47: The Grandmother Hypothesis - Why Menopause Isn't a Decline

Why Menopause Isn't a Decline...If you've been telling yourself that aging is decline, this episode is your wake-up call. Sheri and I are pulling back the curtain on one of the biggest patriarchal misconceptions keeping women feeling invisible after 40, “less than” and maybe even a little resentful. It's the belief that we need to stay youthful to be beautiful, relevant and respected.

You know the feeling: less capable at work, exhausted from proving you're still relevant, wishing you could have your younger body and strong, capable identity back, a little angry… If any of that sounds familiar, it's just a story. And in this episode, we're taking that story apart.

What we cover:
✨The myth we've been sold. The idea that menopause is "the beginning of the end" isn't science; it's culture, and a very specific, very Western one. We’ll uncover how and where it shows up, and why it’s so important to challenge it.

✨The biology that flips the script. Almost no species on the planet lives significantly beyond its reproductive years. Humans are one of the rare exceptions, alongside some species of whales. The Western narrative is that there is no real biological reason to live past menopause. We reveal the truth. 

✨The evidence that turns this myth on its head. Research on some remote indigenous communities gives evidence that women live beyond menopause not by accident, but because evolution selected for it. 

✨The reframe to move forward with. The energy that once went toward reproduction doesn't vanish after menopause - it redirects. This is the time to lead, not decline.

Next week: what's actually getting in the way of stepping into this  and what this next chapter of leadership is supposed to look like for you.

References: 

Healthy at 100 by John Robbins

Kristen Hawkes Research on Postmenopausal Lifespans

Find us on instagram:

 @midlifewomenrising

@jenreimercoaching

Transcript

JEN (opening narration): Welcome. This is the Midlife Rising podcast. Tell me if you know this feeling. You're starting to feel a brain fog at work where you've like got those moments of memory loss, or you can't do enough in the day, or as much in the day as you used to be able to do. So you're starting to really wish you had your youth back, even though you know that aging is a good thing because you've got all this experience behind you. And in life, you're starting to feel this too, like a little bit less relevant or a little bit invisible. Just wishing you could have your old self back. In this episode, Sherry and I are unpacking this story we've been told that Patriarchy has told us about aging and how, especially for women, it is a decline. We're going to turn this myth on its head based on research and anthropology, on some remote tribes that are still living the way our Paleolithic ancestors used to live, on the biology that totally flips this script, and a new hypothesis about aging that is going to leave you a little bit feisty, maybe after this episode, because you will be feel like you can step into your power instead of feeling like this whole I'm past my prime and it's all downhill from here. So if you're ready for that, then stay with us. This is a good one.

[SHOW INTRO / TAGLINE]: You're a woman over 40 who spent your life being the one who holds it all together. But now your body's changing and your soul is done pretending everything is fine. Welcome to Midlife Rising. We're your hosts, Sherry and Jen, twin sisters and modern medicine women, here to help you rewire your stress response, balance your hormones, and reclaim your feminine power. Every episode is a rebellion against the rules you never agreed to and a return to yourself. Join us where midlife isn't a crisis, it's a catalyst.

JEN: Hey, I feel like it's been forever since we recorded together.

SHERI: It has been forever.

JEN: So for our listeners, I was doing some work at a school. And so I had a lot of interactions with parents of young children. And I have noticed, and so a lot of these parents are, because I'm an old mom, I shouldn't say it that way, but I had my kid when I was 45. So I tend to be a lot like a decade older than the other moms with kids the same age as mine. And I have noticed, which I didn't notice before, how many of them, in so they'd be in their 40s, are getting Botox.

SHERI: Yes. I have noticed that. It wasn't, and this is our listeners are going to find out why this is so relevant to today's discussion, but um I hadn't really noticed it before. Like I was just, I don't know. And I just noticed somebody the other day who had obviously just gotten it done and it's kind of more noticeable the day after or whatever. And it looked like it just a little too tight, kind of. And I was like, oh my God, that person's getting Botox. I had no idea. And I keep noticing more and more than I think it's becoming rampant, and you really notice it in Hollywood. And you can start to pick out the signs after a little while. You know, you see a couple of people who have had it done, and then you just see it everywhere. It's like you can't unsee after you've noticed what it is.

