Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Rewilding: The Courage to Become Yourself Again

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

For years, Jane Green looked like she had it all. She was a bestselling author, a wife, a mother, and a woman who had built the kind of life many people spend decades chasing. But beneath the success was a question she could no longer ignore: Whose life was she actually living? In this deeply honest conversation, Jane joins me to talk about the unraveling that led to her memoir Rewilding and the surprising freedom that can emerge when you stop trying to be who everyone else expects you to be. We explore why so many women wake up in midlife feeling disconnected from themselves despite checking every box, how childhood wounds quietly shape our adult relationships, and why the loneliness many people experience isn't always about being alone. Sometimes it's about losing touch with who you really are. This conversation is for anyone who has ever looked around at a life that appears successful on paper and wondered why something still feels missing. In this episode, you'll discover: Why high-achievers are often the most disconnected from their authentic selves The hidden cost of people-pleasing and performing for approval What loneliness is really trying to tell you How childhood experiences continue to influence your relationships decades later Why insight alone doesn't create lasting change The surprising connection between your body, your emotions, and your sense of purpose How midlife can become a powerful invitation to reinvent yourself rather than a crisis to survive What it means to stop being who you've been taught to be and start becoming who you truly are Whether you're navigating a major life transition, questioning old identities, or simply feeling a quiet pull toward something more authentic, this episode offers both insight and hope. Because sometimes the life-changing question isn't "What should I do next?" It's "Who have I become while trying to be everything for everyone else?" If this conversation speaks to you, be sure to check out Jane's memoir, Rewilding, a powerful exploration of what happens when we stop performing and finally come home to ourselves. For those drawn to lived transformation, her Rewilding Retreats in Morocco offer an immersive space to step away from noise and reconnect with what feels true when life is stripped back to essentials. And if this episode is opening up questions about love, attachment, and relational patterns, explore Quantum Love as a next step toward building relationships from a more self-aware and connected place. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 love.

What happens when the life you work so hard to build suddenly feels like it's not your life at all? That's what happened to my guest on this episode of The Language of Love, Jane Green. She is a bestselling novelist, beloved storyteller, and now author of a deeply vulnerable and transformative new book, a memoir called Rewilding. Many of you probably know Jane Green from the novels that have comforted and captivated women for years, New York Times, number one bestsellers and so forth. But in this book, she turns that same honesty and insight inward, sharing her own journey through people pleasing, dissolving her marriage, identity, friendship, healing, and ultimately reclaiming parts of herself she had slowly abandoned in order to be loved, accepted, and successful. And what I love so much about this conversation is that it's not really about blowing up your

life, although she definitely did. She ran away to Morocco, but it's about waking up to yourself. We talk about performance, the performance that so many women live inside of, the pressure to keep everyone happy, to maintain the image that everything is fine, keep achieving, caretaking, shape-shifting to meet everybody's needs, and shrinking ourselves to fit the emotional comfort of everyone around us. Jane shares so openly about the unraveling that happened when those strategies just didn't work anymore. The role of resentment, of menopause, of self-abandonment in relationships, the healing power of female friendships, the role

that somatic therapy played in her healing as well as some plant medicine journeys, and what it actually means to rewild yourself and come back home to who you truly are. This conversation is honest and funny and soulful and in my mind, deeply relatable for anyone who has ever looked around at the life they've built and quietly wondered, but where did I go? So let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Jane Green. Jane, thank you so much. I'm so excited to talk to you about this topic, especially, but I've been a fan for years. So this is really fun. Well, this is an enormous honor. I'm absolutely so excited and thrilled to be on your podcast. Thank you. Oh, you're so sweet. You know, I've been following you for, gosh, I think it was

even pre-COVID. I don't remember how. I think through a mutual friend of ours or something, I started following you and I'd always enjoyed your books. But I feel it was so beautiful for me to read this book, which as far as I know, is your first work of nonfiction, Rewilding, right? It was so beautiful for me to read it because as you were telling the story, you know, I think a lot of us kind of were somewhat following along. And when you started talking about, I think I remember this was maybe a year or two ago, when you started talking about rewilding, I remember DMing you and you probably had no idea who the hell I was, but I was like, hey, this is going to be really good. Yeah, I do remember you DMing me. That was the thing.

I had no intention of writing a memoir, but I just, even though my career has been writing novels, writing has always been the best way I know to understand the world and to understand my world. It's how I figure out how I feel about everything. As I started writing about this journey of leaving my marriage and figuring out who I was again, kind of tapping back into that sort of brave little girl I had once been and finding the essence of me. I started writing about it and lots of people, you included, wrote to me and said, this speaks to me. You're writing about me. We really relate. And actually, eventually, somebody from HarperCollins slid into my DMs and said, I hope you're turning all of this into a

book. And when you do, I'll buy it. And that was how the memoir came about. Yeah. This is, you know, I didn't know that part of the story, but I love it even more. And we're going to get into what rewilding means. But while we're on this topic, I feel like this, because our lives very, very different. But obviously, just like most people who are going to read the book, you see so much of it, you can relate to so much of it. And one of the many things I could relate to was this idea, and this is how it kind of began for you, the unraveling sort of that led to the rewilding is that like, you're in this beautiful, you know, you're a sparkling bestselling author, you are on top of the world. And when we are in those spaces,

we can ignore a lot, right? And when we have been raised to, and you share a lot of your own story, you know, and it's a little different than mine, but here's the parallel. And I think a lot of people will relate to this when you have learned to kind of bypass yourself your own needs your own identity in service to what the world wants and you somehow and this is all unconscious you have somehow unconsciously figured out how to successfully put yourself out there in this way and use your talents for that and get tremendous success for that my version of that was also you you know, New York Times bestselling, not for fiction, but for nonfiction, you know, Oprah's person, television shows, blah, blah, blah. And then in my case, we won't get into my story.

These guys know my story, but I went through my version of what I call an AFGE, another freaking growth experience where your life implodes or something implodes and it just turns you to mush and you have to reconfigure if you're going to, right? You literally reconfigure yourself like the butterfly does into the cocoon, turning to complete mush that caterpillar does. And then it reconfigures into the butterfly. And I kept like seeing that image

as I was thinking about this concept of rewilding. So I wanna get into your story, but first let's even just start at the end. What does it mean, essentially, to rewild yourself, which I think every single one of us are going to need at some point, because very few of us stay wild. And that's why I love rewild, because I think we're born this way. Well, it actually is a gardening term and it's becoming very popular in the UK. And it's about restoring your garden to its native indigenous state in order to allow it to thrive. And so, of course, I have taken that and applied it to women because just as you just said, you know, I think so many of us learn very young to twist ourselves into all kinds of shapes

in order to be loved, whether that's within a family, whether that starts at puberty when we become interested in boys, but we do it to ourselves. I think so many of us carry the secret shame that we are not good enough. And so we develop all of these roles and constructs and personas because we need the world to see us as you know we're so frightened that anyone will look at us whether it's peers or friends or colleagues or other mothers mum groups men but we're so terrified that anyone will see through that veneer to what we secretly know to be true about ourselves which is that we are not enough and so many women spend their entire adult lives expertly stepping into these roles and these constructs. But then the great unraveling,

as you called it, which I love, really happens at menopause. And there's a confluence of things, right? It's also often if we have children, it's when our children leave home. Even if we've had careers, suddenly our roles as mothers is taken away from us. And we are, I think, wholly unprepared for menopause we know about things like hot flashes and night sweats and irritability but we really aren't prepared for the enormous cracking of all of those constructs that have helped us go through life and keep a peaceful household and keep our marriages happy and we have spent lifetimes learning to say yes instead of no in order to keep the peace and suddenly menopause has this neurological rewiring where all of those constructs are shattered and suddenly

we often find that without the personas actually we don't know who we are we have no idea who we are and we feel completely untethered and lost and we have no idea how to get ourselves back we're also often filled with resentment and so it can be terrifying it is terrifying it's completely overwhelming, but it can also be, if you choose, the most extraordinary gift. It's not even giving you back a life. It's giving you a new version of life and a new, more authentic version of you that will lead to a life that is filled with unparalleled amounts of joy. I love that so much. And it gives me chills and simultaneously makes me personally want to cry a little bit because I know there's a lot of grief in your story as well. And even in just

what you were just describing for all of us. When we get to that place, there is anger, resentment and grief. But I just wrote, you know, which we've been communicating and I sent you my book, but I just wrote this book about grief. And the core, one of the core messages of crying out loud is exactly what you said, that it seems it is, you know, in my case, losing a child, like the worst thing I could ever imagine happening ever and was the worst thing, you know, knock on wood, hopefully the worst thing that ever happens. Also, not that I wouldn't give it all back to have him back. But also, when you go through something like this, whatever that trauma, whatever that unraveling is, whatever that dark night of the soul, you know, that you go through,

if you are willing to step into it, which you so gloriously did, and not all of us are brave enough or willing enough. And that's why I'm so excited about your book, because it's another path for women to do this. When you are willing to do it, it ain't easy. It's bumpy as hell and it's scary as hell, but it burns away everything that doesn't matter. It allows you to step fully into your authentic self. And then the world begins to meet you there, which I've experienced. And even in your story about how this book came to be, right? That's a beautiful example of you stepping out onto social media here's my imperfectly imperfect messy rewilding self I'm on this journey and then a publisher who's like you know the world then starts to meet you

there and be like hey yeah I like this I can relate to this I see you there's something really beautiful about I agree with that and I think there's something else I'm just taking you for a little walk because the sun is shining if you're watching the YouTube version of this we're getting to see jane's we're going to talk about morocco in a minute but we're getting to see jane's beautiful moroccan garden that she now lives in oh yes i can i can give you a little a little sneak peek look at that of my moroccan garden yes it's like a little paradise but thank you i think what you just said is absolutely true and i think there's another piece of it which is that feeling uncomfortable feelings is really really hard it's really frightening and many of

us will do anything we can to not feel those feelings and whether that's turning to drugs or alcohol or shopping or whatever it is you know it can be addictive behaviors it can be work but we will be aiming to run from fears feelings because it's awful to feel those feelings and I never understood until I left my marriage and until I ran away to really rewild myself. And that encompasses so many things, you know, learning to say no, setting boundaries, learning the art of discernment. But at its core, what it is, is about learning to value and love myself. And I have absolutely no idea how to do that. And of course we often recreate what's familiar to us. And I, you know, because I was somebody

who didn't love and value herself, I have no idea how to do that. I attracted men who didn't make me feel valued or loved either. And I understood, you know, I did my first year or the first 10 months of me being on my own, I did all the old behaviors. I lost myself in partying and drinking and flings and anything I could to numb the pain and not face the grief, the loss and all of those old childhood wounds, which is actually what menopause does. Because what it does is that when it cracks open all of our constructs, we're just left with a massive every wound we've ever, every emotional wound we've ever carried. And it took me about 10 months of numbing myself really well when I suddenly understood

that I had to stop. And I had to sink into the feeling and I had to feel it all because if I didn't do that, I was not only never going to grow or heal or change, but if I ever did have another relationship, it would be exactly the same as the relationships I'd had, just with a different facade. Yes, that's literally why my book is called Crying Out Loud, because we have to be willing to feel it all and not hide it away and shame it away. Okay. So I, we're going to get into what you did to heal in a minute, but I just want to talk about

the quote unquote running away part, right? So you're in the, you have this life in the States, you have a husband, your kids have now left for college or your last children have left for college. And you literally at first temporarily, but then it relatively quickly is determined by, you realize it's permanent, but you literally run away from your life and your husband and go from, I think you were in Connecticut, go from Connecticut and move to Morocco. Okay. Let's just start there. Well, here's the thing, as you can hear, although I am a dual US, UK, you know, I have passports in both. I'm clearly not American. You can hear I was born in London and I left for the United States 26 years ago. I spent 24 years in the United States. And I do think that

once you've uprooted yourself from the place in which you were born, it's never that difficult to do it again because you sort of become a little bit of an alien. You're sort of at home everywhere and nowhere. You can never quite go home again because life moves on. It's not the same place that you grew up in. You can make your home wherever you pitch your tent, but ultimately you always sort of know that it's not home. So it makes it easier to uproot. So, um, but you say, you say this thing, I wrote this down that it wasn't just a break from my husband. It was a break from the version of myself I had become in order to be loved. And I know that you had just written a fiction book before you did this about Talitha. You know, you had this whole

fantasy and you always loved Morocco. And so it was like this really beautiful, okay, I'm just gonna go find myself in Morocco, right? But then you get there, you're alone in Marrakesh. Well, I want to see what else you want to say about that. But there's something specific I want to ask you that I just thought was so beautiful about those first months and the healing that happened in Marrakesh. So you're in Marrakesh, you're spending, you're in the Medina, you know, and I just have to say, like, I love Morocco. You wouldn't know this, but I was married in a prior life before my final husband that I've been with for 25 years. I was married to this horrible human being who turned out to be, you know, same thing. I was marrying my wounds back then.

Yeah. So, but he was from the rock of Gibraltar, which is right across the straits from Tangier there in Morocco. And so I would go to Morocco all the time and I loved it. And it really did in many ways was a solace because he was seriously emotionally abusive and I was in a really dark place and it turned out, you know, to be much worse than that, but that's a different story. But I love, I mean, I understand. And when you were talking about the Medina and the Sook, like I was envisioning all of it. But here you are alone, you know, wandering through the Sook and in the unraveling. And you say, I wrote this down too, I thought my meandering was aimless. but every every human interaction every kiss because very lots of affection as people realized you had you know you were now local right so they were all kind of taking you in whether you wanted it or not as you walk through the streets right so you say every human interaction every kiss

