48: What Orcas Know About Aging That We've Been Missing All Along

What Orcas Know About Aging That We've Been Missing All Along

Trillions of dollars are being put towards an industry to fight a perfectly natural process. 

The anti-aging industry…that bombardment of marketing and advertising we get daily about all the creams and things women should buy to look "better."

What if this patriarchal story that being youthful is better was completely wrong? What if we gracefully aged into wise women the way our ancestors did? You’ll be shocked at the answer.

This episode is part 2 of our “Grandmother hypothesis” series, where we take it out of “theory” and turn it into a working blueprint. You’ll learn the four mistakes that sabotage women in midlife, why your "symptoms" are actually your body's most honest messages, and what leadership looks like when it's not about managing a team but about becoming the woman your family, your friends, and your future self actually need. 

What you'll walk away with:

• How to stop managing decline better and shift into a completely different philosophy of the purpose of this life stage.
• The mistakes that are making midlife harder: the "strong and capable" armor, the need to be needed, fighting your symptoms instead of listening to them, and chasing the anti-aging narrative
• Contrary to popular opinion - why your creativity, intuition, and leadership are sharpening right now, not fading. 
• A simple 3-step exercise to identify the identities you're clinging to and start leading from where you actually are (family, friend group, work, or just yourself)

"Putting up armor doesn't help you step into a leadership role. That doesn't make you a leader;  it makes you a doer, and it makes you exhausted." 

Resources:

Midlife Women Rising website

Liz Wiseman leadership website

Find us on instagram:

