Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Reclaim Your Journey as a Woman with Kelly Brogan

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

This episode with guest Kelly Borgan, M.D., is all about how you can reclaim your journey as a woman.  To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep171/. My guest, Kelly Brogan, M.D., is a holistic psychiatrist, author of the NY Times Bestselling book, A Mind of Your Own, Own Your Self, the children's book, A Time For Rain, and co-editor of the landmark textbook, Integrative Therapies for Depression. She is the founder of the online healing program Vital Mind Reset, and the membership community, Vital Life Project. She completed her psychiatric training and fellowship at NYU Medical Center after graduating from Cornell University Medical College, and has a B.S. from M.I.T. in Systems Neuroscience. She is specialized in a root-cause resolution approach to psychiatric syndromes and symptoms. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

If I am at middle age and have not yet learned the dialect of my native land, you know, being this body, then it's a good time to start. Hey, Dr. Mindy here. And welcome to season four of the Resetter podcast. So please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. And I want you believing in your body. I want you believing in your mind. I want you believing in your spirit. enjoy. On this episode of The Resetter podcast, I bring you Dr. Kelly Brogan. So some of you may know her

from her New York Times bestselling book, A Mind of Your Own. She is a holistic psychiatrist that has been really helping women understand depression and a variety of mental health challenges from a holistic standpoint. So hopefully you're aware of the fact that in our mental health world right now, we really have a one-size-fits-all approach once again to mental health, which is you're mentally suffering, let's take medication, or let's dive into therapy or do both. And what Kelly was really a pioneer in doing is taking the concept of depression and bringing a more complete conversation to this issue that so many women were struggling with. And you'll hear it in this episode.

She talks about lifestyle quite a bit. But then she dives into where she is today, which is reclaiming yourself. And she calls herself a reclamation queen, which I love. She has a new podcast coming out called Reclamation Radio. And her passion these days is helping people reclaim their true selves. And why I wanted to bring Kelly on is because I see so many. women and men, but largely women, as we go through our perimenopause and postmenopausal years, we have really huge ahas about ourselves, about our lives, and we see dramatic changes happen.

And I strongly feel like depression and anxiety hits us when we're not embracing these new energies, these new thought patterns that are looking to emerge through us as we move through the perimenopause and menopausal years. And I think what you'll hear in this conversation, I hope what you'll hear in this conversation, is that when you get those nudges of, my life isn't where I want it to be, my relationships are not how I want it to be, that those are opportunities for us to find a new path where we can actually emerge. into a better version of ourselves. I strongly feel like that is what menopause is for.

That is what happens to us after 40. This is why we lose our hormones because there's an opportunity for us in that moment to discover a part of ourselves that we may have never really addressed or even seen. And if you are resonating with what I'm saying, this is what Kelly is about to share with you. is that there is a golden opportunity to birth something new.

And she'll actually tell you, and I love this idea, that it's actually not something new. It was there inside of us all along. We've just squashed it for responsibility. We squashed it for, you know, putting our attention on our careers and our family and pushing our own internal desires aside and not listening to the whispers of our inner, that have been trying to speak truth to us for so many years.

And when we step into our 40s, we have the opportunity to finally listen. And in this conversation, you're going to hear what do you do when those whispers appear? What is the opportunity for you at this moment as you move through your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, to really reclaim that part of you that wants to show up in the biggest way possible? It's such a cool conversation. I am so excited to share it with you. So here you go. Dr. Kelly Brogan.

Enjoy. It's nice to officially meet you, by the way. I definitely love your work. I love just how you're showing up in the world. And this is just a joy to have this conversation with you. So thank you for being here. Thank you for your support and interest. It's not a universal phenomenon.

So I'll take you where I can get it. It's all good. What I'd love to tackle today with your expertise, is really what happens to us after 40 as females. And it's not, as you know, not just from a hormonal level, but big life changes, big self-discovery. And in that transition is a lot of depression, a lot of anxiety, a lot of leaving marriages, a lot of, you know, suicide, the most common time that I've read recently for women to commit suicide is between 45 and 55. Like, it is a big energetic transition time for us.

So I'd love to dive into that if you want. Yeah. I mean, that is exactly the demographic that I have worked with in private practice. And as I am myself entering into this and to said demographic, I understand. You know, I also wonder if there is something that is shifting. I have, you know, a teenage daughter and a child. tween age daughter. And I wonder if this individuation journey that I'll reference in a moment is likely to be sort of temporally mapped out in the same way that it has been for so many of us.

But around 39 to 40 is what I have seen. And I know many have seen archetypally, right? Like this is when we begin to gain access to the areas of our relational life where we we are still operating from childlike consciousness, right? So it's for many of us, when the process of figuring out how it is that we are not our parents and how it is that we are begins. And so 40 is really when it all started to go down for me. And I witnessed that in so many of my patients.

And this is really one of the great challenges of engaging a paradigm that says your symptoms, of anxiety or symptoms of depression, your hot flashes, your insomnia, whatever it is, is a problem to be solved. Yes. Rather than an invitation to, you know, be accepted or denied, right? Like, you have full free reign around how to interact with your own body and your own symptoms and your own experience.

