The Menstruality Podcast - 73. How to Navigate the Inner Winter of Grief in Menopause (Krista O’Reilly-Davi-Digui)

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

This conversation moved me deeply. Teacher and writer Krista O’Reilly Davi-Digui explores what it is to be a brave and beautiful human in progress, particularly in the messy middle of life, and especially living inside a grief and trauma illiterate culture. In 2019, when Krista was in the midst of the ‘Quickening’ of perimenopause she lost her son Jairus to suicide. In this conversation, she shares generously about the inner winter of her grief journey, how it intersected with her menopause experience, and how she is now moving into the second spring of menopause, choosing to say yes to life in it’s fullness, not knowing what tomorrow holds…We explore:How grief leaves no room for bullshit - particularly in the menopause, stripping away all pretence, people pleasing and masks. How to make peace and develop resilience through the mess of heartache, struggle, and exhaustion of grief. The necessity of having our pain witnessed - Krista shares how to find the community you need to survive the darkest times of grief, sometimes in unexpected places. (And how to hold boundaries when your existing community isn’t offering the support you need). ---You can now order our new book! Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com---Join the waiting list for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme here: www.menstrualityleadership.com---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.schoolKrista O’Reilly Davi-Digui: @a_life_in_progress - https://www.instagram.com/a_life_in_progress

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, Alexandra and Sharni, 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, thanks for tuning in today. This episode really moved me. It's with teacher and writer Krista O'Reilly Davideghi and we explore what it is to be a brave and beautiful human in progress, particularly in the messy middle of life and especially living inside a grief and trauma illiterate culture. In 2019, when Krista was in

the midst of the quickening of perimenopause, she lost her son Jairus to suicide. In this conversation, I'm so grateful for how generously she shares about the inner winter of her grief journey, how it intersected with her perimenopause experience, how she's now rising into this second spring of menopause and choosing to say yes to life in its fullness, not knowing what tomorrow holds. Let's get started with the amazing Krista. Hey Krista, I've been really looking forward to this conversation ever since we started sharing voice messages about it. It's great to have you here. Thanks, I'm excited. Can we start with a cycle check-in? Yes, I just on the weekend pulled out my old agendas to check in and see just how long it had been since I'd had a period. In about two weeks it will be six

months. Wow. Yeah, so I will admit I was a little disappointed. I was hoping it was closer to about eight months because I I feel excited I'm I am ready for this new season um and yeah but that's where I'm at how about you I'm just after ovulations I think it's day 17 I often lose track of my days in this part of my cycle because my awareness is very much focused outwards. But I feel clear, I feel calm, I feel focused, I feel really passionate. I feel I've got a kind of warm fullness in my chest that's rising up into my throat that shows me that there's some big emotions rolling through and I think it's because well Frank I think it's because you seem to have a gigantic capacity for allowing emotion through your being and I can feel that sitting with you now and being immersed in your writing and your work and your story today has really stirred stirred me deeply

so no pressure but let's get into a big conversation well that makes me excited I want to hear more from you too thank you so I would love to start our conversation talking about inner winter as a state of being and as I've immersed myself in your work I see how deep your understanding your embodied understanding of seasonal living is and cyclical living and I was reading this article of yours, Your Imperfect Life is Messy, Show Up Anyway. And in that article, you described the spring of your life, then the summer of your life, and the autumn of your life, and then most recently, this deep winter that you've been in. And then you start to talk about the spring that you're emerging into.

But I'd love to stay with this winter, which you described as a long, hard season of liminal space and can you walk us into that and I know from your writings that it was really brought on by the death of your son yeah I'm feeling raw at the moment probably because I didn't have a lot of time this morning to like put enough armor on. So I don't have any armor on. interesting to me where I sit in this moment that winter has become not a favorite place because that's just like seems out to lunch like ridiculous but one of the places that have been the most powerful like important to me in terms of learning how to live rooted and awake and willing and that goes all the way back to when I first started practicing cycle tracking and I was 34 or 35 and how that balsamic moon you know that just before the bleed that learning how to be there has been the thing that I think has kept me anchored ever since and And I'm 51 now. So I've gone through a lot of stuff, a lot of life,

