Dr. Amanda Hansen

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Start your free trial at Shopify.com/au. I'm going to start with the quote, "Just hear me out and listen to this."

It's a game changer for a woman when she is willing to lose anyone,

but no longer willing to lose herself. That's great quote. Why do you think that's so hard for people?

“Because I believe that women never put themselves first.”

Welcome to "Talk Fifties to Me." That quote and there's a few more that we might share in today's episode. That the more women talk about choosing themselves over choosing others, the more you become aware of that it's just ingrained in us. You know, it's Margaret Show talked about that we're given dolls as children.

Like we are basically given toys that we are taught to take care of from a tiny, tiny age.

Yeah, but that is the thing. I don't think that women realize how much of how we feel has been baked into us without our permission at all.

“And I think that we're told that putting ourselves first is selfish.”

And I recently realized that the greatest gift I gave myself was desentering everyone from my life be so that I could put myself first so that I could develop a sense of radical self-love. And I think when you do that, you realize how to love everyone else from your true self. Yeah, but we're not allowed. No, and also I do believe that is the gift of menopause. If menopause is going to give you anything, it gives you an awakening of, hold on a minute.

Is this now my time? Because everything else is now like no reproduction, no, you know, needing to find a partner, needing to find a career. You know, all of that is gone. And that part of your brain has shrunken on purpose. Hmm, so to enlarge the other part of your brain, which is about self care and taking care of, which is another quote that I maybe I should just say it right now before we go into our guest,

“because I think it's so fucking cool that menopause happens when childbirth becomes a”

danger to something nature wants to preserve. A woman stops creating life to create something even greater. Menopause protects the wisdom by preserving the teacher. It's a good way to look at it. I also think for me, because it was so different 15 years ago

when I first went into menopause that I felt invisible and then that invisibility became a superpower.

And I was like, wow, no one's paying attention to me. I can do whatever the fuck I want. I can pay attention to me. And that's when things shifted. Yeah, see, I like that you came at it out of basically, you didn't have any other choice, but to focus on yourself, because nobody else is focused on you, where we are Gen X is now coming at it with wait a second, pay the fuck attention to me and to us, because we have something to fucking say. Yes. And you know who

has something really important to say today? Yes, our guest. Our guest today. All right, our guest today calls women's inability to love honor and value themselves a global crisis. Let that sink in for a second. Imagine the power we could have just by loving ourselves. She is a clinical psychologist for over 27 years. And in her 50s alone is a published author, a podcast host, and one of the most influential coaching voices in the world helping hundreds of thousands of

the midlife muse, police say hello to Dr. Amanda Hansen. Yeah, ladies, that's so beautiful. Wow. Thank you. Please, that's all you. You gave us all that. We even started this episode with your quotes, because I am constantly blown away by all of the positivity and affirmations for women during this time that is so needed in this world. Can you give us one word to describe

“your 50s? Powerful. Powerful. Wow. I like that. And can you expand on that? Where that comes from?”

Or how you came to that word? I think up until that point, I was still as much as I was working through not being attached to the patriarchal structure. I was raised in it bathed in it. It was coated inside of me from the time I was a little girl. So I think I spent the first 50 years of my life looking underneath every piece of rubble, a patriarchal rubble, and saying no, I'm pulling my arm out from that one. And no, I'm pulling my leg out from this one. And I feel

most powerful now because I've actually stood up out of all the rubble, been able to identify

who I am with all the languaging that prompted me up for so long that promised me a perfect life. And gave me so much of the opposite. So I feel so powerful that I have gotten myself up out of all of that and recreated my own completely different narrative that with all the best intention, my mother, my grandmothers, no one in my vicinity was able to help me construct. So it feels really powerful to build this brick by brick, even when a lot of the women in the world, the

patriarchalized women who don't even realize they're still very horrible. Yeah. Looking at me,

like, I might be insane. Yeah. Stay in the force. It's a powerful, powerful declaration of self.

“I think it's cool how you do it with so much positivity because I know as a boomer, a lot of”

my self discovery and self love came with a lot of anger and being so fucking pissed off at the patriarchy. Like every day I uncover another wound and I know that radical self love is the answer to healing myself and to healing other people. But yeah, I love that you do with so much positivity. And I loved that you coined your midlife muse. How did that come about? Well, before answer that I do want to clarify that when I reached 40 and everyone around me was

starting to panic in my friend group about the fact that we were all turning 40 and my husband's a bit older and I thought, why am I supposed to be panicking now? He didn't even bat an eyelash and so I will tell you from 40 to probably like 47-48 it was rage of the double standards. I was pissed. So that last part that really helped me completely untether and deconstruct from it was anger for sure. I've softened into this beautiful powerful place now and it is a different energy

calling women forward. Yeah. But my anger and rage served a very good purpose for a long-time pre-week-week-week-week-week-week-week-week-week-week-week-week-week-week-week-week-week-week-week-week. I mean, I'm sure I would have been angrier but I got sober at 40 so I spent 10 years just trying to figure out like, oh, I didn't even know I was in Perry Maniposed or any of that. So I was too busy cleaning up to get angry so I had a 10-year delay of anger. But actually it's in my 60s

and I'm the most, you know, everything was so different 10 years ago. We didn't have women like you speaking publicly all the time. Yeah, that just came about because actually it's interesting. I think that we often when we think about mues we think about it having to be a man has a mues that he

gets inspired by to write music, to paint, to create art. That's how the story I've always heard it.

So I realized women could be their own mues rather than it having to be this word that inspires men to do things in life. What if we turn that word? I love taking every single word that the patriarchy has used and turning it and looking at what I can do with it in my own life. So it's this idea of like, what if I become my own mues? What if I'm the one who's so turned on by myself? What if I'm the one who is so inspired? What if I'm the one with the ideas for my own life

rather than it needing to be that I'm the mues just someone else? So I play kind of play with that

“idea and that's that's how you love it. Do you have a merch line because you should have be your own”

mues on t-shirts and hats? I absolutely should. Because I think it's all yours. I think that's brilliant

your 50s or anytime you have a problem in your life is about to just you must nobody else cares.

“No one's coming to save you. You must save yourself and prepare yourself. Yeah. Absolutely.”

Now you also said so from 40 to 48 the rage and then you said and that's when I went gray. Can you talk about it because the you know the whole gray hair conversations that are happening right now all over? They'll happen forever. And they're going to happen forever. Until we change it, until we are able to say like yes, this is natural. This is what we're going to fucking do. There's certain people that want to cover it for forever and that's fine. That's more power to them.

But I want to speak to how from your rage it then made you you know you moved into this mues

and you moved into this. I'm going to be empowered by what naturally is happening to me,

whether that's gray hair, whether that symptoms of menopause etc. Yeah. I just decided I really trust Mother Nature. Mother Nature is where I go to ground for everything in my life and I thought

“why wouldn't I trust her with me? Why wouldn't I trust her on this process of aging? I don't really”

believe she makes a lot of mistakes. So because I have such profound trust in how we're still even here and things keep happening and the earth keeps spinning even though we betrayed her and we've harmed her so so much. I wanted to play with that dynamic for myself and I thought well Mother Nature seems to have done a beautiful job with my husband's gray hair and his gray beard and why don't I try that on precise? But I realized I really had to disconnect from any messaging that was going

to try to contaminate my journey. So it has taken really squeaky clean boundaries with what I consume and absorb and at this point now I'm and I'm well beyond needing to be a squeaky clean with what can come in because I am so immune now because I can see it for exactly what it is. It's just another marketing scheme if we can make our afraid she'll buy something. Yeah. But I'm not operating from a baseline of fear so I can't sound the anything. It's also really interesting two things.

Well they are creating products now that stop you're here from growing gray and I was like so dumb the fascinating thing about gray hair to me was I dyed my hair red for my whole life and then by the time I hit my 50s I thought oh this coloring doesn't suit me at all and I let my gray hair grow out and that is what naturally my coloring was but when you were saying Mother Nature I find it so fascinating at the one good thing we have in this world is called Mother Nature.

But this extends also into how you feel about your skin and aging and wrinkles and plastic

surgery and all of that also correct. Correct. Yes. I'm extremely I've always just been I was

built extremely thin with a very high metabolism. I always say the only good thing my father gave me not God rest his soul but truthfully he was he was MIA my whole life but as the story goes he had great metabolism and he was really skinny so whether skinny is good bad not even the point it's just I've always run on the thinner side and I told the story many many years ago that it was not feminine and I didn't have a feminine body and I wasn't really I looked like a stick and I got bullied

in high school and they used to call me you know all kinds of names for being so thin and the nurses thought I had an eating disorder you know she'd call me down to the office and I really I didn't but it created a different kind of feeling and so I was so vulnerable that I made the decision thinking it was from a place of power at that time to get breast implants. Oh wow I don't know I've had them removed. Yes I've had them removed they're no longer a part of me but there was a

period of time where I thought well that that'll help me feel more feminine because I had no sense that true femininity was built inside. Yes. I thought femininity is lipstick and high heels and breasts and I don't know long hair whatever we want to say everybody interprets it differently. I still was under the patriarchal spell of believing true true femininity and beauty came from stuff you did or had on your body as opposed to that quiet sensuality that lives within us.

So that took a lot of excavating for me to do so in this process of deciding at 40 like why I'm not going to get Botox. I'm not going to do fillers. I'm going to let my hair go gray. Well sure has held us aligned at all when I have breast implants so these bad boys have to go.

“I and when we were coming home from the surgery I remember it was only an hour and a half from”

our home and my husband was driving me home and when I was in the recovery room I couldn't stop

I was just tears I felt like from thousands of years ago just were coming off with my face.

“And on the whole drive home my husband kept saying oh my gosh did I hit a bump and am I going”

to fast what's wrong? Please say something and all I could get out was these I am just crying for the version of me and any woman who ever thought she had to put herself at risk for a surgery or something toxic to be more beautiful. I wish that the version of you did that would know the power I know now and it was just so much grief not just for me for just women in general. So we are willing to die for acceptance. I don't know for the male gaze for a moment

for a flash of beauty for what? Well we're also so are facing it is heartbreaking because I also like I've been offered two free facelifts and like no fucking way am I cutting my face open for you and I say to women all the time I know that it's your right to do what you want to do I just want you to understand the why behind what you're doing because it is baked into you. I had the opposite story I was made fun of for having big boobs at 10 and I had a rest reduction

I wanted them off I was like just leave the nipple I don't even need anything else and so I get it and it really is we're constantly our containers this meat suit is picked apart as if that's all we are and I women really need to understand that there's it's not your faults that you feel that way you came out of the womb that way hearing it you know. I did a you know I know it's coined sadly

“man on the street imagine I think that should be on the street by the way and giving you all”

your pastries I'm changing it all I I was walking asking random men and women do you remember the

first time someone made a negative comment about you're in my god I saw that it was amazing we couldn't

even clip it all in every single woman yes yes yes yes you know men no no no no and if the one or two men were like yeah they told me I had big ears but you know whatever I just I just blew it off it's just amazing how we're policed I think from the time the average girl you know five six years old starts to hear something and we build an entire life based on being pleasing as if we're ornaments rather than these instruments of our own being and so I think I think it's a really

really really difficult trap to unravel from and it takes a lot of work yeah it really does again it all goes back to radical self love I mean we even do it to babies it's like look at that chubby baby yeah you're like already judge them if they have like you know roles on their thighs