But the dominant narrative would suggest that this is a time of pathology. And if we are to reclaim, our journey as women and to understand the rich nuances that cannot be collapsed into life is great or life sucks sort of binary, then one of the essential frameworks to shift into is that these symptoms are, you know, I always say are, you know, if I have symptoms, it's me telling me about me. So if I am at middle age and have not yet learned the dialect of my native land, you know, being this body, then it's a good time to start better like than never so let's get to it yeah okay so we're just going to go with that thread

because what you said is absolutely brilliant and um i i want to remind me how old you are well i learned recently that i'm not supposed to tell you that oh really oh gosh okay well i'm because and you know my friend chris john northrop i'm sure you know she always has talked about as long as i've known her she's always, you know, her own, her own, like, daughter doesn't know how old she is. And so there's this concept of participating in the, like, morphic field, if you will, of sort of linear time and age, right? So, so if you, if I tell you how old I am, which, by the way, I've disclosed readily elsewhere, so I'll just tell you, I'm almost, I'm, now you're looking at me, right? And you're like, oh, well, how does she look for a 45 year old? Or maybe she looks a little younger than 45.

But instead of this just being, this is Kelly at 45, like this is what happens in Kelly at 45. And what if I am not interested in participating in the I look older, weirier and, you know, and I'm sort of signing on to whatever the collective has attributed to the aging process. I mean, I actually feel more vital and I actually feel more beautiful than I ever have in my life. And I look at pictures of myself even five years ago, and I feel like, wow, I was like less attractive then, you know, like I was less woman then. There's something in me then that is not, I don't long for that. So does that mean I'm aging in reverse? What does it mean? Right. There's not a framework for that. And so, so anyway, so that's a tangent. But I do think there's some wisdom in in reserving that and sort of like playing with the mystery of, well, what does it mean? You know, what does it mean, actually to be a certain? number and what am I signing onto when I disclose that? I mean, I've not, obviously I failed just now, but I've not successfully, you know, held it back. Somebody just asked me last night. And it is something I'm playing with because I think, I think Christian might be on to something.

Well, a couple of things I have to say on that is actually, I can tell you, I'm proudly 53. And I feel like I'm 25. And yet emotionally, what hit. me in my 40s just shocked me. And it had to do with my hormonal change, which, you know, we all have it at different times. But it also had to do with the, my life change. My kids, I have a 23-year-old and a 20-year-old. And, you know, hats off to you with the teenage girls. Like, that's a whole process. But the reason I bring this up is that I feel like the cultural hush. like the conversation we're not having and it's multi-pronged is that when we go into our 40s, there is this energetic shift that is happening to women.

And we can look at it from a hormonal aspect. We can look at it from a career aspect. We can look at it from a parenting aspect. But I want to tell you as a 53-year-old woman that my 40s was an extreme sport. And it was hard, hard, hard. It's so true. It's such a good characterization in extremes sport. Yeah. And so that's what I want to turn around now from my 53-year-old perspective and say, how can we help women do this time differently? And that's where I really look at your expertise

and what you're doing because you're talking. I love how you're talking from both a physiological and energetic. Let's go into our shadow. And what's beautiful, I can tell you at 53 is you got the time to do that. But wow, is that not fun? Having the time to go into your shadow and like dealing with it and time to go into all the things you pushed aside because parenting and work came ahead of that. That's what I want to bring to light regardless of, you know, age. There's a deeper conversation to be had here. Yeah. So I am a big believer in sort of the spiral path of this process, right? So we talked about how it can be deceptive to align ourselves with a linear path, right? Like as if we necessarily get more and more wise or we necessarily get more and more wrinkly

or we necessarily get whatever. So if it's a spiral path, then we're revisiting and we're being afforded the opportunity to revisit over and over again, similar themes, similar conflicts, similar, you know, challenges. And we have the opportunity to respond differently. this time. And so the sort of, I don't know, the breakdown of that spiral path, for me at least, involves like an order of operations. So, you know, I resolved a chronic, potentially chronic autoimmune illness almost 14 years ago now. And I really engaged lifestyle, right? Like that was my

reclamation of choice. I understood, okay, what I eat for breakfast, what time I go to bed, you know, what I do first thing in the morning, these things all matter. I didn't think they mattered. I was told in medical school they don't matter. And in fact, they do. So I reclaim my power of choice through these, you know, I call it chop wood, carry water, through these basics. And in my process over these years, I still come back to the basics. Like right now, I'm actually exploring like some dietary change and adjustment, right? So many years later. And I want to come into a, ever amplified communication with my own body, I want to make sure that is cool that I am caring for this body with intentionality and consciousness. And that affords me the space.

The space comes from that foundation to work on relationships, to work on bigger questions. I mean, last night I was sitting down and saying, like, what do I actually want out of my crazy? Like, what am I doing actually? You know, like, why? Why am I doing this? How will I know when I'm happy? I mean, I've been, you know, I've had the same essentially business model for the past decade. And I've asked that question probably hundreds of times. And every single time I revisit it, you know, I have the luxury to explore these meta questions when my relationship to my body, my routine, my self-care and my lifestyle is back online or, you know, sort of.