more hard than I would wish on anybody. And so, but I just want to say that I haven't shared that with anybody that there's this incredible relationship now with winter that I don't have words yet for, but I'm, I will be curious to maybe find words for that in the near future. Um, so yes, I 2018, I would say, my son had been struggling hard for a long time, and he was a highly sensitive person and a deep feeler. He was a lot like his mom. He was a deep feeler, a deep thinker. He wanted to be good. And he was um but he he was a a questioner also like me and and um a lot about this world is shitty a lot about this world doesn't make sense in many ways. And so I, he, I learned in the, in the year before he died that he had actually been struggling since about 15, but he, he never communicated some of the fall of 2018, Jairus mentioned dying for the first time. And then that December, he admitted to that but I had a vision so to speak that December and it's this isn't the first time I don't know what else to call it I

I call them visions but they're they don't particularly mystical, but I'm awake, but I see things unraveling. I see it. I hear something so loud and clear and even insistent. Not urgent, not scary at all, ever, but very clear. And so I have learned over the years to trust what I hear like um and in that moment I I saw this big gaping wound being stitched up and I heard this is no longer your story you will write a new story.

And I don't remember the sequence if I did, you know, what I said first or this next, but I saw myself then barefoot carrying these buckets, walking up a grassy path. And I like to be braless and barefoot. That's my natural joyful state. And these buckets were sloshing over. And I questioned internally, well, what is that? And I heard, those are sloppy buckets of joy. And, but yeah, so I think just backtracking. So when I heard this will be a new story, I argued with that thought. Just like I thought, no, I'll write a new chapter. And I heard this voice or thought or whatever and said, no, you will write a new story.

And it was so powerful. And in that moment, I believed, and I know that I wanted to believe, that it meant Jairus would be well. Things were going to shift. That is not what it meant. And in March that year of 2019, he tried to die for the first time and I brought him home and we fought alongside each other we tried to save his life and then in 2019 October he succeeded in time and so I

it's been just over three years we just passed the three-year mark in October since his death and And that was significant. I heard, I knew, like I, you know, you know this, and many listeners will know this, that when you're in winter, and you get even a spark of hope and light again, and you're like, oh my God, spring is coming. You just, everything, you just wants to like get there, right? Just like get through and finish up this work. And it doesn't happen that way. It always takes longer than you want it to. And so I kept feeling the sense of, oh, spring is coming. It's going to be easier some, you know. But of course, like I shared in that article, I think that you mentioned that I, I learned something there. It's like, you know, I heard this inside of me, not like a vision, but I heard this truth that like Krista, you have to finish living the end of this story before you can write the next one. And I was like, ah, shit.

Like, okay. But so, so this fall, I knew I was like, okay, yeah, I'm, I'm finally here. I kept sort of having that false, like, oh, yet maybe now not yet but this fall I I knew I was stepping into a new story and which now I actually believe is like second spring um and I didn't I didn't know that at the moment I didn't connect that or anything but I I just knew that vision that I had had I've held on to for know, it was years that I had to hold onto that. And, um, so this fall I was hearing in my spirit, lay it at the water, go lay it at the water. And I, as happens when I hear these things, I have a, I will just say this, I have a really strong and clear inner voice, like, and I trust it above anything else, because I have worked my butt off to cultivate

self-trust. And I know that when I hear something so clear in my, in myself like that, that it is always trustworthy. And it doesn't mean I know what it's going to look sound or feel like it just means I can say yes and step into. So so I didn't know for sure what that meant. But I there's this, I think it's called the somatic wilderness Institute in Colorado. I have a girlfriend in Colorado. I'm in Canada, by the way way but my a friend of mine who also her son died by suicide five days after my son and our we didn't know each other and our memorials for our beautiful boys were held on the same day and readers online readers connected us and she's become a close close friend and we've journeyed together through this winter season. Incredible gift. Anyway, so I just, she gave me this ceremony sort of guide. And I kind of prepared a little bit and I went to the mountains,