was bringing me back to life so the human connection that was from yes how did that play a Well, you know, I think what so often happens when we are unhappy and we're unwilling to face it, we end up accruing a mountain of resentment, which is what ultimately makes it insurmountable. We're fueled by anger and resentment, but I think women often internalize that. And because we feel that we're not able to express it, sometimes it's because we're not heard or we're in marriages to men who diminish us. But either way, we are not allowed to have a voice. And so we withdraw and we become more and more isolated. And so, you know, so many of these, I think they've turned and now walk away wives, these women who leave what looks to the outside world to be a wonderful marriage. And the husbands are always blindsided and they never see it coming. But if they stopped and listened, they would hear and they would know. But the problem is women who are not heard try and we try and eventually we just withdraw. And that's what I had done. And I have become very isolated. And the last few years of my marriage had seen me becoming incredibly reclusive. And whilst by nature I am slightly reclusive, I also need people and I love people.

But there I was at home. I never left my house. If I needed anything, it was Instacart or Amazon or, you know, I just ordered everything I needed so I didn't have to actually leave my house and see anyone. And when I first got to the Medina in Marrakesh and I realized that there is no Uber Eats, there is no Instacart, there's no Amazon, there's no mail actually, there's no mail service here. And so if I needed anything, I had to get dressed and walk up my derb and go to the main street and walk along the street and go to the little guy to buy bread and eggs and then go to the next little guy to get kitchen towel or whatever it was I needed. And as I became more recognized as somebody who was clearly there to stay, as you said, a local rather than a tourist, people started greeting me. And I'd find that, you know, I'd walk up and I'd have to stop and have a little chat with Faizal, who runs the little corner store.

It's called a hamlet here. And then I'd have to stop and have a little hello with Rasheed, who sits on the tour guide. And then Fatima, who did the henna outside the henna cafe, would always stand up, come and she'd kiss me on the left and then twice on the right. And she'd stand back and she'd say, Zwina, which means beautiful. And we'd have this little kind of chat in my terrible French. And what I realized very quickly was that these human interactions that I didn't want and I didn't certainly didn't think I needed started to bring me back to life. And I really do believe that we are living through a crisis of isolation, you know, whether it's through technology or self-imposed, whatever it is, and COVID did not help.

We trick ourselves and we tell ourselves, I hate people phoning, I only text and I would never phone anyone and I would never, and we've suddenly imposed all these rules upon ourselves that keep us enormously isolated. And I really do believe to the core of my being that the sole reason we're put on this planet is to connect with other people. And we are losing something so enormous in the isolated lives that so many of us are now living. Yeah, I agree. And it really, it really was beautiful. You know, I just want to, I could have said this at the beginning too, but one of the things I loved, and there's a lot more

to talk about here, but one of the things I loved about your book, which makes total sense is you're this amazing novelist, right? You've had all these number one bestsellers. You're an amazing writer, storyteller and writer right and what was so beautiful especially for me as a non-fiction writer who's written 11 non-fiction books is it it's a non-fiction well it's a memoir but it also gives a lot of guidance and advice from your perspective through your story but it is written and reads like a novel which makes it so much fun because normally you know I'm doing like five podcasts a week and I'm reading because I insist on reading the books, but I'm like reading in my speed reading way. You know, I'm getting all the gist and I'm going through everything. I sat my

ass down and read this whole book in a day cover to cover because it was so freaking enjoyable to read. So I just want to say that before I forget. I am actually tearing up. That is the greatest compliment you could give me. You know, and I will say as well, but you know, I got my 22nd novel coming out in the fall and this is my first memoir and it's a completely different experience and it's absolutely terrifying I've always drawn from my life I've always written about my life but I've always been able to hide it behind fictitious character and yeah and one of the things that I felt was really important for me was honesty and authenticity and there were there are two parts to this the first is that I felt very much that I lived in a town where appearances

were everything and you know I was the sole provider the sole breadwinner I was supporting six children myself my husband and I wasn't my income had dropped dramatically and I was scrambling to keep our heads above water and yet if you asked us we would have said oh no we're we're living in this shitty little cottage because we're getting ready to travel or build some fabulous I mean heaven forbid anyone should know the truth and I was so tired of lying I was so tired of spinning plates and stories and what I started to understand is again it goes back to what we were talking about at the at the beginning it's shame we're so frightened of being seen yeah to be not good enough and and so and actually I just thought I want to just the whole house of

cards has come crashing down anyway inside of me so let me just tell everybody my truth and shame thrives in darkness shame needs secrecy in order to survive and the one thing that you've never told anyone the one thing you're terrified about people discovering is actually the one thing that's stopping you from having an authentic life and from having proper connections with people and I'll tell you this as well. But when you start being honest, over half the people that you thought were friends disappear. Amen, sister. And yeah, and it's incredibly jarring in the beginning. It's confusing. I had people just completely ghost me who I really thought were proper friends, people in the book world, authors, you know, book influencers who just suddenly

