172 The Missing Essence of Menopause in the Mainstream Narrative with Kate Codrington

In this soul stirring conversation today with Kate Codrington, author of Second Spring and The Perimenopause Journal, speaker, facilitator, artist, and podcaster, we discuss:

🌱 The Menopause Industry: A Critical Discussion about the recent Panorama Documentary.

🌱 Exploring Death and Creativity in Midlife

🌱 Understanding Inner Seasons and Their Impact

🌱 The Power of Vulnerability and Self-Acceptance

🌱 Navigating the Emotional Landscape of Perimenopause

🌱 Emergence in Winter: A New Perspective

🌱 Finding Pleasure and Power in Midlife

Kate has always been one of the most validating people I know. Listen for a big dose of oxytocin!

Kate’s Links:

Website: https://www.katecodrington.co.uk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kate_codrington/

Listeners get 20% off The Perimenopause Starter Kit online course with the code PERI20: https://bit.ly/peri-kit

Sally's Links:

[Free] Relaxation Hypnosis Recording:  https://bit.ly/relaxationwithsally

How to Create Phenomenal Self Esteem [£47]:  https://www.sallygarozzo.com/selfesteem

Menopause Wellbeing Practitioner [£127] https://www.sallygarozzo.com/meno

Cold Water Therapy Practitioner [£127] https://www.sallygarozzo.com/cold

Transformational 30 Day Rewire (Includes RTT) [£447]: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/rapid-transformational-therapist

Transformational Trauma Informed Coaching [From £197]:  https://www.sallygarozzo.com/transformational-coaching 

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/sallygarozzomindmentor

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallygarozzo/

Send me a voice clip via What’s App - https://wa.me/message/FTARBMO7CRLEL1

Transcript

Sally (00:24.783)
So my guest today is none other than the brilliant Kate Codrington. Kate is a mentor, author, speaker, facilitator, artist, and a podcaster. You might have heard me talk about her book many times on this podcast, which had a big influence on me. It's called Second Spring, The Self-Care Guide to Menopause. She also has a second book out now called The Peri-Menopause Journal, which is designed to help you unlock your power.

own your wellbeing and find your own path through menopause. Kate was on this podcast back in the early days, episode 68 in fact, where we spoke about the impact of diet culture on our menopausal minds. The episode was called The Big Fat Lie. So if you like this conversation, do go back and have a listen to that one too. It was amazing.

Kate (01:12.756)
It was a good one, I remember that. It was really good. We just laid it out on the line.

Sally (01:20.281)
We did, and there was so much drilling in the background. don't know if you remember the drill of truth. It was bonkers. Yeah, it was really good. Yeah. So welcome. Welcome back.

Kate (01:29.042)
forgotten but now you mention it

Kate (01:35.696)
Yeah, come on, let's dive in. So what are we going to lay out today, Sally?

Sally (01:40.375)
Well, I wanted to ask you how life has been. Now you're famous with two books under your belt.

Kate (01:47.54)
be ridiculous. I'm famous in my own house. That's for sure.

Sally (01:51.365)
Ha ha ha.

How's life? How has life been since we last spoke because you have put two books out? What's it like being a published author?

Kate (01:58.133)
Hmm.

Kate (02:02.494)
Okay so yeah I'll answer right from my heart because it's I think that when there's a lot of stuff that gets projected when people write books it's your famous thing okay and the process of writing and you know I it's an enormous privilege to have my words out there and something I never thought would happen and I am.

Sally (02:07.513)
Yeah.

Sally (02:18.723)
Yeah, sure.

Kate (02:30.41)
hugely grateful. I mean, I'm just, I'm still kind of boggled by what happened and it happened because of proper feminists leaning in and supporting me. No question. It was to do with introductions, with me being courageous and stepping out and asking for help and kind people giving me help step by step. And the books have been supported.

Sally (02:51.78)
Hmm.

Sally (02:55.397)
Bye.

Kate (02:59.584)
in that way all the way through. So it's really a community effort. But the process of writing, particularly the first one, was terrifying. Yeah, really terrifying because of the visibility issue, because of showing up. So it really engaged all my paranoid, my worst paranoid fantasies about being...

Sally (03:10.149)
What's that?

Sally (03:15.374)
Right.

Kate (03:25.388)
called out about being shut down, you know, all that kind of stuff, because I have a kind of radical view. I think it's like blindingly obvious, but apparently it's radicals that women are cyclical and that perimenopause delivers us into a better place.

Sally (03:28.645)
Hmm.

Sally (03:41.349)
Yeah, it's a very different point of view. It's different from the mainstream, which we're going to get into in a minute. So I can imagine how frightening that must have been for you to put that out there, that kind of psychology element, that being in tune with nature.

Kate (03:56.874)
Yeah, that there's body wisdom. mean, that there's body wisdom and that, you know, we need to buy less and do less and all this stuff that I think people really know deep down inside. But I think that there is something that happens when someone like me with a really positive attitude comes in and when people meet it to a suffering, can feel, they can feel really.

Sally (04:09.913)
Yeah.

Kate (04:25.716)
enraged and threatened and that does happen sometimes. A little bit, a little bit, yeah. But I think that when you're suffering and when you're in a world that is not listening to you and when there is a maelstrom of misinformation, as we'll talk about later, I think rage is pretty appropriate.

Sally (04:29.156)
really, have you been on the brunt of some of that?

Sally (04:46.244)
Hmm.

Sally (04:51.021)
The appropriate emotion, yeah. Yeah, when you're triggered. And what prompted you to write the second book, The Perry Menopause Journal, which I've just bought? It's lovely. It's really lovely.

Kate (04:59.436)
I'm still in the early birth stages where people hold it up and I go, It's beautiful. That's its main thing. It's absolutely gorgeous. And second spring has all the things in it. It's digestible. It comes in little chunks, but it has a lot, a lot, a lot of different ideas and possibilities around food, around practices and that, different things. And I know because I've got a

Sally (05:06.789)
It is so pretty really isn't it's lovely hard but...

Yeah.