the nearby mountains, to the water, to a favorite place. And I didn't know what was going to happen, but you didn't ask me for this, but basically it was like this rage I had been carrying. Like, that just roared to life. And I released that ugly, loud, like, just raw, you know, because what I had lived through was ugly and raw. And I, there's a bit of a drive between me and the mountains. And so I just roared on the highway at high speeds where people couldn't hear me and wouldn't think, you know, call the police. And I just released this and I went to the water and I laid it down. And I knew heading home that I had stepped into a new season. Thank you. thank you you've spoken about how jairus's death brought you from a place of head knowledge

into a place of lived experience in your body and there was a big stripping away of bullshit that happened oh my god through that process oh my god yes and this is one of those weird juxtapositions which is similar to me saying that somehow I have found this kindred relationship with winter that doesn't make sense like what how could that be and yet this and I've heard other moms talk about similar things like that how the worst thing in the world could be a catalyst towards freedom and growth that you would never trade like you would never give it back you would never want to go backwards now that does not mean in any way that I would not given a magic wand wave that and and bring my son back if he could come back whole

um I would not wish him to come back in suffering but um but yeah like, you know, I had been working hard to journey towards freedom so hard and experienced, you know, so much, like, beautiful growth and becoming and befriending myself and all of that, which, by the way, I think is what held me as I needed to hold space for my child um I don't know if I could have done it if I hadn't done all of that work before so but yeah it was just like you're just one minute to the next. You're just like done. No more room for bullshit. No more space for relationships that you should have let go of years ago, but you had stayed because you were trying to be a good girl or compassionate or you know whatever and it's really I think just because in the face of something so important you have nothing left

because you're looking life in all its realness which is ugly and terrible and exquisite and beautiful but you're right there looking at it in the eyes there's no room for falseness pretense it just doesn't exist there in that place no and so I I've said the last three years since Jairus died not the years before because really all I was doing was don't rock the boat all my energy had to go to just keep him safe just keep him alive but after I've just been stripping away and like I just keep, surely now the work is done. Like what's left, but Oh no, there's always more. There's always more. And, and so, yeah, just, I think that's been the work of this season, at least in part,

like this deconstructing unraveling, stripping away until hopefully what's left is just the truth, like true self, I would say. That's how I feel it. And maybe that's it. Just that. Because like true self doesn't mean anything except here I am a messy and beautiful human in progress practicing choosing to say yes to life and its fullness not really knowing what that means because we don't know what tomorrow holds but just sort of saying yes to it and uh yeah I'm closing my eyes as you're talking because those words that you just said gave me so much relief I think you said a messy human in progress yes what a relief to know that that's what true self means it's not some

something on a pedestal that we have to become and perfect ourselves into it's the truth and the practicing part matters too because that's what we can do you You don't need to know all the answers. You don't need to know the full sort of all the steps ahead of you. You don't need to do anything perfect. You don't even need to do it well, to be honest. Sometimes the only thing you have is I have no fucking idea how to do this. And I didn't ask if I'm allowed to swear but I have a lot of f-words in me since my son died a lot sometimes all we have is like that yes that's

how I experience it it's just like I'm saying yes to life that's it I don't have to know the how I don't have to know any anything else in this moment I'm really interested I'm really curious about how you navigated the depths of this winter because I know that so many of our listeners will be right now inside their own winters particularly the perimenopause quickening menopause winter and I've so I've picked up a few things that you've been saying like firstly this ally that you've had the woman whose son died five days after you that that kinship sounds like it was a huge resource oh my gosh yeah and the I've heard you speak about the inner voice being able to hear that and all the work that you've done to be able to hear your inner voice and then this beautiful

just saying fuck you to perfection that you do of embracing the messiness like when I when I wrote to you to say I'm so sorry we can't do our interview because my life's a mess. You wrote back and said something like, yes, it's not neat and tidy. Don't get me wrong. I would love it to be neat and tidy. I would love that so much. Oh yes, yes. But it's not. So making peace with that certainly allows us to just be here, present, willing, even joyful in the midst of heartache and struggle and exhaustion. Yeah. So yeah. Yes. So community, I, community matters. We need, we know this from a science perspective. Healthy community is a key factor in resilience. We need each other. We need community care.