JEN: Yeah. It's the next level of anti-aging that's becoming more normalized now. Like it wasn't 10 or 20 years ago, it was around for sure, but it was more of a Hollywood thing, or more of like, you know, for a few people who were like really concerned about their youthful appearance. And now it's like it's as common as dyeing your hair.

SHERI: Yeah. And there are many other types of the anti-aging types of what's the word I'm looking for, treatments available. Like you'd be surprised. I was listening to a podcast the other day, and some of the things that she was talking about, I just was shocked at what women are doing to their bodies, not just their faces, but other parts of their bodies in an effort to maintain youthful appearance.

JEN: I know it's crazy. Okay, so Sher, why is this conversation relevant to what we wanted to talk about today?

SHERI: Well, I'm really excited and fascinated by this concept, this hypothesis that I actually came across upon reading a book, I want to say 14 years ago, back in like 2012. And it has taken on new meaning today because it's really all about where ageism is coming from and how it's just Western culture that's being affected by this. There isn't this whole anti-aging culture in other parts of the world outside of Western culture. There may be some exceptions, but that's generally the rule. And I'm really fascinated about this. And you and I have been talking a lot about our Paleolithic ancestors and how we actually live in a body that is largely still the same as our Paleolithic ancestors. And so I'm really fascinated by the efforts that we can make to try to live a little more closely to that way of living and how that has made me feel so far. And part of that is not just what we consume, what we take into our bodies, what we do to our bodies, but it's also the way we feel about our bodies. And that's very different — that was very different for our... well, I can't say exactly how somebody felt about their body, but there's lots of anthropological research, even in today's tribes that are very remote, where we can see how elders, or even midlife women — I don't even consider myself to be an elder — but how midlife women or menopausal women are treated.

JEN: Okay. So to sum up what you said, you're basically saying that the way we have been looking at our bodies, at aging, in Western culture is not consistent with the way that we evolved to be.

SHERI: Yep, exactly. And there's evidence of that today, in some of today's existing tribes — cultures that have just not been exposed to Western culture.

JEN: The reason, Sher, this is so important today is that it's making so many women — like we've had these conversations in our online program, in my in-person women's circles — feel irrelevant as they age. They're feeling like they're becoming invisible, but not invisible because they're so visibly aging — like it's this kind of paradox. And they're feeling uncomfortable, kind of shameful because they're aging and they don't want to feel that way, but they don't want to stop it. They don't know how to stop it.

SHERI: Yes. Yeah, a hundred percent. And that's what I find so interesting — the fact that we've even come to the point where we are so exhausted by feeling invisible. And I'm exhausted by the marketing and advertising that is coming my way to purchase and spend so much money on anti-aging treatments and creams and anything that will make us not appear as though we are aging, and how that contrasts with other cultures.

JEN: You know how I feel about it? Like, I'm aware of this as I watch, but it's like every time somebody introduces me to something new — like there's the whole collagen craze these days — there's a new trend all the time telling us this is the quick fix, this is the thing that is going to keep you looking youthful. It's the miracle cure. And I always feel, when I hear about a new one, this pressure to be doing it, and like I've been missing out. Like, oh my God, all these people are doing this and I'm not, and maybe I'm looking older than I could because I'm not doing that thing.

SHERI: Yes, I have felt that totally. And that is a sort of a low-grade shame.

JEN: It is.

SHERI: It's — well, the shame is actually not exactly from feeling like I'm missing something. I suppose it is —

JEN: No, but from the way that —

SHERI: Yeah, the second part of what you said. It's like how I'm looking. Because it's so deeply ingrained — even though I don't want to care that I'm aging, it's so deeply ingrained at a cellular level in my psyche that I can't stop myself. I've been having this fight with myself lately, because you and I stand for aging as we're meant to. And yet I'm looking at the gray hairs multiplying, and I want to dye my hair, and I keep going, no, I'm not gonna dye my hair because this is what I stand for. And I want other women to follow me and not dye their hair too, because gray hair is what we are meant to have as we get older, and it doesn't mean we're less attractive or less beautiful. So it bugs me that I have this internal conflict all the time. And I know it's bothering other people too — not so much that they have the conflict, because maybe they're not there yet — but I know it bugs them that they're feeling a little bit shameful about getting older.

JEN: Like, especially when I'm comparing myself against these younger moms, I always feel like I'm being stared at because I look older. This is what I find so interesting about the "I don't care" movement — that's a whole other podcast episode. But do you know this movement on Instagram, TikTok? There's a lot of people saying, "I don't care anymore." And yet they do still care.

SHERI: The people who say "well, I don't care what people think anymore, I'm no longer going to keep quiet about this" are the same people who are getting their hair dyed. So it is a bit of a paradox. In some ways they don't care, but in other ways they very much do.

JEN: Yeah.

SHERI: And don't want to admit it.

JEN: Yeah.

SHERI: Or even notice it. Because it's just so normal to dye your hair. Everybody dyes their hair.

JEN: I don't.

SHERI: You don't.

JEN: But most of my friends do. I need a haircut and I might do it. We'll see.

JEN: So some other things — we talked about some of these symptoms: feeling a little bit invisible, tired or exhausted from trying to keep up. And that's not just about our looks — it's also feeling invisible sometimes in the workplace, like being passed over for a promotion because younger people are up and coming with new ideas and more energy. And exhausted from keeping up isn't just about the latest anti-aging trend — it's performing, producing, and proving that we're relevant, especially in the workplace, especially in corporate. I've talked to so many women, and there's actually research on this too — women don't want to talk about aging because they want to appear more youthful, because they don't want people to think they're less capable, or that brain fog is holding them back. So they want to appear more youthful, yet they also want to appear mature because of the experience they have — that's an asset. So there's this conflict happening in workplaces.

SHERI: Yes, definitely in workplaces. I've certainly felt it just out on the street — I've walked up to a bar, a crowded one, and been continuously overlooked for all the younger people lined up, just becoming invisible for drinks. And I'm like, wait, hello, I'm here.

JEN: Yeah.

SHERI: And that makes us feel resentful of the younger crowd.

JEN: Or it can.

SHERI: Definitely. Or maybe not even resentful, but envious of my own youth. Like sometimes I'm just, oh, I wish I had my youth back.

JEN: Which also brings up something we've talked a lot about — grief around our changing bodies. Grief for the person we used to be, the energy we used to have, the body we used to have, the looks we used to have. That can come with grief — the wishing that you had that back. That can be a loss. It can feel like a loss.

SHERI: Yeah, it can feel fearful — like being afraid of getting older, afraid of losing your edge. I definitely have a bit of that. I can admit to that.

JEN: I can see that. My edge.

SHERI: Yep. My memory, my energy. So I think anyone stuck in this place we're talking about — these are some of the things they're feeling. And it really leads to — I don't know what to call it — a never-ending treadmill of anti-aging creams and whatever your thing is to appear younger, feel younger, stay relevant, stay visible in today's society. It could be something very physical, or something less — it's basically the anti-aging treadmill. And it is a treadmill because you can't get off it. Our bodies age — that's part of life. So you're absolutely on a hamster wheel if you're on it.

JEN: Yeah.

SHERI: And I've been told — I haven't had Botox — but once you have it once, you kind of need to keep going.

JEN: Oh, I didn't know that. Why, because it gets more saggy after?

SHERI: I don't know — wrinkly or whatever. I don't know if you just notice it more because you've had it, so when it starts to wear off it feels more noticeable. But I'm told that once you start, it's really hard to stop.

JEN: Interesting. Well, Botox is a neurotoxin, so putting a toxin into your skin is likely going to kill off a few cells or something. It's gonna have an effect.

SHERI: Yep.It's a little like eyelash extensions. I tried those a couple times, and when I let them grow out, my eyelashes underneath were very short and sparse, and it took a while before they grew in fully again. For me it was more of a time-saving thing — I just didn't want to be bothered to put on mascara.

JEN: All right, so this anti-aging treadmill — we're positioning this as the enemy. It's a toxic way to go through life, really. This cultural script, this norm, that says we don't have value anymore as we age — our value was when we were fertile, young, youthful, energetic. Everything else...

SHERI: That's true.

JEN: So, Sher, you've done some research on this in terms of the science. We don't have to get overly scientific, but I found a couple of the facts you were talking about quite profound — really provoking some thought around our purpose past menopause.

SHERI: Yes. So, as I was saying, back in 2012 I read this book called Healthy at 100 — I think the author is John Robbins, we'll link it in the show notes. I was only about 40 when I read it, so I hadn't gone through menopause. What stood out to me — I was reading it at the time from the perspective of how do we stay physically healthy until we die rather than getting sick. The author studied four different ancient tribes that still exist today: the Okinawans was one, the Q'ero was another — the last of the Inca in Peru — there was the Abkhazia in southern Russia, and Dr. Mindy Pelz talks about the Hadza tribe in Tanzania. A commonality within all of these tribes is that the elders — elder women in particular — are revered and play really important roles in those cultures. It's so opposite of how our Western culture thinks about elderly or even midlife women.

JEN: Exactly. 

SHERI: One of the studies on the Abkhazia — I'm not even sure I'm pronouncing that right — they actually lie about their age too, but in the opposite direction. They'll say they're older than they are, whereas we all want to say we're younger than we are, and we get offended when — you know, I've started getting asked whether I hit the senior discount. I've been getting retirement mailers.

Although, people are always very wary of offending when they ask — they're like, "I just ask everybody so nobody misses out on the discount." And it's only 55 in a lot of these places, not 65. Anyway — I think I cut you off on what you were reading.

JEN: There was a time when I did lie about my age in the opposite direction.

SHERI: Yes — well, before, we looked younger.

JEN: Even when I was of drinking age, in my early 20s, I wanted to look older because I wanted people to think, when I hit the workplace, that I had the experience I needed to excel in my career. But yes, as I've gotten older — I watched my 40-something friends get really excited when we were in Miami back in March, and a couple of them got asked for ID. 

SHERI: I got asked for ID at the liquor store during COVID. I would have been 48 or 49 at the time, and I had a mask on — the sales rep asked me to lower my mask so he could see my face, then looked at my license and said, "oh, that is you — you look really young for your age." I went home and told everybody, I was so excited I got asked for ID at the liquor store. And then I thought about it afterwards — why is this such a compliment, that I look younger than I am?

JEN: I know. And in these other cultures, that's actually not a compliment.

SHERI: Right. So that was really interesting. But the piece I want to get to, Jen, is — we're going to talk a lot more about these tribes in our next episode — what I really wanted to get to today was the roles that females play beyond menopause. This was really fascinating to me when I realized it a few years ago. I was doing some research and realized humans are one of only four or five species on earth that live beyond their fertile years, into menopause. There's a couple of species of whales.

SHERI: There's killer whales, pilot whales — there's emerging evidence beluga whales also live into menopause, and some emerging evidence chimpanzees do too. They've studied why — what's the evolutionary purpose of these animals living beyond their fertile years? I've heard people, even a naturopath recently, say "well, we didn't used to live beyond our fertile years — it's disease control and vaccines and healthcare that's helping us live longer." That's actually not true. There's tons of evidence that we lived well beyond menopause many years ago. These tribes with no access to modern medicine are living well into menopause — not because they're vaccinated or have access to cancer drugs.

JEN: It's the same in that documentary, Blue Zones — not exactly the same tribes, but places where people tend to live to 100. They're a little isolated from modern society, and they're not living to 100 because of modern medicine. That's not why.

SHERI: No, exactly. So what they found in these whale species is that it's the grandmothers who hold information about where food is — they have long memories. Beyond their fertile years, the grandmothers step into a leadership role and guide their pods to food. They're finding the same thing in the Hadza tribe and others — you don't even have to be a grandmother, it's the women beyond their fertile years who have that memory, that library of where to find food, and they also have the energy to do it. The energy that used to go into raising children, into fertilizing eggs — which takes a tremendous amount of calories — that energy is now redirected. The body reorganizes to put that energy into these other roles within the tribe.

It's today's environment and the way we live that causes so many symptoms — like exhaustion — that prevent us from actually stepping into that.

JEN: Oh, I find that just so fascinating. It's like the older matriarchs are the leaders and they hold the cultural consciousness. Just sit with that for a second — that is the most important role in a tribe, or in a pod of whales, because they will die off without that.

SHERI: And they do. So what they found is that the pods with the oldest matriarchs were the healthiest pods.

JEN: Isn't that profound? It blows my mind. It turns everything we believe about aging, and women aging in particular, on its head. And it feels so good — to think, okay, I no longer need to put energy into raising children — although I do, because of modern science. But most women in their 50s do not need to put energy into having or raising children anymore. So they redirect that energy toward important leadership roles. That just feels so good.

SHERI: And can you imagine how Western society would change if we, as women in midlife, stepped into that instead of the belief that age is just decline and we become invisible and irrelevant? For some people that might be scary, but imagine what would happen with all of the world's problems.

JEN: They'd be getting solved.

SHERI: But instead we're told it's decline, it's all downhill from here — stay small, don't do the things that light you up that could actually change the world. So many women stay small, and the problems aren't getting solved. I lost my train of thought — they're actually then probably dying sooner than they need to, because when we think it's a decline, it becomes one.

JEN: There's also research showing that when you believe you are declining, you will decline.

SHERI: There's something I want to go back to — first, credit to the person who did the studies on the Hadza people, back in the 1990s, which is really just what we're starting to talk about now. She called it the grandmother hypothesis. The anthropologist's name is Kristen Hawkes, and she studied the Hadza in Tanzania. What she expected to find was older women foraging just to feed themselves. Instead, the grandmothers — the women in menopause — were the most productive food gatherers in the entire group. They were outworking women decades younger than them.

JEN: It shouldn't be amazing, actually.

SHERI: Yeah, and it's our culture. I know it shouldn't. When you think about it, all this energy — even within our own bodies, if you're like me and don't have children to raise — all this energy goes toward creating eggs. And on top of that, women who are creating eggs and raising children — that's a ton of energy you're no longer spending after menopause. So it makes sense that all that energy gets freed up. But we're conditioned to believe women just get more tired as they get older, that we have less energy, that it's not just cognitive decline but physical and energetic decline too. That's just a narrative we've been fed. This Hadza tribe shows that's completely backwards. It's not true.

JEN: And like you said, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we believe we're going to decline, then we do.

JEN: I'm thinking about a tribe friends of mine were researching in South Africa — a community living in poverty in the middle of nowhere. Missionaries and NGOs were trying to bring in water systems and modern infrastructure, and the community didn't want it. One reason: they looked at the roles within the community, and the women past childbearing age were the ones who collected water — that was her role. She'd get up before the entire family, go down to the river, collect the water, carry it back — water's heavy — boil it and have it ready for cooking by the time everyone else got up. If they brought in a water system, she wouldn't have that role anymore. It's not positioning her as a matriarch exactly, but it is positioning her as having an important role. And she didn't want to give that up, because then her reason for living was gone.

SHERI: And that's something we hear from women our age — they want meaning, they want fulfillment. Our modern society has taken so much of that away, because we don't need someone to tell stories anymore — we have the internet, ChatGPT can make up a story in five seconds. We don't need people to hold this collective consciousness, this information about where the food was, how to find new areas that hadn't been visited in years. We've taken that away. And so women are looking, I think, for new purpose.

JEN: And something you just said — we don't need that anymore, and yet we kind of do. We're losing something.

SHERI: We do.

JEN: Yeah.

SHERI: We're losing so much knowledge because we're not asking our elders about it. We no longer know what natural plants do for our bodies, what our ancestors believed beyond what's written. We don't have our own personal line of stories anymore because we're not interested.

JEN: So what do we do with this knowledge, Sheri?

SHERI: Well, number one, for me, this gave me a whole new perspective on aging. Even if our society still doesn't revere our elders in Western culture — coming back to one of our key teachings, a through-line for everything we do — is our own self-worth. I don't need external validation that I am worthy or valuable to society.

JEN: Right. So even if externally our culture is saying I'm not — when we're looking for external validation, we tend to outsource our worthiness instead of finding it inherently. I know that's difficult to embody, but if we can —

SHERI: Felt worthiness — it's felt, yeah.

JEN: It's a felt sense, yeah.

SHERI: Mm-hmm. And if you can't think your way into worthiness — no. But what that does reinforce for me is that I don't need external society to tell me, and I'm not going to wait for them to tell me I'm worthy. I'll behave differently if I believe in my own worthiness. I won't go get my hair colored, because it doesn't matter what somebody else thinks — I know I'm inherently worthy, even with gray hair.

JEN: Yeah, I do think it's a battle, Sherry. I think that different perspective helps us reframe this in our own minds, cognitively shift to a new mindset, and talk about it — because the more people talk about this, how it's not a decline, how we don't have to do all the physical things to appear more youthful when we're inherently worthy as we are, the more we have worth in society as women over 50, or 45, or whatever the number is. And the next step is to create that felt sense.

SHERI: Yes. And the beginning — where we always start — is simply to notice. This just reframes something I had always sort of believed. It gives me a whole new perspective: it was actually evolution that selected for these women in menopause to survive. They were required for the survival of the larger community.

JEN: Yeah, there's a reason — it's not modern science, it's the opposite of modern science. I find it so interesting it was whales and people — those are the two species. Knowing that whales are a very intelligent species, I find it interesting those are the two, and it wasn't gorillas and people, or something we'd see as closer to our genetic makeup.

SHERI: Yeah, I agree. We know whales are a very social species. The other one that came up in the research was Asian elephants — also very social, and it's the matriarchs who are the leaders of their... I forget what elephant groups are called. Whales are pods.

JEN: I think it's a herd.

SHERI: Herds, yes, of course.

JEN: One other thing I want to say before we close this out, Sher — our modern society has also made it very difficult to look up to grandmothers for the knowledge they have. An example: we have family members — aunts, our mom — who give me these anecdotes I see as wives' tales, and we discount them. Like, when I'm sick — what did she say? I don't know. We have an aunt who said put a mustard plaster, or onion, on your chest for whatever. I discount it because Western medicine hasn't directly said that's a good remedy. But then I've gone to my Chinese doctor, who's said the exact same thing, which gave it more credibility because I trust her. But there's still a part of me that thinks, that seems kind of out there, old-wives'-tale-ish. This is a really hard reframe to embody.

SHERI: Well, and the fact that we've been, especially over the last five years, conditioned to follow "the science" — it's only true if science has proved it. And you and I both know science is never hard proof. Look at all the things that were "science" and later discounted. There's a study, but that study can always be criticized, or something comes up that can't be repeated. Science is never truth, and yet our society puts a lot of value on science as truth. So, to answer your question — what do we do with this? Simply becoming aware of this information might help shift some beliefs for midlife women — that maybe we do actually have value. Maybe it doesn't matter that society tells us we're invisible; we can stand up and empower ourselves anyway.

JEN: I like that.

SHERI: But the other thing we really want to talk about next episode is that these grandmothers, these menopausal women, weren't just a requirement for the tribe — they were leaders. They were revered. In these remote cultures that still live today, elders are still revered. So our next step is: how do we take this information — we've begun reframing the midlife woman's role in society — but how do we now step into that? To me, that's leadership, whether leading people at work or leading your family in a different way. I see my own role in our extended family as different now — I've gained more wisdom, my nieces and nephew are growing up, and I'm interacting with everybody differently. Or it may just be leading your own life — a way of being inside your own humanity. That's what I really want to talk about next episode.

JEN: I love it. Well, let's close out there, and we'll see our listeners back in the next episode.

SHERI: Okay. And if you found this episode interesting, valuable, or enlightening, as Jen and I did, share it with a friend — there's a ripple effect here. You sharing this is going to get the word out that we are not invisible. This is a really empowering message that we hope you'll share.

JEN: Absolutely.