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Let's Talk All About Her
Introducing ‘Let’s Talk, All About Her’ hosted by Kirstin Bouse, Clinical Psychologist and Founder of All About Her - The Centre for Menopause.
The menopausal years last about half a woman’s lifetime. And given the constant unpredictable hormonal fluctuations (at least through perimenopause) they tend to be pretty ‘disruptive’ to say the least.
Join Kirstin and members of the All About Her Health Professional Community as they share their experiences of working with perimenopausal and post menopausal women. You’ll hear everything from accurate and up to date health and wellbeing information, through to tips and strategies and treatment pathways. All of this is designed to help you navigate these years in the best way possible … for you.
From psychologists and psychotherapists, to nutritionists and naturopaths, through to sexologists and nurse practitioners, the All About Her Health Professionals have decades of experience in their chosen field with the added knowledge, skill and commitment to supporting women as they navigate the menopausal years.
We’ll get a little deep as we ponder the purpose and meaning of this life stage and collectively muse about what wonderful things might be possible for us all. The conversations will be filled with buckets of compassion, and pragmatism (because while we’d all like to own a beautiful island to run away to often, I doubt any of us do). And here’s a heads up … there’s a 100% chance there will be some humour and expletives. It’s just how we roll.
And we’ve kept it ‘short’. Well, a little shorter than some of the podcasts out there. Why? Because we want to get useful information, relatable stories and a bunch of ‘hope’, to as many women who are going to step into this life stage as well as those who are in the thick of it, as quickly as we can.
Let's Talk All About Her
Understanding Menopause Through Storytelling with Ruth Cross
Menopause is more than just a biological shift—it's a deeply personal, emotional, and transformative journey, and psychotherapist Ruth Cross is here to explore it through the power of storytelling.
In this episode of All About Her, host Kirstin Bouse engages in a meaningful conversation with Ruth Cross, who specializes in working with women during the menopausal transition.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Ruth’s career shift from documentary filmmaking to psychotherapy
- The role of storytelling in understanding the human condition
- How Ruth’s own midlife transition inspired her to work with women in menopause
- The importance of focusing on the emotional and psychological aspects of menopause, not just the biomedical side
- Helping women create new narratives as they move through this life stage
Listen to Ruth’s episode to gain a deeper understanding of how therapy can support women in perimenopause and menopause, and stay tuned for future episodes where Ruth will share more of her personal journey.
Click subscribe or follow to make sure you get notified about new episodes.
Visit here to access a comprehensive resource hub for Australian women navigating menopause, offering trusted professionals, support, and information all in one place.
Kirstin Bouse: Hello everyone. Thank you for tuning into all about her podcast again today. We are doing another episode of introducing one of our fabulous practitioners Ruth. And so today is really about getting to know her a little bit more and firing some questions at first so that you who are listening in I guess really understand what bought her to this point in her career where she's working with menopause women so Ruth. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Ruth Cross: Thank you Kirstin. It's great to be here.
Kirstin Bouse: Yeah, I love these conversations. They're lots of fun. I always learn something new about people and A New Perspective I think about how Of menopause perimenopause the whole shebang and I'm bold for people. I'm really curious about because I knew you've had a super interesting career your path is not kind of leave High School go to university get a degree in therapy some shape or form and voila, spend the next few decades doing that. You've done some interesting things before you care.
Ruth Cross: yes, I have thanks My background really comes from the Arts. So originally I was very much interested in music and drama and so on but my first career was really in film and it began in a more sort of curatorial film programming.
Ruth Cross: and then from that I got quite inspired to make and my own life at that time was also traveling a lot and experiencing different cultures and going and living to work somewhere and documenting that so I was taking a lot of photographs shooting Super 8 doing and I kind of really got swept up into the world of documentary and telling stories. about What it is to be human, really? I mean that sort of in a nutshell I think is what really drew me to work in documentary. So always being really fascinated by The Human Condition but also I think really wanting to as there's been a sort of drive to make a difference in a So hearing people's stories finding commonalities that can connect.
Kirstin Bouse: mmm
Ruth Cross: was a really sort of strong thing for me I think in how I oriented towards that work, and so it was a very
Ruth Cross: Exciting challenging difficult, all the kind of gamut of experiences tied up in that work. but then about
Ruth Cross: About five years ago. I kind of point where there was something that was really Telling me that it was time for a change and now that I look at In the timeline of my life and really see a parallel with my own. midlife and…
Kirstin Bouse:
Ruth Cross: my experience of kind of transitioning in navigating midlife and looking for what was next for me and there's a lot of factors that played into those decisions, but
Ruth Cross: Really, I think. the path to study
Ruth Cross: evolved in that stage and I find myself wanting to make this significant change which is a big identity shift as well because
Kirstin Bouse: That's huge.
Ruth Cross: which is doing that sort of work as a producer of very committed. it's really very much your whole world and relationships and everything. It's all intertwined. So
00:05:00
Ruth Cross: so then I kind of went back to studying over the last five or so years. I've been Being in that space and completed a masters in Psychotherapy and counseling. and in that process of
Ruth Cross: Doing that. incredibly Rich Work which involved so much self-reflection it was like going through therapy in the process of doing the terror of learning about.