Kate (05:29.802)
great bookshelves full of books that tell me everything I need to know that I don't follow through.

or at least I don't follow through in the way that in which I would like to all the time. So the Perrymanipause journal is a, it's like a haven of kindness. And again, it's pretty radical. You write down how you're kind to yourself every day. You write down how you look after yourself every day. I dropped my shoulders. I put on my soft blanket and had a of tea.

Sally (05:43.556)
Yeah.

Sally (06:05.23)
Right.

Kate (06:07.146)
or whatever it is, so that at the end of each month or at end of the year or each week or whatever, you can see the kindness that you bring to yourself. So it's kind of rewiring the brain.

Sally (06:20.537)
I love that, I love that because I think we need that recognition, don't we?

Kate (06:22.156)
Thanks

It's so sneaky! It's so sneaky! And it's really beautiful, the publishers David and Charles did an absolutely gorgeous job, the illustrations are just gorgeous. Yeah.

Sally (06:36.665)
love how you said that, sneaky, because it really is actually, isn't it? It's like, it's, you're getting someone to just do something every day and then when you look back and read what you've written, you've seen, yeah, I have been kind to myself. I can be kind to myself. So it reinforces, it's conditioning, isn't it? Pavlov's dog thing. Yeah.

Kate (06:40.758)
Yeah.

Kate (06:56.064)
Yeah, yeah, but really gentle and forgiving and kind and, you know, any therapeutic practice, whatever your modality or as a practitioner or as a client, we know that we do small little steps, step by step, and it often looks like nothing. Until you look back and, you know, one of the first things you said to me when we just met just now was,

Sally (07:17.337)
Yeah.

Kate (07:24.492)
Wow, that is a lot of water that's gone under the bridge, you know. When we look back, we see how much has changed.

Sally (07:27.597)
Yeah, yeah.

It's very true, it's that retroactive looking back. I always say to my clients actually, change happens very slowly and invisibly. And it's only until you look back that you recognise, change as we're going through it sort of feels normal, feels normal, unless there's a big thing that happens and we're thrust, you know, a big trauma, we're thrust into having to change like right now. Gentle change over time, I think is the preferred way of doing it for our nervous systems.

Kate (07:59.286)
Hmm. Yeah.

Sally (08:01.461)
and much kinder to ourselves. I definitely, mean reading your book Second Spring, I had it on my headphones. I remember walking up and down the seafront going, my God, I just feel so validated by everything that you were saying. My every, you know, my muscles relaxed. Even listening to it feels like an act of kindness to yourself. So if you don't have Kate's book, you've got to go and buy it. It's absolutely brilliant.

Kate (08:18.432)
No.

Kate (08:25.794)
that's so sweet. You know, for me as a kind of little, you know, I live in Watford, I'm a mentor, therapist type person, yoga, nature guide, I do these things. I don't like, I don't run big online courses. I don't like doing that. It's no fun. I'll never be rich. I'll never be rich, do from from this work. And I have a small, you know, my client list is full, have a small number of clients that I've worked with.

Sally (08:42.767)
Yeah, it's hard work.

Kate (08:55.204)
and write by writing books because I have the privilege of you know the access to the track record I guess with two books out there I can reach far more people and more people can feel reassured that they're okay that what they're experiencing is normal and it's okay and they're gonna be okay so it's it's a pretty good you know it has a good reach put it like that

Sally (09:14.031)
Yeah.

Sally (09:17.549)
Yeah, yeah. Is there a third book in the making?

Kate (09:20.97)
Yep, there will be, I want to write about post-menopausal creativity and death and the seasons, the seasons, second spring and second summer, second autumn and second winter. Yeah.

Sally (09:27.102)
yes please!

Sally (09:34.541)
be amazing because we don't talk about death enough and I think death is something I know for me part of my midlife transition and midlife crisis as it were has been around waking up in the middle of the night worrying about death because death starts coming up as well doesn't it the conversation around death and the the the thoughts around mortality and how we're to make the most of it or how we might die or you know we might be looking after ailing parents who are facing death and that

brings up our own sense of what's going to happen to us as well. So I'm really looking forward to that. And it's something that I do want to start looking at a lot more in myself. Because I think when we look at death as well, it helps us to live more. I don't know if you've experienced that or how's it? Hmm.

Kate (10:18.612)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, totally. It's, I think that's one of the great gifts of perimenopause and menopause that we're forced to think about it because we notice our vulnerability. have maybe aging parents or, or unfortunately sometimes, you know, we have friends who don't make it through and it focuses the mind. So what is my life about? Well, you can make, you can make of it what you may like.

Sally (10:30.393)
My name

Sally (10:34.692)
Yeah.

Sally (10:40.228)
Yeah.

Kate (10:48.392)
often we can get caught in anxiety about it. And it focuses our attention. So what are you gonna do with yourself? I mean, my favourite thing, which I don't, I should do every morning, I think, is have a chat with my 89 year old self, my deathbed self. Have a chat, people, with your deathbed self today, in some shape or form. Journal it, imagine her. What advice would she give you now? And she's like, there's your intuition right there. Boom.

Sally (10:51.663)
Yeah.

Sally (11:04.484)
Yeah.

Sally (11:14.525)
I love that.

Kate (11:19.284)
She always knows what you need to be doing.

Sally (11:19.459)
Yeah.

yeah, that is incredible. That is a very, very, very powerful image, actually. Yeah.

Kate (11:27.976)
It's really simple, anyone can do it. And you can titrate it as well. if you, you know, if obviously if you are in a grief process and you're overwhelmed with a lot of charge in your life at the moment, then don't do that. But if you, if you, but you can titrate it, can, you can, you can do it in a, I wonder what my older self would think about this situation.

Sally (11:43.589)
Yeah, listen to your body.

Kate (11:57.544)
you can do it in a little manageable way. Or you can have a big old process if that's your thing.

Sally (12:00.557)
Yeah, yeah.

Sally (12:04.901)
if that's what you want. Yeah. Okay. I wasn't expecting to go to death, but we went there. We're going right in. So let's talk about the elephant in the room, shall we? At the time of recording this, you and I have both watched the menopause industry uncovered panorama documentary. And for me, it was actually a bit of a shock to my system to see how some women have been treated by the Newsome Clinic being over

Kate (12:08.844)
I don't know what got right in!