 @midlifewomenrising

@jenreimercoaching

Transcript

Jen 0:00

Welcome. This is the Midlife Rising podcast. If you are a midlife woman who has been thinking about what does my next chapter look like? And you want it to look amazing, then this episode is for you. We are taking the grandmother hypothesis to the next stage. We talked about that on the last episode. So this is a continuation of that conversation. And we're going to go deep on how we can actually use this as a sort of blueprint for this next stage of life. You're also going to find out why thriving in menopause isn't just about managing decline. In fact, it's not about that at all. How to defy ageism from the inside out, and why your creativity, your leadership, your intuition, all of that is actually sharpening in this phase of life, not fading. And then lastly, you're going to find out what a different kind of leadership looks like. So it's not always just leading people in the workplace, but how the grandmother hypothesis can show you opportunities for a different kind of leadership in many different aspects of your life. So if you're curious about how this is all going to work and how you can use the grandmother hypothesis in your own life, then stay tuned. We're going to dive in deep. 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. I cannot wait to get straight into this topic because this is part two after last week's discussion, the last episode number 47's discussion about the grandmother hypothesis. And I really want to get straight into talking about how we can use this information that life is not actually a decline, that we were meant to act as leaders in midlife. How do we start to embody this and use this thinking as a roadmap for our next chapter? I find that so intriguing and exciting. Yes. And I agree. And not just a roadmap, but motivation or inspiration that it does and philosophy. Yes. And yeah. And the idea that we're not on this gradual decline to the end of life, that there is so much more that we have to offer. Yeah. And you know, one thing that we did not talk about last episode is that we kind of treat aging as managing a decline, like slowing the decline, fighting the decline. And we're gonna talk about in this episode why actually feeling like you're thriving after 45 isn't about getting better at managing the decline. It's totally different. Like that's why this is such a different philosophy. It's not just a roadmap for managing your next chapter, it's a whole different philosophy of life. Yeah. It's the like right now, our society looks at life as sort of a bell curve. You know, like you, you sort of peak. I don't know when the peak is. Some people say 30s, some people say 20s. But that at some point it's just like you hit your peak and then you're on a gradual decline. And I'm like, what if it's not a bell curve at all? It's just us like a we just keep rising until the end. Yes, that feels good. I like that. I don't like this bell curve thing. I didn't like it in school when when you were on the curve or over the average. And I don't like it now because we aren't, it just makes it feel so depressing. Well, and one thing that we didn't talk about last week is or last episode, is so we talked about these tribes that several people numbers of people have studied, these tribes or societies or cultures that still exist that have very little Western or outside influence. And that's why they're studied, because they give us a view into what are to how our ancestors lived. And even though these tribes are on completely different sides of the world, like one of them is in Peru, another one is in southern Russia, another one is in Okinawa, like that's an island in the middle of the Pacific. Another is in Tanzania, and yet they all have this commonality. First of all, that their elder, elder, their elder women, menopausal women, even if they're not considered elderly in our culture or theirs, they are revered. And second, there's no assumption that you must get sick in order to die. I know I find that so interesting. It's all that is also very much part of Eastern philosophies. Mm-hmm. That you can you just live optimally until you die. You don't have to get sick, you can just die in your sleep. And that is so foreign. Like the assumption is that you are going to end up in a senior's home or hospice or something, and there has to be some sort of illness or decline in order to die. And that is just that's actually not that's an assumption. Because that's the way it often goes in our culture. It doesn't, yes, not in every culture. No, just so fascinating. It's so interesting. Okay, so why don't we start with the mistakes that our listeners might be making that is that are causing them how would you say it? It's keeping them from stepping into this this leadership, this empowered role as a menopausal woman. Yes. And some of them are making it worse when I think about them. Absolutely. They're actually they're actually making aging harder. Yes. These mistakes. Like they're not actually making it better. We think we're they're making it better. And they're actually making it worse. Yeah. And I want to add that this is to to no fault of our listeners. If you're someone listening, going, oh my gosh, what am I doing wrong? No, no. It's it's just that we've been conditioned to value certain things and we're gonna talk about these things, but they're actually making aging harder. And they're they're making us actually shrink versus empower ourselves versus stand up, lead. So what are these things, Jen? Okay. So first one, and I'm it's also I I'm guilty of this myself. It's holding on to the I this identity as I'm a strong and capable woman. It's okay. It's like this thing. It's okay. I'm strong. I'm capable. I can do it. I don't need help. It's that. And and we keep hearing that from women. This is a huge trend, is that they just want to, they want them their old selves back. And they just want to still be like the strong. I just want to be able to be the high-performing, high achieving person I was. I don't want this brain fog and I don't want this feeling that I that I'm not as sharp as I used to be, or that I can't accomplish as much in a day than I used to. They don't want to slow down. And you want to say something, Cher? Go ahead. Well, there's so many things I want to say, actually. But uh what