Five Body Wisdom
Five Body Wisdom is designed to emphasize the deep connection between our five bodies—physical, energy, mental, wisdom, and bliss—and how they work together to promote a life of balance and fulfillment. Inspired by and for women over 55, this podcast delves into the specific challenges and opportunities of this transitional life stage, offering inspiration, guidance, and practical wisdom.
Each episode weaves together personal stories, insightful interviews, and practical techniques to empower listeners to embrace their true selves. The show is hosted by Delia Quigley, an experienced yogi, meditator, intuitive artist, and author with over 40 years of experience in helping women find clarity and purpose in their daily lives. Her compassionate approach and deep understanding of life’s interconnected aspects position her as a trusted voice in navigating change with grace and authenticity.
Listeners of Five Body Wisdom will gain valuable tools to restore balance in their lives, enhance self-awareness, and reignite their sense of purpose. Delia shares her personal journey and expertise, offering techniques for nurturing the body, calming the mind, connecting with intuition, and embracing spiritual growth. The show also features interviews with everyday women who have discovered their inner strength and wisdom, inspiring listeners to do the same.
By tuning in, you’ll join a supportive community of women dedicated to living with intention and joy. Whether you seek practical advice, soulful stories, or a spark of inspiration, Five Body Wisdom provides a roadmap for thriving in the second half of life.
Five Body Wisdom
The Maiden/Whore: Stories of a Woman's Journey
Delia Quigley transports us through the transformative stages of womanhood, from the tender "maiden years" into the complex terrain of female adulthood. This deeply personal exploration features voices spanning generations – from 11-year-old Lexi navigating social media pressures to women in their warrior years reflecting on motherhood and self-discovery.
At the heart of this episode lies a profound examination of how society shapes, judges, and often diminishes female experience. We hear raw testimonies about first periods, changing bodies, and the confusion that ensues when young women aren't properly educated about their own physiology. Delia vulnerably shares how her debilitating menstrual pain vanished when she transformed her diet, lamenting the knowledge gap that causes unnecessary suffering for countless women.
The conversation takes a revealing turn when 25-year-old Annabelle reflects on dating much older men in her late teens and early twenties. Her candid assessment of hookup culture – "I guess you know we've all done it. But to me it wasn't really fun" – captures the complex emotional landscape many young women navigate while exploring intimacy and relationships.
Most captivating is Delia's personal story about her mother presenting her to Air Force cadets at 17 – a generational ritual where daughters are subtly offered as potential wives. This poignant anecdote perfectly encapsulates the tensions between maternal expectations and a daughter's emerging sense of self, while acknowledging the powerful but often unspoken forces that shape women's choices.
Through musical references, personal confessions, and cross-generational dialogue, this episode celebrates the female journey in all its complexity. As Lexi wisely reminds us, "Being older doesn't mean I can't connect with you... We're all still learning." Join us for this enlightening conversation that honors the transitions, challenges, and profound wisdom that emerges through every stage of a woman's life.
Hey, I'm Delia Quigley. Join me as I take you from my humble beginnings as a rock and roll guitar playing firebrand to a Delia. Delia, is that true? Actually, it is From my maiden years into the whole years of my 20s. I can honestly say I rocked a lot of worlds. So let's get with ourselves your whole years. Yeah, that's what our young guest Annabelle calls those formative, fun, initiation years of a woman's early life. So let's just trend along with the younger generation. Let's say Okay.
Speaker 2:So, now that you have our attention, what's this episode all about? Well, how's this for a description? In this episode we journey through a woman's maiden years, when innocence meets awakening and a young girl begins to sense the power and the vulnerability of her changing bodies. Then we cross the threshold into the years I call the whore stage Actually, I should have called it the hoe stage when society begins to judge and define a woman based on her sexual choices, often branding her with shame or approval, depending on how well she fits into the mold. Hey, delia, didn't you put together a playlist for this episode? I did, and your question brings me to the first song on the playlist. Now I can't play the music because of licensing, so a few lyrics will just have to do. But feel free to pause this episode and have a listen to the songs that I mentioned. They followed many a young woman into the underworld of her psyche, helping her to emerge back up into the light, scarred, but so much wiser. Every woman has a playlist of songs that acts as a soundtrack to her trials and her adventures.
Speaker 2:So allow me first to introduce the shadow presence of the predator, the external and internalized force that seeks to control, exploit and diminish a young woman's power. Exploit and diminish a young woman's power and this song so brilliantly epitomized in Laura Nairo's Eli's Coming. And here's the gist of the lyrics Eli's coming. You better hide your heart, your loving heart. Eli's a-coming.
Speaker 2:And the cards say broken heart, oh, broken heart, yeah, eli as the predator can come in many forms the older man who objectifies the young woman, the cultural narrative that teaches her to please rather than to know herself, or the voice in her mind that whispers she is never enough. The predator shapes her choices, diverts her path and often keeps her from fully claiming her body, her voice and her inner truth. Naming this force is part of healing. Understanding its impact is how we begin to reclaim what was lost or taken. All righty then. So where to begin With, the maiden, of course. I met Lexi when she was seven years old. She is now 11 and is willing to provide some insight into what it is to be an 11-year-old girl child in 2025. And she has a lot to say. Here you go.
Speaker 4:I'm talking about how it is to be 11-year-old in 2025 and be a teen girl. You know, in this like day and age, and so I first wanted to talk about what it's kind of like growing up in like a place where you don't go outside all the time anymore or you don't interact with people as much. The form of communication now is so different than it was, for example, when my mom was born, and I think it's really interesting. I feel like people around 11, 10, 12, these girls, you know, are fixated on the platforms that kind of our influencers are on, that are practically trendsetters. But I feel like a big problem about it is that when we see those influencer girls who are maybe 18 or 19, you know, and they say, oh, I use this makeup product, oh, I love this hair straightener, it almost I feel like eats away at the younger kid, because when we, it's almost like you want to be like your parents when you grow up type of like vibe when you were little, like you fixate on trying to be this person that you aren't, and I think that that can be really toxic for kids around my age, because we're so consumed in this having to be a certain way Be that person, you know, and so I think that can be really hard for kids my age.
Speaker 4:I feel like the need for consumerism we are always wanting a different thing where I feel like I mean, kids are always going to want something. But I feel like it becomes unhealthy when you are constantly fixated on what you're getting next. I need to be this person. I need to have the same things. I need to be them where I feel like that can be so unhealthy for a teen girl because that's what we feel that we need to do to fit in. I do skincare and makeup and hair and you know I find a lot of joy in that and it's not to please anyone, it's for me. And I think something that is really hard for kids my age, especially women, is the amount of judgment we get, um, and criticism. Partly I'm like thank god I wasn't growing up in a time where women didn't have as many rights and we we couldn't do things where I feel like there's still any parts of our world now that still have that.
Speaker 2:So, delia, let's talk about the maiden's initiation into womanhood. Yeah, of course, what was once a celebration for the maiden in many cultures can be a traumatic, painful initiation in others. And that's when the first blood flows, marking the girl child as having crossed a line that she cannot retreat from. A woman's blood became a dirty secret for some, while in ancient cultures she was considered unclean and relegated to a tent, away from the men and children. Many girls are shocked by their first period, believing they're dying. This reaction occurs when they have not been guided by another woman. In some cultures, this time is used to actually mutilate the girl's bodies, whereas the truth is that the sacredness of menstruation signifies a girl becoming a woman, a girl becoming a woman.
Speaker 3:So for me, when I was a teenager, my PMS cycles were horrendous. I had debilitating pain in my breasts, my cramps were unbearable Mood swings, terrible, terrible mood swings. You know, I knew when my period was coming and everyone else knew when my period was coming as well, because at that time, when I was a teenager, I was a junk food teenager. I was eating sugar all day long, which was not good for my body or my hormones or my liver or for for any part of me. And then, when I transitioned my diet in my late 20s and early 30s and I stopped eating so much crap and horrible stuff and I started to eat real food, includes vegetables. Right, I started to eat real food, my PMS symptoms went away.
Speaker 3:And my 20s which was horribly debilitating, where I needed my doll, a whole container of my doll naturally disappeared as my eating and my lifestyle got better, as I started to exercise, as I started to take care of myself. So for me, my transition through menopause was not debilitating, it wasn't like my transition into fertility. It was completely different. Thank God, thank God, it was completely different. Thank God, thank God, it was completely different.
Speaker 2:And what about your monthlies there, Delia? Well, changing my diet completely altered my monthly period from three days in bed in the fetal position to living an active, pain-free life. But it took many years for me to learn that. God, how I wish someone had educated me early. But the information is lost to generations steeped in the addiction to fast foods that lack the nutrients a woman's body needs to bear and deliver strong, healthy babies into the world. The weeks before you menstruate, your body becomes depleted of certain vitamins and minerals as it prepares to shed the uterine lining each month. What helped me was increasing my intake of foods rich in magnesium, calcium, vitamin B6, and even evening primrose oil. Sometimes this came in the form of a pint of maple walnut ice cream, but hey, that's the nature of a woman's premenstrual cravings.
Speaker 1:Most of my childhood I was very innocent and very kidsy and my mom definitely kept us very sheltered for a good reason and still really didn't have any idea about anything, probably till I was like 16. But I do think I was like earlier than most people to like be intimate with men. I guess I guess my experience with like dating and intimacy and kissing and whatnot was like when I was 16 and it was, like you know, classic high school relationship, being in college and like just being around men who were just really I just feel like they were just like really hungry for women and at the time I didn't really realize like what that meant and like also didn't really realize like dating guys who were older than me. You know, I was like 19 and dating someone who was like 26. And then I was 22 dating someone who was 32. And like looking back on those relationships, that wasn't like great I guess, because these guys are like way out of my age group, specifically when I was like 19. Like you know, guys were intentionally dating girls who were in college or like swiping on girls who were in college on those dating apps and it's just kind of gross to look at that. There's like a lot of like bad experiences that can happen at a young age with men.
Speaker 1:It's also fun to have like what they call like a ho phase and like fun. I guess that could be fun for some people, but for me it never was. I want to get to know people on a very personal, like very deep level and just really be like best friends with somebody. And now I'm at an age where like having sex or being intimate is not like the main goal of a relationship I sometimes think about like the hookup culture is what they call it. I guess you know like it's not like exciting to me anymore and like I think people who want to do that at this age it just looks kind of silly and most people are doing it for the wrong reasons, like they're using it as they would alcohol or maybe smoking weed. It's like an addiction or something that they use to just like get through the day or get through life or get through the weekend or something I I don't know, and there's no judgment there. It's just like you know we've all done it.
Speaker 1:But to me it wasn't really fun, I don't know, because I guess I just like I'm a very sensitive and emotional person and like to me everything's very energetic and like important for women, especially with like risks of pregnancy and std and and now it's like most people I know a lot of people I know are voluntarily celibate just because of the state of the world, and also like people who can't use birth control or don't, it doesn't agree with them. It's like there's a lot of other risks with being intimate. So yeah, I mean as a young person I feel kind of like I joke that I'm like internally 45 sometimes, but I also am like I think the right person will come around where it'll like be nice to experience that. But I feel more safe and glad to just spend time with myself and kind of like be in community with my friends and be with myself instead of like worrying about a lot of the shit.