I love that. stronger, right? So then I come around and around and around and around. And the one thing, I mean, as you were speaking, I was thinking, wow, if there is one thing, I could communicate to women in this moment because, you know, I share my journey pretty publicly and I do so because I delight in how almost generic it is, right? Like how almost universal it is and how many women can relate to, so much of what I have experienced in my 40s, let alone, you know, in the past, you know,

decade of my life. And, you know, if there's one thing that I could relate, it is that we have this, this opportunity to grow our capacity for the liminal spaces, for the in-between, and for the confusion and uncertainty that attends growth. And if you don't hear my, voice, you know, telling you that like five years from now or whatever and you're listening and you're 38, then you might actually bulldoze over and through one of the greatest opportunities for expansion into a new story for yourself in your lifetime, right? Like in this moment in my life, as we are talking, I am in one of those spaces where I could narrate what's going on in my life and I could be like, wow, you know, where I was, I don't know

when I, you know, seven years ago, you know, I got a seven-figure book deal, New York Times bestseller. I was madly in love. I had a huge community around me. It was ecstatic dancing, like, blah, blah, blah. And now my life feels really small, you know, like, I don't know. Was that the peak? And now I'm just like, wanding down, you know, like. And that because I have this framework, I can remind myself with frequency, I'm in the in between. And I couldn't possibly imagine what is coming. Because it's not going to be an extension of what has been. And that's the nature of it, right?

Like as you are changing your story, you are necessarily moving through this birth canal, right? This metaphor is never not going to fit. And in that tight, dark space, you're not, you can't crawl back up in the womb and you're not yet out in the world. So if you don't recognize that, terrain. And sometimes it can be, you know, I've witnessed patients where this can be like so disorienting that it can induce a sense of suicidality, right? Like I can't handle it. Who am I? Right.

Like when we don't have those structures to cling on to that we have attached our sense of security to any longer and we don't yet have new ones, then it can be very, it's a nihilistic space. Right. So in this in between, if you can remind yourself, like, I'm, I can't put on the old clothes anymore. They don't fit and I haven't gone shopping yet. And that's okay, right? Like I'm in this in between and just that, that is where the faith comes in, right? That we live in a benevolent universe, that there is an experience that is more authentically

expressive of your soul that is coming online. And it takes time to configure that. and for the material manifest world to reflect that back to you. Because otherwise we get into this like really funky space of pretending that we haven't changed. And that is a self-guess light, right? That's the conversation. That's the conversation I want women to have as they move into their 40s.

Because what I wish I had heard those words 10 years ago for my. And there was some nuggets in there that I don't want people to lose. And one of them is you were more connect. You are, and correct me if I'm wrong, you are more connected to the energetic, the spiritual, the mental needs of your own life because of a strong, healthy foundation of diet, you know, whatever you're doing, diet, exercise, biohacking of all kinds. When we go into that as our foundational work, now we're primed for the emotional work. So that's one thing I want to highlight that you just said so brilliantly.

The second thing, and I actually feel like I could cry at this because it was what I think happens to us in our 20s and our 30s is that we are all, we're either thinking about ourselves in our 20s and in our 30s. and in our 30s we're thinking about our children. And then you hit your mid-40s or you hit your late 40s and your kids don't need you. You haven't thought about your own self. You've been, you know, maybe like soaked in a career that is taken over your life. And then you're left what felt like to me spiritually naked, energetically naked. And I spent last year in that space that you just. talked about without words for it, I would call it grief. And it was deep crying every single day.

I'm a very optimistic person. But the loss of my identity that I had created in my 30s and 40s was so profound that it took a full year to grieve it. And now I'm starting to do exactly what you said. What brings me happiness? What am I doing? Who am I? And in that, that emergence for me has come this like wicked badass woman who is like saying things that she wouldn't have said in her 30s, standing up to situations she wouldn't have stood up to. And the deep intuitive, I'm now seven months without a cycle, my intuition and intuitive capabilities are through the flipping roof. So that is what I want women to see is that there's an opportunity. So talk a little bit about how we take what you just said and we start to emerge into

the best version of ourselves that is what we're really as women capable of doing as we move into our 50s and our 60s. Yeah. So I like to think of things these days a lot in terms of polarity and specifically like inner polarities. It just helps me to hang, you know, a lot. of potentially otherwise difficult to pin down concepts onto a pretty simple framework. And, you know, I have, I have a lifestyle protocol called vital mind reset that's like based on how I healed my Hashimoto's, right? And so I've watched like, you know, thousands of women do this thing. And I've been, and then like literally medical history has come out of this protocol. Like I've literally published, you know, case reports and case series and a randomized trial and

all the stuff, right? And I even published, like, the first case, apparently in the medical literature of the resolution of Graves disease, like, without surgical or pharmaceutical intervention. I know it's not the first case ever, but in, you know, in the medical literature, it's, so it became almost a sport for me. And what I really came away most interested in was like, what is the anatomy of this, right? Like this, this health reclamation, if you will, like, what's actually going on here? And now that I think more in the terms of like, sort of intermed, masculine, inner feminine, interfavern, your father and her mother, however you want to look at it, I can see that there is, that there are phases of our life where we are integrating these,

these gendered archetypes, right? And I don't know that we need a lot of help as women or actually as people, period, right? I don't think men need a lot of help with this either to open our hearts and feel our feelings. I actually think what most of us need help with is feeling safe, right? And growing what, you know, I refer to and others do as the masculine container. So there is this process of maturing the inner masculine from the like toxic, shitty, abusive, bossy, you know, sort of what's wrong with flagellating. What's wrong with you?

Get it done. I can't believe your to-do list still looks like this or, you know, oh my God, you're like still stuck at this job. You know, this is how our inner masculine interacts with, you know, the parts within us. And the maturation of that masculine brings us to a point where we have this self- allegiance. Like you can even see my body is like my spine is straightening, right? Like we have this sort of like inner, you know, solid core. that holds us through whatever it is that wants to come through.

