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

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

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 Eastern 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 we explore the gold that these myths and archetypes hold for us as we navigate the initiation of menopause and enter the second half of our lives as elders, with the brilliant writer, psychologist and mythologist, Dr Sharon Blackie.Sharon illuminates the magic and potential of menopause as a shape-shifting crucible, which strips away all that isn’t essential - so we may know ourselves, and our Calling in a new way. She shares how she envisioned herself inside an alchemical process at menopause, how the natural world served as an ally through this initiatory time, and why the world needs more feisty, older women now more than ever…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.You can now pre-order your copy of our new menopause book! Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com---Registration is now open for our live menopause course - Menopause: The Great Awakener. You can take your seat here: https://www.redschoolmenopause.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.schoolSharon 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, 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 there, welcome back to the Menstruality Podcast. I love all the conversations that I have for this podcast but this one today was especially enjoyable for me. It is with the brilliant writer, psychologist and mythologist Dr Sharon Blackie and we're talking

about the myth, the magic, the metamorphosis of menopause. When you explore the old European myths it's always the elder women and the grandmothers who are running the world. In Greek myth there are the fates, these three older women who make the world go round. In Eastern European mythology we have the crone Baba Yaga who's initiating the young people and facilitating transformation. In ancient Scottish Celtic Gaelic mythology it's the Kaliak who creates and shapes the land from the beginning of time. And in today's episode we dive into the gold that these myths and archetypes of older women hold for us as we navigate the initiation of menopause and enter the second half of our lives

as elders which is a topic that Sharon explores in depth in her soon to be released new book Haggitude reimagining the second half of life which is an amazing companion to our menopause book which is coming out at the same time Wise Power. So in the conversation today Sharon illuminates this the magic and the potential of menopause as a shape-shifting crucible which strips away all that isn't essential so that we can get to know ourselves and our calling in a new way. She explored her own alchemical process at menopause, how the natural world served her as an ally through this initiatory time, and why our world needs more feisty, older women now more than ever. So hi, Sharon. Thank you so much 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 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. 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 were living in Ireland and we decided that we needed to come back to the UK for reasons I might bore you with right now.

We landed in Wales in a new house, which we had never properly seen before, didn't know how anything worked on the first day of the first lockdown so that was edifying um as the movers refused to bring our stuff so we literally stayed in an empty house for six weeks which was pretty unpleasant um for various reasons and um 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 um so I was diagnosed with 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

slow me down and it really didn't. And it just felt like the universe giving 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 than most, but I cancelled everything other than writing because I was writing, I was finishing my book, which is coming out in September, Haggitude, 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 um 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 just like it's literally gone um 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 and 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 um 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 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 at a similar time to you, to Wise Power. She has a very clear end of the day at five o'clock and nothing happens after five 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. It was so good. 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 uh 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 Rooted

you share the mistakes you've made through your life very honestly and openly and it's 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 in if women rose rooted oh well that's kind thank you a lot of people say that you know and I I found it curious at first because I suppose if I had if I if somebody asked me and I haven't 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, in the first place. It's just like, I really do believe that we are, we should be changing. You know, there, there,

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. So sharing them just seems to me like more of an affirmation of transformation than necessarily an admittance of, you know, being a complete and utter ass sometimes in my life aren't we all exactly speaking of profound transformation um our conversation our topic today is menopause and this is the topic of your new book haggertude which is coming out in september

and i'm i'm so i can't wait to read it. You make me look forward to menopause, as do Alexandra and Sharni 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. idea that menopause is 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 so and that there's something that you wrote actually about haggardtude. I think I found this on Instagram where you say,

haggardtude 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 Haggitude 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 to a whole new adventure and then it carries on saying okay we've got through menopause um 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 um everybody has a different approach to 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 a kind of like, you know, a role as 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 worked, 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 furies. 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 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 um and there's this there is a wonderful um description of the furies um somewhere which i

can't um 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 looks, 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, and so that kind of empowering thing that tells you rage isn't always wrong. You know, the anger that, 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 Greeks. 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. Yeah, 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 what you call it a bone-deep metamorphosis that's happening that's not being acknowledged in our world which makes me furious indeed and and're not, it's not only not being acknowledged, but we're not given time to do it properly. You know, 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, you know, 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 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 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 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 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 it 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 it 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, you know, slam dunk kind of bag of rage was landed on my head and all of the other things that happened. 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 50, 51, 52, whatever, you know, 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? I found them personally in an archetype, which are a group of archetypal characters, which relate to a Jungian archetype called the medial woman. And there was a woman called Toni Wolfe, who was Carl Jung's lover as well as his student. And she wrote about what she thought were four 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 medial 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 medial 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 like 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 alchemist, there are a lot of female early alchemists, you know, we tend to see the bearded man in all of the pictures, but actually Cleopatra, the alchemist who lived in Alexandria around the third or fourth centuries was the founding mother of chemistry, 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 alchemist, 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 have the lovely image of the crucible in alchemy, which is where everything that's inessential 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. Now 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. Instead of this suffering that's happening in this phase the alchemy can then create I think I think you refer to it as like the world needs more feisty old women yeah indeed it does it really does but but 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 the world and and um you know in a sense as we get old if we if we if we allow