Sally (12:35.501)
estrogenized causing all sorts of really quite bad issues some of them even needing these surgical interventions to repair the damage of these super super super super high doses that are being given. I know you've done you did a little post on Instagram did a video which I watched and thought it was really really good. I'd love to know what your thoughts are on the way that some women are being over estrogenized pushed HRT.

as the only viable solution to menopause and alongside that the commercialisation of the menopause transition. What are your thoughts Kate on all of this?

Kate (13:14.06)
Mm.

Yeah, well, it's a hot topic at the moment. It's creating a lot of consternation and fear and confusion amongst midlife.

Sally (13:27.545)
Yeah.

Kate (13:31.721)
However, I was aware of rumours about the Newson clinics and what was happening with over-estrogen, over-prescribing estrogen. I have been aware of that for a while. So I was glad that that was in public because, because

Sally (13:43.693)
Yeah.

Okay.

Sally (13:52.216)
Right.

Kate (13:56.896)
Louise Newson is, in the UK, if the breakfast telly or the lunchtime, it is ladies telly really. I can't think of a better word to describe it. Lewis Women, whenever they talk about menopause, they get her on. Whenever the Daily Mail or the broadsheets talk about menopause, she's quoted. So in the UK, the whole culture around perimenopause and menopause,

Sally (14:08.759)
Loose women.

Sally (14:14.33)
Yeah.

Kate (14:26.238)
is kind of governed by her to a great extent. She has a lot of power. And this power has made information available. It has made education available right across the board. You there's no question that her business has done a huge amount to educate and to bring perimenopause and menopause into awareness. So,

Sally (14:31.767)
Yeah, she does.

Sally (14:53.091)
Yeah, I agree.

Kate (14:54.358)
there's a huge service that she's done. I strongly disagree with the way she views perimenopause because she regards it as menstruation as the norm, know, menstruating body as the norm. And then in perimenopause, things are deficient, it's an illness, it's something to be medicated and treated.

Sally (15:06.788)
Right.

Kate (15:23.444)
and post-menopausal women are then extra deficient because they have a different kind of estrogen. And her, she regularly quotes Robert Wilson's book, Forever Feminine, which, don't Google this, don't Google this people, because we don't want to encourage whoever's profiting out of this, we don't want encourage them. it's a highly misogynistic book, it was written in the 60s. And it's about the kind of feminine that...

Sally (15:37.027)
I did have a little look at that.

Kate (15:53.408)
that is forever in the title is the Stepford Wife, subservient, quiet, in service to men, know, all this kind of bullshit really. And they, no, I've read excerpts. I've not read it. I don't think I could cope. I'm too sensitive. I'm a high sensitive. She don't want me to read the whole thing. No.

Sally (16:04.727)
Yeah. Have you read it, Kate?

Okay.

No, I read a little bit of... yeah, me too.

Sally (16:20.353)
No, yeah, absolutely. Me too. No, I did have a little look on Wikipedia and I was like, my God, I want to vomit. Really just not. And I was really surprised that you said that she'd reference that book because I was like, no one in their right mind would do that at this day and age.

Kate (16:26.708)
Yeah, yeah, it is. It

Yeah she does, she does quite often but it...

Kate (16:39.634)
It's, she has a worldview that colours the female body deficient. And we are not deficient. It is the world that we live in that is toxic, that is causing all the problems. The misogyny, the hyper productivity, the sort of soup of chemicals that we live in through personal products, through, I was reading about clothes, my God, clothes.

Sally (16:54.722)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Kate (17:07.66)
reading about clothes the other day, fire retardants, all the endocrine disrupting hormones that we ingest in our homes and in our personal products, in the hyper-processed food we eat, and most importantly in the ridiculously stressful lives that we live. And the way that we hate ourselves for being cyclical.

Sally (17:26.351)
Mmm.

Sally (17:33.465)
Mmm.

Kate (17:34.026)
We naturally have, with our menstrual cycle, we naturally have more energy at ovulation and less when we're menstruating. And this rhythmic, cyclical thing gives us access to special powers. That's what gives us more access to our intuition. It gives us more access to dreaming and to connecting with the spirit world in our...

in our menstruation. And it gives us more capacity to be superwoman and to multitask in our summer. And we just have more range. We have a huge range. But it's seen as deficient. And this cyclical thing continues into perimenopause through our lives when we become more sensitive in perimenopause to everything, to stress, to food, as our hormones fluctuate.

Sally (18:06.532)
Yeah.

Sally (18:11.172)
Yeah.

Kate (18:28.672)
This is a good thing because it's teaching us to care for ourselves post-menopause. It's teaching us that we can't be like Donald Trump and be ever, ever expanding and getting more and more. You know, we have this expectation that we're just gonna do more and we're gonna conquer the world and that, you know, there's a second wave feminist lie about having it all that was, we can't know that's ridiculous, but we're still kind of.

hooked into it and we cannot, we cannot have it all. And perimenopause is a corrective force that it's like for our self-employed listeners, it's like doing your profit and loss, you know. And we know how much we love doing that. It's like, God, I can't believe I little money I made.

Sally (19:11.397)
Yeah.

Sally (19:20.953)
Yeah.

Kate (19:24.78)
In that, we see how much energy we find out in perimenopause. That's my latest metaphor. Thank you for that. Perimenopause, the profit and loss of life. We find out how much, yeah, exactly. We find out how much we've given and what we've received in return. And that is betrayal. That is trauma. That is gaslighting. Right there.

Sally (19:32.291)
That's all right.

what our energy deficit is.

Sally (19:44.685)
Yeah, how much is in the bank?

Sally (19:52.293)
Yeah.

Kate (19:52.465)
But it's real, it's truthful. And that's because, you know, estrogen, the estrogen-progesterone balance, physiologically it shifts. So we get to see, psychologically, what's going on. And that's important.

Sally (20:07.491)
Yeah. So, so you, so what I'm getting from this is when we go through the tumultuous time of perimenopause, the roller coaster ride, it's an opportunity for us to actually tune into what's there. But what the world is saying is that's a problem. This tumultuous energy that you're experiencing, these highs, these lows, this sensitivity, that's a problem.

And as a result of that being a problem, here's a load of HRT. This will help you. And if it doesn't help you, you're not using enough of it. Put more on.

And I think what they're saying is that there's something wrong with you because of these sensitivities. And the invitation is to go deeper within that and to explore what the sensitivities are requiring of you. So I know I'm definitely more sensitive. I mean, even right now, as I sit here, this shirt that I've got on has been in a wardrobe where there's an air freshener.

And it's a non-toxic air freshener, but it's still making me feel nauseous. And so we're talking about these sensitivities and I'm like, yeah, I'm so hypersensitive. I have to get my husband to put his aftershave on outside now.

Kate (21:21.772)
Mm.

Sally (21:34.125)
He loves me for it, I bet. But yeah, but it's all of these things, isn't it? That it's like listening to the body.

Kate (21:41.333)
Yeah, it, you know, it's culturally, it's interesting, you know, Robert Wilson aside, how estrogen has become the hot topic. No, it's all about estrogen, but what about progesterone? We need progesterone. And for people who are interested, go and look up the work of Professor Jerilyn Prior on progesterone, which is really interesting work. She's a Canadian researcher.

Sally (22:09.461)
Okay. Yeah, progesterone. I liken progesterone to having like a personal massage therapist with you all the time. A personal energy healer with you all the time. And when she starts to decline, it's like, God, I don't have my resources. I'm not as well resourced as I was. And we know that progesterone declines first.

Kate (22:09.856)
really interesting stuff.

Sally (22:36.089)
I've often heard some doctors say, some functional medicine practitioners say, we should be prescribing progesterone first, not estrogen. I know when I went on HRT and I was putting the estrogen on first, I felt rough for the first month. And that's probably why, you know, if I'd have perhaps been given the progesterone first, might've had an easier slide into the estrogen. Yeah.

Kate (22:43.798)
Yep. Yep.

Kate (23:00.141)
Yeah, mean, HRT is not my specialty. So that's just not my thing. But as I understand it, if you hyperdose with estrogen, then the receptors become kind of numb out, so you require more. for people who are interested, the recommendation from the endocrinologists is to start low and go slow.

Sally (23:03.436)
No.

Sally (23:08.163)
Yeah.

Sally (23:18.095)
Yeah.

Sally (23:27.269)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kate (23:28.486)
The other issue with Louise Newston is that she has been recommending HRT for things where there is no conclusive proof that it will help, like dementia for example. There's no conclusive proof that hormone therapy, estrogen, protect you from dementia. But she regularly goes online and...

Sally (23:45.068)
Okay.

Kate (23:57.942)
telling you stuff, saying this kind of thing. So of course people are very frightened, it's like, my god, look at the rates, I don't wanna, so people who are, even people who are not experiencing symptoms feel like they ought to or have fear around not taking hormones.

Sally (23:58.073)
Hmm.

Sally (24:17.441)
Yeah, they feel like they ought to be on it in order to prevent heart disease, osteoporosis, dementia. It's like this kind of wonder drug, this panacea to prevent all of this aging, which probably ties into this feminine forever concept, as you were saying.

Kate (24:28.234)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kate (24:34.602)
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, because of the paucity of research into older women's health, we don't know. There's so much we just don't know, particularly what the long term effects of taking hormone therapy are. We just don't know because there's been no research.

Sally (24:48.473)
Yeah.

Sally (24:54.583)
Yeah, yeah, we really do need more research into women's health and hopefully it will come now as a result of this. I'd love to talk to you, Kate, about, dive into a little bit more about the inner seasons and the concept of the inner seasons. Because I think not everyone understands that we have these life seasons and what they represent. I know many people understand the idea of our

Kate (24:59.596)
you

Sally (25:23.673)
the weeks of our cycle being autumn, winter, spring, summer. But the concept of seasons through our life is something that you express so articulately. And I wonder if you could explain that in your own words and in your own language, what the seasons are.

Kate (25:40.592)
Sure. Well today Matthew, today Matthew what I'm going to do is, sorry it's a very boomer joke, sorry, sorry young people, what's it called, Stars in Their Eyes? My friend used to call it Stars in Their Ears. Anyway, today Matthew I am going to describe the seasons in terms of what our souls long for.

Sally (25:43.867)
Hahaha

Sally (25:53.443)
I get it, I get it. Yeah.

Brilliant.

Sally (26:09.488)
Kate (26:09.868)
Okay, so this is a slightly different take. when you're a teenager, after your periods start, our souls long to have adventures in the world and explore who we are in relation to the world. When we're in our 20s and 30s, our souls long to be effective in the world, to have our particular gifts and skills and talents.

effective in the world creating change and to receive validation for that.

when we are in our perimenopause years, our souls long for space, for rest, and for reckoning. Whoa, sounds a bit Old Testament, doesn't it? But we've already referred to that. It's this reckoning about the gap between who we are and how we've met. How have we lived so far? Where is our, where is that calling? And...

Sally (26:54.841)
Kate (27:11.34)
How was that met and did I receive the validation? And then as we move through perimenopause and get more into our winter, the need is so clearly for rest and quiet. And that winter, that sort of deep menopause time, it, so this is a sort of soul longing. And of course our soul longings seldom get met.

Sally (27:25.689)
Hmm.

Sally (27:40.165)
Mm.

Kate (27:41.642)
which is why we kind of drag around these longings with us all through our lives. So perimenopause being autumn is a sensitive time, as we've mentioned. So in a time of healing and a time when these, the, I'll just say it, the abuse that we received in our teens and our twenties and our thirties comes up for healing.

Sally (27:53.476)
Yeah.

Sally (28:07.532)
Right.

Kate (28:09.472)
So it's these unmet soul needs that are resurfacing and asking for completion, asking for completion, asking for completion. And yeah, that feels like a crisis. That feels like we're falling.

Sally (28:22.149)
You call it separation in your book, which I thought was extremely poignant because it does feel like a tearing away. I know for me, it felt like, my God, I've lost myself. I don't know who I am. At the beginning part of this building process to who I am now and where I'm going now was just really quite tumultuous and very destructive. Actually, she was a very destructive force in my life, know, very angry.