was coming out of my mouth at that moment was that we our standards are completely different than what our ancestors would have had. So they didn't have this complex. Like I have to be strong and capable and independent and you know, juggle all the balls. No, that was a patriarchal creation. That is completely a pretend. Um, and that also means they didn't have that complex throughout their entire lives, making them suddenly exhausted when they hit menopause. Right. We talked on the last episode about how our energy is actually supposed to increase because it's no longer being funneled towards fertility and caring, nurturing children. So we should actually have more energy, more creative energy, more energy for stepping into leadership, whether that's at work or at home or or simply in your own life. So yeah, hanging on to this identity, like it's a little bit of a, it's ironic because the way that I see the Hadsa tribe or the like when I think about the grandmother hypothesis, I think of these strong, empowered women as leaders, as necessary for the survival of those tribes. And our definition of strong and capable is just completely different than that. To me, it's about empowerment. Our definition of strong and capable in our society is uh you have to do all the things. Yeah, it's totally different. Strong and capable in Western society, Cher is I'm um I'm a super mom, I'm super busy, I'm um I can do it. I don't need help. It's armor. I don't need help because subconsciously it makes you feel weak if or you look weak or look incapable, and that's shameful. So um, so our definition of strong and capable is capable is very different. It's a it's subtle because you have to really it's again, it's a felt sense of difference. Like when you feel empowered, that's totally different from nope, I'm strong, I can do it. From that, like and I'm quoting. Um so and the reason I want to just touch on before we go to the next one, Cher, is the reason this makes it worse. Because it's a mistake, because it's not actually putting up armor doesn't help you step into a leadership role. That doesn't make you a leader, it makes you a doer, it makes you exhausted. And that's exactly what why it get it makes it worse because it means you're trying to do all the things. When you're that busy and going crazy, you cannot access your intuition, you don't make good decisions, you don't access, you can't see all the opportunities that are in front of you for creative solutions because you're in stress mode, and that means you are focused only on what is in front of you. So there's no strategy, there's no visioning, there's no ideas happening. So being that's why it's such a like this is the number one mistake that women our age make is trying to like hold on to that identity that they're still strong and independent. And it just makes you more tired and you keep doing more and um and you become exhausted because you can't actually handle all the things. And that makes your symptoms worse. That makes you right, it that saps that energy that you're supposed to actually have more of at this stage of life. Yeah. Okay, so second one. Yeah, the second one actually came to me as I was coaching one-on-one clients who are childless, who women who wanted kids who never got to have them. And one of the things that they wanted was to be needed. And I have noticed as we talk more and more to mothers, they also lament this being no longer needed. And if I'm no longer needed, then who am I? So it's another identity, the one who's needed. And that also can hold us back from leading because we're stuck in this. Oh my gosh, I'm I'm lost if I'm not needed. And then we strive to continue to be needed. Yep. And this happens in the workplace too, Cher. Like the fixing and the um that it that it can show up as micromanaging, and it can also show up just as diminishing your people. So, and Liz Wiseman talks about this a lot, um, not in this context, but um, she's a leadership um guru, let's call her. She's written some books, and she talks about how um you diminish the intelligence of your people if you are constantly trying to fix their problems for them, swoop in and save the day, protect them, answer their questions instead of actually saying, Well, what would you do in that situation? What's your solution? So, but and what she doesn't talk about in the context of leadership is like she tells you all the behaviors that you should do instead. And she doesn't talk about why we still do them. This is what I found in my leadership research is that, well, we continue to fix and answer for other people and swoop in because that makes us feel needed and important. And that so that's an identity. So you cannot change your behavior in the workplace or at home with your children or whatever, if you still have that subconscious need to be to be needed, to be valuable, that you're sourcing from the outside. And if you feel like you're unworthy and you're trying to source worthiness and value from the outside. So that's one of the things that doing this kind of work, like worthiness work, helps you to naturally be another leader, a better leader, because then your behavior shifts naturally. You don't have to try to will yourself into changing your behavior at home or in the workplace. It totally shifts. I have felt that within myself, and this is just a bit of an aside, but I actually feel different. And I'm sure that other people can see that I'm behaving different, but I feel like I'm reacting differently. I feel more calm. I feel that you talk about this, like a feeling that I have more grace. Yeah. Well, that's what I used to teach was leading with grace. And that's exactly you suddenly go, Oh, I wouldn't have done that that way before. Yeah. Like sometimes I'm, I'm, I'll say something or I'll do something and think, who am I? Like, where did that come from? So your your behavior automatically changes without you having to think about it. Exactly. Okay, so next mistake, Cher, is oh, I just love this one, fighting your symptoms instead of listening to them. You you're so good at explaining this, like how your symptoms aren't. We look at like modern medicine looks at symptoms as symptoms of disease, whereas really they're a signal from your body indicating that something is off balance. And particularly when it comes to perimenopause, the fact that we even call them symptoms suggests that there's some sort of underlying disorder or disease when menopause, it's not a disease, it's a normal process of life. So when you're feeling like that's like saying that having to go to the bathroom is like having to urinate is a symptom of a full bladder, which is normal. But we wouldn't say it that we don't think about it. But we wouldn't call it a symptom. Because it's a normal function. No, it's a normal function, and the urge to use the bathroom is not a symptom. It's it's your body giving you a message that it's time to urinate. It's just a message. It's just a message. And and that's the same with these so-called symptoms that we feel in perimenopause and the and menopause during that transition. That's a signal that your body is out of balance. So Well, and sure, I I wanna, I wanna put, I want to just also make a little bit of a concession here. And that is that our grandmothers and our Paleolithic ancestors would not have felt symptoms in the way to the extreme as we feel them today. Because of our environment, the cortisol in our system, the glycosate, all the toxins that we're dealing with, all of that stuff that has changed our physiology. Yeah. So so they feel like symptoms now because they've gotten so bad and uncomfortable. And they're not a disease. No. But they are a they are a signal that there is something out of balance in both our internal bodies, our in internally and externally in our environment. How that comes, like how that that links up with the grandmother hypothesis is in these, in these tribes that still exist today, the symptoms that that women feel there are not what we feel in our culture. They don't have a lot of the things that we do. They don't have the rates of heart disease or cancer or Alzheimer's or anything. That's why they're living to 100. Okay, so the point here is that this is a mistake as it comes to um being able to step into your leadership. Why? When we listen to the messages our body is giving us, we can more easily rebalance our bodies so that we have that energy that we should have that allows us to step into leadership. We're not so mired down by, oh my gosh, what is happening to my body? It's it can then be viewed as this initiation into the leader you were meant to be, the elder you were meant to be versus someone who is suffering. Yeah. You know, I'm just thinking about the orcas again. And if you didn't listen to the last episode, you need to go back and listen to it because we talked about how orcas are one of the other few species in the world that lives past menopause. And if you imagine the way that they live and flow gracefully into menopause, it's so different from the way we do. Like I don't imagine the grandmother orca is going, I'm not valuable enough anymore. I like try has not been trying to prove her value throughout her life, isn't exhausted. And if she's depleted, then she rests. She doesn't go, oh no, no, no, I just need to push through because I gotta keep up and I gotta stay strong and I don't need help because that's gonna make me look incapable. Exactly. She doesn't have all of that, so she just, so she just, she just naturally progresses into her new role as a matriarch. Isn't that beautiful? The way we were supposed to do. Okay, last mistake. Well, buying into the anti-aging narrative, and we talked in the last episode about how this is nearly impossible given the bombardment of marketing and advertising that we are that we receive on a daily basis. There's, you know, my Instagram feed is full of creams and things that I should should buy to make me look quote unquote better. So spending all your energy on that and trying to get back a previous Version of yourself is stopping you from stepping into this beautiful leadership role and from moving gracefully into it. Like now it's like you're moving into it, kicking and screaming like a little child. Well, and Jen, imagine like this is something that we didn't even plan to talk about, but can you imagine the finances that would be freed up if women stopped buying all of the anti-aging shit? Like it's a almost a trillion, I forget the number exactly. Oh my goodness, it's like a trillion dollars. Trillion dollar industry. Imagine if we started funneling that money towards anything more hopeful for the world. Life changing, world-changing. Yeah. But no, we're using all we're using trillions of dollars to try to fight a natural process. It actually sounds ridiculous when you think about it this way. Trillions of dollars to try to fight against a very natural process because patriarchy has told us that it's shameful to age. Oh my God. So, okay, let's talk about what happens when we fix these, because that's where I feel like I'm getting much closer to that. And that's where we want every other midlife woman to get to. So, first of all, the exhaustion that's gonna lift. If you're not trying to be the strong and capable woman and you're just accepting help or resting when your body needs to, your energy is naturally going to increase. And that's good it changes everything. There's a ripple effect to that. Like that affects all of your other quote unquote symptoms. But it also allows you to focus your to focus on completely different things. If you're exhausted, you can you can barely function, let alone do something really creative or impactful. Yeah, I love that when you start to unlock your intuition. Because when you when you are not so busy with all these different things and in a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode, and your nervous system is regulated, you can access your intuition and that and actually listen to it instead of just pushing it away because we're told that logic and data are better. And when you start listening to your intuition, you start seeing synchronicities, opportunities. You have ideas for how to, I don't know, find more abundance, grow your business, um, get a promotion, do something that feels, do something that feels meaningful. Yeah. Find what you purpose comes with that. Yes. Purpose comes with inspiration comes like it people often ask what it feels like when you're in that, in that state. And I I sometimes have trouble explaining how it feels, but it's just you feel motivated and inspired instead of sort of waking up. It's it is, and it's a form of euphoria.

unknown 25:17

Yeah.

Jen 25:17

Like it's quite addictive. Yes, it is that feeling. Yeah. I'm yeah, I I do kind of chase that. In a good way. Yeah. Some of the other things that get fixed when we stop making these mistakes. The ripple effect on your relationships is enormous. Like the midlife rage slows down. And you're not trying to be something else. So you just can be present without feeling like you should be doing something else, without feeling like you have a million emails that you should be attending to, or or like sitting at, you know, your university kids lacrosse game and going, oh my God, there's like I'm I'm losing time right now. I really want to watch him, but I'm losing time for that presentation I need to be working on. So um everything about your relationships changes. Well, and you move through life without this crunch, the the time crunch. Mm-hmm. Without feeling the pressure to hustle constantly. How free. Yeah. Yeah. And the last thing I would add, Jen, is just that your body starts to feel like you can trust it. It feels more like your friend again, instead of this thing that you're constantly fighting with. So those signals, you know, if you're actually listening to your body, the signals subside. They don't have to talk to you anymore. If you're listening to them and doing what your body needs, your body becomes something you can trust, something that feels more like an ally than an enemy. It's like you're so it's such a silly example, but going to the bathroom. When you go, your bladder stops shouting at you. Exactly. When you calm down your cortisol, start eating fewer toxins, releasing the toxins from your body, and we help people do that. Um your body stops shouting at you. Your body stops shouting. Yeah, exactly. I love that. And I and I have to admit, like, I'm still a work in progress there. Well, we all are. I mean, we're just we've been working at this for a while, you and me, Jen. But yeah, absolutely. I I feel like this is a lifelong journey. This is not something that I will just get to the end of and know everything, or my body will be perfect, or you know, it's a it's a journey. So, what can we say to our listeners about what they can do to begin stepping into the grandmother role, the the leadership role of their lives, a more intentional role? The first step is to identify the roles you're in now. Like what the identities? Yeah. What are the identities or roles that you are? I mean, some of them are, as we say this all the time, it it's not a problem to hold on to identities. It's when you're clinging to them that it's a problem. It's because when they, when that is what you're sourcing yourself worth from, then the holding on to those identities becomes a problem. So the first step that that we take our clients through is just identifying what are the things that I'm clinging to. And if, you know, I'm a strong, I'm strong and capable is one of them. And I'm trying to remember some of them in our last um mini retreat that came up, and I can't think of one offhand, but um, well, the identity of, you know, our our little sister said it, our little sister, she's 51, um, our younger sister, she said it recently when she talked about how she's moving from mother, I forget the exact words she used, but moving from from she's realizing that she no longer needs to nurture her kids in the same way. She's becoming more of a guide than a mother. And if you're hanging on to that identity of being a mother, and you can this happens even when you are not a mother. If you're like me and have no children, but you're hanging on to, but I should have been a mother. I wanted to be a mother. And and that's keeping you from seeing clearly what your future may look like, then you may be holding, clinging, as you said, Jen, to that identity of being needed. Yeah. I got another one. Um, I'm low maintenance. Oh, yes. That's an identity that many women cling to because they don't want to be a burden on other people. And so they didn't then they don't ask for help. And then they get overly busy and overwhelmed, and then they cancel on the thing they actually want to do at the last minute. So understanding those identities, just like journaling a little bit on some of those identities that you are holding on to is the very first step. And then asking, like, which ones aren't serving you anymore? Which ones are stopping you from stepping into a leadership role in an area of your life? And the next step is like, what is your little, what is your pod? Like, who is what's the pod that you want to lead? Is it like within your family? Is it like a little friends group? Is it, do you want to be a leader at work? Like, where, what is it that you want to lead? Maybe it's just leading yourself. And I think those three steps are are a pretty good starting point. Yeah, I want to say one thing about that, Jen, because I no longer work in the corporate world. So I don't have a team to lead. I don't, um, I suppose I'm a leader within my business. But one of the things that I was thinking about was that I spent a lot of my 40s and even my early 50s working on myself. I never thought of myself as a leader within our extended family, like you, our parents, our younger sister, all of your families. So I never thought of myself as a leader within that pod. However, I've started to think of myself as not the only leader, like not the leader of our family, but a leader within it, like someone who can be an example for my nieces and nephew. Someone who can model what I've learned through all this last 12 years of self growth. So that's a different kind of leadership. It's true, Cher. And I I'm also finding that among our cousins. Like so that further extended family. Like we have we have family um struggling with mental health issues. And some of our cousins came to me and said, we chose you to reach out to this person. And I went, okay. That's not because I'm the oldest cousin that I saw that as my role, but because I'm equipped. Because I've been coaching women for for years, I have I have a leadership, a PhD in leadership, I have a wealth of experience that can to share with this person. So that's that's leadership. That's that doesn't have to be official leadership in something. So I think that's a good distinction. And I I love that because and I love having that role. Yeah. And within a pod, you know, if we go back to our whales, they might have a matriarch, but they will have multiple grandmothers within a pod. So there isn't necessarily just we think of leadership as like one leader, but that isn't the case. Leadership is something that all of us can step into or demonstrate at a different points in a conversation, in a situation, in a family. So when we talk about leadership in this way, it's not about managing a group of people. It's it's about so many other things. Because it's a whole other podcast episode, how patriarchy has had has led us to believe that it's one leader that we have to look up to, and that is completely false. Okay, let's wrap up. All right. Well, I guess the, you know, the the last thing that I would challenge our listeners with is to like, how would you lead differently? After hearing what you heard today, what would you do differently? And I'm thinking about that myself, like after this conversation, what I could do differently in my life. Yep, me too. Okay, so listeners, again, please share this episode with someone who it would resonate with. And follow, subscribe, leave us a review. We would absolutely love that. And we thank you for listening. Come back for the next episode. Oh. You know, sorry, one one last thing, share for our listeners. You don't have to actually share the episode, even. Because I don't even know how I would do that in Spotify. Just tell people about the Midlife Rising podcast. That's all you have to do. We would be so grateful if you would. Thank you, and bye for now. All right.