And when you don't have that, then it's like this mishmash of energies, defenses, and fundamentally your nervous system is not in a place where you can even access that intuition you reference because you're still fundamentally in fight, flight and freeze. And you couldn't, you wouldn't recognize your intuition if it bit you on the ass. So you can get to this place where,

where with your system stable and solid, you can start to feel the energies that move inside. And those energies guide you. There are yes, they are a no, they are look over here. They are, wow,

this is fun, right? And so the ritual of this program, I realized, is like the initiation of the masculine, right? It's like this experience of, I am here,

this is how it's going to go. I'm going to exercise choice. and commitment and follow through and discipline that's inspired by self-love, right? Because discipline that's outer, you know, sort of induced is tyrannical, right? That doesn't stick, right? So this is a different kind of devotional, ritualized self-care practice. And then, you know, the rest of what can come online does so in this stronger container, right? Because I was like, oh, it's just like a nervous system thing.

But I also feel like, no, it's also energetic. Like when I show up with competence and security and a sense of I've got myself in my life, then the play, the fun, the pleasure, and the movement is welcome. It's almost like irrepressible. It just follows suit. So, you know, and this is a spiral path again, you know, because I, even in this past year and a half or so since my last divorce, I have engaged a lot of, you know, masculine maturation where I have shown myself that I can handle aspects of life that I imagined I needed, you know, a partner, you know,

or a man specifically to handle for me. I mean, things like, I'm talking about like leasing a car, right? Like, just like things. And as I have shown myself that I can handle these things, there is this deepening sense of, oh, not only am I going to then relate to a man, not from a place of like, princessy, come save me, you know, because I can't. But I also have this core foundational like okayness, you know? like I took my first jujitsu class the other week. And there were a lot of women in the class.

And I was speaking to one of the, you know, sort of senior women who was helping to train. And she was talking about how she feels so safe in her body doing this practice. She's been doing it for many years and she's like really into it, right? And I like

to dance. I mean, that's my thing. So I'm like curious about this whole martial arts thing. Like how does this work? And it made so much sense to me that women are attracted to these kinds of practices, not to become manly, right? Or like not to be masculine, but in fact to confer that sense of inner safety to their system so that they can walk in the world as a woman.

Yeah. And, you know, ideally we have a society where the men in our society offer this, not only to the women and children, but actually also to the other men. And right now, that is not occurring. In my opinion, it's actually strategic and it is actually socially engineered. And we are in a bit of a mess, right, where we have actually colluded as women with the confusing inversion of polarity,

where we feel entitled to adopt this inish and masculine energy and we want to disempower and thinking that it is empowering us, you know, the men of the world. So this is a lot of what I've been sort of exploring in my own process of ending the war with men so that I stop projecting, right? And getting into those mini battles or macro battles on the outside. But I do think that, you know, this process of swinging back and forth between, you know, sort of like this structuring energy in your life, like the power of your word, the integrity of your commitments, the way you relate to clear decision making, right? like what are what is what is in front of you to address and you don't cower in sort of like helplessness you know uh and how you also prioritize movement and singing and dancing and playing and beauty and you know exploring and creativity um this is a dance and we're doing it not

only you know with the world and potentially with a partner um but with ourselves and and you know with our kids and these energies are always existent. And that's actually why I've become, probably why I've become actually very interested in conscious kink and BDSM and the culture, you know, pre-existing culture that has acknowledged, these polarities are already at play. There is already, you know, a dominant and a submissive in every single dynamic, right? In the, right now, right here, you know, we're in that play. And so either you get good at recognizing those polarized energies inside of you or you just don't

have as many choices as you might otherwise have. And so you could end up feeling, you know, slipping into victim consciousness more readily if you don't have contact with those, those choices that are existent. So juicy. There's so much to comment on that. Okay. The first thing I want to say on what you just said, and this is something that I've, I spent a lot of last year really, like, diving into is if you look at history, you know, in the BC years, we had a matriarchal society. And in that society, intuition and ceremony and community was really highlighted. And then somewhere along the line, we moved into this patriarchal society that condemned a lot of that and made it made our lives very black and white. Our healthcare system is a great example of this. You have this problem. I'm going to give you this diagnosis. Here's the solution.

The other example of a patriarchal change that is really, I think, hurt women has been, we don't talk about the menstrual cycle. We don't talk about the fact that our hormones make us all spectrums of the emotional range. That's how we're meant to be. And so what I see now and what I spent some time really studying what happened after the 1918 pandemic flu. Out of that came a new, one of the major themes was a new woman. And that new woman was the flapper. And she cut her skirt short and her hair short. She drank.

She smoked. And she was the rebel. So I kept asking myself last year, like, what is the, what's going to happen to women that emerge out of this pandemic? And what I'm now seeing is exactly what you just said, that I think the place we want to go to is the blending of the patriarch and the matriarch. It's not, it's not an opposition. it's bringing all parts of ourselves together. And then beyond that, what I just heard you say, regardless of whether we talk about your age or not, is the wisdom of a woman that as we get older, we become more powerful.

And that, not just for ourselves, but for everybody around us. And that is this part of the menopausal journey that is not being expressed. And I will tell you that I sit in my power now at my age and I love it. But it took me understanding that I'm going to be blending the feminine with the masculine and that as I move through this hormonal change for myself, I'm more powerful than ever based off of the changes that are happening to me within my feminine body. So I'm curious your thoughts on that. And I'm really looking to rebrand this process for women because it's not.

