Confessions of a Midlife Muse with Dr. Amanda Hanson
00:00 Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. and that way my goal is to awaken your mind body and soul it's time to become fluent in the language of life dr amanda hansen she's known as the midlife muse is a psychologist who blends traditional psychology with time-tested holistic methods to help women heal from emotional traumas and break free from destructive patterns and she's a big advocate for embracing aging as a profound spiritual journey and her expertise lies in guiding women toward cultivating more self-love,
01:05 viewing themselves with more reverence, more self-respect, and mastering their confidence along the transformative path, as she calls it, of aging. I'm really excited to share this conversation with you on The Language of Love. Amanda Hanson, thank you so much for joining us on The Language of Love. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be in conversation with you today. Me too. Now, I think I started following you maybe even during the pandemic, it feels like, or I don't know. It was really early and I've watched you really continue to grow and explode online. I remember something went really viral, a post you did, and it's just been really fun to watch. I feel so aligned with so much of your messaging, which is why I was so excited to have
01:52 you on the show because my peeps here are all different ages, but a huge proportion of them are in the 35 and up range. And a lot of your content, I know a big piece of what your purpose is, is really changing the way that we look at midlife and in particular at aging. And that seems to me, I know there's a lot that you do, but that seems to me to be such a huge crux, like a huge center point of what you talk about challenging those traditional narratives we have about aging, especially around women. So I wanted to start there about like, just like your treatise, like what's your position? Let's just start there rather than me describing it. And then we'll go from there. Yes. I think that it's time that we start having a more
02:45 broad conversation about what it means to be women who are aging. And I think for a very long time, there was at least in my mom's era, my grandmother's era, it was, you were well washed up before you were 40 years old. And that number, that number has continued to move, but I still think that while we have opened up opportunities for women as they age, maybe in places of work business, even, you know, fertility and so many more opportunities have opened. The one thing that has not changed is the expectation of a woman's face and her body. This expectation that, oh, sure, you can achieve all these other things, but don't dare and show us any signs of humanity. The world needs you to continue to be that ornament, that expectation that has been placed
03:32 upon us to be forever static, which I find so preposterous because every other aspect of a woman's life is constantly in evolution. And yet we have kept this one area where the expectation is that she not show any of the signs of the evolution on her face or anywhere on her body. So, and I find it to be terribly insulting and it's gotten so out of control with all that comes at women now and all the opportunities and procedures that are available where I feel like women are really getting lost in themselves. I feel like they're getting further removed and disconnected from any sense of the honor of being human, the reverence around aging, because I personally don't believe we can hold the feeling of being in deep honor and reverence
04:21 for ourselves while simultaneously poisoning ourselves. So those two, they completely counteract one another. So if a woman is saying, no, I really do. I'm really like honoring, but then is turning around and injecting herself with poison that will probably lead her down a really dangerous path. I think she's in denial. And so I just wanted to finally bring a real narrative. I feel like everyone's tiptoeing around. People have been so scared to call this out and I was watching it play out. And I thought this is just absurd. And it really hit me when my 21 year old daughter said to me through tears, I don't even know what a 30 year old woman looks like anymore. I don't even know what moms look like anymore other than you mom, because
05:00 all of the moms of the people I know, they go to Botox appointments with their daughter. And so I thought, this is tragic. And I had already been on a natural aging journey for the past, you know, several years forever, but I doubled down and started speaking out about it more because I wanted there to be a different narrative for women who were interested in considering the opportunity. Yeah. I remember hearing you or reading something about how you were saying that, that when you're, you know, that part of the work you do is not just for other aging women, but
05:31 a big inspiration for speaking out and being a model of this and teaching about this is to get to women when they're young, right? To change the narrative early. And also it's not just the older women that are injecting themselves with Botox and fillers and facelifts and everything else, but younger women. I mean, I know I have sons, I don't have daughters, but all the girls I know if especially if they have some cash themselves or come from affluent families in these very progressive, otherwise very progressive, very educated, very informed, very girl power families are getting at least the lip. And, you know, they may not be getting Botox yet, but they're like getting the lip fillers or getting the Brazilian butt lift or like these crazy things. that is astounding to me. So it's starting really early now. It really is. And my daughter talked about that, being she's now a senior in college and not really knowing many girls at all who
06:35 weren't doing something. And it is innocuous as going to their dental appointment or getting a haircut. It's that normal now. And people just say it like, oh yeah, I'm going for my Botox appointment. And so I think that in some ways it's almost this final frontier when it comes to women in aging and the fear starting as early as their twenties. I mean, I wasn't even something that was, I never even thought of. And you're right. Like even families that are very progressive and very much in support out, like you said, girl power and women rising and all of the things. It's like in every category, I see that messaging, but when it comes to this, nobody wants to touch it. Nobody even. And if anything, I've heard women say,
07:18 it's the most feminist thing I can do. It's my body. It's my choice. And I think yes, absolutely, all day long. And you really are lying to yourself to think that this is coming from a place of feeling like you have agency and real true power. Because if we lived on a deserted island and it was just a bunch of women running around and we never had the concept, just like I didn't even know cellulite was a thing until someone pointed out that I had cellulite when I was young. And then I realized like, oh, is that a bad thing? Is that something I'm supposed to be ashamed of? Oh gosh, now should I cover it up? Oftentimes, times we're not even aware that something is a thing until marketing or media shows us that it's
07:56 a problem or something we should be ashamed of so that they can sell us something. And so now that we're, they're so easily able to sell this fear of aging and now they call it baby Botox, women are running and saying like, oh my gosh, I definitely choose this because it's, it feels like it's coming from a place of power. But again, I completely disagree with that. And that's how they market it. They market it from like, you know, claim your power. You're a powerful modern woman. You should feel your best and look your best. And this is about you and your relationship with you. But it's really not. And a lot of my friends who do this and many of them, I mean, this was as early as like late 40s, were getting the neck lift or the eye job or whatever.