Kate (28:24.556)
Mm.

Sally (28:50.287)
kicked the husband out before he was my husband, shouted, screamed a lot, couldn't cope, got blind drunk on occasion. And yeah, it was incredibly destructive. And I guess that's like the volcanic energy, isn't it? Like the trauma, as you say, the abuse, like rising to the surface and the sense of injustice in that. But I love that word separation. How did you come up with that word in that concept?

Kate (29:06.732)
Mm.

Kate (29:13.472)
Yeah. Well, it's not mine. It is the language of the seasons, the theory of the seasons and the mindful practice of following seasons through the menstrual and life seasons, life cycles, comes from Red School from Shani, Hugo Wollitzer and Alexandra Pope, they're my teachers. And they have lots of wonderful courses and online stuff and trainings and

two books, Wise Power and of... I can't remember. Wild Power and Wise Power, that's it, yeah. So you can find out more about that there. So this isn't stuff I've come up with, it's their language and their words, although they don't use separation anymore as a way of describing that part of our life. But that early perimenopause where you're getting blind drunk and screaming at the people you love.

Sally (29:46.115)
The Genie, wild Genie was him.

Sally (29:51.233)
Okay.

Sally (30:12.793)
Yeah.

Kate (30:13.29)
It's a kind of classic moment. And what's happening is we're fighting against the trauma. We're fighting against our vulnerability. We're fighting against the sensitivity. We're fighting against our feelings. I don't want to feel. I don't want to feel this stuff. And it's all your fault. It's like projecting onto the world like mad.

Sally (30:40.877)
Yeah, we're not fully able to lean into it.

Kate (30:44.254)
Not yet. So the separation, it is a great word. I love that word. It's so descriptive because we have a huge desire to separate from the world. We want to be on a mountaintop with a view of the sea with the nearest person 500 miles away, typically. We want to move away. We need space. We need space for this. But also it describes

Sally (31:07.833)
Yeah.

Kate (31:14.176)
the process of separating and because we've talked about Louise Newsome, I'll describe it as our estrogenated self, know, kind of estrogen, you know, we love estrogen, it does so much good, but it also makes us fawn, it makes us into people pleasers. It also makes us want to do lots of things for other people that are not in our interests. So this.

Sally (31:23.034)
Yeah.

Sally (31:40.325)
Yeah.

Kate (31:41.182)
this separation process separates us from that part of being so that we can move into a fully actualized post-menopause. There you go. So that's like psychothera- that's kind of psychotherapy language. What it means is you could say being your best self or letting go of the stuff that doesn't serve you. That's, that's what it's for. And of course we do it messily. We do it incompletely because we're human.

Sally (31:54.85)
Wow.

Kate (32:11.865)
But that's why today I wanted to talk about it in terms of a soul's journey. Because it helps us to understand that it's what wants to happen and life and personality and circumstance gets in the way.

Sally (32:12.186)
Yeah.

Sally (32:17.475)
Yes.

Sally (32:29.795)
Yeah, that's a very different way I've not heard you talk about it like that before, as souls longing. I really like that because it's what wants to emerge, it's what wants to be known. And when that doesn't happen, I'm guessing there's probably some kind of grief that goes along with that. Yeah, which has to be acknowledged, expressed, processed.

Kate (32:34.474)
Mm. Yeah.

Kate (32:52.62)
Yeah, there are consequences. you know, if you think about the classic thing of grief, there's a lot of grief in perimenopause for all kinds of reasons. But the classic grief right there about not having our, maybe not having children, maybe never, didn't, God, and I'm a classic.

I'm a late bloomer, you know, I didn't, I didn't, I never really achieved what I wanted to. No one really saw that skill or I could never really quite find the way of expressing myself that was, matched in the world and was seen in the world. And that kind of awful feeling of feeling less than, feeling smaller than and now, and you you'll hear this a lot from people in perimenopause and now it's too late, which is of course not true.

Sally (33:41.188)
Yeah.

Kate (33:44.468)
But it has that feeling of I missed my chance, my summer chance where my soul wanted to be recognised in the world and now it's too late. Well the good news is we get a second go round, you know, we get a second spring and a second summer and a second autumn and a second winter before we shuffle off the earth. So it's not too late. Shuffle off. My slippers.

Sally (33:53.475)
Yes.

Sally (34:02.789)
Shuffle off. Go to the other plane of existence. Yeah, yeah, that's such a beautiful way of putting it. And something else, as I was flicking through your book today, is I recognise you said something that our feelings come in cycles too. So our wounds have cycles. I'm just going to read here. Our wounds have cycles. Each time they arise, the invitation is for greater debt.

Kate (34:10.688)
Yeah.

Sally (34:32.309)
of meaning and understanding. I really, really like that because we do have these little echoes, don't we? And often with some of my clients, I hear them say, I thought I dealt with this. I thought I dealt with this. And it's like, well, you dealt with it in that context back then. Now you're dealing with it again in this context. Yeah.

Kate (34:42.444)
you

Kate (34:51.69)
Yeah, well, you know, it again, there's a sort of medical model linear expectation that, well, I had this issue with my mother and then I went to therapy or transformational therapy or hypnotherapy or I went to see my mentor or whatever. And so that's that sorted now.

Sally (35:09.274)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kate (35:12.768)
But of course, you know, of course we're human, we have this imprint and then we, gets exactly as you said, so articulately, it gets expressed in a different way every time and with a different reflection. you know, that's, it's part of who we are. And hopefully over time it'll, the grip, it's grip, won't be so tight that we can have a bit more.

Sally (35:37.775)
Yeah.

Kate (35:39.698)
bit more softness around it, a bit more choice in how we respond. We can be a bit less charged maybe, that would be nice.

Sally (35:44.292)
Hmm.

Sally (35:48.653)
Yeah, yeah, it sort of loses its grip over time perhaps. Yeah. When you talk about winter, now this is something interesting because I think I am in my winter now. I haven't had a period since March. And so it's been a long time without a cycle. Although there are other cycles, obviously. There's the day and night cycle. There are the moon cycles that I'm terrible at keeping in alignment with, but I'm trying.

