power. We’re so proud of that book, because it was such a huge download, to really articulate the initiatory dynamic of the menstrual cycle journey, the psychological forces and the spiritual forces at work — and this is your preparation for menopause, to really bed down into this knowledge and understand what happens at menstruation, because you referred to how you do a sort of mini run in preparation for menopause in your premenstruum, and at menstruation, what happens in that dynamic. So I would heartily recommend, if you’re wanting to go deeper with this, our book Wild Power is one of the best places to start.

Lisa: Well, we will definitely link to all of those places in the show notes, and I’ll also link to our previous episode where we really went deep into the seasons of the menstrual cycle — that conversation was so informative, I quoted from it in The Fifth Vital Sign, and of course you go into so much more depth in your book Wild Power, so it’s essential reading for every woman, and every individual who exists on Earth.

Alexandra: Yeah, the men should also read it too — it’s a little bit less critical for the men to read, but they should also read it. We’ve actually had one or two men read it and write to us about it — one man read it through four times, we were blown away by that. I just want to add, you can also find us on Instagram and Facebook, all the usual places.

Lisa: Oh yes, we’ll make sure to link all of those places. Thank you so much for being here — this conversation was so powerful, and I’m just so thrilled to be able to share it.

Alexandra: Thank you very much, Lisa, it’s been my utter pleasure to engage with you, really delightful.

Lisa: Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with a friend — you’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/333. I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode with Alexandra Pope — mind-blowing, right? I just love being part of these fantastic conversations, and I’m so glad I was able to share it with you. These are the conversations we should be having about our cycles, about the seasons of life, with a sense of wonder, a sense of excitement, a sense of joy, and an acknowledgement that these are natural, healthy phases we’re supposed to go through, and there’s a reason why — and there’s also a lot of positive, exciting potential for these phases. For what it’s worth, I’m one of the most period-positive people you’ll meet, but I also recognize that the reproductive phase of our life is a phase, and once we finish our reproductive childbearing years, there’s something at the end of that which is also incredibly wonderful and exciting, with a whole new set of possibilities, when we are no longer sharing our energy in that way with the world, our families, and bringing life into the world. So just like there are seasons of the year, and seasons of your menstrual cycle, this is one of the seasons of our reproductive life cycle, and I love that we were able to talk about it in such a positive and empowering way. Now, I’m not saying it’s all going to be roses and strawberries, because plenty of women have challenges during that period of time, but I think one of the biggest challenges is that we’re not really aware of how to take care of ourselves during that time, we’re not really aware of the connection between our menstrual cycle and our overall health, we’re not really looking at the menstrual cycle as a vital sign, and so we accept horrific pre-menopausal symptoms as just part of the course, the same way we accept period pain, and we don’t really look deeper into that unless we’re forced to because symptoms are so bad. But I hope you enjoyed this conversation, and I hope it opened up some possibilities for you, and ultimately my hope for this conversation is that it gave you a different version of menopause, and took it out of this dark, dreary box of horribleness into an interesting phase of life that actually has some really exciting possibilities. So we’ll be talking about this on social, so you can find me at Fertility Friday on Instagram, because I definitely want to hear what you thought, and I’m excited, because I really do, from my experience, feel that most women have not heard menopause talked about positively — it’s just not a thing. So if this is the first time you’re hearing it spoken of in that light, then I’m really happy to have been, I guess, the impetus for that, the channel for that — literally the podcast channel for that, I guess you could say. So with that said, I hope you have a wonderful day, week, or weekend, whenever you are tuning into the episode, and I hope you share this episode with your friends if there’s someone who you know will benefit from it. Again, the link to this episode is fertilityfriday.com/333, and of course, as always, until next time — be well and happy charting.