We're looking at the wrong thing. We're looking at the wrinkles on our face. We're still looking at for a lot of women in their 50s and 60s. They're still looking at the number on the scale. And I feel like there's an opportunity for us to step into the greatest moment of our life. if we start to dive into conversations like this. Yeah. I mean, again, it's the relationship that we have to adversity that is at the core of the,

you know, sort of, I guess, misunderstanding around what it is that that happens for us over the lifecycle because it's not just for women, right? Like, we don't initiate our adolescents. So you basically coast from your childlike, depends. helpless, powerless position into your adult clothes. And there's no actual transition where you meet with strategically imposed adversity with the support of the elders in a community who are gazing upon you, connecting to your higher capacity so you can step into it beyond this too small frame

of your child consciousness. That doesn't occur, right? So all of the ensuing experiences that we might have are going to be based on maintaining this illusion of control because we don't have that sense of, oh, I'm an adult now, right? Like, I am not that kid who is helpless. And so when we encounter these, right, so whether it's menarchy or childbirth or menopause, when we encounter these, right, when we encounter these transitions or even the deludial phase, right? Like even the phase before our premenstrual phase, you know, where the veil is thin and something other than I'm okay shows up, right?

We don't know how to interact with that. We have not been trained around how to emotionally explore within, how to develop intimacy with ourselves, how to dialogue with what it is. that is showing up and how to embrace literally whatever comes through us. I mean, the other option is that you fight with it. And you have an entire system set up to help you do that. If you enjoy the victim triangle and you think that there is any way out, you know, of that triangle of suffering through your adopting the victim posture, then so be it.

I certainly was there for many years of my life. You know, I was such a match to that system that I became, you know, one of the practitioners leading the charge, right? So I get it and it meets needs, right? So that's important to remember. It's not like, oh, you're stupid then and then you get smart and you wake up, right? No, like that's just one way of meeting needs. And until you recognize that there's a more direct way of meeting your needs,

like, for example, when you're sick and you run to the doctor and then you get a diagnosis and then you have to go see the doctor over, have to, even that language, over and over and over again to manage your illness. right, you're getting many needs met through that system. You're getting care and attention. You're getting a sense of safety because somebody is in control of the situation. You're getting help with your boundaries because if you're sick chronically and you have this diagnosis, you don't really have to learn to say no in your life.

You can shrink away from all sorts of social experiences or life expectations by just saying I'm sick. Right. So there's so many ways that it meets, needs emotionally. And we get to this point of rupture often in. our lives, this opportunity where we are presented this fork in the road, right? And we can either pretend that it's working. And sometimes we do that. I've done that many times. Pretend that it's working. Keep pretending. Like keep the mask strapped on, right? And hope it doesn't slip.

Right? Or you can say, you know, forget this. You know, I'm going in another direction and I don't know what's there and I'm just going to see what happens. And down that path, you develop the reflex of curiosity and instead of the reflex of fear-based control, right? And the reflex of curiosity allows you a pause where something emerges in your life. You start to develop a symptom, right? You start to, your relationship starts to, you know, feel like it's on the rocks. You have this, like, sneaking, you know, sensation around what you're doing for a living that it's like maybe not quite right for you anymore. That comes up. And instead of tensing and clenching and locking down into like, I hope nobody notices,

because I'm going to pretend I didn't notice that. You open with curiosity. And it's not threatening. And you just recognize like, oh, I'm in another one of these spaces. But until we learn to relate to what it is that we don't like about our life experience, period, in a different way, we, there's no. hope for us to relate to experiences and transitions like, you know, menopause through anything other than the lens of, you know, this is, this is a problem we're just going to manage best we can.

Yeah. Right. It's like it's drained of all of its meaning, its richness, its cultural context. And of course, the potential that that transition has to represent the initiation from, you know, the mother to the crone stage of a woman's life. And when you talk about that kind of power, it is, as you know, a power that was always there. It's just that there's less, you know, occlusion. There's less obfuscation.

There's less like cobwebs if you were cobwebs in the way. And all of those, I think, stem from these, you know, childhood wounds and associated projections that make it impossible for us to perceive not only reality on the outside accurately, but also, you know, what in psychobiology is called interoception, right? Like, also our inner landscape, we don't know how to interact with that or perceive that accurately. Yeah. So when you, when you graduate into these later phases of life, the clarity, the open channel that can be established allows you to become this conduit for power and wisdom and all that's really happening is that you are bringing awareness so that masculine presence and attention within you to the energy that's here.

Yes. In and out. Like that's literally all that's like what we could call, you know, enlightenment. You know, like that's all that's actually occurring. And it may happen in brief moments. And it's still an extraordinarily, I want to say, disruptive force. Oh, it's totally disruptive.

Yeah. Let me tell you, what I heard in what you just said is that we, the structure that, that this world has given us to live within that we aren't questioning that we've maybe bought into is actually safety. And when we get into these menopausal years, what I've noticed is that there's a moment where you can finally see that and you go, oh, shit, I've been playing by the wrong rules. I want to play by different rules now. But the minute I said that to myself, all of a sudden the universe came in and was like,

okay, well, then you're going to look at this side of yourself and you're going to look at this side and you're going to look at your attachment here. And yet, if we're willing to do the work to embrace this new. version of us that's going to emerge as we move into our post-metapausal years, there is incredible wisdom that we can not only find for ourselves, but we can turn around and share with the world. And then maybe, this is my thought, that maybe we can start to break apart part of this structure that the younger women are living in and suffering and then not seeing it.