ourselves to go through this process naturally um to the best extent that we can i mean clearly a lot of people need you know need a lot of help um uh through hrt or whatever because of symptoms that would 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, you know, 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 allowed 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 alderhood. 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, has all of these colors and, 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 the potency that's to come yeah thank you I mean curiously the book design the cover designer is a young man um no so yeah he's done he's done a couple of my books we weren't quite sure what to expect but when we looked at oh my god I wasn't expecting anything quite that bright but yes it's got beautiful butterflies and rich but you know but autumnal colors 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 perhaps 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 the 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 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 and shaped 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 hag, it seems to me, is a word that is often flung at women as an insult, 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, the fates also in Greek mythology who are old women. I mean, in a lot of the art they were, 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 Cullyach, 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, Baba Yaga, another classic one from the Eastern European and into Russian tradition, you know, a very, very powerful old woman who initiates, tests young people, young girls and young men. And you might not get out of there alive. Again, these are stories where there are proper consequences. It's not a game. It's like life or death. And these old women are the ones that are 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, and so, you know, in combination with a 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, you know, I'm thinking of my son who's 18 months old, but when he's five, if he's seeing stories of the Baba Yaga, of the Kaliach, 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 honouring 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, there's a Haggitude website, which is

haggitude.org. And it's got information there about the book and about the programme, which is not necessarily related to the specific stories in the book, but it's very much about revisioning elderhood and, and and and also providing resources and encouragement for women who are going through menopause and into elderhood to try to reimagine it differently um and to look at all kinds of you know different ways of being an elder and from kind of sacred activism um for for the the more out there um women who like to be out in the community kind of you know working to to more inner work with creativity for example so there's all kinds of different ways or different archetypes of elderhood 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 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 to to help others see this this life process differently and you know you mentioned young 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 realizes that when that fades, as of course it will will there is still another life you know we have we have three lives women at least um there's another one still to come which 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 of the alchemy that's happening in menopause and in a recent interview you 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 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 to kind of ancient greek times plat 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 year or of its life but but contributes to in some way to the whole and I always think of 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 as that flower but also to contribute to the community of life in the garden and that's kind

of the way that that I see it so these are very very ancient traditions and they were picked up by Jung and other Jungian kind of writers Jung believed that that the middle of life at this later stage of life the second half of life was all about a process that he called individual individuation which is very much related to calling which is 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. People think it means that, oh, I've got to go out there and save the world and be a 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 Jung, 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 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 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 um that just the things that that really speak to us and all the stories that speak to us all 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 the transformation of other people. So that's really in a nutshell, I think, what it is about, that menopause allows that stripping back of all of the fluff and fantasies that we were very attached to when we were younger. We get to this stage, oh my God, now who am I? Now what? What's left?

When I don't have the trappings of what the culture thinks of as beauty and youth and what have you anymore, what's left that actually matters to me and to the world. We are so excited for the release of Sharon's new book, Haggitude, Reimagining the Second Half of Life, which you can find at haggitude.org. We're also thrilled that Sharon will be back with us for our upcoming wise power online retreat where we'll be celebrating the launch of our book wise power with a series of conversations about the power of menopause hosted by Alexandra we'll tell you all about the retreat very soon but before then please head over to wisepowerbook.com to pre-order your copy of wise power today we've got a special offer at the

moment when you pre-order wise power you receive a hundred dollar discount on our live menopause online program you can pre-order your copy and get your hundred dollar discount today at wisepowerbook.com that's wisepowerbook.com it is a slow and winding process isn't it this 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 have 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, kind of distressed that by the age of 25, they haven't figured out their calling and they're not like, that's not the point. It's not, it really isn't a destination. You know, it's, you're here for as many years as you can be as you can live here for, for a reason, because there's always still something to be learned 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 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 long 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 a years-long um diversion into corporate life um 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 had a, 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 which is just like oh my god how bad can it get but um I learned a lot from from that good you know thing 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 and that sense of isolation and all of the rest of it I 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 till 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 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 to regain our strength you know for for whatever's coming up I'd love to segue to speak about nature and how the natural world can support us here because we you and I have a love in common which is the Isle of Lewis and the Isle of Hebrides