And I believe, ideally, we need somebody or somebodies to just witness us and then we offer it to them right and we don't all have our circle of trusted friends yet and so we sometimes have to get creative about forging safe community right like and I say a lot, because women carry so much shame and judgment all the time for everything. And it's so internalized, and it's so perpetuated constantly, that we don't eat, we're not even conscious of it most of the time. And then sometimes we can come into a little container where we can, you know, point it out to each other so that we're like, oh yeah, right. Okay. Release. So we don't all find our people in our local communities. We have to get creative about it.

Sometimes that means a grief circle. It can mean a therapist. It can mean Al-Anon meetings. But it can also mean like my brave and beautiful community online, where women gather from different corners of the world to be with each other and witness each other and cheer each other onward and do messy growth work and be real in a world that actually doesn't want you to be real. And, and so there is something beautiful and important about having people locally that can drive you to the doctor if you need it and bring you a meal when you need it. So I do think that's important to somehow not give up on forging that, and I'm speaking to myself also here, but sometimes you just need to look elsewhere to

find the people who are doing this work. They're not staying stuck. And sometimes it is a question of life or death. And my friend Kathy in Colorado, Kathy Escobar is her name in case anybody wants to look her up. She does work with the unhoused population. She does amazing work loving people in her local community. And, but she and I have spoken about this in terms of surviving the brutality of what we have walked through. And it's not a judgment on any other hurting human in this world, but there were many places I could not stay. Grief circles and and online spaces where I couldn't stay because it felt like and and again, I want to be so careful. This is not a judgment. This is about my need to survive.

I had to only be in places where everybody else was also choosing forward. We have to name our pain. We have to. There is nothing. We actually, it's critical. The only way trauma work tells us that our pain must be witnessed. If it's not, we can't find our way forward. We can't heal forward or grieve forward.

And so there are spaces where it's just like, you have to get your pain witnessed and your family and your friends may not be able to do that for you your faith communities sometimes are horrible at this like you so you go go somewhere where it can be witnessed um so there's that that part of my survival is only being in spaces where the other people were also doing this courageous work of saying it feels like I might die here this pain is so big and and also I'm gonna keep living and I'm not only gonna survive I'm going to keep living. And I'm not only going to survive, I'm going to thrive. And that takes, I don't have the words for it, but other moms who are there know what I'm talking about.

That choice is, it feels sometimes like it's ripping you apart because what it feels like, and by the way, maybe we'll get this, maybe here, maybe we won't. Feelings are allowed, all the feelings, but we don't only rely on feelings. Because if we only rely on feelings in the worst winter season of our life we will fall apart we might die there so we have to look outside of the feelings and so for me I often look to science for that like that's where my brain goes I'm like look what is what is there evidence for? What are the survival things? You know, how do people survive this? Sometimes also to memoir. People who have been ahead of me on the journey.

Maybe not the exact journey, but a similar hard journey. And so we have to also anchor into something else that just tells us, just do the next right thing. Get out of bed, do the next right thing. Get out of bed, do the next right thing. As Krista mentions several times in the conversation, Alexandra and Sharni's book, Wise Power, was a really supportive guide for her through her perimenopause process. And if you're looking for a guide through the messy middle of life, whether you're still cycling, but feeling the quickening happening in the run-up to menopause, or perhaps you're in the middle of the menopause transition, or post-menopause and

looking to make sense of your experience, we invite you to get a copy of wise power discover the liberating power of menopause to awaken authority purpose and belonging you can order your copy today at wisepowerbook.com that's wisepowerbook.com and there's so much awkwardness and challenge in what you're talking about I'm thinking of my darkest season of grief where my friends that I had relied on in the past simply were not helping and I had to tell them I'm not going to talk to you about this anymore because the things that you're saying to me are hurting me and that really hurt them to hear that it hurt me to say it it was uncomfortable but I needed to protect

myself and I needed to that propelled me to then find people that I could roar scream say fuck a thousand times at and they and and just that they got it because they were there too they needed to be there too and there were only two people in my life I'm thinking of the depth of the darkness of the infertility that I experienced there were only two people who who got it and they were absolute lifelines for me and no one else could do that as much as they loved me as experienced or talented as therapists or whoever they were yeah I mean all the degrees in the world don't mean you know how to do this no right that doesn't give you that type of wisdom or the ability the capacity to be with somebody in the darkness and hear them and stop trying to fix and stop pretending you have any answers you don't have

any answers you don't even know what you're talking about. Right? Like, and for many of these things, there are no answers except whale. That's the answer. Whale. And we live in a grief and trauma illiterate culture. And maybe not everybody listening, but Western culture is certainly grief and trauma illiterate so you really do have to look and then look some more when you're looking for these places they're growing you know um you don't need somebody who has gone through the exact same thing always. But I certainly have found that when people haven't gone through loss, they don't know. And they don't even want to let their brains even fathom the pain that you are experiencing. When we're talking about child loss or suicide loss, nobody wants to even get close to you, that pain, because, and everything in them will cut, brings up stories of, well, that wouldn't happen to me. We're doing all the right things. And so they should right you don't like I would wish this pain

on anybody but the problem is when you need people the most you're alone and it's devastating and it's not okay and that's why we have to keep talking about these things openly. We have to. I needed women to come alongside and wail with me. I needed a circle of women who would witness that roar that comes from within, that sounds like that it isn't you. You don't even know it's you at first. I needed that. I didn't need people to say, oh, but now he's not suffering. Oh, but you know, all the just crappy bullshit answers that, you know, they're all designed to fix the discomfort of the person on the other side right and so and I can have compassion for that like I really can't I didn't in the moment I was just like fuck you back up like now three years out with all the trauma work I've done and all the grief work and everything

and you know and just being in a more resourced state, I can, I don't think it's okay. I think people need to be called on their bullshit actually, because people are dying alone while we're just like, well, I was trying my best. I'm like, guess what? Sometimes that's not enough. We actually have to own it and decide, are we going to do better or not? People are dying. People like my child, and then a whole lot of adults. And side note, you know, another thing that isn't spoken about enough is the suicide rates for women in the middle season of life. Yes.

Women in perimenopause and menopause. We have to be talking about this, right? So, okay, I'll bring it back down. Community matters. If you, it's risky and it is vulnerable. It's normal. If you don't hit, you know, you don't meet your people first try, keep trying. It matters that much. Even if all you get is that one person, it's enough. It can be a lifeline in the storm. I was grateful. Kathy, my friend, readers online connected us.

And I think one of my friends too had followed both of our work. So I'm so grateful. But then also Kathy hooked me in. This brand new grief circle had started in Colorado and the pandemic forced them online so I was able to join these women and the leader does a beautiful job and it was just a small circle but that too was a lifeline for me over the past years. Let's look at this connection between these, the huge emotions that we experience when loss happens and perimenopause, midlife,

as Alexandra and Sharni call it, the quickening in the years and the run-up to menopause you know just through the writing of like wise power and wild power before it and um Kate's book second spring I'm like I feel like some friendship I feel like okay you know my experience is affirmed and reading wise power So I was going through later perimenopause while I was grieving. And I was aware of it. Like there was, you know, some stuff going on and I'd mentioned it to my husband and we talked about it and everything, but it completely took back burner. Like nothing, like COVID was happening. I mean mean nothing was touching what we were learning to live through but even before my son died so um okay I'm talking around about wait so I'll first say what they helped me see one of the most important things that were really was really affirming for me was that rage.