When I look at Crohn, the word crone comes from the word crown. And when I look at how other cultures do menopause, like for example, Indonesia, they bring all the menopausal women together as the guides for the community because their intuition is so great. But I think it's well beyond hormones. I think it's because you hit a certain point where you're not going to play the game that society set up for you anymore. So that's the transition that needs to be highlighted, not like, oh, my God, you're not sleeping. Oh, you have heart flashes. Oh, you have more wrinkles. Like, let's put that bullshit away. And the message I want to say to women is, wow, the opportunity is huge to have this massive energetic shift for yourself. But then the opportunity culturally is huge if you're willing to step into it and talk about it. Totally. Totally. And I think that, you know, there's, there's sort of a corollary to offer, which is that, you know, you kind of describe getting to this, this phase where you give zero fucks anymore, right? And that and everyone can feel what that freedom is. Right. Like when you are the kind of person who literally is just you. And you, and you, we feel that, you know, and people who who, who have that degree of freedom. And the thing is that you can't get to that place of giving zero fucks until your system is healed, integrated, and solid enough to hold you through the experience of being perceived from the

outside and perhaps on the inside as bad and wrong. Yeah. Right. So like that practice of taking opportunities to honor your. inner impulses, honor your inner sense, honor your truth, whatever we want to describe that as, no matter what anyone else thinks about it, I mean, that sounds great. Like, who the hell wouldn't want to do that, right? But I have lived experience, you know, that has demonstrated that it actually takes literal bodily healing. Like you actually don't have the nervous system capacity to hold

yourself through the shame wall that will like erect itself the moment that you do something that someone you care about perceives as outrageous, audacious, inappropriate, reckless, you know, or maybe it's just activating your too much wound, right? Like, oh, wow, that was too much, whatever I just did there. Right. So like you can, you can learn through practice to be with whatever arises when you, you, step out of your own box. Yeah, right? However, you know, it's not, it's not just something you choose on a Wednesday to do.

Like, it's literally a practice. And the first couple of experiences that we have as women, breaking, you know, rank and being someone other than we thought we had sort of signed on to being for life, it gets easier. Right? And you get, you get, like, you get it in your tissues. Like, it's okay if they don't like it. You know, it's okay if my brother doesn't like it.

It's okay if my dad doesn't like it. It's okay if my partner doesn't like it. Like, it's okay. If the public doesn't like it, you know, it's okay. You know, I'm still okay. And the consequences and punishment that I thought would come with the disapproval aren't actually here because I'm an adult now and I have choices. And I can choose to stay, go, talk, not talk, you know, be here or not. And, you know,

one of the practices related to that that I've really gotten a lot out of is to understand that anyone else's judgment of me. And of course, you know, I put myself into a position to be, you know, publicly scrutinized, which is my choice. It only matters if I agree with it. Well said. Well said. You know? So I've been, you know, on social media, for example, like I've heard all the things. Like as I have become and grown into somebody different than people might like me to remain as, the feedback and constructive criticism, if you will, that I have

gotten, you know, has been an incredible spiritual crucible for me to work in. And that's actually how I have used social media over the past, I would say two years of my life is, you know, I'll dip in and I will, you know, read some of the comments. And if I have a feeling in my body, you know, that feels intense, meaning like I feel triggered, right? I will recognize that as an opportunity to meet and discuss this with the part of me that agrees with them, right? That I'm embarrassing myself, that I'm harming people, you know, that I am, you know, a fraud, you know, that I'm like shilling for the patriarchy. I get that one all the time. You know, whatever it is, like it's going to slide off my back, as some comments do,

unless there is a part of me that agrees. Yeah. And that part that agrees wants to be included in the conversation too, right? So how can I actually interact with the part that agrees that I'm not to be trusted and I'm embarrassing myself? Yeah. And not need that part to change its mind. Yep. Right?

So I'm not going to spiritually bypass and say, oh, no, you're not embarrassing. Everything is, you're just doing you and it's all good. No, that part actually believes that. And I have an opportunity to develop intimacy, listen to the story of that part, and really understand, like, why it is that. that there is a dimension of me that is rooted in the belief that I am embarrassing, let's say, whatever it might be. That's actually self-reclamation, right?

Like, that's how we use our adversity and our experiences of challenge and our interpersonal dynamics that might appear as conflict to reclaim parts of ourselves. And that is, perhaps, at, you know, later life stages, you know, 50, 60s, what that feeling of I've arrived, I'm here, I am more whole, more powerful. It may simply be, you know, because we have, we have collected the parts into more of a coherent whole that were, you know, sort of tossed by the wayside over the course of our early childhood traumas. Oh, God, that was just perfect.

I hope that everybody caught that because that, you described again, what I have been feeling as I've gone through this journey and still going through the journey of, you know, emerging as a new version of myself. And what I have recently grabbed a hold of is that I really truly have gotten to a place that I don't really give a fuck what anybody thinks of me, that I'm more interested in what I think of me. So when these situations arise, like what you're talking about, reading your social media, The analogy that I use for myself and what I would encourage women as they go through this process to do and correct me if there's another way to do this.

But for me, my personal way is when something triggers me. I'll give you an example. You know, last couple of days, there's been some people in my life that have behaved in ways that I wasn't really excited about and made me very angry and brought up some emotions that I haven't felt in a while. and I wanted to outwardly blame those people. And what I discovered in that moment, what hit me in my meditation one morning was those are just opportunities to see what you need to work on. And I am reacting in the older way, a way that I used to react. But the newer version of me doesn't want to go there anymore.