so I haven't spent as much time there as you but I in the midst of my experience with infertility which was four years and really one of the darkest times of my life I I just needed to be away from everything so I literally like you I thought this is but I in fact I took if women's rose rooted with me on this journey so it's a bit meta here you took it home yeah I did I took it home and I me and my partner and her husband we just wanted to get as far away 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 be in a landscape that felt as desolate as as I felt inside and something

happened for me there and I couldn't even quite describe to you what it is but I I didn't feel alone I felt that I was with I didn't want to be around humans because I've had enough of humans but I was with something that was not loving me but just with me yeah 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 rock suddenly started to feel, seem 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 I 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, 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, multicolored landscape that went down to the sea. And I only happened to come 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's 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 out stretched 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 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 whale, 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, 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 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 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, you know, 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 I wasn't ready for that yet.

So I left. I felt a very strong push to, as if it was kind of kicking me out. It's like, 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 but that's clearly the case now so yeah it's very important to me but 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 yeah I agree wildness of Lewis but on one of the beaches I was still in the middle of infertility. So I was still walking on the beaches crying with the rain, you know, the rain mingling with the tears on 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 I carried on walking and then I stumbled across an entire spine backbone of a whale and I found out that that 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 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 roads for it to go it's all collected there yeah yeah that's so true yeah and I I felt I yeah I received a message from that

whale which was just keep diving deep and you will rise and 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 and what have you that just I don't know you how can you explain it but it just it's 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 into 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 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 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 there is an animate spirit in everything

and 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 um a sense of inspiration that spring will always come no matter how old and gnarly you are um every you know for the past two years that we have been here so I think just 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 our way one of these months this is of all possible British summers. And, and just, 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 I, 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 cocoony kind of time isn't it i think well you don't know you haven't been through it yet i know yet i'll talk to you on the other side

exactly come and tell me i think in my experience too there's this sanity in nature in that it 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 and also that the thing that the other thing you to go back to your initial question about about the ways that cyclicity comes I also find it I also find myself kind of stargazing a lot more as well um I have this wonderful um app which is called Stellarium if anybody wants to go and look at it and it kind of it it shows you the night sky um effectively for 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 it. 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, you know, 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 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 um to to the wider cosmos and um yeah it's 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 semi-circle 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 but 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 women, she was the oldest 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 in a plane, not in my dreams, but 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 there was this hole, these holes where the light the sky 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 what you know it'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 one 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 one thing when everything in life might feel like it's falling apart turning inside to those those memories and those deep meanings they don't go anywhere

no and the images so when i was going through through lymphoma and the lymphoma chemotherapy it was back to the crucible you know i kept dreaming of fire i was doing 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 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 um it will be valuable it's necessary it's a necessary strip in the 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 if 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 the possibility for the healing of the wasteland however that came so the concept of healing a wasteland is something i always associate with with with women um women. Not that, you know,

clearly men have their part in some of the stories, but it's all, it's always the gift of, of the other worldly woman, for example, in whatever form she comes. This is 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, with a culture. In Greek mythology, the fates 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 had hubris, you know, or whatever. So all of these old stories are about balance and the wasteland is a consequence of imbalance. 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 haggard's out in the uk on september the 1st and the us um october the 20th i think it is um so um you could find more at my website which is just sharonblackie.net and that's got information about all my books and all kinds of other malarkeys and resources um hidden in there and if you want to find out more about Haggadude specifically, there's more information at haggadude.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 they can do today because I've got to wait for the book you see which doesn't have to do it but but really that whole point of reclaiming the inner hag is to look at the various archetypes of elderhood you know so you've got Baba Yaga who's the dangerous old woman you've got the loathly ladies and the old stories like you know Kundry in the past of our story who 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 afire. 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 one is and the the trick I guess is to figure out which what 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 you know for the way that you are set up to be and to become. Thank you, Sharon. Oh, I enjoyed that conversation so much. I think Sharon is fascinating and I hope you enjoyed it. And if you'd love to hear more about this myth and magic and metamorphosis of menopause, then her book, Haggitude, can be found at haggitude.com and Sharon will also be joining Alexandra in conversation for our wise power online retreat

which is happening later in the year and we'll tell you all about that soon if you'd like to pre-order your copy of wise power and remember we have a special offer where you'll also receive a hundred dollars off our live menopause online program menopause the great awakener you can do that at wisepowerbook.com all right i'm really looking forward to continuing this series of conversations about menopause every other week on the podcast throughout the autumn and I really look forward to connecting with you there so until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm