Embracing Middle Age: How to Navigate a Shifting Identity in Perimenopause

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Introduction to Pause to Go Podcast

[00:00:00] Bree: Welcome to Pause to Go, the podcast that's all about making the most of life's transitions from middle school through menopause. I'm your host, Bree Luck, joining you as we embark on a journey of self discovery and questionable decisions. Get ready for heartfelt conversations, expert insights, and personal stories that'll have you laughing, crying, and saying, thank goodness I'm not alone.

[00:00:30] Bree: If you've lost your midlife crisis survival kit, we've got you covered. So join me, won't you? And together we can pause to go.

Discussion on Perimenopause and Menopause Symposium

[00:00:44] Bree: I have spoken with pretty much anyone who will listen about the shifting identities that often occur during perimenopause and menopause. And a couple of weeks ago, I attended a [00:01:00] symposium called the Perimenopause Menopause Symposium, Let's Change the Conversation. Lisette Ostrander organized it.

[00:01:09] Bree: She has been doing really wonderful work around, sexuality, sexual desire, and intimacy. And the symposium truly reflected that. She had some incredible speakers, a really fantastic lineup. And , I was lucky to be one of them. So... what you are going to hear today is actually a recording from the symposium and it's a talk that I gave on the shifting identity in paramenopause.

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Exploring Inner Role System

[00:01:44] Bree: In this talk, I also bring up a methodology that I developed to use with my coaching clients for accessing and making the most of their inner role system. For [00:02:00] those of you who are exploring different therapeutic modalities, you may have heard of internal family systems This, this is a little different.

[00:02:08] Bree: . This is not a therapy modality, although it was born out of my work as a drama therapist. If listening to this talk.

[00:02:16] Bree: Makes you feel like you want to explore your inner role system. I'm going to open up a few spots for people to just do a two session inner role systems exploration with me.

[00:02:31] Bree: So you can check out the show notes for more information about that.

Review of 'The Disappearance of Cher Height' Documentary

[00:02:36] Bree: Speaking of sexuality and desire and just sex in general and the suppression and oppression of women, I saw a fabulous documentary at the Virginia Film Festival this week. It was called The Disappearance of Shere Hite.

[00:02:55] Bree: The director is Nicole Newnham. You may remember her. She [00:03:00] also made a documentary a few years ago called Crip Camp. It's fabulous too, but this one, The Disappearance of Shere Hite, it's truly extraordinary. I don't even love documentaries. I know I'm married to a documentarian.

[00:03:18] Bree: Don't tell anybody, don't tell anybody that it takes a lot for me to watch a documentary, but this is one that I truly enjoyed on every level. It's beautiful storytelling, it's relevant, it's an aesthetic masterpiece, and you'll see why. I'll share the link for it. It is being distributed by IFC.

[00:03:42] Bree: It will be in some major cities over the next month, and I suspect that it will be available for streaming pretty soon thereafter. It's about a woman named Shere Hite, who wrote the 1975 best selling book, The [00:04:00] Hite Report, which examined and talked about the female orgasm.

[00:04:07] Bree: And the documentary also illustrates the cultural response to Cher's work and how that affected her. It is really beautiful and I encourage you to check it out.

Identity and Sense of Self in Paramenopause

[00:04:23] Bree: And now let's take a look at identity and the sense of self in paramenopause.

[00:04:31] Lisette: this is Bree Luck career and performance coach, host of the Pause to Go podcast and podcast producer.

[00:04:42] Lisette: Bri is a strong believer in the power of partnering grounded intuition with thoughtful and pragmatic steps to cultivating a vibrant and satisfying life. She's energized by each of her clients as they find their vision, build their confidence and create relationships and [00:05:00] career paths that are in full alignment with their values.

[00:05:03] Lisette: Definitely I've sent the link, but I will send it again, a link to your pause to go podcast. And I've definitely done a shout out to that one episode too, that talks about embrace the beauty of midlife. 50 insights for perimenopausal people and I will definitely share that again. Bree, it's an honor to have you here.

[00:05:23] Bree: Thank you, Lisette. I am not an expert on perimenopause or sexuality.

[00:05:30] Bree: But I am a podcast host and I am 50 years old and I am in the messy middle of my own identity transformation. Like so many people in perimenopause, my body and my roles at home and in society are rapidly shifting. And I'm in the process of unbecoming and becoming, you know what? I'm, I'm totally here for it.

[00:05:54] Bree: So taking a quick inventory of who I am becoming this week. [00:06:00] Right now I'm a lover, a mother, a coach, an artist, a fool, and definitely a rebel. I'm not sure if I'm a hostage, or a queen, or a teacher. I want to be a little bit more of a monk and a priestess, and if I'm really honest, a rock star. And I know that I'm not a bro, a pariah, a goddess, or an alien, but that hasn't always been the case.

[00:06:29] Bree: Throughout our lives, we take on and we play out any number of roles or qualities that make up our identity. And while our scope of self has the opportunity to shift at any point in life, Perimenopause is a time of profound transformation, physically, emotionally, sexually, culturally, cognitively, and often that manifests in our sense of identity too.

[00:06:56] Bree: So my podcast, Pause to Go, is about paramenopause. [00:07:00] And I'm going to tell you something a little vulnerable. Sometimes I don't actually want to tell people what I talk about for hours and hours every week. I mean, I'm not proud of it, but grappling with a phase of life that comes with a lot of baggage doesn't always fit with how I want to be seen.

[00:07:19] Bree: Because so much of what we hear about perimenopause and menopause has a negative connotation, right? It centers on concepts like decay, drying up, hot flashes, unstable, bitchy, irrelevant, invisible. I don't want that. But I'm convinced that the only way past the tumult of perimenopause is to move right on through it.

[00:07:46] Bree: And what if, what if, what if for just a few minutes, we take a different vantage point to consider the possibilities that this total upheaval unearths. So in Chinese medicine, [00:08:00] menopause is often called The second spring, it's a time of growth and renewal and truth to tell, perimenopause to me feels like I'm spending a bleak winter in a simmering heap of compost.

[00:08:16] Bree: But where other people see a bunch of rotting refuse, I like to think that all of this change is helping us to find a different sort of enrichment. It's a time to assess, to select what is working for us and what isn't, and to the best of our ability to use what we have to plant the seeds for our next phase in life.

[00:08:40] Bree: Don't worry. I'm not going to continue with the garden metaphor for too long, but y'all, when I'm having a period for the 18th day in the cycle for the third month in a row, it helps me to think that this is all part of transformation that I can welcome, that I'm participating in my own ability to flourish in ways that I haven't before.[00:09:00]

[00:09:00] Bree: So I'm going to tell you a quick story about one of my clients, I call her Mary. Mary was a good girl. She colored within the lines, you know, she played by all the rules. She paid her taxes. She brushed her teeth. She raised two kids lovingly. She tried to eat right and fit into a culturally acceptable dress size.

[00:09:20] Bree: Mary had a wild streak, but she felt that it was important to be responsible. To work double shifts to support her family, to make cupcakes for school events and to show up at family events, dressed in a way that would please her parents. Then she hit their early forties and the poop hit the fan. Her body was changing one minute.

[00:09:43] Bree: She was ravenous for sex. And the next minute she was convinced that she never, ever, ever wanted to be touched again. She came to me in the throes of this and she said, Bri, I am either crying or I'm pissed off, pissed off about everything. The government, the way my [00:10:00] kids leave their stuff all over the place, pissed about all the opportunities I missed because I was too busy playing by the rules.

[00:10:08] Bree: She said that she didn't feel like herself anymore. And that's when I knew that we were onto something, because when you don't feel like yourself, even if things seem to be going pretty smoothly, it can feel like a crisis. So why the heck is our sense of identity or self so important?

Exploring the Concept of Identity

[00:10:31] Bree: Psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum explains, and I quote, The concept of identity is a complex one, shaped by individual characteristics, family dynamics, historical factors in social and political contexts.

[00:10:47] Bree: Who am I? The answer depends in large part on who the world around me says I am. Who do my parents say I am? Who do my peers say I am? What message is reflected back to [00:11:00] me in the faces and voices of my teachers, my neighbors, store clerks? What do I learn from the media about myself? How am I represented in the cultural images around me?

[00:11:14] Bree: Or am I missing from the picture altogether? Dr. Robert J. Landy is a drama therapist who developed an approach called the role method. And in full disclosure, I was his assistant when I was studying drama therapy at NYU. Anyway, Robert maintained that what we think of as the self. is not a static structure, but an evolving system of roles.

[00:11:42] Bree: Roles that we willingly take on, roles that are forced upon us, roles that we reject. But at any point in life, we are taking on and playing out any number of roles that make up our sense of self or identity.

Identity Shifts Throughout Lifetime

[00:11:57] Bree: And what's more, we have major [00:12:00] identity shifts throughout our lifetime. In early childhood, which, by the way, is the most rapid time of aging, from the point of birth on, it's the most rapid time of aging.

[00:12:12] Bree: So if you feel like you're getting real old real fast, just know it is nothing compared to the aging that you did in the first seven years of your life. But during that early childhood, we children begin to develop a sense of self and individuality. We explore who we are and where we fit into the world. We start to build our self concept in early childhood.

[00:12:37] Bree: We start to understand our preferences, our strengths, and our interests. And this initial Exploration lays the foundation for our identity and how we express it. You see the environment, family, and culture play a crucial role. That's how we absorb values, beliefs, and behaviors, and that shapes our emerging identities.[00:13:00]

[00:13:00] Bree: And when that internal sense of identity is in conflict with how we are seen and treated. Things can get pretty rough. The other day, I was at Wegmans. That's a grocery store. I don't know if Wegmans is everywhere, but it's here in Virginia. And I was doing my very favorite thing, which is eavesdropping.

[00:13:21] Bree: And I watched a brief interaction between a parent and a really cute kid, who appeared to be about three years old. And the kid was bent. On helping the grownup with their shopping. And at one point, the grownup said something to the effect of stay in the cart, baby, at which point this child reared up, threw back their head, kick their feet and loudly exclaimed, I'm not a baby becoming and unbecoming.

[00:13:53] Bree: This was one of those situations where the perception of the parent was that the child was in fact a baby, but the [00:14:00] child's self view was shifting. They didn't see themselves as a baby, and they most definitely did not want to be treated like one. I mean, , I felt with a kid, right? Not two minutes later, the person at the cash register addressed me as ma'am.

[00:14:19] Bree: And I sort of wanted to kick and scream as well. So if you find yourself... Wanting to throw a temper tantrum at the grocery store, just know, my friend, you are not alone. Okay, back to young children. So young children often engage in role play and imagination, trying on various roles to try to understand different aspects of their identity.

[00:14:40] Bree: So whether that's pretending to be a superhero or emulating a parent, these playful moments contribute to their sense of self. And as you'll see, I think that engaging from this place of exploration is actually a key component of navigating shifts in midlife. We are never too old to play with our [00:15:00] identity, y'all.

[00:15:01] Bree: Identities continue to shift as kids start school and form friendships. And then, of course, there's puberty. We all know the dramatic and sometimes traumatic shifts that occur during adolescence. Bodies change, brains get all rewired, emotions surge, and young individuals start grappling with who they are becoming and how they fit into a new paradigm.

[00:15:29] Bree: This is the time that we think of as marking the biggest shift in identity, but it's only one of many. One of my clients said that she had the biggest shift in sense of self when she was pregnant with her first child, and she felt like her body was out of control. And for many of us who raise children, whether or not we go through a pregnancy, parenting is another life altering milestone.

[00:15:51] Bree: When we shift from Individual to caregiver encompassing a new set of roles and responsibilities and emotional experiences. [00:16:00] So by the time we get to perimenopause and menopause, we should be used to identity shifts, right?

Identity Crisis During Perimenopause

[00:16:06] Bree: Well, whether we call it a midlife crisis or as Heather Corinna writes, a life's 'splode.

[00:16:12] Bree: When we reach this biological milestone, our roles in society, family, and the workplace are changing. And for most of us. It's likely that our identity is shifting as well. So why do we go through so much during perimenopause? Well, perimenopause is marked by a plethora of changes, but at the very least we can count on the hormonal and physiological changes.

[00:16:36] Bree: We can count on irregular periods, hot flashes, mood swings, among myriad other manifestations. Couple that with societal and familial expectations, the beauty bias, systematic misogyny, the dearth of solid medical research in women's health, and we have a perfect cocktail. for an identity crisis. Is it any wonder that Mary said, I don't know who I am anymore?

[00:16:59] Bree: Is it any [00:17:00] wonder that she felt disillusioned with the world around her? That she felt that her body was betraying her? And perimenopause is in many, but not all ways likened to puberty in reverse. Just as puberty marks the transition from childhood to adulthood, perimenopause can be seen as a transition from adulthood to A new, vibrant stage of life.

[00:17:25] Bree: Unfortunately, there are misconceptions and stereotypes that often cast this time as a period of decline. And maybe that societal branding doesn't fit with how you see yourself. So when I asked Mary if she had spoken to her healthcare provider about the possibility that she was in perimenopause, she burst into tears.

[00:17:47] Bree: The identities that she associated with aging were the ones that she felt resistant toward. So I took her through an inner role assessment exercise and this is born out of my background [00:18:00] in drama therapy, and it's a list of 70 to 80 archetypal roles that are based on literature and performance, and I had her sort the roles into four categories.

[00:18:11] Bree: This is who I am. This is who I am not. I'm not sure if this is who I am. And this is who I want to be. So this simple exercise gave Mary a praxis for not only exploring her sense of identity, but for clarifying some of her emotions and expanding her roles to shift her perspective about them. For example, a role came up that she felt a lot of resistance toward, and it was the crone.

[00:18:40] Bree: So she saw the crone as Asexual, dried up, lonely, irrelevant qualities that she was desperately afraid to inhabit. She felt like the Crone was antithetical to a role that she had previously identified with. Beauty. Well, Well, we began by deconstructing and reconstructing [00:19:00] both roles. She played with the role of the beauty until she could find herself within its reaches again, and with a little time.

[00:19:07] Bree: She also developed a deep respect for the crone. And in fact, some of the aspects that her crone eventually embodied were magical, self sufficient, powerful, and subversive, which we both thought were pretty sexy and empowering. So recently I reached out to her. She's still in perimenopause. She's thriving in a new relationship.

[00:19:32] Bree: I asked her about her feelings about the crone and the beauty, and she laughed and she said, Those two roles are playing very well together. And the rebel has joined them. She's turning 50 this year, and right now, she says she's feeling very connected to what she calls her authentic, vibrant self. Her words not mine.

[00:19:55] Bree: So I'm not going to suggest to you that you all use an inner role assessment to make sense of your shifting [00:20:00] identity. If it's something that appeals to you, hit me up though, I'm happy to share.

Strategies for Navigating Identity Shifts

[00:20:03] Bree: But I do think that we can all implement strategies for having a greater awareness and self compassion during this time.

[00:20:11] Bree: So when possible, find opportunities to notice and connect with your evolving identity. It's not always going to be easy, so seek support, whether it's through friends or professionals or communities that understand your journey. Make note of your inner dialogue and just check in with yourself. Are you feeling irritable, angry, lustful, withdrawn?

[00:20:34] Bree: What does this sound like? Make note of some of your assumptions about your inner characters and how it fits or doesn't fit with yourself. I definitely have an inner fool who emerges with increasing frequency, and as someone who has been quite professional and buttoned up for my whole life, I was a little afraid by what this character would do, because she can be a little impulsive, and that didn't always align with the strategic plan [00:21:00] that my late 30s self had laid out for myself.

[00:21:03] Bree: But I also learned that my fool is a liberator who helps me tap into a deeper purpose. She lets me be goofy and requires me to engage creatively in ways that have been utterly life changing. So that fool self took to the dance floor earlier this week, and although my muscles are still paying for it, I have no regrets that she had me moving my body with utter abandon and delight.

[00:21:29] Bree: So if you still struggle with leaning into the positive aspects of your evolving self, find social role models whom you admire. Part of the reason I started the podcast was so I could hear stories of other perimenopausal folks who are navigating this time, and they have been extraordinary guides.

[00:21:48] Bree: Maybe these are your friends or your family. Talk to them. Maybe you don't have access to great role models, do what you did when you were a kid and read a book or watch a TV show with a character who [00:22:00] inhabits qualities you admire. And if you can't find one, because we know the media doesn't always represent people of a certain age as well as we want them to, make one up.

[00:22:10] Bree: So, yeah. Perimenopause is a time of chaotic upheaval, but that isn't all bad. Maybe the unbecoming is becoming like, maybe invisibility is your superpower, you know? And as we embrace change, we have the chance to unbe become the roles that no longer serve us and step into the next stage of life with confidence and empowerment.

[00:22:36] I look forward to evolving together. Let's do this.

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Call to Action: Share Your Story

[00:22:41] Bree: Here's my call to action for this episode. That's what they call it. When I'm trying to get you to do something, I want you to do something and that is to share your story. So if you would like to share an experience of your midlife delights, agony, or just plain humor, you can leave me a [00:23:00] voice memo on my new website.

[00:23:02] Bree: Pause to go podcast. com. There's a tab on the right side of the website that says something like. Leave me a voice memo and you can, you can just record a voice memo for me right there and I'll get it. And if you feel comfortable having me share your voice on the pod, then I can share that with everyone.

[00:23:22] Bree: It's so nice to hear other people's voices. But if you don't feel comfortable having me share your voice, I can just anonymously share your story. It'll be great to have your stories on the Pause To Go podcast. All right, stay curious y'all

Podcast Closing Remarks

[00:23:42] Bree: Thank you for listening to the pause to go podcast. Special thanks to code base co working and WTJU radio for their support. This has been an awkward sage production.