So what do these people represent? for me. And one of the insights that I got to is actually a quote that Rom Doss, I heard, say, years ago, I heard him live when I was in my 20s in West Hollywood at a church. And he said, resist nothing. Just resist nothing. And so in these moments, I thought to myself, why am I resisting what these people are doing? Why do I want to turn hatred on them? Why do I want to turn anger on them. I just want to be love. That's what I want to show up as, as I move through. So if I'm going to be loved, then I got to let go of needing the people around me to behave a certain way. Because in that, I am suffering. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the foundational aspects of

the victim triangle, right? And associated consciousness is that you actually are dependent on the enemy, you know, to change. And I sometimes call it the erotic caress of the enemy because as an activist in many years in activism, I started to notice this over the course of my career where I would see these, myself included, but I would see us, let's say, like literally obsessed with these key figures in government or whatever it is

and what they were doing and what was happening now. And we're in this like reactive defensive posture and our entire life force energy was devoted to the enemy. Right? And this is what happens even on interpersonal, on the interpersonal level, is that when you imagine that you actually need someone else's behavior to change, in order for you to feel okay, you are blind to your choices. You actually can't perceive your choices.

And then you say what the victim says, which is I don't have a choice. I have to. and you're in that powerless place and it actually feels like degrees of hell and it should because it's an illusion, right? So that pain is part of how I think we are called back home, right? Like we're called back to the truth, which is that we can exercise our power of choice without needing anyone to be bad and wrong, right? Like if I don't like what antics the government is up to, for example, I can,

rest into this place where I consider my choices, what are actually my choices, what is actually in my control in this moment? It may simply be how to narrate the situation or it may also be, you know, that I can pick up and move to a commune or I can, you know, stop participating in a given system and I can set up a new one or whatever it is. I can exercise my power of choice. And then it's like non-referential. It's not oppositional. It doesn't even matter. what they're doing over there. It becomes like a moot point. And that is sovereignty, right?

Because otherwise we are in these dynamics. And like I said, we're in them for a reason. We're getting our needs met. And that's also what I like to remind myself in those moments is like, you know, there is a part of us that is a victim, right? So the part of you that wants to blame and shame, listen to that part. You know, that part is guarding and holding like probably some very tender. you know, emotions that also want your care and attention, right? So it's not to bulldoze over and

toughen up and be a sovereign, right? It's to acknowledge that the part of you that wants to blame and fingerpoint and punish, honestly, as often the same part, you know, it's just a part. It's just a part of you, right? And if you let that part take the wheel, as we do often, then yourself with a capital S is not actually driving the car. It's just this sort of like rotating roster of these, what in parts work is called protector parts that you're giving the wheel to unconsciously. You know, it's like almost like no one's home. So, you know, when you show up and you say I'm home, part of your responsibility as the adult witness consciousness is to listen to and organize all of the parts. But the action is coming from that place of sovereignty that

is taking it all in and examining the right action, examining what the choices actually consist of. I love that. So this may be the wrong question to map to this conversation, but I want to finish up with this thought. What the gift I want to give, especially women, as they move into their menopausal and post menopausal years, is the opportunity that we're talking about. But I also want to make women very aware of the fact that this transition is coming.

And I want to give them like, how do we help them? How do we give them structure? Is that the wrong question? Like, how do we guide women as they go through this so that we create a new culture that looks as women as they go through menopause as, oh, my God, what is this woman going to turn into because she's going to become something spectacular, as opposed to I'm aging. I'm not useful anymore. My skin doesn't look the way I want it to. My body doesn't look the way. I want to flip that into this conversation that we're talking about and say, no, get ready,

because it's incredible what you're about to step into. But that transition could be painful. It could be messy. How do we help that transition? transition for women as they shift through. Well, I mean, I think two ways come to me. One is I've already discussed, which is just sort of this framework of understanding, which is to recognize that when you find yourself in like a barren wasteland of your life, right?

Where the things that were juicy, you know, whether it's like your career or your vulva, like literally aren't anymore. And you're tempted to narrate it in such a way as to describe it as like a denouement or like some sort of like falling off. What if you just develop that awareness based on conversations like this that it could be the transition space. It could be that liminal space.

It could be that charnel ground that you are passing through and open up to the spectacular possibility that what is on the other side of it is something you literally can't even design. You couldn't imagine. Right. So that framework, this is archetypal. This is how all growth works. Just think of the butterfly, right? Like this is the metamorphosis process.

It always is like this. The gooey caterpillar is like dead and disoriented. And the imaginal cells are collecting to grow the butterfly. And she still has to pass through that teeny, teeny little hole, right, to strengthen her wings so she can fly. And, you know, I think the other. thing that I would say is find an inspiration, right? Like find a mentor, find it like a womaning mentor who is ahead of you in her, her, you know, developmental, maturational actualization becoming process. You know, I think of somebody that I interviewed for a collection, I called

Faces of Fierce Femininity named Gurmuk, who is one of my Kundalini Yoga teachers and is really like a legend in that space. And, you know, she's in her 80s or she's 80. And we, you know, in the interview, literally talk about her sex life and how extraordinary it is. And she and her energy is so embodied that her radiance speaks for itself, right? So she doesn't need, you know, she didn't have to take a class on how to like, you know, become an actualized menopausal woman.