Speaker 2:I guess that comes with sometimes dating men and that was the beautiful Annabelle Scarborough, our 25-year-old, who was kind enough to enlighten us on her transition from maidenhood into womanhood, where she still resides, as a dancer, and international dancer at that. So let's move from our 25-year-old to hear from two women in their warrior stage, having raised their children successful in their professions, they're both going to look back and give us a little insight into those tender younger years.
Speaker 5:I think that the maiden years are an incredible, incredibly powerful time in a young female's life. For me there was just so much going on that just didn't allow that journey to happen in a very healthy way. For me, being abused was normal, although on an intelligent level. I knew it wasn't, because obviously I watch tv and I think that there was a huge disconnect from my emotions because I knew that what I dreamed and fantasized about wasn't really going to be the reality. And, being highly, highly sensitive to my environment and to everybody else's emotions, I took on the role of caretaker, coupling that with the racism I was facing outside of the house at school.
Speaker 5:It was just a very unsure and unsafe period of my life and I had made up my life, my mind, at a very tender age age, that I was going to leave England and that I was going to go on a journey for finding where I belonged and that kind of started my journey of traveling later on in life. But as a youngster it's a painful time to recollect thinking about my mother or my aunts, because it didn't look like anyone was happy. It just seemed to be going through the motions of life. It had a lot to do with the environment, as I said, but an interesting time, to say the least least.
Speaker 6:As you reach puberty and get your period, you are suddenly told that you are now a woman. Although I like boys, I was not ready for that title, so I covered my body up as much as possible. I didn't like the changes in my body and somewhat felt objectified. I don't think it was until I was 24 and met a man who I fell in love with and although the relationship didn't last, I think it was the first time I felt truly seen through his eyes as a woman and not an object. I loved that feeling. That was the first time that I wanted a family.
Speaker 6:That relationship, although quite short, changed everything for me. I became a single mom around 39 to a four and seven-year-old. The biggest thing that changed was the intensity. I felt that I needed to make sure all of their needs came first. Their health, their sense of security and happiness became my center of focus, so much more because of the fact that they now came from a broken home due to the decisions their father and I had made. I know all mothers feel that way, but when you are alone, that feeling intensifies because so many decisions are made by you alone and not as a couple.
Speaker 2:My thanks to Koldip Rao and Denise Kay for their kind contribution. Okay, delia, what's next on your playlist? Funny, you should say. This brings me to the second song on my playlist. It was written by Hall Oates, but if you're going to listen to it, get the version by Grace Mitchell, and it's called Maneater. This is a song that, to me, personifies those whole years some may look back on actually nostalgically. So here's some of the lyrics oh, here she comes. Watch out, boy, she'll chew you up. Oh, here she comes, she's a man eater.
Speaker 2:I had a friend when we were in our 20s who could walk into a room and every male head would swivel her way. She was not satisfied with just their gaze. So she would. It was in the bar. She'd go to the bar and sit down and she would throw back her head and let out a laugh that we used to call the call of the wild. That drew those boys into a circle around her like bees to honey. She was the archetypal seductress and she had no concerns about what anyone else thought. Pleasure was foremost in her mind. The character Samantha on Sex and the City was exactly how you would describe my friend, and sometimes I would have to accompany her to ensure that no one threw her over his shoulder and walked out the door with her which did happen once and we had to go after him and get her back. And I would bet just about every woman out there listening to this remembers a friend who drew men to her like, as I said, like bees to honey.
Speaker 2:So, delia, it's story time. What do you have for us today? Well, I've been giving this one a lot of thought. I knew that deep in my memory bank was a moment that I experienced with my mother that I wanted to talk about, but I couldn't pull it up. So I had to go to my hard drive in my mind and, just you know, send it into the library of memories and see what came out. And sure enough, this memory rose to the surface and I knew it was the perfect story, because it's the story about the age-old ritual when the mother decides that the daughter is ready to find a husband. So let's begin.