You refer to winter as emergence in your book. I thought winter was more of like a squirreling away and, you know, reflecting and dreaming. Why do you refer to it as emergence?

Kate (36:35.864)
Yeah, this is, yeah, it's a bit misleading. It's not very helpful word to describe it. But let me try and give you an example. towards the end of our deep menopause, when we've kind of made friends with our sensitivity, you could say it like that, when you have a sort of a better working relationship with your sensitivity.

Sally (36:44.229)
Hmm.

Kate (37:05.29)
with rest, with nourishment of all kinds. Because autumn and winter are not socially acceptable seasons in our lives because we're expected always to be spring and summer. Even though we know we need to rest and nourish ourselves, we will still feel the impulse to, well, I'm perfectly fine now, I'm post-menopause, I'm gonna go off and get in a car. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

I'm going to go off and do something completely bonkers because I can, right? And then we find our edge. So it kind of describes the desire to emerge, to rush out of the cave. If it's like hibernation, then rushing out of the cage into the sunlight. And typically we want to do it too soon. So our task in that phase,

Sally (37:48.345)
Okay.

Sally (37:58.161)
Okay.

Kate (38:03.762)
is to sit and receive. So that means receiving information, receiving intuition, receiving and probably people will still be inviting you to do, or maybe new exciting things will be dropping into your life, new relationships or new, I don't know, new projects, new stuff. And our task is to take them in as nutrients.

Sally (38:35.079)
okay.

Kate (38:36.064)
to fill ourselves up. I mean, you might engage with them, you might not, but it's the quality of taking in nutrients to nourish ourselves rather than taking in nutrients to then instantly give them away by servicing other people.

And that's, for me personally and with my clients, that's quite a long and wibbly wobbly process, that this place where you are, it seems to go on forever. It feels unreasonable that you're still needing rest, enough, but it goes on. just plugging.

Sally (38:54.201)
Yeah.

Sally (39:04.634)
This man.

Sally (39:11.278)
Yeah.

Sally (39:16.195)
yeah that's fine. I think this is where I'm at because when I talk to my therapist I'm always like I did it again I burnt myself out again and she's like okay.

Kate (39:27.872)
Yeah, and that's normal. That's exactly, that is it. That is the thing that we do. you did it again. So it's kind of like testing how full you are, testing how resourced you are in that situation at that time of year, at that time of moon, with that project.

Sally (39:43.535)
care.

Sally (39:56.677)
So it really is what we're talking about, it's like a behavior change, isn't it? It's a fundamental sort of behavior change that we're going through. Well, I say a behavior change, it's a psychological change, a nervous system change, habit change, a perspective change. And I suppose the way to do it, the way to have it happen.

less bumpily, that's a really inarticular way of saying it, but you know what I mean, is to do the journaling and do the reflecting and live cyclically and look at what the moon's happening and look, sorry, look at what the moon phase is and look at what's happening in your body in relationship to the moon phase and what you've eaten. And this is why I guess we need to be much more reflective at this point, because that's a full-time job right there, isn't it?

Kate (40:53.491)
Hahaha

Sally (40:54.108)
Hahaha!

Kate (40:56.278)
Yeah, yeah, and it doesn't, it could be a full-time job, but it doesn't have to be hard. we'll find, once we finish menstruating, we lose our, whatever your relationship to your menstrual cycle was, we lose an anchor. We lose rhythm in our life. So one of the things that we can do is to feel into what kind of season am I?

Sally (41:17.957)
Hmm.

Kate (41:25.214)
What do I notice right now?

Sally (41:28.837)
Hmm.

Kate (41:29.514)
So talking to you now, it's being recorded, my cortisol is quite high, I'm quite up, I'm quite summery right now. I'm about validation about my work being seen in the world. It's all summer for me right now. So how do I care for that? Well, I can make sure my feet are on the ground. Because they weren't, I was kind of sitting in a weird, titty kind of.

Sally (41:37.731)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sally (41:46.319)
Yeah.

Sally (41:54.329)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kate (42:00.227)
I can work on my grounding, can exhale and come back into my pelvis and talk a bit, you can hear I instantly start to talk a bit more slowly, a bit more grandedly and that's really good summer self care.

Sally (42:07.269)
Hmm.

Sally (42:18.82)
Right.

Kate (42:20.446)
If I was in, if I was like, winter is classically hiding under the duvet, I just can't get out of bed. You know, when we have to greet the world and we're feeling wintery, we have skills like pacing ourselves. Or like, obviously staying in bed would be optimal. That would be the best possible thing if you can swing it. But you can pace yourself, you can delegate tasks. You can use your shit hot.

Sally (42:37.986)
Yeah.

Sally (42:42.597)
Hmm.

Kate (42:49.962)
discernment and assessment to decide what tasks are worth it and what are not. You can just just let go of the obligations that are not serving you.

Sally (42:55.866)
Yeah.

Sally (43:03.524)
Yeah.

Kate (43:05.416)
and don't know, winter care could be softness. I've been wearing blankets a lot this week, like blankets on top, round my bum. I'm like the sort of the bag lady of Watford waddling around in this giant blanket vest because I've had a very wintery week. You know, so yeah, I'm getting a bit distracted. it can be so simple. Notice what season you're in now.

Sally (43:11.257)
Hmm.

Sally (43:24.388)
Yeah.

Kate (43:34.988)
If you're really tired, it's winter. If you're feeling a bit interested and a bit full of wonder and excitement and possibilities, that's spring. what if I did this project? It would be really cool. I'm a spring fiend. I love spring. I don't like following through. Anyway, if you're looking at yourself in the mirror and going, hmm, I'm pretty hot today, certainly summer.

Sally (43:35.203)
Yeah.

Sally (43:46.469)
Mm-hmm.

Sally (44:04.207)
Yeah.

Kate (44:04.628)
And if you're feeling difficult feelings like grief or anger, you're feeling sensitive, there's autumn. How can you care for this season today? That's it.

Sally (44:10.84)
Yes.