08:40 And they would say, this isn't about anyone else. I don't care what anyone else thinks about. This is about me and when I look in the mirror and I'm like, okay, it's about you. And when you look in the mirror, but like, even I face this, I was getting ready today for this interview. And I was thinking about this obviously. So I was being really conscious of it, but I'm looking in the mirror, putting on my makeup and my eyes immediately go to my next sag, which has shown up happily over the past couple of years. And the flaw, like our eyes just entrain automatically to our flaws. And I am someone who, and I'm very transparent about every freaking thing. So I'm transparent about this too. For many years, I did the Botox thing. I'm now 55. So I think starting
09:26 in my late forties, I remember I was at a hairdresser and I just started to get forehead lines. And I said, I'm not liking these forehead lines. I think I should get bangs. And she said, you don't need bangs, just get Botox. And I'd never heard of Botox before. And at first I was like, ew, poison botulism? Like that can't be good. But then as it became totally normalized, I was like, all right, let me try this. And I was like, oh, the lines are gone. So for a while, I mean, I wouldn't do it every three months, but for a while I did my forehead and then it became my eyes and then it became something else. And so about two and a half years ago, I was like, ew, like I'm looking around and everybody looks like a deformed alien, but they don't have wrinkles.
10:09 Their faces are frozen. They can't even talk. And you look at some of these celebrities, Their mouths don't move when they talk, but they have no wrinkles and they look like they're frozen, puffed up statues of themselves. And I was like, this is such a waste of money and so toxic, I'm going to stop. But full disclosure, and I am someone who loves myself and believes deeply in what you're preaching, and I preach it myself. But when I look in the mirror, I really want to be thrilled with what I see. I really do.
10:41 Then you have to change the lens by which you look through. Yes. Yes. And that's what I really want to talk about because I know I'm not the only one. I mean, I know we all are struggling with this. I'm just the guinea pig here. And I want to talk about that. But a lot of it comes from, and I know you had a mom, and I'm putting a pin in that because
10:59 we are coming back to the lens, but you had a mom who was very externally focused and was bought in for this and still is. And my mom was the same. I was the ugly duckling in my family. They literally would say my sister was the beautiful one. And I was interesting looking always. My mother was gorgeous. And my sister was beautiful. And I looking back at myself and beautiful. I was beautiful, but I wasn't like they're kind of beautiful. In fact, my parents offered me a nose, told me when I was like eight years old, they when I turned 14, they would get let me get a nose job if I wanted. I didn't even know there was anything wrong with my nose until they said that. So a very external family inserted their fear into you. You didn't even know there was something to be afraid of. I had no idea.
