The Menstruality Podcast - 212. Replay: The Myth, Magic and Metamorphosis of Menopause (Dr Sharon Blackie)

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

It’s world menopause day later this month, and throughout October we’ll be sharing on social media about how we can rewrite the cultural narrative of menopause. On October 21st - 23rd, Alexandra and Sjanie would like to invite you to join them for their free three-day online menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power. And their online course, menopause the Great Awakener starts on October 31st - you can register for the free event and find out more about the course at redschoolmenopause.comToday’s bonus episode is a replay of my conversation with the brilliant writer, psychologist and mythologist, Dr Sharon Blackie called The Myth, Magic and Metamorphosis of Menopause.When you explore old European myths, it’s the elder women and grandmothers who run the world. In Greek mythology, there are the Fates - three elder women who make the world go round. In Easterm European mythology, the crone Baba Yaga initiates young people and facilitates transformation. In ancient Gallic mythology it is the Cailleach who created and shaped the land, from the beginning of time. In today’s episode Sharon explores the gold that these myths and archetypes hold for us as we navigate the shape-shifting crucible of menopause and enter the second half of our lives as elders.We explore:The Greek myth of the ‘Furies’, the sacred role of their rage, and the necessity of the comparable anger many of us feel in menopause.Why our world doesn’t allow us the time to ‘do menopause properly’ and the impact this has for us on a soul level. The Jungian archetype of the ‘Medial Woman’ who doesn’t define herself according to anyone else, is whole unto herself, and chooses to dive deeply into the mystery of the world.---Register for our free three-day menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power on October 21st-23rd---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyDr Sharon Blackie: @sharonblackiemythmakings - https://www.instagram.com/sharonblackiemythmakings

Welcome to the menstruality podcast where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexander and Sharny, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers, and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, welcome to the podcast. So it's day two of our special bonus replay episodes,

which we're going to be sharing each day this week to kick off our month of menopause at Red School. So it's World Menopause Day later this month. Throughout October, we're going to be sharing on social media all about how we can rewrite the cultural narrative of menopause. Alexander and Shania are going to be hosting a free event on October the 21st to the 23rd called How Menopause Awakens Your Power. And it's going to be an introduction to their online course. Menopause the Great Awakener, which starts on October the 31st.

You can find out about both the free event and the course at Red School Menopause. menopause.com. All right, today's bonus episode is a replay of a conversation I absolutely loved with the brilliant writer, psychologist and mythologist, Dr Sharon Blackie, who I've learned so much from over the years. And we talk about her personal experience of menopause, plus the gold that ancient myths and archetypes can hold for us as we navigate the shapeshifting crucible of menopause and enter the second half of our lives as elders. We meet the fate, of Greek mythology, three elder women who make the world go round. We meet Baba Yaga from Eastern European mythology and the Kaliak from ancient Gallic mythology, who created and shaped

the land from the beginning of time. It's such an epic conversation. Let's get started with the myth, magic and metamorphosis of menopause with Dr. Sharon Blackie. So hi, Sharon. Thank you so much for... for joining us on the menstruality podcast. Yeah, it's wonderful to have you here. Thank you for inviting me. We usually start with a cycle check-in, and since you're now in life post-menopause, I'd love to hear, do you feel like a cyclical being? What's your relationship to your cyclical nature in this phase of your life? Well, I had a difficult experience with menstruation, so I was very glad to be freed of it after having endometriosis for most of my.

life. But I feel in a sense that it's kind of, it's still there. And I guess that's perhaps the cyclical element is still there, but not associated with menstruation. And that's because over the years, nevertheless, I grew quite attached to seeing what was going on in my life in the context of cycles of the moon and phases of the moon, as well as the cycles of the seasons and the cycles of the year. That's kind of part of my practice, I suppose. So I don't feel that I've actually lost that cyclicity just because I've lost the actual bleeding part of it. It's kind of it feels almost ingrained. And I don't feel so many mood shifts, certainly, as I would have done when I was menstruating, which I find quite pleasant. I kind of like being on an even keel. It feels

like something disruptive, very beautiful in lots of ways, but something disruptive has been taken away and that I can focus in more on kind of, I don't know what to call it, spiritual aspects or the psychological aspects of it, as opposed to just getting through, you know, a really hard week once a month. Absolutely. And that's going to be the topic of our conversation today is exactly that spiritual power that happens in this phase of life. I, before we get into it, I'd just love to hear how you are because I recognize it's been

a big couple of years for you. Yeah, it's crazy. we landed, we were living in Ireland and we decided that we needed to come back to the UK for you with right now. We landed in Wales in a new house which we had never, you know, properly seen before, didn't know how anything worked on the first day of the first lockdown. So that was edifying. The movers refused to bring our stuff. So we literally stayed in an empty house for six weeks, which was pretty unpleasant for various reasons. And I ended up to cut a long story short with a serious bout of what looked like

inflammatory arthritis, but was clearly a prelude to lymphoma. So I was diagnosed with lymphoma. That would have been about getting on for 18 months ago now and spent last year undergoing the rather extreme chemotherapy that comes for lymphoma, but it seems to have worked. And at the moment, I'm feeling really great. So good to hear.

And were you writing during this time? Yeah. You know, I have a history of overdoing everything. And I thought that menopause would slum me down and it really didn't. And it just felt like the universe has given me a big hit on the head. And what was great about that is I thought, okay, I've got six months where I'm going to be very ill with chemotherapy. I wasn't actually, to be honest. I had an easier time of it the most.

But I canceled everything other than writing because I was writing. I was finishing my book, which is coming out in September Hageritude, which is about this time of life. and I really, really, really passionately wanted to explore that. And so I cut out all the teaching engagements and interviews and all of the things that I do sometimes find a bit draining. And I just wrote my way through it. And I think because the book talks about, you know, the final experience of elderhood, which is death,

I was at that time having a very intimate relationship with death because it was a very aggressive form of lymphoma. And I think it made it richer, you know, for having had that experience. So in many ways it was a gift. of a time. I know that sounds weird perhaps, but it was in many ways. It shifted my perspective on things that should have been shifted, you know, years and years and years ago. So it was, it was interesting. Fascinating. And how is it now emerging back into the world more in the run-up to the launch of Haggitude? How is that going for you? Brilliant, because I really did learn a lesson.

So most of the things that, you know, I would just accept everything. And I'd have a new idea. and then I'd have to go and do it right now, you know, I wouldn't kind of wait or plan or maybe in a year's time or whatever. It's like, no, I've had an idea. I must do this course. I must do this piece of writing. And I have no, although I still have a very strong drive to write and to write well, I have no drive to do that mad stuff, you know, everything anymore. It's just like it's literally gone and it's turned into a very fine, focused sense of, you know, everything anymore. It's just like it's literally gone. And it's turned into a very fine, focused sense of what I really need to do in the world. And I only accept kind of, you know, invitations to speak or whatever that I really

think are valuable in line with what I'm doing at the time. So that kind of came as a consequence of that time. And it's a very good thing because I think that's what should happen in elderhood. You know, this focusing in of the energies to say, okay, what am I here for? what is the work that I can bring to the world and how am I going to be best placed to do it without burning myself out? The word potentizing is coming to my mind. It feels like there's a potency.

I see it in Alexandra, actually. Alexandra, who's one of the co-founders of Red School and the author of the book that we're releasing a similar time to you to Wise Power. She has a very clear end of the day at 5 o'clock and nothing happens after 5 o'clock. and we were in a meeting the other day. And it was five past five and she went, oh, I'm going.

And she just pressed off on Zoom. I love her already because I'm exactly the same. I mean, my computer goes off usually actually before five because I'm a really early riser. And I don't answer emails on Sundays and all of that is new. You know, so yeah, it's really. But what it does is it not only keeps you from being exhausted all the time, but it really does feel as if, and for me, I think probably for the first time in my life, I'm really kind of actually in control, you know, of what I want to do rather than just

being swayed in the wind by whatever idea or, you know, interesting experience comes along. And yeah, it's kind of like finally growing up after, after many decades of just not really being very sensible with your own energy or time. It's so inspiring. I love how generous you are actually with your stories in your books, you know, in If Women Rose Routed, you share the mistakes you've made through your life very honestly and openly. And it's a really, it's a very kind act because it's so affirming as the reader to think, okay, maybe there's some sense in my mistakes as well, because it finds its way to this path that is very beautiful in If Women Rose Routed.

Oh, well, that's kind. Thank you. A lot of people say that, you know, and I found it curious at first, Because I suppose if I had, if somebody asked me, and I have been asked occasionally, you know, what is your core belief in life? It would be in the power of transformation. And I think that's why I went into psychology and became a psychologist in the first place. It's just like I really do believe that we are, we should be changing. You know, there is a sense in which I think, you know, your comfort zone is your prison. We have to be challenged in order to unleash that creative potential. And so I always expect to. change and I expect to kind of make mistakes and think, oh, you know, I could do that better. And so sharing them just seems to me like more of an affirmation of transformation than necessarily an admit and admittance of, you know, being a complete and not at ass sometimes in my life. I haven't been making all the wrong decisions.

Aren't we all? Exactly. And speaking of profound transformation, our conversation, our topic today is menopause. And this is the topic of your new book, Hager. which is coming out in September. And I'm so, I can't wait to read it. You make me look forward to menopause, as do Alexander and Sharnie with their book.

It's fascinating to hear what you're saying about the book. And it's clear for most of us that the current story that we're telling about menopause needs to be rewritten. This idea that menopause is this looming disaster waiting to happen. And then on the other side, we just decline and fade. And what I love about your work is how you take the old stories

and you bring them alive for us in our modern day time. And there's something that you wrote actually about Haggatude. I think I found this on Instagram where you say, Hagatude unearths the stories of the little known but powerful elder women in European myth and folklore, inspiring readers to imagine that the last decades of our lives might be the most dynamic of all. So I'd love to hear what some of these old stories can teach us about menopause and about life after

menopause. Yeah, and just for clarity, I mean, Hageritude starts with menopause. So the subtitle is reimagining the second half of life. So it starts with menopause as that transition point, which I believe really opens you up to a whole new adventure. And then it carries on saying, okay, we've got through menopause. now what kind of elder do we want to be? And to me, it's the phrase that I use is kind of uncovering our inner hag, you know, that everybody has a different one. Everybody has a different approach to elderhood. And so my question, and should, you know, depending on who they are and what their skills are and their orientation to life. And so what I went to do was to go back and look at our old European fairy tales and mythologies to see where the older women were, in those stories, who they were, and whether they had anything to teach us.

And, you know, I expected to find that difficult because there are many young women in European myths and fairy tales. Very few middle-aged women, mothers tend to play bit parts, but the older women always, almost always are playing bit parts. Now, that doesn't necessarily matter because in playing kind of like, you know, a role as a perhaps a helper or a guide to the protagonist of the story, they are nevertheless, often in some way managing the narrative, kind of, you know, pushing the narrative forward. So although it looks like a bit part, actually they play a much, much bigger role than it often

appears. And so what I didn't find is I didn't find very many stories with older women as their protagonists. But I found a lot of stories where older women were absolutely crucial to the way the world of the story work, the way, you know, the world. in which the protagonist was how that worked. And that was really, really fascinating. And, you know, that began in menopause. I remember my favorite archetypes, I guess, for menopause are the furious. Because my menopause was all about rage, you know, the anger that I had never been allowed to express as a child. And then it all just like a dam had burst. And I was like this mad volcano and not quite as uncontrolled as I make it sound but you know in my head for sure and

then you have the furious in Greek mythology who are older women whose job it is to get angry at things that you're supposed to be angry about and I found I found this really inspiring that that was their job and that it was the job of older women to kind of you know deal out consequences for really, really bad behavior. And there's this, there is a wonderful description of the furies somewhere which I can't, I can't bring to mind right now, but it talks about, you know, it talks about their haggish appearance and their hair is all over the place and they, it just look, it's the kind of look that you would love to be able to adopt in menopause.