Sally (44:15.823)
Yeah. Yeah. OK, so maybe I was approaching it from a type A personality point of view, the idea that getting through this menopause malarkey is a job, it's a full time job. But actually within that, there's a lesson in that. Even the way that we approach the work of menopause is highlighting, it's not even work, but yeah, the flowing through menopause is highlighting

Kate (44:35.3)
Yeah.

Sally (44:44.505)
these sort of personality traits that might not be favourable actually as we flow through.

Kate (44:49.004)
Yeah, yeah, so really we need to do less. We need to let go. We need to do less. We need to think less. We chronically, we chronically overthink, we chronically overdo typically. know, take all the, you know, people go and buy all the supplements. And I'm like, so are you properly hydrated?

Sally (44:53.198)
Yeah.

Sally (45:03.044)
Yeah.

Sally (45:16.313)
Hmm.

Kate (45:18.252)
about if you went to bed half an hour earlier. You we want it to be complicated and it's not necessarily.

Sally (45:22.372)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Kate (45:26.656)
So tracking through your days will show you this. Will show you this kindness.

Sally (45:33.261)
And do you recommend writing it down or do you just recommend noticing within yourself or a little bit of both?

Kate (45:40.264)
I recommend doing whatever is fun and pleasurable for you. some, yeah, I know that some people like stickers. Some people like drawing. I'm a writer, so of course I write, that's my thing. yeah, or whatever works for you that is accessible and easy and pleasurable and sustainable.

Sally (45:43.35)
Okay.

Sally (45:48.751)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sally (46:02.083)
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And pleasurable, know, pleasure at this time of life, getting, weaving a little bit of pleasure in can be so good for us. The oxytocin and the progesterone and all of those good feeling, those feel good hormones at the top of the chain of all the rest of the hormones can really feed into, you know, just feeling much better actually. So I love that. Yeah.

Kate (46:27.712)
Mmm.

Kate (46:31.094)
More pleasure, please.

Sally (46:32.645)
More pleasure. You talk about unlocking your power. What is the power? What is the power that we, that you speak of here? Yeah, what is the power that Perry Menopause is inviting us to unlock?

Kate (46:53.572)
What a fantastic question. And I'm really not sure how to answer it. Because... Because...

Sally (46:54.981)
Okay, take your time.

Kate (47:06.122)
I think that it's something that we have because it yeah I know unlock your power it's a kind of it's a kind of it leads us to think about things in a a in a rigid kind of way so if I think about power then I think I think about power being misused instantly and actually what

I observe emerging as I sit with people as they move through their perimanopause journey, the power that they have is the power to forgive themselves, is the power to accept their vulnerability. And there's often a sort of power of the prepubescent girl, her nerdiness. So it's about

reconnecting with that nerdiness and allowing it and of course that nerdiness was shamed, that nerdiness was ridiculed, was locked away because we had to do whatever your culture led you into, whether it was getting A grades or A stars or riding a pony or getting a boyfriend or whatever being acceptable to heteronormative stuff.

Sally (48:09.605)
Mm.

Sally (48:25.711)
Yeah, to fit in.

Kate (48:30.976)
But how about if we really embrace that little girl? And that is power because that is, you know, that's an acceptance of who we really are before we all got messed up with being grownups. So when I see older women and I'm like, I want to be like you. So I got really lucky a couple of weeks ago and I went to see Patti Smith.

Sally (48:45.871)
Mmm. It's like.

Sally (49:01.255)
wow. She's your idol, isn't she? One of

Kate (49:01.572)
Oxford I know okay so she's the I just cried my god she's actually there on her own yeah it still it still brings tears to my eyes actually because she she has she's she is absolutely herself and she is passionate

Sally (49:15.085)
I heard you... yeah.

Kate (49:30.42)
and she is nerdy and you know she's not she's not well she is beautiful but she's beautiful because she is herself you know she did she's not she's not she's not sort of dumb she's not she's not a dumb gunner person in the least she's absolutely herself and that has an enormous power

Sally (49:50.285)
Yeah, it's very magnetic. That authenticity and that...

Kate (49:56.298)
Yeah. So that's the kind of power. So it's this combination of compassion and embracing our vulnerability. that we hopefully, post-menopause, we can hold both our power and our wibbly wobbliness together. for me, that's what makes leadership. That's what makes good leaders.

Sally (50:23.493)
Yeah, and actually one of my questions was about, I've got to find it on here now, was about, yeah, if the world actually listened to menopausal women who had lived cyclically, what would they learn from us?

Kate (50:37.194)
Sally! my god, that's like the best question ever! Thank you! my god, I'm so excited to answer that because what... What? What's an idea? hadn't thought of that. What the world would learn was that to embrace their own vulnerability.

Sally (50:45.349)
That's alright!

You could write a book off that one.

Yeah.

Kate (51:04.288)
Because that's the thing, that when we live cyclically, when we can, as best we can, and as imperfectly as we can, embrace our winters, we show the people around us that vulnerability is okay.

Sally (51:21.477)
And when vulnerability is okay, what are the consequences of that? The positive consequences of that?

Kate (51:28.736)
We care for ourselves better, we care for our communities better. We stop separating ourselves from the rest of the population. You know, we're living in such extreme times where there is so much poverty. And we kind of, we're kind of shutting our eyes to it, I think, because it's so excruciatingly painful. once we can embrace our own vulnerability, then we can see it in other people and we can step up.

and we can make a difference in the world in a way that is sustainable to us. So not in the old school activist way of giving all our energy away and crushing and burning, but in a way that is. So it creates connection across divided communities.

Sally (52:13.348)
Mmm. Yeah.

Kate (52:14.7)
There we go, what have we done? We've done death, we've done leadership. Where next Sally? We've done this, we've that one. I don't know. Yeah, job done. I can retire now. I can retire. That's my work done.

Sally (52:19.897)
Yeah, we've done estrogen, progesterone. We've done so much. We really have. I love it. I love it. You what? No, I think it's really good. I think we get to understand the autumn and winter, you know, there's autumnal moments, those wintry moments, the reflection, the anger, the rage. There's utility in that, you know, they're not just redundant emotions.