Yeah. Somewhere like that year before my son died, I had so much rage in me. I wanted to like tell everybody to fuck off. I was like, what's wrong with me? And I went to the doctor and I told her and I said, I don't know, like, I feel like maybe something's wrong. And she listened compassionately and, you know, for the 10 minutes that we get, you know, like maybe something's wrong. And she listened compassionately. And, you know, for the 10 minutes that we get, you know, in a doctor's appointment, and then she offered me an antidepressant. And I said, I don't need an antidepressant. But you know, I appreciated she that was what she had in her toolkit. And I so I just left and in where I live, marijuana, weed is legal. Now, it wasn't't at the time but I got um I went to

a clinic there and I got some CBD oil and some stuff to help me like just feel kind of calm or whatever so I could just be present to my life and and make really important decisions and everything with clarity. But I didn't know that that was a common experience of this latter stage of perimenopause. And it makes so much sense to me now because, well, now I've had different layers of experience, like that whole like we said like that stripping away of pretense that stripping away even if it's painful and we still feel wobbly it's like I am not going to live my life to please you like I'm going to live a life that is true to me I like myself I don't need to fit into your little boxes over there. Like, it's like just that sort of fuck you energy, you know? And so that was really affirming. So that was a gift. And even if it's sort of like a backtracking, you know, that was like now like four years or something ago.

It doesn't matter. There's still this sort of kinship. Like, like okay I'm connected to these women you know these brave women being real and speaking openly about these really important experiences I've had my own version of that roar that came out of you on the highway and on the mountain and I'm intrigued to hear how the rage is working in you now as you're feeling this emergence into spring what's your relationship with the rage now is it there how are you with it yeah that's a good question I don't think I've really sat down to ponder that like too closely right now. That was only September 27th that I went to the mountains and laid that down. So by the way, I didn't even, I, well, I know that's not true. Actually.

I knew I had rage in me. Yeah. But I was angry. Okay. Okay, so I will just say suicide loss and mental health struggles need attention. We all know this, literally like our kids are dying. Many times we are actually asking for help. I was screaming for help. I am an articulate person. I have enough

resources to access different forms of help. And my child was still falling through the cracks. We have a system that is dysfunctional. It is traumatizing um I're we're in Canada we have the RCMP our police force they are not trauma informed and also they're not receiving the trauma care they need yes yeah so the armor that they have to wear the emotional armor is huge yeah so when I say this it is not only about the people but but it is I'm going to say they chose that career they have a responsibility and and they're not doing a good job. People are being harmed because they are not trained enough and they are also then not getting the care they need because of the horrible things that they witness. And so we've got these systems that are broken.

So a lot of my rage was directed towards the extremely traumatizing experiences that we walked through when we were trying to get help for my son. I haven't spoken openly yet about this. I haven't written because I had to be safe myself. Part of my personal journey is that I walked through 17 months of severe panic disorder and dissociation after my son died. And I kept working and I kept loving my family and I kept trying to love people through that. But it was brutal. So I had to take care of myself first, right, and stay well and whole. And also I have two beautiful daughters who deserve a mother who is living and thriving. So, so yeah, so there's all that rage as well. So, and it's complicated because when you're going through something so significant at the

same time as perimenopause and this, you know, kind of inching towards menopause, it's like, how do you completely disentangle what's what, right? Like it all, but, but the stories, like for instance, the, the wise power kind of wisdom does help me see, oh, that wasn't just grief. There is also this, you know, both were really happening at the same time so um so the rage I laid down at the water on this this fall was important because it was rage that was harming me it was it was time to lay that down for my freedom and my wholeness and so that I could keep like so I could step into a new story it's such fine intricate huge work you're talking about how how to allow the pain to stream through and create a channel for clear expression that can actually create change. It's going through the eye of the needle stuff.

And I don't know how to do it yet, by the way. So it's been interesting for me as I step into this new story, again, like the, so the Wise Power book, and then also Kate's Second Spring, they've helped me, you know, that feeling like, okay, I'm not alone. There are all these other women figuring this out, but I was feeling really off kilter. And I was like, I always have a very, very strong vision.