You know, I had many days in menopause where I felt as if I looked like that. And so that kind of empowering thing that tells you, rage isn't always wrong, you know, the anger, that women are often really criticized for that comes out for many of us in menopause actually has a function in society and it had a mythological function for the Greek, so that's great. That doesn't tell us that we have to all go out there and be furious, but it tells us that there is a role and a place for that and a necessity for that anger. And so when I went back to the old stories, that was the kind of message that I was getting from them, if that makes sense. It makes absolute sense. I haven't been through menopause yet, but I'm lucky

to know many people who are in it or are on the other side of it. And rage is such a theme. Rage and grief also. Yeah. And I think there's a grief from what I hear. There's a grief about what's being lost, but more than anything, a grief of the lack of acknowledgement in the world about the profound, where you call it a bone-deep metamorphosis that's happening, that's not being acknowledged in our world. which makes me furious. Indeed. And we're not, it's not only not being acknowledged,

but we're not given time to do it properly. So one of the things that I talk about in the book, and it is not in any way meant to be critical because this is the way the culture pushes us, is of women who try desperately because they're told that's what they must do to hold on to the youth and what the culture thinks of as beauty

and effectively to just keep on going on through it as if nothing was happening. You know, you've still got to do all of the things that you're supposed to do as a good woman, whatever that is in this culture. But meanwhile, all of this amazing stuff is happening inside your body. And because you're supposed to carry on through it, you can only ever see it as an inconvenience, you know, because it stops you from doing all of the mad stuff you're doing. But it's designed to stop you. It is supposed to be a pause. You know, it is supposed to be that time in your life where you really, you really.

you just step back and be quiet and shut up and just let the transformation happen and sit and think, okay, you know, what is it that I am and what is it that I have to give to the world and to myself, you know, to my own growth as a soul? And we don't allow that time. And so nobody is allowed to, if I can put it really simplistically do menopause properly. And so it's not surprising that everybody thinks they're failing at it and that women tend to fall apart at this time in their lives if they don't have, you know, someone to give them an alternative story to perhaps live by. And you did have these alternative stories. So I'd love to hear as you were going through

menopause, how does anything come to mind in terms of how these stories guided you? Like, yes, through the rage, but also to navigate the transformation that was happening within you. I guess when I was going through it, I wasn't. so much looking at, you know, a late elderhood. I was, I was 50. And because I had endometriosis for all of my life, I'd been on the pill, which is the only thing that controlled it. And I could actually have a life. And I said to my doctor, I'm coming off at 50 no matter what. And I'm just going to have to just get through because I didn't think it was safe, you know. Anyway, I came off at 50 to discover that menopause had been happening quietly in the background. I never had

another period. It was just like, oh my God, all of that uncertainty. I had managed to avoid. And yet the psychological effects were very much there. It was. like, as I say, this slum-dunk kind of bag of rage was landed on my head and all of the other things that happen. So I wasn't looking at it. I was kind of looking at it in terms of, okay, I'm a 50-year-old woman and I'm going to come out of this, a 50, 51, 52, whatever, you know, it takes longer to get through menopause, but you know what I mean? I'm going to come out of it, a woman who is still, in theory, in her prime. So what am I going to find, where am I going to find the role models that still have that power? And I'm going to

I found them personally in an archetype, or a group of archetypal characters which relate to a Jungian archetype called the Medial Woman. And there was a woman called Tony Wolfe, who was Carl Jung's lover as well as his student. And she wrote about what she thought were for really, really important archetypes of womanhood. And one of them was the medial woman. One was the mother, I think the other one was called the Hittara, which is kind of a muse type. woman the other was the Amazon, you know, the woman that just kind of goes for it. But what was interesting is that the media woman is the only one that didn't define herself in relationship to anybody else. The medial woman was literally her own magic, you know, just whole in herself.

And she was very magical. So the media woman is a woman who kind of goes deeper into the mystery, deeper into her own mystery and deeper into the wider mystery of the world in order to see what is there, in a nutshell. And I found that very compelling, having, you know, that time of my life spent a long time kind of nurturing other people's writing and nurturing all kinds of other things and having lost sight of myself a little bit. So, you know, I would be looking at characters like, you know, the alchemist. Early alchemists, there are a lot of female early alchemists. You know, we tend to see the bearded man in all of the pictures, but actually, you know, Cleopatra, the alchemist and who lived in Alexandria around the third or fourth centuries was the founding

mother of chemistry, you know, modern day chemistry. So we never hear about them. But that whole idea of the alchemist, which is very much about transformation, isn't it, alchemy? And so it plays into my idea of transformation being important. So I kind of started to visualize myself both in an alchemical process as all of that crap is stripped away during menopause. It is burned away with the fire of that rage, but also then to see myself as an archimist as someone who is capable of inducing or helping the process of transformation in others. And that to me is the classical example of the medial woman. And I think it is something that can come to us in menopause because we're being burned away. You know, you have the lovely image of the

crucible in alchemy, which is where everything that's in essential is stripped away and you're left with the essence, what is that? That to me is the core job, I guess, I think we have in menopause, is to approach that in whatever way we can. It's beautiful. I imagine a world where that alchemical process is actually supported in women at this phase of life.