11:53 And I remember being like, you know, I don't I don't I want to be beautiful. I don't want to be interesting looking. And but what I did see is that even though I do struggle, like I said, with aspects of aging, my mother and my sister are my mother's no longer here, but they were lifting and sculpting and like desperate because. For what end and for what reason? Yeah, trying desperately because so much of their value had been built around the world's response to them being, quote unquote, beautiful. And so when they started to age and no longer looked the same and in our society, the aging face doesn't show those signs of youth, which we consider beautiful, which is what we're trying to change here. so they were going crazy trying to stop the hands of time and I felt oh I'm glad I was the ugly duckling because I never found my worth there I was smart and kind and interesting and my sister was beautiful and social and good at sports those were our labels and in the beginning I was sad about that but as I started aging I was like I'm freaking relieved that that's where my value was
13:05 but I still struggle. So I was wondering if you could speak to this idea of like, we do have to change the lens and it is the beauty industry that is feeding us and fueling and like changing the culture so that this is normalized and expected and using fear. It's a billion dollar industry, but it's also happening in our living rooms. You know, it's happening in our childhoods. Yeah. And so I think it really becomes these kinds of conversations, but I also think it becomes, what do you decide to do with that? So just like I raised my children, not to succumb to peer pressure, I can't just turn and teach them that message and then not also do that for myself. So what I decided to do when I was approaching 40 is I decided to really get
13:49 underneath these beliefs that were coming at me. And I was watching all the women in the same age range struggle with this idea of aging and my mother in which she was perpetuating and my grandmothers for, even though they're not here anymore, watching how they aged and the terror around it. And so I finally decided I'm going to sit with and ask myself, and I did this approaching stop and coloring my hair. I'm going to sit with what do I actually believe it means to be an aging woman? I'm going to pretend I've never heard of anything that my family or any social media or beauty culture has ever taught. What do I think it means? And so I made internally a list of what aging means to me. It means wisdom. It means beauty. It means power. It means
14:31 this exquisite nature, a whole tapestry of stories, it means probably the most elegant, revered energy. It means grounded. It means someone I want to be next to. I want to sit at the feet of to learn. That's what aging women mean to me. And so then I decided, okay, if that's what it means to you, Amanda, then live that way. And it's very simple. We make it so complicated, but I will not allow myself or my one and only precious life be determined by the outside world who's running around in fear. So I cleaned up the very first thing I did. I cleaned up any social media accounts. I only follow sites that lift the shapes, sizes, colors, and ages of all women. And it's very few, right? I don't follow beauty influencers. I don't pay attention
15:20 to the, I don't watch reality TV, never have not an episode in my life and never intend to. I don't consume, just like I don't consume a bag of Doritos and expect to feel good about my digestion. I don't consume toxic messaging and then walk around wondering why I don't feel good about myself, right? So I'm going to become that which I consume. And so I have really very hygienic practices around what comes into my physical body and my mental body. It actually gets to be that kind of a decision. But I think women run around like, oh my gosh, it's so hard. It's so hard. it's hard if you get into the river and let everybody pull you down the stream and dictate where you're going. But I just refuse. I'm also very rebellious and anything that tells me like
16:05 a system of patriarchy, any system that tries to tell me that this is the only way I often go in the exact opposite direction and say, I don't think so. And that's what I've done here. And being the pioneer of this kind of verbal, at least starting verbally and then showcasing it physically. And I know I'm doing something right, not simply because of the organic following, but when I'm out in the real world, no matter where I am in the world, the young women that come up to me in tears saying, thank you for your message because I have nowhere to turn. My mom is terrified of aging. My aunts are terrified of aging. There's no one to look up to. And it just continues to fuel me that these young women need a role model. They need a grounded
16:47 role model. The young girls do, and the older girls do. We all need a role model. And I remember hearing you speaking just for a moment to the social media, which you mentioned, which to me is one of the most insidious for many. I mean, I talk about social media all the time. I think kids are dying. I know kids are dying from it, but also just we are being poisoned by the stuff you were alluding to that you keep out. And I loved what you said, and I want my parent peeps to listen to this. There was some interview or conversation I was listening to where you were saying that you had this exercise that you did with your kids around social media. I was wondering if you could speak to that for a second. Yes. And I had them. So I used to do this with them
17:30 in the physical realm, right? So when they would go to a friend's house and they would come home, I would say, how do you feel after hanging out with that person? Because I wanted them to start to pay attention. How does your body feel when you're around this person? Do you feel happy? do you feel good? Do you feel icky? Do you feel sad? Do you feel more tired? Do you feel inspired? Right? So the languaging changed with that question as they got older. And so really helping them pay attention, like how do you feel when you are around somebody, pay attention to that feeling. And so then a years later, because they're now in their twenties, but then when they got social media, we would do the same thing. I would sit down next to them and
18:05 say, show me who you follow. And we'd go through, I'm like, tell me why you follow that account. And they would talk about like, do you feel good when you watch that content? Well, I mean, I don't know if I feel good or bad. I haven't really thought about it. Well, think about it. Pay attention. Let's scroll through some of the videos, right?
18:18 So really helping them understand how do you feel when you consume this content and what is the purpose? Why are you here? Because I wanted them to understand intention in life and the way that they choose the people that they hang out with and the influencers
18:34 that they are absorbing information from. and also that they will become a by-product of the five people they hang out with the most and the information and the television shows and the music they listen to, what they consume. So you have agency. Do you want to become like this or do you prefer to chart your own path, right?
18:53 And so that's really how I raise them from the very, very young age all the way through the different stages of their life. How do you feel when you interact with this content? How do you feel? If you're second guessing yourself, if you're feeling bad about yourself, if you're feeling like you don't measure up, you're not feeling worthy. If you're feeling
19:09 sad and uninspired, that's probably a pretty good indicator. This is not healthy information or people. Yeah. I love that for all the reasons you said. And also because you're also teaching them in addition to all of that, this concept of embodiment of attuning to their gut and to their instincts and to their inner knowing and discerning, which the majority of us, myself included, I had to learn much later in life. So you're just naturally embedding that in them through this process, which I also love about it. Yeah. It's interesting because, and it depends also, I think in part, I think the pressure is universal, but something popped into my mind a little earlier that I just was thinking is relevant that I guess it was around
19:57 the time I turned 50. Yeah, it must've been right around the time I turned 50. I had moved out to LA again. I'd lived here 17 years prior and my agent, you know, I had this whole Oprah career and books and whatever else. And then I got breast cancer. And so I just went radio silent for a couple of years. And then about a year after that, I moved out to LA and I had written a book and I was back in the swing of things. And my agent sets me up with some meetings and every single one of these a-holes, and I now call them a-holes. Back then, I was just devastated. Literally told me that I needed to find someone young and hot and relevant to literally young, hot, and relevant, three things that evidently I no longer was, to pitch whatever show they wanted to pitch for me or
20:50 whatever thing they wanted me to do next. I went home and I curled up into a ball. I was like, wait, I'm not hot anymore? I'm not relevant. I know I'm not young, but I thought I was still hot and relevant. But the entertainment industry, and you alluded to reality TV, but it's not just reality TV. It's everywhere. It's all reflecting back to us and the business itself is reflecting back to us. Now, I'm hoping that the baby boomers and all of us now aging are ready and wanting to look at something different. But until more recently, and probably still, that is the norm. Yeah, I sat next to a television news anchor at an event a couple of months ago who was crying to me that she was approaching 40 and she was terrified that she,
21:40 because they were alluding to the fact that she was in so many words, maybe not going to be the best fit any longer. And her account, I asked her about her counterparts, both male, both one pushing 70 and one in his mid sixties, both visibly gray hair. And it's not even bad in an eye at, so she was very upset about this. And she was like, so I am filling myself with endless amounts of vote. I'm doing everything I can. I'm working out two to three hours a day and she's killing herself and she's miserable. And I said, so you're willing to die for this? And she looked at me, she's like, well, what other option do I have? And I said, go start your own show, right? In the same way that I used to say to my children when they were five or six, how do you feel when
22:20 you go to so-and-so's house to play? How do you feel when you show up at work every day, knowing that they only want you there, if you stay in this really tight framework, if you find that to be fulfilling and you find that to be honoring and respectful, then by all means stay. But if you are killing yourself and you're sitting here crying to me about how hard this is, then go and build your own table. Stop asking for seats at a table where nobody actually wants you unless you fit this model. And do you know why we want young, hot, and relevant? We want that because she's easier to manipulate. She's easier to please. She's still a toy. She doesn't know much about life. We can puppeteer her around, get her to say or do all of the things. It is the woman who is
23:02 45, 55 plus who now doesn't have many fucks left to give and who is now going to actually say what it is that she really wants, what she really means. And she doesn't put up with bullshit. She's harder to please and she will stand up for herself. This is why we are afraid of women as they're aging because they're not as gullible any longer. So we don't want her on a TV show. We don't want her on the cover of a magazine. We don't really want her voice many places. So, which is also interesting because there was some pushback and some people kind of snickering when I said that I was really going to try to go on TikTok and other platforms
23:38 and social media. And it was like, oh, that'll be interesting entering when you're like 49, which was a couple of years ago. And sure enough, I think that the organic reach has shown with over 200 million women reached in the past two years, that women are starving for a new message. Starving. They absolutely are. And starving for a new lens. So we were saying this earlier. Let's come back to it. I'm someone who I've been through it. I worked, you know, even that stuff that happened. I took about six months probably for me to like really take a deep dive and come to the
24:13 same conclusion. Fuck them. Like, fuck them. I am fucking relevant. Who says I'm not relevant? I don't need network TV or any TV to get my, you know, why do I even want TV? I want TV to get my message out there. Well, why do I need TV to get my message out there? You know, I build your own TV show. Yeah. I just started doing my own thing and writing my books and I'm relevant to whoever decides I'm relevant, but I know I'm relevant.
24:39 And still this morning I'm looking in the mirror and I'm like, so when I was saying this earlier, you were saying, okay, it's about changing your lens. And I'm all about the lens through which you view your world determines your life. But I need some help. And I think we all need some help, obviously, in the lens department when it comes to looking at the aging face and body. Here's a shout out to any woman who has experienced a horrible loss, is going through grief. I just want you to know, you don't need to do this alone. And you also don't have to go through this. You can grow through it. You can come out the other side of horrible loss, a more self-actualized, tapped in, tuned in, empowered version of yourself. You can continue a relationship
25:32 with your loved ones on the other side. I am living proof of that. With the losses I have had, especially of my sweet boy, Sammy, who's forever 16, I can tell you that you actually don't have to just suffer through this. And that is why I am holding a retreat for women in Chicago called From Heartbreak to Healing. I'm bringing in a whole bunch of my favorite healer teacher friends,
26:00 and we are together going to take you through the process, not only of showing you how to heal, but making it inspiring, uplifting, and beautiful. It's only women this time. I'll do some for men and for couples as well. But this time it's only women. So come and be embraced by a sacred sisterhood, meet other like-minded people
26:22 and learn how to not just have to go through this horrible pain, but grow through it in beautiful ways. Just go to the link in my bio on my Instagram page of Dr. Laura Berman or go to Eventbrite and search for Heartbreak to Healing Chicago and it'll come right up. I hope to see you there. So I think that the average woman goes to the mirror with a critical lens, with a view
26:51 of let's see what's wrong. Let's see how tired I am, how many new wrinkles showed up, how many silver hairs, how many more signs of visible aging are appearing, sunspots, whatever it is. When you decide that that's not going to be the story anymore, when you just decide, and it's literally that simple, it's a decision, just like, am I going to wear a brown dress or a black dress today, right? It's a decision. We get to decide, you know, I'm ready to have a new narrative.
27:16 I'm ready to start when I wake up in the morning, and I've been doing this for probably a good three years now. Every morning when I wake up, before I touch my phone, before I do anything, I go to the and I stand there and I hold this beautiful moment with myself that can last anywhere from 90 seconds to three minutes. I haven't even grabbed my toothbrush yet. I haven't checked in. I'm not letting the outside world dictate my energy or my vibration. I'm there. And this is not about, oh, wow, Mandy, you really look tired today. Or, oh, I didn't notice that wrinkle before. It's getting a lot, it's a lot more deep. I don't do any of that. I stand there and I never
27:55 do any of that, but because I haven't trained, my lens doesn't see that my lens sees wrinkles and says, wow, those are so beautiful. This is something I've decided to do, but I stand there every morning and I greet myself as another opportunity, another day. Like who am I going to talk to? What am I going to discover? What am I going to learn in these next several hours that my heart is beating? And so I hold eye contact with myself and I, many mornings I cry because I'm in awe. I am in awe of my humanity. I'm in awe of the way I show up in the world. I'm in awe that without even having to ask my blood to pump through my veins, it knows exactly how to do it. And that my cognitive functioning is as sharp as it is. I'm in awe that my eyes still work and
28:41 all of my limbs. So I stand there when you start your morning that way. Yeah. Anyone trying to tell me that a dark circle under my eye or a wrinkle or a sagging neck, it feels, first of all, I don't even have, I don't, those messages don't come in because I'm not in that world. I'm so inundated in creation that those, those are very few and far between, but they deflect right off of me because the insult by which it's, it's laughable to me. It is literally laughable. I've got huge, amazing things to do with my life. I have zero time or energy to be even thinking anything but beauty about a wrinkle. I have no bandwidth for it. So it's, it really just deflects right off me because I decided three years ago that I would be the woman who created what aging means. I would
29:29 be the woman who wrote a new narrative for herself, for my daughter, and for any future people watching in my lineage. And that is what I wanted to do. Yeah, that's really beautiful. And I love mirror work. It's a good idea. I love that idea of doing it in the morning. And I have had just these amazing, I think about that all the time, what a freaking miracle it is that I even get to be here, that I'm having this human experience and that that little sperm and egg came together and grew into me and that I am still here all these years later and healthy and full and whole is just an amazing gift. And I, you know, what you're also speaking to is that gratitude, that deep gratitude. Because I remember reading that you, or hearing that you had,
30:17 you were speaking to how a lot of this was implanted early. I mean, you've always been rebellious, as you've said, it sounds like you kind of came into the world living below the surface and you started working with Alzheimer's patients in your early adulthood. And that that really because, you know, most of us, like even when you were describing. What is aging mean to me, all of these beautiful wisdom and power and beauty and grace and and reverence and all of these things, most people, if you sat 100 women down in a room or even 100 people down in a room and said, what does aging mean to you? Those would not be the first words that came out of their mouths, sadly. I agree with what you're saying, but I, I just am wondering where that came from.