unfollowed me but what I now know is those people were never for you in the first place because they never even knew you they were attracted to the sparkle and the persona and the construct there was nothing authentic about their relationship to you and when you start actually being authentic those people drop away and your whole energy changes and even though it's really frightening it's really frightening to come out and tell the truth about yourself but you start attracting the right people who are drawn to you because of the real you not the real you and then yeah there's there's a transition and a pause that feels like between the old you and the new you for all of us and you know I love that part of the story because it's something I find myself

saying almost every day to someone who's feeling stuck in their life or who's trying to decide whether to stay or go whether it's a relationship or a job or something else is eventually there's a tipping point where the pain of being in the situation is greater than all our fears of getting out of it and into the unknown. You described that tipping point, your tipping point so beautifully. And the other thing I love about what you're describing is there were many key elements right there. You know, there's this whole journey of the unraveling and then the reconfiguration, you know, in the cocoon of Morocco, if we're following that butterfly metaphor. But You dive into, which I am a huge proponent of, somatic healing, somatic therapy, and you also share all the ways that plant medicine, psilocybin, I think primarily, but I think there was also an LSD moment.

Yeah. And unexpected LSD moment, right? But those journeys and that unexpected, unintentional LSD moment really opened things up for you. And you describe it so beautifully in the book. What did both of that, the plant medicine and even the LSD and the somatic healing teach you that talk therapy, because I know you've done talk therapy and I, you know, believe me, I mean, I'm a talk therapist who does a lot less talking over the past 10 years. I'm a huge fan. I mean, I do most of the work I do is in the somatic realm. But what did it teach you that the insight oriented therapy could not?

I started in therapy when I was, I mean, the first time I ever saw a therapist, I was probably 21. I started very seriously when I was approaching 30. And then I kept trying. I knew that therapy was the answer. and I kept trying to find a therapist and it wasn't working. And I had a really clear intellectual understanding of exactly why I was the way I was,

of all of my particular childhood wounds and all the ways that made me me and why I made the choice of I'm in. I just didn't know how to change it. I started doing psilocybin journeys that were kind of ritualistic structured within an organization. And I found them, I did find them transformative.

They gave me back a way to keep my head above water. And I were at a time when I felt that I was underwater and I couldn't reach the air. And psilocybin allowed me to breathe and get through the day. But it still, it wasn't the sort of deep healing that I needed. And I knew I needed something other than talk therapy. That just, I had done it on and off for many years. I'd been to therapeutic retreats and I'm a consummate overthinker. so I will intellectualize everything and analyze everything but it wasn't changing and just by

chance I asked a friend of mine to recommend a therapist and she happened to recommend a somatic therapist I didn't even know that she was a somatic therapist but what she taught me to do and I was in intensive somatic therapy for two years was to think down from my overthinking brain into my body because you know to quote from the Bessel van der Kolk book the body holds the score if you believe the body holds everything that's ever happened to us it's only by locating those wounds locating those feelings and again it goes back to running away from feelings you've got to face them you have to find them you have to face them and then you have to embrace them and that's has had the most profound shift. And I do tell the story and it's now happened a couple of times

where I have been in these, I can't call them relationships because they were short and they were quite painful, but they were what the kids called situationship. And my brain wanted to make this, you know, they start off sort of love-bombingly fabulous and all of a sudden there's a withdrawal. And I remember the first time it happened, I've never experienced it before. And I I have this man saying, you know, you are my person and this is it. And I was like, well, that's a bit fast, but maybe this is my turn. You know, maybe this is the Hollywood love story. Maybe this is real.

And just as I started to trust it, he sort of disappeared. But then he kept coming back and then he disappeared. And actually, it was so confusing. But what I realized was I had become obsessed. And my entire central nervous system was activated by this behavior. and but my brain still wanted to get back to how it had been when he was loving and present and consistent and so I kept wanting to talk things through and and actually it was two weeks of pain and after two weeks I suddenly thought I stopped listening to my head and I sank into my body

and I realized I didn't like the way my body felt my body was activated and my body was telling me this is not for you hell to the no yeah yeah I've sort of learned that I think what somatic therapy has also done is it's enabled me to fully trust my intuition and I think we all have it we're all born with it as women but we let our overthinking brains override our intuition all the time we do it with friends we do it with work we do it with with romances but we we want we logically want something so even when our guts are saying red flag or this isn't quite right because we want it we will override that and somatic therapy has taught me to always trust how i feel amen a hundred amens to that and it also like our bodies are the bridge to our souls

and i 100 agree that we all have powerful intuition especially women even cognitively there's more connection between the left and right hemispheres. There's all these neurocognitive reasons that we have better access to intuition, but our body is the pathway to get the information. And, you know, I, this happened during my one, you know, really after the loss of my son out of a, out of a, you know, for survival sake, because I was in so much pain, I said, okay, for the next two weeks, I'm just doing this for two weeks. Cause I was like you and you talk about this in book, a total people pleaser. And, you know, I'd done a lot of personal work and even some somatic work, but I was, you know, still, I was very different even than I am today, five

years later. But I decided I'm only going to say yes to what my body says yes to whether I want to do it or not. And I'm going to say no to what my body says no to whether I'm going to do it or not. And I even, you know, I've made meditations for people to show them like, how do you even know what yes and no feels like in your body. Okay. So I did that. There were so many things during that two weeks that I wanted to say no to that my body was like, no, yes, it's a yes. And so many things that I wanted to say yes to, not so many, but a few key things that I would have like cognitively and the past me would have jumped at doing like amazing opportunities or things like that. And my body was like, N O. And so I found myself saying to people, you know what? I'm so

sorry. I would love to go on that yacht with a bunch of celebrities and thought leaders and be included in that. But my body, I only do what my body says to do. And it's saying not to come. I'm so sorry. I literally started saying that. But after two weeks, I cannot tell you the peace and ease I felt. And I have literally five years out continued to live that way. And it has changed my life. And it does really, the more you attune to your body, the more your body can tell you what your brain may justify or rationalize or distract you from. Your body is not going to lie. Yeah. And I think the other thing is that it's habitual. We're so used to those of us who are people pleasers saying yes when we mean no. And actually there are a myriad of occasions in any

given day where we say yes when we mean no and it can be tiny things yes do you mind if I do this do you mind is it and and you said you tell me if it's not a big I don't really but it's not it's no big deal and you say yes instead of saying no and actually when you start practicing saying the no it becomes easier and easier to then say no to the big things yes I think that's a great point And let's talk about one of the major themes in this book were friendships and your tribe, your community and female friendships and the importance of them in your life. And I was relating to that so deeply as well and how they need tending, you know, like a marriage. And you spoke a little bit to this, but you also write in the book that when your heart cracks open, you instantly recognize the people that are your tribe. And I thought that was really beautiful, as well as, you know, your story about your beautiful friend, Carla.

And I'm so sorry for that. Not spoiler alert, but I am so sorry. Let's just say I'm so sorry for what happened there without telling the story. But I'm wondering if you can share, you know, about female friendships and how essential they are, what you discovered about them, especially in midlife. But I think at any time. So I think, gosh, it's all everything we're talking about. I think I had, I was surrounded by, I love people. Despite being a little bit reclusive, I also love people and I'm very attracted by the bright, shiny and new. So I was always gathering new friends and it took me years

to realize that I had not nurtured my oldest, closest friends. I would still call them my best friends. But meanwhile, I only saw them a couple of times a year because we lived overseas and I didn't put the time and effort into them. And I've really learned to very consciously nurture my closest friends. I now FaceTime my three or four best friends every single morning. We start the day with FaceTiming. We're all in bed with bedhead and then our nighties. And that is how every morning starts. I will also say that friendship has been the great theme of my life. It has brought me some of the greatest joy and some of the greatest pain. I have never had my heart broken quite so painfully as by a female friend. But I also know that when you don't know

yourself and you don't value yourself, you long to be chosen. And so when somebody that you think is has worth chooses you whether that's as a friend or a partner or whatever it is you are so flattered that you will become their friend and I've had many friendships over the years with women who I should really never have been close to because it wasn't about it was I was just so flattered to have been chosen and I never felt like myself in those friendships And again, learning the art of discernment, which is being very mindful about who you're drawn to and who your heart is leading you to, and also becoming okay with being disliked, which has been a huge part of rewilding. And that's a really hard one for many of us. But really choosing the people that choose you and understanding that if people don't choose you or don't invite you or don't like you, it's OK, then they're not for you. And, and it really, it doesn't say anything about your value or your, but I think so often

we need to be chosen by the right crowd and the right friends. And that particularly when, as we're raising children and those, those mom groups that can be incredibly toxic. Yeah. I never actually did them. I was never involved. I was relating that to that too, in your story, like the school functions. And I was the one that brought the napkins at the bake sale.

You know, all the mom groups, they, they are mean, those women, they can be real mean. Well, I managed to avoid all of that, but I definitely had other friends who were sometimes high profile and I couldn't believe that they chose me. They wanted to be my friend, but actually those were not healthy friendships for me. I very much passed myself as their lady waiting. And they were not healthy friendships. I also think that there is nothing more glorious than friendships with secure women. And there is nothing more painful and dangerous than friendships with insecure women. But of course, the lovely thing about rewilding and listening to your intuition is you start to understand, you spot them instantly and you stay away. Yeah.

Yeah. And you don't before, right? But you can, once you start tuning into your nervous system and listening to your discernment and doing your own healing, not only are you not attracted to that and you can recognize it, but they, what is attracted to you is different, right? So you start becoming a match for, you know, more authentic, deep people. And speaking of matches, I want to talk because you did this so beautifully to talking about this whole idea. I mean, it was just in the storytelling of your sexuality, your identity, discovering parts of yourself or releasing old kind of rigid ideas around your sexuality. It starts to unfold that you as you start to peel away these layers and kind of let go of everything that defined you and you're

stepping into this rewilding you start to come to terms with you know what I have always been it's not an either or but I've always been attracted to women too but it's not just you know that I like women as friends but sometimes I'm attracted to them yeah I mean that that was the great secret and the great shame because I didn't want that I didn't want to be that I I wanted to be married to a man and have lots of children and so I just thought well I can just push it down very deep and never have to think about it or look at it and then I I sort of ended up having a very brief unrequited crush on somebody that I met while I was married but it really awoke something in me and it sort of made me think oh I think maybe this is real that thing

that I was always terrified of when I was younger maybe it is real and I did end up experimenting having a couple of lovely situationships with women and I thought yeah I am sometimes attracted to women and actually I can now talk about that and embrace that and it's not an either or I love men and sometimes I'm also attracted to women and that was the great secret and the great shame that I was terrified well I was terrified anyone would find out including myself I didn't want to be that so I'd never I'd never experimented I've never done anything with a woman so in that first year I, I did and discovered, yeah, I I'm right. Yeah. And how was that? How did that set you free to just claim that for yourself? So I think, I think it was just a tremendous release of shame.

Actually, it was all of that shame and, you know, intimacy with a woman is, is a completely different thing. I found it all rather beautiful, but more than that, I started talking about it. I told everyone, actually, I really didn't, I, you know, I also came out of a marriage where I, definitely wanted to have sex again and so I decided on maybe it is because I'm gay and I thought well the way around this is to come out to everybody I to everybody I knew my children my friends strangers I mean everyone I met I was like I'm gay I think I'm gay and I mean after a while I I realized I am not gay but actually that the saying that like every time I said it to someone I felt a piece of that shame yeah that makes sense you know yeah I need shame shame

exposed to the light evaporates. And that's essentially what you were doing. Yeah. And so now I, I mean, do I, what do I identify? I don't really identify as anything. I identify as me, but if I, if I was forced to put a label onto my sexuality, I would say fluid, which is different to being bisexual because it's not equal, but sometimes I'm attracted to women. Yeah. I love that. And I, and are you seeing anyone now or are you still exploring and rewilding and yeah i'm i'm not i actually since the the love bomber and there is a big chapter in the book yeah that was a year ago and i really i've taken the year off um i mean i've had i've had a couple of dates but nothing to write home about and i also realized that i've had a real

reframing and I'm I love my life I am very happy on my own I have always required a lot of time on my own but I'm open now finally to meeting someone but I don't need to be chosen and it would have to be something very special but you know it would have to be yeah it would have to be I don't I don't ever want to find myself settling or in a relationship where there are behaviors that I know are not good for me. And so I kind of trust that it's not even really up to me that greater powers

than I will decide when I'm ready and I shall be open to receiving when that happens. I like that plan. And I also think, you know, I say this to people all the time when they're breaking up with someone or ending a marriage or a relationship,

especially a long one or a toxic, painful, you know, horrible one. no one, you know, very few people listen to me, but I do on this, but I do feel like it's really helpful, even though the temptation is what you did in the beginning, you know, just not to try to find a replacement. Right. But exactly. You, you described it so beautifully in your storytelling and there are amazing stories, including the love bombers about some of your sexcapades and your relationships that were starting and stopping. And what we end up doing is unintentionally repeating the same old patterns just in a different package. And so that's why it's so

valuable to stop because not only do you give yourself a chance to do tremendous healing, that's going to change your energy, change your perspective, change what you're attracted to and attracting in, but it also breaks the pattern and it sets you up. Like, I don't know about you, but even for me and for so many, I know like I need a lot of alone time too, but the idea of being completely alone. You know, I have a husband and I still go and take my alone time, but I still have my husband, right,

in the house or gonna come home or whatever. And so, you know, this idea of being completely alone, even if you have friends and family and other places is really scary for people. And so I think getting to a place like you're saying, where you feel like your own beautiful, delicious cake and your life is this beautiful cake and someone else's sprinkles or icing or whatever,