“and their babies that have like soaked up nutrition in order to survive it's crazy so I think about”

the gender reveal party like really like what is it or it's a baby it's a human consciousness it doesn't need to be prepared for being a girl or being a boy it just needs arms and it needs oh you know yeah it's a kind of construct because it's again it's to sell stuff it's to sell gender reveal party is all about selling everything is about selling right ever wonder what Marie and Tuenet and Kim Kardashian might have in common

or how celebrity scandal from 2007 is basically just history repeating itself

where test and clear and we host right answers mostly a podcast where history and pop culture collide from ancient queens to reality tv stars we break it all down with the rich juicy storytelling it deserves it's giving girlhood it's giving historically accurate most of the time new episodes every Monday and Friday come for the facts stay for the drama this is right answers mostly where history is just gossip

so because you basically it sounds like you were headed into your 50s a little bit more aware than maybe most of us can you maybe speak to when you got into your 50s was it what you thought it was going to be because you went into it with a little bit more of awareness and consciousness of just heading into it naturally and letting your symptoms be natural and you know because you know for for me in particular I felt like my 50s just I slammed into a wall

and I just went whoa this was not what I thought this was going to be so I would love it if you

you got into your 50s what feels like with a little bit more of a smoother transition absolutely

“I think in the same way that what I always equated to for me is when I was giving birth to my”

children I didn't want to have the epidural or any pain meds I wanted to have midwives I wanted to feel it all again trusting mother nature trusting my body in the same way that I knew

that that pain from from first stage labor when the baby is descending until you push and second

stage that middle phase is called transition and that transition is the double peaking contractions that feel like you might die and you'd only last about 90 seconds to three minutes nonetheless it feels harrowing and I was prepared for it I knew that I'd already been teaching natural childbirth but when I got to it for the first time myself all I kept thinking and saying to myself is that this right now that you are moving through Amanda it's not killing you it's killing

it's it's burning off and the version of you the young woman in you part of her is being released

“because you're stepping into an era and a territory you're going to need this kind of power for”

because what what you'll face being a mother you're going to need to be one hell of a warrior

so I understood that mother nature built that in for a reason and also to have my loved ones in the room they're witnessing it and understanding the power of a woman's body because that's often so muted so that was really big for for my loved ones to be a part of but then also I went into midlife the same way anything that comes Amanda we're going to breathe through it just like my periods I would look at my blood as it was coming out in the toilet and say shed what does not

serve me any longer and shed it all and so as I woke up in the middle of a night with hot flashes for eight weeks I already had like a huge fan by my bed I was sleeping naked with the air conditioning on 65 and I would just go to my fan three times at night when I would wake up in that wet pool and I would surrender I put my arms back I surrendered my neck up and I opened my legs and I stood there in front of this full fan and I said let burn away what I cannot take for my crone era

let it burn here right now and I it was in ceremony over it and I had two other symptoms that I saw as ceremony one of them was my depth perception was during the time of the hot flashes I had a couple of months where my depth perception where if I was walking in an unknown room not my home a room I wasn't familiar with I couldn't tell the difference between where the carpet ended and maybe the hardwoods began so what I told myself was I mean you've been walking really

fast your whole life slow down I attention be present with your life so I decided to make that a ceremony and then the dry eyes I had that for a while too and so I created this ritual about a warm eye mask I started every morning with the warm eye mask and every evening where before I was starting my day like okay what would I have to worry about today what's I might to do list so just making the symptoms what is the symptom it's a professor what is it

here to teach me I can't bypass this right now because where I'm going requires this kind of self-holding and self-containing and power I don't want to run from it and I'm not telling a story

that it's scary well it's so powerful you were obviously so meant to do what you do I almost

feel like source and the universe has been channeling through you for quite some time for sure you I mean I can feel I can you're you're pulling in which is amazing to be able to connect to

“that I think we all have that ability but we push it away I you may have answered this a little bit”

but I wonder what your advice is for the next generation coming up into their 50s I would say you have a choice and you can decide to be white knuckling it terrified and filled with terror that you're losing so much and I would suggest what if you loosened your hands from the grip and surrendered into wow I'm so curious what I'm going to learn what I'm going to find in this next chapter and coming into it with so much excitement and delight and I guess all and wonder

because I don't think we can simultaneously hold the energy of surrender awe and wonder and be terrified so it's like I would say if some if you feel fear go source for underneath the fear what is the message underneath the fear more often than not it was someone else's fear you absorbed or it was a marketing machine trying to get you to buy something it's not you probably don't really actually have fear if you sit with what is so scary about being an aging woman and do the

yeah what if it all works out happen what if it all works out long your wildest frames exactly