I'm a very vision oriented person. I have the strong, strong inner voice. I always know where I'm heading. And, but I was bumping up against something that was confusing and what I've recognized is that my new story my old story that big wound that I talked about in the very beginning the way that I got here to this point in my life the way that I knew how to heal and find how to live in a world where I didn't feel like I fit. And I was through a lot of hard work, a lot of pushing and struggle and effort and, and fighting and advocating. And all of a sudden I realized, oh, that is done now my new story I'm going to be coming from a place of embodied joy and peace I always cry when I talk about joy oh I was gonna say you're so you're a delightfully paradoxical being but now I know joy many women I teach this in some of my workshops joy is the most vulnerable emotion

oh truth we armor up against joy because it is so scary. We would rather feel angry or afraid than we would to allow joy to live in our bodies and our lives. Why? Because if you allow yourself to feel that, then when the next bad thing comes around the bend, you feel like you have further to fall. Yeah. around the bend you feel like you're further to fall yeah if you open up to joy and then it's snatched from you now what it's terrifying i'm just still drawing these lines between what grief works in us and what perimenopause and menopause works in us in terms of a capacity to be in the face of life with everything it throws at us and stay somehow open and willing like you said at the beginning, rooted, awake and willing.

Yeah. And I, like, I do think, you know, give me a few more years and looking back, I'll probably be able to speak to that with more confidence because I am just emerging, just barely, I have just stepped over the line. Like I'm just there. So it's hard for me to know for sure what's grief and what's that. But I think there's a similarity though. This is one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you, by the way, because you are right here in the middle of this emerging process. Cause we've spoken in Alexandra's wise power series. We spoke to a lot of women who are on the other side of menopause and are reporting back about their experience and some of the feedback that we received was this is great and I want to hear from people who are in it because I'm in it and it's

freaking painful you know and so it's one of the reasons why when I read your work I thought I really want to speak to Krista because she's inside something and can speak about it from inside it, which is hard. It is. So it makes sense that grief, which is a deep winter and this part, like there's commonality. Of course, there is. They're both these significant, important, powerful transitions through winter. And so I think it's okay that we can't neatly unpick what belongs to what, because probably they're characteristics of both. And that's just what it is. I know with certainty, I am in second spring, I have stepped over the line. And what I love about that too is that even though I it's only been just about six months since my last period it doesn't matter I know yes

I hear that all the time from the menopausal women in our community and people in our community who just say I know where I am and Alessandra and Shani are so always so good with this of like, there are the maps, the ideas, the theories, the concepts, and your knowing of your own being, you know, that inner voice that you're speaking about is it. And that's why I follow them and recommend them to my community because we don't need more gurus. We don't need more gurus we don't need more even experts what we need is more teachers or guides or journeys co-journeyers or whatever co-journers reminding

women to trust themselves to hone that inner voice to do the healing work required to reconnect to their bodies and their their men you know their their wisdom centers of mind emotion and body to trust that more than looking outward and trusting anybody else right that's what we need and so um and so yeah i would And so, yeah, I would not be following or recommending anybody who would be doing other and saying, look at me, I have all the answers for you. I just smile when anyone says anything like that now. Like, oh, come on. It's like, really though? Yeah, come on.

What does spring look like from where you're sitting? I'm going to say this, I'm going to hold it loosely because then it scares me when I say these things out loud. But I do see myself writing several books. I already have the three, like I am under contract right now. And I had, I chose, I had to really postpone that because I was in the depth of winter. And I was like, I don't know what I was thinking, signing a contract, but I had no idea. And I was, and also when you're in that kind of pain, I think it's just completely natural that you are just thinking, surely it, it will end soon because you can't fathom like anything other so so yeah so my first book is actually coming out um I gave

myself lots of breathing room so I wouldn't panic because like and I mean literally panic so spring 2025 and my book is written according to the seasons and it's as far as unless it gets changed in the editing process it it's beginning with spring. And so that's why it's a lovely, you know, tie in. I have a sense of where I'm heading in terms of my family, my, I'm not going to share too many details, my work, all the things. I don't know yet how to do the how. I know one way. I know how I got here.