Imagine where if it was normal for everyone to have a six-month or a year sabbatical, when they choose in this phase of life so that that could happen. Imagine what that would mean for the individual, but also for our world. Yeah. Instead of the suffering that's happening in this phase, the alchemy can then create,

I think you refer to it as like the world needs more feisty old women. Yeah, indeed. It does. It really does. But not just feisty for the sake of it. You know, feisty because they're passionate about whatever it is, they think they have to offer. of the world. And, you know, in a sense, as we get old, if we, if we, if we allow ourselves to go

through this process naturally, to the best extent that we can, I mean, clearly a lot of people need, you know, need a lot of help through HRT or whatever because of symptoms that will otherwise just be impossible. But if we, if we, when I say naturally, I don't mean necessarily without, you know, pharmacology, I mean just allow the psychological process to unfold. Then I think that that rage that descends on a lot of women probably wouldn't descend anymore because there wouldn't be anything to be quite so angry about. And that madness, you know, everybody talks about the mad menopause of women. I mean, there is a little bit of, you know, being unhinged in that. But I think that's because of the world not allowing us the time. And I think if we allow

the time and the space, we would transition into it in a way that probably wasn't quite so traumatic, but we would transition into it with the aim of, the exact aim of being transformed, you know, not of stopping the transformation, but of being transformed into whatever unique kind of flower we might become in our adulthood. And then I think that has a great potency because we are in those times of our life, not quite so distracted by building things, you know, whether it's building families or building careers or whatever. And so we have a different kind of skin in the game than we did when we were younger. And it's really powerful, I think, when it's unleashed. You know, you do see

examples of that today. The cover of your book really speaks to this because it has all of these colours and there's this depth and there's this richness and it's, it feels like it's a beautiful visual representation of what you're speaking to here, of the potency that's to come. Yeah, thank you. I mean, curiously, the book does. The cover designer is a young man. So, yeah, he's done a couple of my books, and we weren't quite sure what to expect. But when we looked at it, oh, my God, I wasn't expecting anything quite that bright. But yes, it's got beautiful butterflies and rich, you know, but autumnal colours, but very beautiful.

So teals and rich berries and kind of leaf-like moths and just very, very beautiful. And trying to convey that idea that there is such beauty, a very, very different kind of beauty about house, but such beauty in the process of allowing yourself to age and to just let all of these changes happen to you. And it is a miraculous thing. I think it really, really is a miraculous thing that we get to women, particularly, we get to this stage in our lives. And we've still got another go at it. You know, we've still, we turn into something completely different. I mean, it's magical. It really is. Absolutely magical. Let me speak about the word hag. So this reclaiming of the hag, this might be from the book description. I'm not sure. I've been like immersed in your world over the last two days. It's been a delight. Oh dear. I loved it. In the oldest known cosmology of my native lands, it wasn't a skybound old man with a beard who made in shape this world. It was an old woman, a giant old woman who has been with us down all the long ages since the beginning of time.

So, yeah, this haggitude, this hag, why do we need to reclaim, why the word hag? Well, you know, the Americans tend to prefer the word crone, but I don't like that because it sounds kind of feeble. You know, and that may just be in a particular English kind of gloss on the word crone, but when I think crone, I think tiny and kind of wrinkled and about to fall over and die. And whereas hagg, it seems to me, is a word that is often flung at women as an insult. You know, you old hag. And yet there is a power in the hag. I mean, it really is the question that when you look through European mythology, it's the old women who are running the world.

You know, you've got the fates also in Greek mythology, who are old women. I mean, in a lot of the art, they were, you know, to make beautiful paintings. They were portrayed as young women. They weren't. In all the texts, they are old women. Three old women who literally make the world go round. So we had this fascination with the maiden from much older times then, because that's what this is, isn't it? It's this fascination with the springtime maiden.

Yeah, yeah, but it's that sense of mostly male artists thinking, oh, we've got to make this palatable by making the elderly women who were the fates young and pretty, you know, and that just takes, it dilutes the power of them. The quote that you're talking about is from an old Irish mythical character called the Kaliaj, which literally means the old woman. And in Irish, Scottish, Gaelic, Manx mythology, she is the old woman who created and shaped the land and the world and had been there since the beginning of time. So, you know, why are we not told these stories? Why are these stories hidden? Why do we not know about them? You know, Babi Yaga, another classic one from the Eastern European and inter-Russian tradition. You know, a very, very powerful old woman who initially,

associates, tests, young people, young girls and young men. And, you know, you might not get out of their alive. Again, these are stories where there are proper consequences. It's, you know, it's not a game. It's like life or death. And these old women are the ones that are, I say, managing controlling, personifying those processes of life and death and rebirth and transformation. And we're just not taught about it. And that makes me, that does make me still quite cross, you know, that we need to we need to get these stories out there and we need to get them told. And so, you know, in combination with the book, I'm running a year-long program, which is very much based on that for women to come together in community and start to not only revision what it is to be an elder,

but how do we seed those stories out into the world so that in the future people know about them and tell them to each other and they don't get lost again. Life looks very different from, say, I'm thinking of my son who's 18 months old, but when he's five, if he's seeing stories of the Babiaga, of the Kaliah, the future looks different for him. It's not a bearded god in the sky or, you know, obsession with the maiden, it's round, it's full, it's robust, it's honoring and respecting the whole of the arc of life for everybody. I'm really excited about your community. Thank you. Would you like to share a bit more about it? How can people find out about it if they're interested in joining?

Well, there is a haggardtude website, which is haggitude.org, and it's got information there about the book and about the program, which is not necessarily related to the specific stories in the book, but it's very much about revisioning elderhood and also providing resources and encouragement for women who are going through menopause and into elderhood to try to reimagine it differently and to look at all kinds of, you know, different ways of being an elder from kind of sacred activists. for the more out there. Women who like to be out in the community kind of, you know, working to more inner work with creativity, for example. So there's all kinds of different ways or different archetypes of adulthood that we'll be working with through the course of the year to see what we can, again, what resources we can make available to it to inspire people. It's not just a closed course. You know, we do a course. It's very much a program for for developing resources and ideas and stories to take out into the community so that people can actually try to help others see this life process differently.

And, you know, you mentioned young men and boys that they will look at women and older women differently if they see these stories, but, you know, a young girl, say on the threshold of becoming a woman, you know, who doesn't see that as something that she has to clutch onto so tightly, but realize. is that when that fades is, of course, it will, there is still another life. You know, we have three lives, women, at least. There's another one still to come, which may well be the richest of all, I suspect. Could we talk about menopause and life after menopause and purpose or calling?

You shared, I'm just reading your words back to you here, I hope this is okay. A new journey through elderhood embarked upon in which the unique gift that each of us brings to the world can finally fully be expressed. So this is the, perhaps you'd say the fruit of the alchemy that's happening in menopause. And in a recent interview you did, I heard you speak about two different aspects of the calling, that there's the calling where we get these gifts and bring them out into the world. world, express them in the world. And the other aspect of the calling is to grow our own deep selves and our own soul. So I'd love it if you could speak to how this menopause transition is helping us through this and what this looks like on the other side in life after menopause

with our calling. Yeah, I mean, you know, the whole concept of calling goes back to kind of ancient Greek times, platonic tradition and before when Plato basically said everybody comes into this life. Having decided what it is, that soul needs to do or to be. And it's very important to stress, you know, calling isn't about necessarily doing. It's about being. It's what you uniquely are. And I do think of it as kind of like, you know, a garden of flowers. Every flower is different. Blossoms in a different way, perhaps at a different time of a year or of its life, but contributes to, in some way, to the whole. and I always think for the flowers, you know, it's the job of the flower if you like to bloom as beautifully as it possibly can for itself as that flower, but also to contribute to the community

of life in the garden. And that's kind of the way that I see it. So these are very, very ancient traditions and they were picked up by Jung and other Jungian kind of writers. Young believed that the middle of life at this later stage of life, the second half of life, was all about a process that he called individuation, which is very much related to calling, which is fine. finally becoming a whole person, you know, gathering together the disparate bits of you and of your psyche, finally kind of coming together over this process in a way that allows you to take that thing that you are, that flower that you are out into the world and express it. So you have the soul growth, if you like, which is a prelude to full expression of who you are as a person.

And I always think of that gift of calling as not necessarily anything dramatic. You know, people think it means that, oh, I've got to go out there and save the world and be at Greta Thunberg or whatever. And it's not. It's very much, I think, about just expressing the essence of who you are, just a different way of being in the world, you know, a unique way of being that nobody else will ever have. And it doesn't have to be anything very dramatic. And it seems to me that, you know, Jung didn't write very much about women.

he was very much a man of his time, Victorian men didn't very much, but later thinkers, and certainly for me, have taken up this idea of menopause, particularly as that stripping away process, you know, again, that alchemy, that burning away of everything that is inessential and then examining the core of what is left behind. And I think it's only when you've done that in those fires of menopause that you can have a sense. sense of what is left when everything else is stripped away. Everything were taken from you. What would be left? What would you have? What would you be? And somewhere in there is the secret of, you know, your calling of your unique gift. And often this isn't a surprise to people,

because I think we get glimmerings of our calling, you know, as kids from the things that we love to do spontaneously without being taught that these are things you're supposed to love because you're a girl or because you're a boy or whatever, just the things that really speak to us or the stories that speak to us or the characters that speak to us. So when I was a kid reading fairy tales, I wasn't interested in any of the golden-haired princesses because that didn't reflect my life at all. I came from a very kind of poor working-class family and I didn't relate to them at all. But that old woman in the woods by herself, oh yeah, she was the one that captured my imagination even as a child. And I think, you know, over the decades, I've kind of very, very slowly,

unfortunately, but finally, perhaps figured out that that's because I see some glimmer of my own calling in that, in that kind of, you know, being whole unto yourself, being the one who perhaps tests or helps with a transformation of other people. So that that's really in a nutshell, I think what it is about, that menopause allows that stripping back of all of the fluff and fancies that we, you know, we're very attached to when we were younger. get to this stage just oh my god now you know who am i now what what's left when i don't have the trappings of what the culture things are there's beauty and youth and what have you anymore what's left that actually matters to me and to the world okay i'm just going to pause this

conversation with sharon to share two invitations with you it's world manipause day later this month. And on October the 21st to the 23rd, Alexander and Shawnee are going to be hosting a free online event. It happens over three days and it's called How Menopause Awakens Your Power. They're also hosting their online course again, Menopause the Great Awakener, and it's starting October the 31st. And you can find out about both of these at Red Schoolmenopause.com. Here's a story from Lisa about her experience of Menopause the Great Awakens. She says, thank you for giving me a language and a map to navigate these stormy seas of menopause. I'm deeply grateful and it's such a relief to have a new way of making sense of my

feelings and experiences of all the different stages you laid out for us and how to identify and prioritize our fundamental needs. Not only do I have a new sense of understanding which will enable me to hold myself through this process far better than I was doing before, but it's also give me a new excitement about this next phase. It is a slow and winding process, isn't it, this uncovering of calling? And I think it's one of the reasons why your book, if women rose rooted, gave me such relief again, because to see you meander and find your way to different places and to different kinds of expressions of your calling.

And they each had the flavor of you, as our lives do. But we, yeah, there's there are things that we can take twists and turns that might seem like a mistake. And all bam, we find ourselves in exactly the right place somehow. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, people, particularly when younger people who come along to courses or workshops I do, you know, kind of distressed that by the age 25, they haven't figured

out their calling and they're not like in pudding. And it's like, that's not the point. It's not really isn't it. You know, it's, you're here for as many years as you can be as you can live here for a reason because there's always still something to be learnt and new paths to be taken and new transformations to be constantly unfolded. And if that's not happening, then you're not fully alive, I don't think. And the old ideas of calling really kind of, they're not about, it sounds very predestined, you know, you're here to do this. And it's not that at all. It's, it's a potential. And the old ideas very much do suggest. that there are various ways to achieve that potential and they're not really any wrong ways and that if you take something that seems to be a path that's not aligned with your calling,

it'll come around again. You know, the world constantly presents you with opportunities. And, you know, I made a years-long diversion into corporate life, which I knew, or I knew from the beginning that it wasn't where I should be. But, you know, for various reasons, I didn't really know what to do about it. I needed the safety and security at the time.

But that, although I beat myself up for years because of that, because I was a health advisor to a tobacco company, you know, which is just like, oh my God, how bad can it get? I learned a lot from that good, you know, things that were very positive and things that were very negative. And if I hadn't done that and I hadn't gone through all of those changes and those questionings and that sense of. of isolation and all of the rest of it, I would not be the person that I am now. I might

have been something different that was very fine, you know, but it's just like, no, that was necessary for me to also be able to encourage other people who think that they're in the wrong job or a job that isn't aligned with their calling to say, it's never too late. I didn't get out of that until I was 40, fully, you know. So, and then this whole other life has unfolded since, which is completely different and much richer. So I think it's really important not to beat ourselves up for what we see as a kind of step away or the easy route. Because sometimes we need that to just take a breather, to develop the skills, to regain our strength, you know, for whatever's coming up. I'd love to segue to speak about nature and how the natural world can support us here.

because you and I have a love in common, which is the Isle of Lewis and the Hebrides. So I haven't spent as much time there as you, but in the midst of my experience with infatility, which was four years and really one of the darkest times of my life, I just needed to be away from everything. So I literally, like you, I thought, in fact, I took if women's rose rooted with me on this journey. So this is a bit matter here. We took it home. Yeah, I did. I took it home. And I, me and my partner and our husband, we just wanted to get as far

as possible. So we literally went to the furthest corner of our land. And you said in this interview I was listening to that you needed to go to a land as lonely as you. And that's exactly how I felt. I needed to be battered by the weather of this bleak place and being a landscape that felt as desolate as I felt inside. And something happened for me there. And I couldn't even quite describe to you what it is. But I didn't feel alone. I felt that I was with, I didn't want to be around humans because I'd had enough of humans, but I was with something that was not loving me, but just with me. I was with life, I guess. And you were sharing a story of, I think this is from Lewis when you were down by the coast and you were like the shapes of the

rocks suddenly started to feel, it seemed like animals. Oh, that was a dream. That was a dream I had when we first moved there. And as you're saying, you know, we moved to a part of Lewis where, which had been pretty much abandoned by the local community and where it was difficult group of incomers who had come there. And so there was nobody to talk to and nobody very much out on the land anymore. And so I substituted the land for people. You know, that's all I had to talk to. So I would walk there constantly with dogs needing exercise, me needing exercise, and just talking to the features and bits of the land because I had no one else to talk to. And so they became very real for me. They became friends. But yes, I happened upon this most

amazing landscape down by the shore. And it was kind of at the, it was like a, it was like a kind of precipice and a cliff, but at the bottom of the cliff. And you couldn't see it from. anywhere. It was this beautiful kind of rocky, multi-coloured landscape that went down to the sea and I only happened upon it by mistake. Nobody went there and I called it the rocky place and the first time I stumbled across it because there was this, you know, there was this cliff at the back of it and this beautiful kind of carpet of rock and little rock pools that had fairy shrimp in them and it was just amazing. I had this dream that night where I was walking along on that kind of rock carpet and I looked up at the cliff face and it was full of animals. So yes, there was an eagle

with his wings outstretched and there was a wolf with holes for eyes where the sky shone through and that became very important symbol to me a little bit later. And then as I was walking along, I looked down and I realized that the rock had become the body of a rock whale and I had to tread on this rock whale in order to cross a, you know, a water channel. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to keep going. And just as I was about to put my foot on it, I heard, it wasn't like I heard a voice, but I heard something conveyed to me the message that, if you put your foot, if you put your foot on that way, you're going to wake it up. You're going to wake up that sleeping whale. And all of a sudden, there was a sense of not danger, but just kind of like, oh my God, these are serious

animals, you know, they weren't kind of cute and fluffy, that if you wake up, the sleeping whale that you don't know what's going to happen, but something's going to happen. Of course, you know, I trod on the whale. But I really did feel at that time that I'd kind of woken up that land because it had been abandoned for so long, and I don't have delusions of grandeur, but it worked out that way over the four years that I was there, that I was the one who kind of was the only one really I felt in that particular place who was really entering into a relationship with it. And I woke it up and it was a genuine relationship.

stuff happened there that's inexplicable and I am a scientist. And I really do feel that if you give yourself to the land in that way and allow it to be your teacher, it's going to teach you and it's not always going to be comfortable. And Lewis was not comfortable. But it is the love of my life in terms of places, but like many loves, it's not forever always. And so I felt that if I had stayed there, I would have turned to stone along with everything else and, you know, become that bleak, enduring hard land myself. And that wasn't, I wasn't ready for that yet. So I left. I felt a very strong push to, you know, as if it was kind of kicking me out. It's like, I take, you know, we've done our work with you off. You go, go and take that. And it was a gift, I think, of kind of

tuning into the land in that way, go take it somewhere else. And so a lot of what I work on now, whether it's in my writing and my books or teaching is very much about building that kind of relationship with place because place also really can play a part in our calling. You know, we tend to think about people who influence us, but place really has been the biggest teacher in my life. That's not to say that people haven't, but at any choice point or any point where real transformation has happened, somehow it's been reflected in the character, the nature, the spirit of the place that I've been drawn to at that time. Hindsight's a wonderful thing, you know, but that's clearly the case now.

So yeah, it's very important to me. It's fascinating you ended up feeling the same kind of way. Yeah, I also had a whale experience, which is that this was actually on South Uist when we went back the next year, which I didn't like as much as, it's a fantastic place, but I didn't have the similar wildness of Lewis.

But on one of the beaches, I was still in the middle of infertility, so I was still walking along the beaches crying with the rain, you know, the rain mingling with the tears my face, which was exactly what I needed. And I saw this huge white thing. It was long. It was the length of my arm. And as I looked at it and sort of wiped away the rain and the tears, I saw that it was a gigantic whale rib. Well, I didn't know it was a whale rib. I just thought,

what on earth does that belong to? It's huge. And then I put it together. And I carried on walking. And then I stumbled across an entire spine backbone of a whale. And I found out that that's summer, 80 whales had been washed up on the beaches of those islands. And there'd been some kind of deep sea testing. It was a deep diving whale. And I, yeah, it was a real tragedy. And I sat with the skeleton for a long time and I let the skeleton talk to me. Again, I'm quite a rational person in many ways, but a lot of magic happens on those lands, doesn't it? And I... There's no rules for it to go. It's all collected there. Yeah. That's so true. Yeah, and I felt I, yeah, I received a message from that whale, which was just keep diving deep and you will rise.

And I think I am and I have and I will. Lovely. Yeah, no, to me that's exactly what that land does. And, you know, we found similar kinds, similar kinds of things happened with seals and otters and what have you that just, I don't know, how can you explain it? But it just, it's very real and they always have the right messages. So, you know, it works out. Do you have any words for someone who, particularly someone who might be in the middle of the crucible of menopause in the middle of this alchemy and wants to cultivate this kind of relationship to place and to the land to support them? Just go out and talk to it, really.

I mean, wherever it is, your garden, a park if you don't have a garden, you know, whatever, in a city, there are, there are, there are, There are places in cities full of wild, you know, wildness in the cracks. And I don't think that it has to necessarily be a natural place. There's an energy in concrete, you know, that we would do well, I think, to begin to acknowledge. But that's another story. To me, the main thing is to go out into the world and approach it as if it is alive, which, of course, it is. but we don't. You know, I have just got into such a habit over the years that I, you know, I walk out of our house and I talk to all of the trees or I talk to a particular rock and it's

just, it's not an affectation. It's just what I did on Lewis because there was no one else to talk to. And I do believe that, you know, there is an inanimate spirit in everything. And, you know, if I would address a neighbour that I happen to meet on the road and say, hello, how are you, why wouldn't I do that to the most beautiful gnarly old Rowan tree, you know, that that has kind of given me the sense of inspiration that spring will always come, no matter how old and gnarly you are every, you know, for the past two years that we have been here. So I think just approach the world as if it is capable of being in relationship with you and then it will be. And that's what you did in Lewis for the shorter time that you were there. And that's

what I did for the long time that I was there. And it was. And it was remarkable. And you know, how can you ever feel lonely when there is a whole world of, you know, animate beings and objects out there to go with? So it is just very simple. It's just really about taking the time and, you know, just not judging yourself or saying, oh, this is silly or whatever, just acting as if it's a perfectly normal insane thing to do. And then it will be. And then, you know, the magic starts very, very slowly to happen. And I always do think that when you are in the midst of some kind of transformation, you know, which I was for many of those years in Lewis, although I didn't realize it for the first couple. It's as if the land knows, you know, and it just, it kind of

recognizes the energy and somehow or other it holds you or it pushes you or it, it plays its part, you know, whatever that part might be. But I think it is very important when you're going through a great, clearly it's a great psychological transformation, but it's also a great physical transformation to actually acknowledge the kind of embodied experience and the discomfort, let's face it, of the physical experience by being out in the physical world and letting the wind happen to you and letting the rain happen to you or whatever the odd bit of sunshine that might possibly come away one of these months in this worst of all possible British summers

and just letting yourself do the animal bit, you know, rather than trying to overthink it, above all, not to overthink it. just so it's like the silence of a cave to me it's a time between stories you're not trying to tell yourself a story at this point you're just you're just in that pause you are in that pause and you're letting the pause happen wow that's really big the silence of the cave yeah it is a cocooney kind of time isn't it i think why you don't know you haven't been through it yet i know yet i'll talk to you on the other side yeah exactly come and tell me i think in my experience too. There's this sanity in nature in that it is cyclical and it isn't fixated on the

spring and the summer and it does continually change. And that is very reassuring to be around. Yes, it is. And also the thing that the other thing, to go back to your initial question about the ways that cyclicity comes, I also find it. I also find myself kind of stargazing a lot more as well. I have this wonderful app which is called Stellarium, if anybody wants to go and look at it. And it kind of, it shows you the night sky effectively for where you are. And if you point your mobile phone at it, it tells you what the constellation is and what the stars are. And I like that because to me, a constellation is an archetype and it has a story. And so I like you. So I'm literally seeing these stories, you know, pass across my front door on the rare

occasions on a British night when you can actually see the stars. But I know it's there. So I've got a wonderful photograph of this delirium app at the same kind of superimposed on some stars which belong to a constellation called the Hydra, which is this wonderful kind of like, you know, serpent being. And it's just like, oh my God, there's a serpent in the sky and it's passing and it's coming round and round again. So I think there are all kinds of levels of cyclicity that we can look at from our own gardens to the, you know, to the wider cosmos. And yeah, it's as well to begin to attune ourselves to them, I think, for the time when the cyclicity in our own body is less powerful, less strong.

I just want to ask you this, because I'll just keep thinking about it otherwise, but you know, you said on Lewis, there was the rock formation that looked like a wolf with the holes for eyes. and then you said it became really important later. How did it become important later? Oh, it's just a very personal thing that nobody else would probably understand, but I was running a week-long women's retreat for a small group of women on a beach house in Lewis, and it had these enormous front windows.