She just bees it. It just is it. And there's no question that this woman is in her power, right? And that she is like holding massive, you know, she takes up space. Yeah. And so, you know, that I know someone like her helps me, right? Because we, I believe in this like chain of custody, you know, for women. I'm a big believer in women.

teaching women. I mean, I have, I have women teaching me sewing, you know, pole dancing, you know, jujitsu. I mean, I have women teaching me all sorts of things. I have a erotic coach. I have all sorts of female support and mentors. And the moment I have singing, I mean, I decided I was interested in learning how to sing like, I don't know, four or five months ago. And literally the moment I opened up to it, there were like 20 incredible goddess level. instructors who just like appeared out of it. They're already so far down the path that they're here to like hold a handout to me. And that's what I find we can do for each other as women like follow your desires,

follow your impulses, follow your, um, it's not follow. It's like honor, honor it. Like as soon as you get this little whisper, you know, like I'm, I think of myself as a dancer, right? I'm not a singer. But I got this little whisper on Christmas Eve and I woke up and I was like, you know what? I want to learn how to sing to. Like other people do. I want to too. And I honor that now. I mean, I could get the craziest ideas and I will honor all of them. Yes. And sometimes it's embarrassing and sometimes it's weird. And sometimes like people are like, oh my God, Kelly, she's up to something new now again. Like when will she just like chill out? Whatever it is, like I am with me. Right. So as you follow your desires and interests, you will always find other women on the path who are there to extend a hand. And it's,

It's such a beautiful, like, fabric that we can weave together. So I would, I would say, like, call in an example of the kind of woman that you want to be, you know, in that, I don't know what you want to term it, you know, like, let's say that last era of your life. And that will imprint what is possible in your system. And I'm a big believer that when we know what is possible, we can orient ourselves. and it almost happens naturally, right? But if you don't know what's possible,

then you're sort of living in these like, you know, it's like blinders over your eyes. And you don't even know what you don't know. Right. You know, in my reset academy, which is my membership group, there's a lot of post-menopausal women in their 50s and 60s.

And I tell them what you just said all the time. I'm like, you have wisdom to share with the younger generation, don't think of yourself as useless, which is what a lot of them think of themselves as. So again, so beautifully well said what you just stated. And I have this vision of like all decades of life of women supporting each other. I saw an incredible conversation between Alex Cooper and Jane Fonda on Collar Daddy podcast. Actually, my 23-year-old daughter turned me on to it. But this conversation was so beautiful to see a 28-year-old activist and an 85-year-old activists share their knowledge as women and their passion for life. It was unreal. So what you

just said was incredible. And I want to respect your time. But I literally, I feel like I just got so much insight into something that I've been living for the last couple of years. So thank you so much for going there with me. Absolutely. My pleasure. And, you know, because again, we think our story is so terminally unique, but these patterns are shared. And when we begin to explore them together, we find that that empathic bridge is very easy

to build because we're all in this sort of like recurring loop of waking up to what we have, I believe, chosen to fall asleep to. And it's like, that's the delight. it's in that sort of remembrance moment of like, oh, yes, this makes so much more sense. You almost feel compassion for the former version of you that was like trying to hack it, you know? Yeah, totally. If I could go back to her, I'd have a lot of things I'd want to say to her. Right, exactly.

Let me end on this. I always end on two questions. And one of them is, what is your daily self-love routine look like? And what do you feel like your superpower is that? you really, I say bring to the world, but I'm going to say today, bring to yourself. So my self-care routine is extremely elaborate and time-consuming. Oh my God, I bet. But it's an ever-growing, it seems.

Like somehow I'm expanding the hours in the day to like accommodate the new things I have to do for myself. So I, yeah, I mean, I wake up. I meditate. I dance. I often will do a coffee anima. I have different things that I'm like learning and working on. So sometimes I'll do like practices related to that like journaling or whatever. So my like morning is like a good two hours that I will reserve and I'll wake up early enough before I have like a scheduled obligation to honor that.

And when I don't trust me, especially with movement, I feel it in my whole system throughout. the entire day. And I also, you know, on the other end of the day, I'm a big, big believer in early bedtime. Like I go to bed at 9 p.m. and have been for many, many years. And it's a game changer for me. My productivity, you know, my sort of literal sense of well-being when I wake up in the morning is really hinges on that, you know? So it's like this paradox, right? Like the more you learn about what your body needs, like the less flexible you get in a way, but then you have this opportunity to sort of like dance with it until it's a choice, right? So now it's like, you know, if I go to bed at 11, okay, but I'm choosing to go to bed at 11 rather than 9 and I know what the consequences

are going to be, right? Love them. What's your superpower? I would say that I'm increasingly good at owning my shit. Awesome. Yeah. And really giving myself permission. to, I call it wear my villain crown, you know, as we were talking about and really understand that that actually can be empowering in the most unexpected ways, you know, like if I have a friend who doesn't like how I said something or calls me out on something, you know, rather than trying to get her to see my side and my perspective, like, I own it. You know, now it's just sort of how I, how I do and every single time it pays dividends. I mean, this is how I mother. And I think it's one of the it's one of the hidden paths that we are not encouraged to walk that actually holds so much of our

potential strength and and really like navigational skills, right? Because I can see so much more clearly when I'm not busy making sure somebody doesn't think I'm bad and wrong. Oh my God. Amen. Man, that was amazing. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this conversation. How do people find you? Just because I know a lot of my listeners will be like, I want more of that. So where do they find you? Yeah. So I'm over at Kelly BroganmD.com. And I actually just started a podcast myself called Reclamation Radio. And that's all the places, you know, Spotify, Apple, whatever. Beautiful. Well, thank you and appreciate you. And thank you for just shining. the light. So grateful for you. Thank you for this conversation. Thank you so much for joining me

in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.