31:10 We've absorbed that from patriarchy because that's not the words we use for men, right? Distinguish and sexy and powerful and like father figure. I mean, women even are willing to date men that they feel like is more of a father energy to them, right? So it's, it's a double standard when I'm talking, this conversation we're having is about women and aging. It's a very different conversation for men in aging alone is disturbing because we infantilize women again, because they're easier to control. But I refuse to exist in a world where I am as cheap as a three-dimensional character. Yeah. The way I look is the least interesting thing about me. And I will not spend my limited resources of time, energy, and money
31:55 worrying about something that is going to happen to every single person. When my son, who's now about to be 24, when he was 17, we were living in New York City and we were at lunch, just the two of us. And he looked around, he said to me, mom, why do so many women in here look like mannequins? And I said, well, that's a great question, honey. And I explained to him what was going on. And he said, you know, mom, and this is a 17 year old boy. He said, he looks desperate.
32:24 Yeah, it is desperate. Yeah. So when we have conversations like I have and the ones you and I are having right now, when we start to have a different conversation, the more we have these conversations, we get to consider it from a different angle, a different lens. And honestly, someday, God willing, if I have grandchildren, I want them to look up and draw lines on my face with their little fingers of all the places I've journeyed and been. I want them to see the crepiness of my skin.
32:52 And I think it's, I love that about aging people and I don't want them to come and have a grandmother who's looking down at them and looks like I have a doll, like a Chucky face on. I just, that's what it looks like. Yeah. No, I mean, that was a beautiful answer and an important one, but I was actually asking why is it that you so naturally had those words inside you three years ago, the rebellious mind for them though.
33:19 I mind for them, right? If I would have allowed myself, and this is the thing I think we miss in all aspects of life. If I would have, like a lot of people are like, oh my gosh, parenting is miserable. Parenting is the hardest years of your life. Teenagers are miserable. God willing, good luck, get through them. If we decide to absorb everyone else's lived experience, then that's what ours will be because that's what we'll be looking for, right?
33:43 When I have women say to me, oh, there's no good men out there. Well, if you are coming from the lens of believing that, then all you will find are the no good men. But if you, like I do, that there are divine masculine everywhere, there's beautiful abundance of good men in the world. You will find them. You'll be an energetic match for them. So we get to define and decide what we want to make experiences mean. I refuse to buy into the belief that having teenagers was going to be miserable. And so guess what? For me, it never was because I aligned with and respected and wanted to hear my kids' thoughts and feelings about everything, even when they gotten caught doing something that was not the best. So I mined
34:27 for the gold and all these different phases of my life. I, and I mined for the gold when it came to aging, it felt, it felt off and it felt icky to me. And so I just said, okay, then what do you want to make it mean, Amanda? Okay. You were on a deserted Island right now. And there was none of this infiltration of messaging and you saw older people walking around, what do you think that would mean? They've been here double the time you've been here. I bet they know some things I don't know. I bet they'd be the ones to go to to learn. They'd be the elders. They'd be the wise ones. How powerful because they've seen so much. They've weathered so many different circumstances. So I mined for the gold and then I built my life on the treasures that I decided
35:09 felt good to me. So that's what we get to do around every single corner of life. Yes, that's beautiful. And it's what I always teach my couples, you know, where attention goes, energy flows. And so if you're looking for all the ways your partner lets you down or doesn't show up or isn't romantic or is inconsiderate, you are going to find that. Right. And so when you start to look for things to appreciate, then you find that. And it's and I love that. So so So that helps me. That helps me understand that this wasn't just something you sat down and was like, oh, I just naturally feel this way, but that it was really a conscious choice of how you wanted to feel and then living from that vibration and setting that as your lens. And that's the work I
35:52 do with women because most people are on automatic pilot, just functioning in life. And so I really help women create in a perfect world, what would be the tapestry by which you would create your life. Tell me the most exquisite, most beautiful way you would want to step into the next 20, 30, 40 years of your life. And they tell me, and then I say to them, let's do that. I have no idea how to do that. And I said, well, that's why you've hired me. I'm going to teach you exactly in every element of life, how to do exactly that. Because it's, believe it or not, mind-blowing to women that they actually get to create the experience, right? And this is no psychobabble. I have my doctorate in clinical psychology. I barely practice anything I've ever learned. I've
36:37 architected my own way of working with women, things that have deeply been missing even in psychology because even psychology was handed down through the patriarchal lens. So I've crafted a very feminine approach in the work that I do. And why I have the success I do with clients is because I teach them to tailor craft every aspect of their life. And almost all of it comes via Via sensuality. Yes. Amen, sister. Via sensuality and via, in my experience, and this is what I, I mean, I've kind of created my own system too, but this is what I teach in quantum love. This idea of using your body's energy and how you want to feel to lead, right? To have everything align with that. And so to start with how you want to feel, because everything we want comes from