It was very modern house, huge windows. And I was sitting with my back to the windows all the time where the group was kind of, you know, in a kind of semicircle in the rest of the room. And I was going through a very, very difficult time at the time because it was when we were leaving. And I wanted to leave. I didn't want to leave and my marriage was in trouble and it was just like everything was up in the air. And I thought I was being fairly calm through it, but you never quite know. And one of the

woman, she was the oldest woman woman in the group said to me one day, yeah, you know, it's really interesting. You've been sitting there day after day after day with your back to that sky. And I keep looking at you and I keep thinking, well, you kind of merge into the sky, your blue eyes and there's something very light about you. And it just kind of broke me open because I felt very heavy at the time, you know, and so it took me back to some kind of memory of when I was younger and learning to fly in order to try and get that kind of lightness. I mean, literally at a plane, not in my dreams, but a plane, physical stuff. And I thought, I've lost that sense of lightness. And so then my job was to, you know, my next job was to try and get it back. So I always had that image of that wolf

who let the light shine through, you know, so it was a very heavy stone, serious wolf, but is this hole, these holes where the light and the sky is still shone through. So it's just a personal symbol for something that you want to become or become again, perhaps. And that's the way I work with images and the way that I work with story, they do take on these kind of, I think for most of us who do that, don't they take on these very idiosyncratic meanings. But they're incredibly powerful because that worn image of a wolf with holes, you know, where the sky shines through can just say so much more than an entire book.

and you can just hold it there as a kind of guiding light. And it's really, really powerful. And I think that every woman should have some guiding image like that, however it comes just to be open to them as they go through, you know, this profoundly transformative period of menopause. It's such a meaningful resource because it's not going anywhere. You know, when everything in life might feel like it's falling apart, turning inside to those memories and those deep,

meanings. They don't go anywhere. No, and the images. So when I was going through lymphoma and the lymphoma chemotherapy, it was back to the crucible. You know, I kept dreaming of fire. I was dreaming of dragons and it was just like crazy. It was fire everywhere and fire is an element I don't really feel very comfortable with. But this sense of the crucible being good fire, you know, that it's burnt away, what is necessary to burn away in order to leave that essence and to let something new grow in the same way that very occasionally, you know, a forest fire can actually leave room for for new growth, it just like, okay, that's what this is all about. If I hold that in my mind, I'll get through it.

This is a crucible experience. It will be valuable. It's necessary. It's a necessary stripping way. And it was. So, yeah, images are really important, I think, in this kind of work. I've been thinking about the wasteland, you know, that you speak of in F women rose rooted, you know, the world as the wasteland and menopause.

and is there something in the menopause initiation for the healing of the wasteland? Well, in the old stories, it was always women who, you know, provided the possibility for the healing of the wasteland, however, that came. So the concept of healing of wasteland is something I always associate with women. Not that, you know, clearly men have their part in some of the stories, but it's always, it's always, the gift of the otherworldly woman, for example, in whatever form she comes. Is this the possibility of the healing of the wasteland? I think any time that we allow ourselves to become whole, you know, rather than holding ourselves back, whether we're male or female, actually,

or however we identify, there is that possibility for healing the wasteland. Because I think the damage is done when we don't allow ourselves to be whole. And that's the damage that's being done today in not allowing, the full process of menopause to be undertaken. So the wasteland, in a sense, in many of the old stories, was a consequence of the world being out of balance or of people being out of balance with the world and with themselves, you know, with a culture.

In Greek mythology, the fates, you know, weren't the hand of destiny. They were the restorers of the balance when somebody had taken more than they should have done or had hubris, you know, or whatever. So all of these old stories are about balance, and the wasteland is a consequence of imbalance. So yes, in the sense that if we allow ourselves to go through life open to the process, to experience whatever we need to experience in a kind of open-hearted way, taking time when we need to, we're not out of balance anymore.

And then the wasteland doesn't need to exist. And I really do think that if we would all just live more consciously, all of us women particularly because we have these particular needs at certain points in our lives we would all just live more consciously and allow the process to work on us and not to feel that we have to manage our way and control our way out of everything then the world wouldn't be a wasteland because we'd all be a lot saner thank you this has been really rich on a personal level and I know that it's going to be real gold for the people who are listening so thank you so much, Sharon. I can't wait for the book to come out. Haggitude. It's coming out in September.

Could you, yeah, could you share a little about how our listeners can connect with you if they are new to your work? Yeah, so Haggatood's out in the UK on September the 1st and the US, October the 20th, I think it is. So you could find more at my website, which is just Sharon Blackie. dot net. And that's got information about all my books and all kinds of other malarkeys and resources hidden in there. And if you want to find out more about haggardew specifically, there's more information at haggardew.org. Brilliant. And this is the first podcast interview that I've done about the book and talking specifically about this. So it was a lovely, lovely conversation. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Do you have a final word

for anyone listening who's thinking, I really want to reclaim my inner hag? Like what's something that they could go out and do today. I don't know that they can do today because I've got to wait for the book, you see, which doesn't have to do it. But really, that whole point of reclaim in the inner hag is to look at the various archetypes of elderhood, you know, so you've got Babiaga, who's the dangerous old woman. You've got the loathly ladies and the old stories like, you know, Kundry and the past of our story, who were the truth tellers who kind of like, you know,

ride out of the woods and tell everybody exactly where they've been going wrong and what they need to do to set the world of fire. you've got fairy godmothers, you've got weavers and creators of the world. So you've got all of these different archetypal old women in the old stories. And the trick, I guess, is to figure out what kind of inner hag you bring to the world rather than just saying everybody's got to do it this way or everybody's got to do it that way. It's about whichever inspiration works best for the way that you are set up to be and to become. Thank you, Sharon.

I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Sharon Blackie. If you know someone that you think would enjoy this or benefit from this conversation, please do forward it to them. If you want to find out more about the free event coming up on October the 21st to the 23rd called How Menopause Awakens Your Power or about Alexander and Sharney's annual online menopause course, Menopause the Great Awakener. You can find out more about both of them at red schoolmenopause.com. That's red schoolmenopause.com. Okay, I'll be with you again tomorrow with the next bonus episode.

And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.