I will be relearning a new way of showing up. But I'm still I have all this hopefully beautiful life ahead of me. So I've got a lot of growth to do. But I recognize that this is new for me. This is new. And I know where I'm heading. But the how is going to be different.. Like, I know that I will no longer be violating my own boundaries. I will not put other people's comfort above my own well-being. I will not hide or mask or discredit myself I believe I have a voice for a reason and I often feel inadequate because I think a lot of us do because like we see that oh but but but I'm but I'm that's okay I'm just going to use my voice that's all I want to into my 80s I I would love to be hosting circles of women and also

I hold that all loosely like I know that I've encountered things in my life that I didn't want and I didn't plan for and surely that's going to happen again But what's really cool for me though, too, is that because I have such a strong vision, I'm so clear on my core values. I've done the work to befriend myself, even the death of my son, Jairus. It didn't throw me off course. It brought me to my knees knees bloodied and beat up and I crawled that first year and a half and then people came around and I limped along but that's why like I know that I'm going to keep doing my work as long as I have breath within me, because

that women reaching out to lift up others, that matters. And speaking of that, can you share a line or two about how people can connect with you and about your Brave and Beautiful membership community? Sure. The Brave and Beautiful beautiful community side note you didn't ask for this but I want people to know that you know it's so easy to look at other people and just make up stories oh like they know what they're doing and life feels easy for them and I mean it's just not true like rarely is that actually true right so um but we continue to make up the story anyway yeah over and over and over I know and so

and even me like I think people do that even though it's like I share honestly about the brutality of this journey and so and you still assume that like make assumptions so it's like but it's you know so so as long as we just keep being real with each other, you know, that matters. So I had that kind of vision for that community. I can't remember now, one or two years before I actually said yes to it. I actually launched it. People started giving me money. I panicked and refunded everybody's money. I don't know why now, but I love it so much, but it scared the heck out of me.

Yeah. That summer, just before Jairus died, I knew. I was like, oh, it's time. I still felt fear. Every time I do the thing in my vision, I feel fear. It hasn't gone away. I've just learned I'm capable of feeling this. So just so people know, it's like, that's the way I know how to do life. Okay. It's like, it's okay that we feel fear. It's okay that we feel wobbly.

It's okay that we have some internal dialogue sometimes that we need to sit with and then remind, bring compassion to our experience over and over and over. You're not doing it wrong if this is what you experience. So I started that weeks before a traumatic car accident. My husband and I were in a very serious car accident. And then my son died three weeks after that. So on top of the grief, I had post concussion syndrome, I shattered the windshield with my head, I was injured, I was like dealing with all of this at once. But I had started my membership just before the shit show. Logically, the worst time ever. But it was one more experience in my life of trusting that inner voice and it being a lifeline in the storm.

These women who gathered with me, especially that first group, I think there were maybe only about 20 women. They journeyed with me. And some of them have been with me from the beginning, we just three years now. And they've been with me through this whole winter season. So I get to be in community as I foster brave community I teach but also we're just practicing all together in that anyway okay beautiful um I love science so I love they tell me that it's this sort of lovely mix of evidence base and inspiration so I get there's doctors and therapists and a microbiologist and a pastor and creatives and and you know retired nurses and like lots of just stay-at-home mamas writing you know their novel on the side like just this beautiful mix of women from different corners of the world and we just get to gather together and do this work

growth work but it's not about becoming a better version of yourself or becoming somebody else it's about stripping away the noise and the bullshit and the conditioning to meet and befriend this beautiful messy human that already lives there. I love these women. You can, I guess, just go to my blog, alifeinprogress.ca. And I'll drop the link into our show notes so that people can find that. Thank you, Krista. Well, what you just described about the community is how I feel on the other side of this conversation. I feel seen, known, understood, relieved in my own messy, not at all neat and tidy unfolding of my being.

Yeah, it's been a great relief and a joy to talk with you. And I knew it would be. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining Krista and I on the podcast today thank you for being part of the community gathering around this podcast and around this menstruality work you can help us out if you're loving the podcast by leaving a review on apple podcast and also subscribing just click the subscribe button it helps us reach more people with this podcast. So thank you for listening. See you again next week. And until then,

keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.