37:26 wanting to feel a certain way, and then living from that feeling in your day-to-day life and letting that be the lens that leads. So this is really helpful to me because I have not been doing that to this. I mean, I've been doing it to some degree, but I was not doing that this morning when I looked in the mirror. And so it really is a discipline and a practice. And you know, the hope is that eventually if enough of us start doing this and stop trying to fight the beauty of time and embrace it, that the norms will change. That's what I would love to see. And also deciding what gets to be beautiful, because to me, the beauty is all the different landscapes of all the different decades. It isn't to me, I, how boring that everyone starts to look
38:14 the same, right. And has the same physical structure and the same lips. And I think it's so beautiful, all the different caricatures and the defined, you know, their own stories on their own unique individual faces. To me, that's what's so fascinating. And, you know, when I talk to my adult kids about this as well, that's, that's in all of the partnerships that they are interested in or are a part of, that's what they want is they want original characters. They want someone has their own unique look that looks like no one else. And that's probably in large part, thanks to their mama's model, which is really important for us to know as parents. So you alluded to, you know, and I want to hear more about it. I'm sure we all do alluded to the
38:56 importance of sourcing or the beginning of kind of creating this new template for yourself as stemming from or rooted in sensuality. So let's talk about that for a minute, what you mean by that. I think it's like youth and beauty. Sensuality is something that we have profited off of the backs of women, right? So it is something that going back, starting with most culture and religion for the average young girl, she was brought up to feel ashamed of, to feel disconnected from anything that had to do with anything between her hips, let's say, right below her navel. And yet there felt this big burden, this big responsibility, something super mysterious, but you're not sure you could feel okay about it. But if you ever
39:42 accidentally came up against it. You felt some fabulous feeling and sensation, but yet the world was telling you it was wrong, all very confusing. And then we tell women to go in the world and give that to someone else to serve someone else with that, as opposed to ever having any understanding or connection of the power of that for ourselves. And that is why I've seen so many women stay in bad relationships and bad love because their belief was, and I have current modern day, very successful clients who have deeply embedded inside of them this idea that self-pleasure is wrong. Oh, me too. And who can't even have an orgasm with someone else and feel like that's the only way they should or could, and that it's actually up to their partner to deliver it to
40:25 them. I mean, these are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies that do this. Absolutely. And so I am a huge fan of all things self-pleasure. I'm a huge fan of also understanding that even if somebody is not even ready to venture into that idea, I have them doing so many very subtle somatic practices while they're on Zoom with me and we're doing them together. And then I ask them to pay attention to that swirl of energy, like tell me where it is right now and how is that feeling? And they start to report to me things that they're like, Amanda, I actually thought that the nerve endings and certain parts of my body were just done. I have women who hadn't had any wetness, complete struggle with vaginal dryness for 15 years
41:08 after just weeks of working with me start to feel lubricated again, because it was never about the external partner. It was never about the approval from outside. It was always an inside job and it is so deeply layered. It's very complex. But as I take them on this journey of reconnecting everything that was disconnected and fractured from such a young age, we've got a lot of reconstructing, let's say. First, we have to deconstruct all of the pathologies and all of the lies so that we can reconstruct
41:41 this more beautiful way. But it is incredible in the ways that women start to connect with themselves. But we work on emotional intimacy and the physical intimacy kind of in parallel process to build that bridge and create that internal safety. And I've had so many women with extreme sexual trauma from early, early times in their life who haven't even been able to ever be physically in their bodies.
42:06 They disassociate when they're with a partner because of the trauma and working with them to just spend a year or two in celibacy, working with me to really start to heal all of that and start to understand and discover their bodies. So then from that energy, they can go into the world and create something beautiful with someone else. Yeah, that is my favorite when I get to do that.
42:27 That is just such a beautiful, beautiful process. And I also feel that when you are awakening that sensuality inside yourself, your own release, not because our sexuality is totally externalized, we're taught for most of us. So to begin to internalize it and to create this emotional
42:45 and sensual relationship inside yourself and to build that energy inside yourself, obviously has huge intimacy, emotional and physical intimacy, positive consequences. But I find that it has huge creative, positive consequences because that's the seat of our creativity. It's the seat of creation and it's the seat of our creativity. Absolutely. And, you know, I know the old moniker was an apple a day keeps the doctor away. And I'm like, well, an orgasm a day keeps the creativity pumping. Yes. And I'm always like encouraging people. I do it myself every day, making sure that I am doing my nonlinear hip movements, you know, whether I'm in the kitchen or brushing my teeth, I'm making my little figure eights, I'm moving my hips, you know, we're just not our days and our bodies and our schedules and our lives and what we're exposed to is not built to support a sensual attunement within ourselves.
43:41 And if there is sensuality, we're taught to project that outward. Exactly. It's more about posing than actual internalized, rooted like an old oak tree sensuality. Like that woman who, regardless of age, you feel a sensual pulse from her because she is living with her five senses fully activated and turned on. And that's why she feels so magnetic and so sensual. And because she, there's a very big difference. I can spot them a million miles away than the woman who is posing, calling that when people
44:15 ask me like about, do you feel sexy? I'm like, sexy is the, like an insult. Sexy is so cheap to me. I know I never want to feel sexy. I want to feel sensual because sensual is an inside job. Sexy is I put on something, I do something to, to get the gaze of others to, to have a feeling about me. Sensuality is something that can be quiet and internal and you can't quite put your finger on it, but you can feel, you can feel it. And I love that so much. And I want you guys to listen to this because so much of what you're consuming, a lot of people who listen to this show, because I'm a well-known sex and love therapist or looking for sex advice. And we speak to this a lot on the show, but I'll do it here too, because so much of what we're taught
44:58 to look for with sex education or workshops or programs. And even if you just go out in the world and look at what's available. It's all like seduce, you know, how to pole dance. And none of that is bad, whatever. It's like, we're looking for ways to land a man or to be seen as sexy, or like I was saying, to still be seen as hot. Perform, perform, perform. I pole and I've had it for 15 years and took a year and a half worth of classes. I think my husband's ever seen me four to five times because it's not for him. It's for me. I didn't take the pole dancing classes. I don't pull dance now to perform for anybody. I do it to connect with my feminine power. But when we trade the lens of through patriarchy and we do it through self, everything, the entire
45:44 world gets to change because I don't center the male gaze in the way that I live and exist. I aging is irrelevant. It's just, it's just a thing that's happening, right? It's not something I focus on because I don't center men in my life. I center myself, my human experience and the service to women. So through that, I have so much available time that I think the average woman, I have a lot of time and money and energy to put towards my life, my career, my family, that I think a lot of women and myself that a lot of women don't have because they're so depleted because they're spending it in other ways. Yeah. On all the injections and lifts and all of that. And they will, they'll spend our last dime on that. I think you have a book coming out at some
46:27 point, but you know, in March and you have a lot of beautiful offerings and all, you know, your social media and your website and people can work with you, but I know you have this event coming up midlife. Is it, what is it called? The muse event or you tell me magnetic, magnetic, sorry, magnetic midlife, midlife, magnetic muse, but this is called magnetic. Yes. It's November 2nd and 3rd in Phoenix, Arizona. It is a two-day event where we will spend two full days where I will be teaching from the stage everything about the way that I have this embodied living as a woman myself, everything I teach with my clients, taking them through how to really harness this power and turn their lights back on to feel magnetic in their relationships, in their places
47:15 of work, in their friendships, in their body, the relationship they have with their body. there's a big component to ancestral healing and trauma. There's just so much that will be covered in two days that I know because I've been in this world long enough is not taught to the average woman in many places at all. It's, it's just my work that I've been developing over 25 years, all in one place in two days, all taught in one place. And so is it all in person or are you going to be streaming too? It's only in person because it is, it is very deeply emotional and I want to, out of respect, it would be insulting to have it broadcasted. So it's an in-person only event. It's intense. Yeah, no. So if you're ready to really upshift
47:58 and release a lot, I love that word magnetic too, because that's really what's underneath what we think of as the law of attraction or manifesting or whatever. When you're magnetic, you are pulling towards you that which matches your frequency. So it feels to me like what you're going to be teaching and guiding women through is how to release what's in the way and how to step into their full magnificent magnetic power. So I love that so much. I'm really excited that you're offering that to women so they can learn about that on your website. And we'll put all of that in the show notes of the episode, your website and any other links, the social media links and whatever else. Listen, I know you have questions and things that you want some assistance with,
48:48 and I am here to help. So that's what my Language of Love sessions are for. I can talk to you live on the line, or you can email your questions and I will answer them. And you can send them anonymously. It can be about a friend or a neighbor or someone you know. But what I want you to know is that when you ask that question, you're asking not only for yourself, but all the millions of other people who have the same question because they do and are learning right along with you. So if you have a question or you want me to talk about something or answer something or help you with a struggle, you can always email me at languageoflovepod at gmail.com. That's languageoflovepod, as in podcast, at gmail.com.
49:44 Is there anything else that I haven't asked you about that you want to share or think is important? I want to share that the narrative we've been given for women is so limited. And if you're willing to step outside of that and reimagine, I think one of the main things clients say to me is, I didn't even know it could be this beautiful. I didn't even know it could feel this incredible every day. So in my world, things come alive in ways that are in many ways, like coming into the colored version of the wizard of Oz movie, right? We're living in this very dreary black and white existence of this is what it is. This is the limited range of what it means to be a woman. And when you step into my world, I show you a whole new way that is just so incredible. It
50:29 will blow your mind. I love that. Thank you so much for being here and for the beautiful work you're doing for all of us in the world. I'm really grateful. Thank you. And likewise, I really appreciate you. Bye.
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