Kate (52:47.36)
wisdom. There's wisdom in that, you know, there's real wisdom in those strong feelings. And yeah, they may come out messily and get directed, you know, at the wrong person and stuff. But there's such wisdom in that rage because it's justified. It's real. And the grief is real. And that is justified. a lot of, I used to call myself, people say, tell me about your work. Okay. And I'd say, well, I'm chief validation officer. I'm sure you are too.

Sally (53:02.821)
Hmm.

Kate (53:16.524)
because most of what I do is go around saying yeah those feelings are real and justified yeah damn right you're angry yeah you've been treated badly

Sally (53:17.711)
you really are, yeah.

Sally (53:28.271)
Yeah. Yeah. And there's a real letting go when we're seen and heard and felt and acknowledged and listened to and space is held for us. You know, what that does to our nervous systems is just phenomenal. And we know, and of course this is not mainstream, but we know how the nervous system plays into our hormones and our hormones plays into the nervous system. is this real...

sort of systemic thing going on there. And when we can relax the nervous system, the hormones settle down, balance, we get more progesterone, cortisol lowers, and all those nice things happen. yeah, it's extremely valuable work, the work that you do. I know there's lots of other amazing menopause coaches in the world, really helping women to go through this

much more accepting of themselves and that is really what I love about your work. As I said before, know, listen to your book, feeling so validated and it was really pivotal for me. It really was because I'm such that type A person. I've had a, you know, a father, lots of high expectations, lots of emotional bypassing, all of that, which has really played into like how I approach my life. And knowing that it was...

Kate (54:37.502)
thank you, Sunny.

Sally (54:54.265)
that it's all okay, it's all okay. It's like, just let it be okay. It's like, I can be messy, thank God. Thank God. Yeah. And just want to come back to something that you said about power, because...

Kate (55:04.716)
you

Sally (55:13.773)
I think the way that we interpret power is wrong sometimes, not women. think that power can be misinterpreted in terms of like laser beam, like how do we cut through? How do we improve, grow, be better? That to me is what power used to be. But as I've gone through the change, power...

feels different, it feels more sacral, it's like a sacral power, whereas the other one felt more solar plexus power.

Kate (55:52.505)
Interesting, yeah. Just hearing you talk, have inquiries come to me like, well, how can I show up for myself? How can I show up for my community, for my family? How sustainably can I stand here in my, as best I can in my authenticity and whole space? How can I bring more connection?

Sally (56:19.343)
Yeah.

Kate (56:19.655)
more compassionate.

Yeah, it's more cyclical.

Sally (56:26.359)
Yeah, it's definitely more sacral. And I wonder if that's when you say, find your power, and if women reject that, I wonder if that's because they've got that wrong idea of power or that more masculine idea of power.

Kate (56:40.116)
Yeah, well mostly power is abused and that's our experience of it.

Sally (56:41.701)
could be.

Yeah, so this is a different kind of power that is, that you're really helping people to understand and I love that.

Kate (56:48.874)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Sally (56:53.891)
What a lovely conversation. What is, do you have any final thoughts? Any final thoughts that you would like to share to people listening to this today?

Kate (57:04.165)
Yeah, just to remind people that whatever they're doing, however they're managing their transition, you're doing really well. Like whether you're taking HRT or hormone therapy or you're not taking hormone therapy or you're, you know, whatever you're, or you're kickboxing or you're pole dancing your way through.

or you're raging your way through or you're sleeping your way through, you're doing, you're really doing okay. know, that isn't, know, because of this seasonal map, the problem with having an archetypal map is that people think that that's the correct way to do it. Cause we seize on it. It's like, so I have to do it like this. But of course that's nonsense. It gives you a flavor. gives you a...

Sally (57:37.848)
No.

Kate (58:01.854)
an idea of what's required, but you do that in your own way. And that's really good enough, know, enough with the criticism already.

Sally (58:12.397)
Yeah enough with the rules. Yeah I love that. like yeah stick two fingers up at that book, blimey okay.

Kate (58:15.348)
Yeah. Yeah, bugger that, bugger that Robert Wilson.

Kate (58:23.53)
Yeah, we've done that. Do it your way.

Sally (58:26.469)
Yeah, perfect. What a lovely place to end. Kate, do you have a special offer going on at the moment? Is there 20 % off something?

Kate (58:36.588)
you darling. Yes, I have not only one, but two. So you can have a whole year of monthly yoga nidras, 30 % off. So they're live. You get to tell me what you want to hear. It's a bit like a hypnotherapy script. You say, I need to hear this. I say, righto. Put them in. So we co-create this guided visualization and body scan.

Sally (58:41.285)
Aww!

Sally (58:49.06)
Wow.

Sally (59:00.527)
Yeah.

Kate (59:07.084)
for you every month. you get, so there's 30 % off that at the moment. And if you're interested in the seasons and want to understand more about how to chart, then there's the Perimenopause Journal, of course, or there's, if you prefer to listen to things, or if you like video, then there's an online course called the Perimenopause starter kit, and that is 20 % off. And with the code, let's see if I can remember what it is, PERI20, I think, but we'll put it in.

Sally (59:10.628)
Wonderful.

Kate (59:36.236)
I'll put it in the notes. Correctly. Probably. Probably. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Sally, for asking. That's really kind.

Sally (59:36.239)
We'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, we will.

I think it is. I think I read that earlier. Yeah. I think it is Perry 20. that's all right. And honestly, like if you haven't explored any of Kate's podcasts or any of her books, you're in for a treat because her work is amazing. Your work is amazing. And even on second listen, you know, I could listen to your book and hear something new in it every time that would make sense. It's going to be one of those books that I dip in and out of, think for the rest of my life, probably.

Kate (01:00:05.91)
Yeah.

Kate (01:00:10.697)
No.

Sally (01:00:11.501)
So Kate, thank you so much for spending this hour with us.

Kate (01:00:18.092)
It's been it's been a delight. I wonder what we're talk about next time Who are we gonna take down we've done the diet industry

Sally (01:00:21.665)
I wonder, who knows?

Sally (01:00:30.169)
We've done the HRT industry. no, a certain person, but yeah, I wonder what it'll be next time.

Kate (01:00:32.1)