they have to be the right flavor, the right kind, you know, fit with the cake. That is a really powerful and beautiful place to be. And it does take time to get there. So I love that you're doing that. Yeah. And that's also why friendships are so important. When you do live by yourself, when you are single,

your friends become your family. Yeah. And so choosing the right friends and then nurturing those friendships is absolutely key to your peace of mind. Amen. I agree. So when someone is listening in here and saying, oh yeah, I am recognizing, or maybe I already know that I've abandoned myself. I'm relating to this story. Where do they begin? So, well, I think the first thing that I have to say is you don't have to pack three suitcases and leave your husband and run away to Marrakesh. This can be done within the

confines of a marriage, but it really starts. I mean, I do have a list of steps in the back of the book, but it does start with quieting down. It starts with learning to set boundaries. It starts with learning to say no. It starts with doing whatever works for you. And we all have a different process. But I also think for those women who are married, who want to stay married, our husbands have no idea of the seismic effect of menopause on us nor do we we don't know we're not prepared so how can they possibly be prepared so when we're having this enormous internal shift they think that we're just having a little meltdown or we're just going through a rough patch and things will be fine things will not be fine so you have to start really understanding

what's happening to your body and you have to talk to your husbands in a way that they can hear and and it's it can be incredibly hard to do particularly if you're in a marriage where you're not heard but I think being able to say and in some ways I don't know that I would have had a different outcome but my husband wasn't able to understand and I tried I tried many times and I think perhaps I just didn't have the right way of telling him in the way that he was able to hear me. But I think that's how you get through it together, that you have to, first of all, fully understand what's happening to your entire internal structure. But all of those constructs and personas are just cracking open and they're leaving you this massive childhood wounds and

trauma and resentment and anger. And you've got to bring your husband into the conversation if you want your marriage to survive, or you can pack three suitcases and run away to Marrakesh. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's so much truth to that. And I think about this a lot. I mean, I've been talking about menopause for 30 years and all in all of the aspects of it, you know, all the physical, emotional, psychological, energetic, you know, the shell cracking open, as you say, when you think about it, you know, historically before we lived in this Western world that minimizes aging women. The aging women in the tribe were the leaders, you know, in indigenous cultures and in non-industrialized cultures. When we move into menopause, we are

stepping into our leadership, our wisdom, our deeper access to the divine, our medicine woman, like all these different aspects. We were revered. And in order to step into all of that, You got to face some shit. You got to shed some shit. You've got to up level. And I really feel like the transition of menopause and all that happens is on a physical level and on a metaphysical level is our invitation to up level our whole lives. But it is a bumpy ass ride. and a lot of people will level this terrible pejorative at women like me when they could they say we're having a midlife crisis and my response to that is it's a midlife awakening but I will also say it's one of the reasons why I think I was so drawn to Morocco because Morocco is not an

ageist society Morocco is a society where all ages mix where the young have so much risk they know that they can learn from the elders. And it's really, really hard in the United States because it is an ageist society. And I was very aware after I turned 50 that I had become completely invisible. So my advice there is find your tribe, whether it's through support groups

or gather women your age around you so you can all grow together. Amen. And get support and speak your truth. And sometimes that means taking some time to even discover what your truth is and what you really need this. I could talk to you forever, Jane. This is such a beautiful conversation. I'm so grateful to you for being so honest and open here, but also more as importantly in the book and about your journey. And I know we'll put in the show notes, everything about the book and your website.

But I know that you also, this could be an invitation for women who this is resonating with too. You run retreats in Morocco now. So tell us about that. So I run two kinds of retreats. I run writing retreats for anyone who has a story to tell. You don't have to be a published author. You could be somebody with a dream.

but I hold writing retreats, teaching the craft of writing and publishing and how to navigate your way through that. But I also am now holding rewilding retreats. And it really is, yeah, everything that we've talked about, tapping back into the truest, most authentic essence of yourself, whilst also getting to experience my particular brand of Marrakesh magic, because I am a local here and I have access to things that you wouldn't normally get to see as tourists visiting Marrakesh and it is pretty magical. There's also a particular kind of alchemy that happens when a group of women who are seeking something come together in a deeply spiritual place like Morocco. I want to come. Next one, October. October 21st is the next rewilding

retreat. All right, good. Well, we'll put all of that in the, we'll put the link to learn more about that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, Jane, for who you are and your authenticity and your beautiful storytelling. I really appreciate you being here. Laura, it has been such an enormous privilege. Thank you. I have loved every second of this conversation. I went to the doctor Said I'm crazy for your love