Kirstin Bouse: Learning. Yeah
Ruth Cross: a therapist and very experiential but on the research side of things I was looking I decided to sort of based on my sort of where I was at and myself and now I can see The parallels as I said before was really like what's actually been doing. what's out there in the therapeutic research for women who are in menopausal transition and from them there's a huge amount of biomedical research, but in terms of how
Ruth Cross: My orientation which is founded in The Peasant way of being with clients that humanistic sort of lens. There was very little of in the literature, so That really kind of highlighted to me. Hang on. this is something that surely.
Ruth Cross: We need to be doing and being a genexa like yourself. realizing that finally we're actually talking about it in the public sphere let alone in the therapeutic sphere and so I kind of Drew those connections and it just sort of started to escalate in terms of almost like a real drive to be able to provide something in this space which I feel is really needed. So.
Kirstin Bouse: like you I am. I mean, I think the experience of the menopausal years is really not got enough attention in all spheres in all types of research. But yeah, I guess if we're looking at the areas where there's the most within menopause is definitely within the biomedical approach and I remember myself searching for qualitative studies. I wanted to hear women's stories and experiences and narratives and I had all these theories in my own mind kind of cobbled together from My friends experience colleagues clients, bringing together the seemingly disparate ideas that were embedded in sociology anthropology psychology, all of that stuff and kind of painting this picture.
Kirstin Bouse: And it was usually disappointing to see that, it wasn't disappointing that people research refuted my ideas. That would have been welcome in some ways, but it was disappointing to see that the research hadn't been done. we haven't been listening to women. We've been asking them to fill out forms and right things, based on a whole bunch of statements that other people kind of came up with but those haven't necessarily been those statements and those questions and things haven't actually been informed in the first instance by really understanding what women's experiences are a replacement for years. So yeah for me. That was a huge disappointment as well. And it's what flights might vote. It's what the excites me is helping.
Kirstin Bouse: putting together a picture in my mind, but at the same time really just wanting to draw the stories out from the women that I work with directly and help them make sense of what this significant life stage means for them and where it might be challenging but also where the gifts that might give on as well and it's interesting that you've come from film and documentary as he said, very human Focus looking for the common experiences of humans in all these different cultures and circumstances and things, capturing their story and
Kirstin Bouse: Therapy, it's just a different version of listening to people's stories and helping them make sense of the past there's traveled and the path that they now want to go on seemingly so different from each other these careers at the same time a really beautiful threat through your career careers.
00:10:00
Ruth Cross: Yeah. Thank yeah, a narrative coherence and…
Kirstin Bouse: mmm
Ruth Cross: making together and really recognizing the individuality of each person's meanings.
Kirstin Bouse: M.
Ruth Cross: yeah, so For me it always sort of say It was quite a natural progression to me. And then the question is how soon and the story comes out And I'm glad that you can see it and…
Kirstin Bouse: Yeah.
Ruth Cross: I think it feels valuable to me to bring all that I bring from that. face
Kirstin Bouse: I think this is working with women going through this experience, It's not enough to have a lived experience to necessarily guide people through and help them navigate it but at the same time, I personally couldn't imagine helping and guiding women through this experience without my own kind of lived experience. they really merge beautifully together.
Ruth Cross: Yeah.
Kirstin Bouse: I think as long as that Curiosity and recognition of my experiences and everyone's experience by no means there's still that very individual. Version of it. Yeah So it sounds like this is one of the core features of your work with women is helping them understand their story and…
Ruth Cross: Yeah.
Kirstin Bouse: almost helping them. Work out what story they want to write next. Would that be fair to say?
Ruth Cross: yeah, I mean effectively depending on what they're coming with and so on but really I think
Ruth Cross: It's creating a space to really explore that emotional psychological and…
Kirstin Bouse: mmm
Ruth Cross: spiritual way of being at this time of life because as I mentioned for me It was a really sort of.
Ruth Cross: deeply existential process and it continues to be
Ruth Cross: as I said for every woman it's entirely different but I just lost my thread there. So maybe we'll
Kirstin Bouse: Losing it's right. That's just part of menopause, isn't it? I was having word finding difficulties before that's a little bit and…
Ruth Cross: yeah.
Kirstin Bouse: yeah, I mean, I think yes, it is unique it is helping them understand this story that's been story that's yet to come all of those become really really beautiful parts of the therapeutic process and
Kirstin Bouse: anything the right word but just so critical for the moving forward in this next chapter of Our Lives then. There's not many women that I talk with who? Don't get to some point in the perimenopausal transition. And it might not happen straight away because for some women they're just too overwhelmed by a whole bunch of the* symptoms and things but at some point when there's a bit of a clearing and a bit of space. I haven't yet heard of or met a woman who kind of is just like, that wasn't really a big deal or this isn't a big deal or enough nothing's changed within me, I think
Kirstin Bouse: Yeah, most of us do feel quite a mark change and I can hear that that's been your experience and what I guess I want to ask you is if you'd be okay about coming back for another conversation where you share a little bit more about that because it sounds to me like your own experience of as you said kind of this existential experience that you had almost parallels where you sit with women in the therapeutic space and where your attention goes and their attention goes when you're working with them. So would that be doable would you come back and we'll have a bit more of a conversation about your own experience and informs is therapy. Yeah.
Ruth Cross: I'd love to yeah, that'd be thank you.
00:15:00
Kirstin Bouse: all right.
Meeting ended after 00:15:14 👋