“so it's time yeah go ahead no you do it oh you do it no you do okay so it's time for our last”

question which is always a surprise question so we're going to dig in here and hope that it's

something juicy just for you and here we go the question is oh you got an easy one favorite book about being 50 favorite book about being 50 I would have to say my book I wrote it was the voice I wish it was the book that I could have found it's called Muse the Magnatism of being a woman who stops abandoning herself oh that's beautiful yes we love it and yes I say that's a really good choice that's awesome it was so quick and wonderful having you here I don't you dropped so many

beautiful pearls of wisdom and I I hope people really just learn how to hug themselves after

listening to all this because it really is what gets you through anything it's just stop waiting

for someone else to love you and just love yourself yeah and you truly are our muse you are every woman's muse you've done it thank you so much for talking to us today you know I was like crying no more times thank you so much for joining us we've loved having you thank you Amanda thank you it's my honor okay I she she that's right like she blows my fucking mind yeah you

“know you just can't get on Instagram what you need to get out of a woman like that yeah and I mean”

she does these you know like day a couple days weekend summits and now I'm just like oh I probably need to go to that yeah I think you know she was talking about that letting go of things that don't serve you was that it Alex I'm asking our producer letting go letting go of the fear and how we fear change yes she's fucking hard well I think it it's in so many aspects of things we hold onto things because letting go of them is even scarier who

am I without my fear of aging who am I without this I have to face who that is and I would like to say it's much easier to face and way less scary when you just do it it's the same as you know quitting drinking a lot of people don't want to quit drinking because they're like who am I without that you're you're amazing without that that's who you are I know what it's anything ending a relationship and you have a friendship ending um an addiction I mean everything is about change but

when we do change we're changing because we are putting ourselves first let go sometimes you're forced right you're forced to put yourself first and sometimes you don't have any other choice but I also wanted to just say that I didn't mention that the quotes that I said at the beginning of the show are Dr Amanda Hansen yes she's amazing and because it's just the being the midlife muse and the

her talking about muses were always for men I didn't even think about that that it's right there's

not women don't go around talking about their muse they talk about um mentors right yeah yeah yeah but even more importantly I think what I summed up from this entire episode was be your own muse yeah be your own muse what a fucking concept inspire yourself yeah basically that's hard I love it I love it I love it but I'm saying that's hard I mean I I would like to look

“in the mirror every day and be like you're fucking great what you should start out that yeah I know I”

should I know these are again things that you're supposed to do and I do it sometimes you want me to call you and remind you in the mornings to do that yeah I want to go look at the mirror tell yourself how awesome you are I want to write it in lipstick she also mentioned a word that we talked about on Instagram which was Cron and we had asked for people to give us what a new word for Cron because we weren't sure if that was a good one and we got a lot of

answers to that question and um at Sharon F. F. offered goddess and at mccz a jk a79 offered matriarch right but a lot of you out there love the word Cron so much so that actually at parks

accent on the green in the crown zone is that Australian listen fuck off on British that is

“it for us today thank you so much for listening yes we're happy to have you if you want more”

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constant simmer is produced by Alex B.D. recording engineer a layout walker editing by Zelene Hesse

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production distributed by the forward network hi I'm Tamson Fidel journalist and author of how to menopause and host of the Tamson show a weekly podcast with your roadmap to midlife and beyond we covered all from dating to divorce aging to ADHD sleep to sex, brain health, the body fat and even how parametopause and effect your relationships and trust me it can each week I sit down with doctors experts and leaders along Jevity for unfiltered conversations packed

with advice on everything from hormones to happiness and of course how to say saying during what can be well let's face it a pretty chaotic chapter of life think of us as your midlife survival guide new episodes released every Wednesday listen now on apple spotify or wherever you get your podcasts