Speaker 2:My mom was from an Irish Catholic mother clan which is a fierce tribe of women. She wasn't much for public displays of affection. Well, she never came out and forbade me from doing anything in particular, but if we were out and someone a couple was walking by, holding hands or oh God forbid, they were kissing in public, then she would absolutely have something to say about that. So it came as a surprise when I was about I just turned 17. She told me to dress up and look my best to look pretty, because we were going that evening to the officer's club. And we were going to the officer's club because there was a squadron of young fighter pilot cadets from the Air Force Academy visiting the Air Force Base. She assured me that there'd be other mothers there with their girls, so I was not to worry because I wouldn't be alone. I wondered what had gotten into her, because I was so not like her. We never talked about boys. My parents hadn't allowed me to date yet and between my mom's hawk eye and my brother's stinky eye, no guy was going to come around and ask me out.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I got dressed up as best I could. I had a beautiful little floral sheath dress that I had made. I had like cool cat's eye rim glasses. My hair was long, I was a good weight, I was really looking good and going out to meet a whole bunch of nice looking young men sure beat staying home watching the monkeys on TV with my brothers. So I was good to go. My mom got dressed up to be my chaperone and drove us in dad's Catalina convertible the purple one with the fins on the back. So we arrived to the officer's club looking pretty spiff.
Speaker 2:We walked into the club and my mom guided me toward the bar lounge where a squadron of handsome, fit young men turned to look at me and my mother. There were no other young women in that room. I wondered if those young gals told their moms to stick it or the moms had second thoughts at the last minute. But there I was, the lone teen with all these young wolves. I was really shy. So my mom made some small talk with some of these cadets and introduced me and then, when she felt I was in conversation, she turned around and she left, leaving me there with all these eyes looking at me like as if I was a tasty treat. And I was. I was young, I was gorgeous I mean any teenager who's 17 looks beautiful and it just so happened that to these young men I was exactly what they needed to escalate a competition that had begun long before they had arrived.
Speaker 2:I had walked in on a Top Gun rivalry that was going to be settled not over the Florida coast in the skies, but by none other than me. The first arrival soon appeared at my side. He was a tall, dark swarthy, handsome pilot from Uruguay. And then the other one sidled up to my other side and he was a real all-American, cocky, blonde, handsome cadet from Colorado, and they were in fierce competition to see who had the right stuff. You know, the bigger. You know what. You know I had no idea about the specifics, but I could see right away. You know, I've got some pretty competitive brothers, so I could see that the two of them were on me, checking me out, chatting me up, flirting, and it went back and forth just like this.
Speaker 2:For a while I knew I was way out of my league in this crowd. All the other guys were looking around taking bets on who was going to get to go out for a walk. And that was the thing I had to go out for a walk with one of these two guys, and they were each going to do the best to try and win me over. I was like this is cool. Okay, I'm in on it. I hadn't read any of the feminist books or really gave a damn, because I was enjoying all the attention. I mean, when would this happen again in my lifetime?
Speaker 2:I let it play out and then I chose the all-American blue-eyed guy from Colorado to take that walk with. Oh, the swarthy, dark-haired, handsome one grabbed his heart as if he was shattered and really ironically, he's the type I turned out in later life to really like. But in that moment I went with a blonde and we left the club to the sound of young men roused to fever pitch. Now he didn't try anything. I was the colonel's daughter and that meant hands off, all respect. So we walked around the grounds for a couple of blocks talking. He told me about being in his last year as a cadet at the Air Force Academy and how much he loved being a fighter pilot. And I knew that this young man and all those beautiful young men in that officer's club would be soon going to war. They would graduate and go to Vietnam fighting a people they didn't even know and there was no telling which of them would come back in a body bag or with their hearts and souls torn from their body, the way so many soldiers do after being in war.
Speaker 2:As we walked back to the club. I saw my mom driving down the street towards us and I said you know I'm going to leave you here. You go ahead and collect your bed. He said you knew. I said, of course I knew, I knew the whole time, and if we ever meet up again, well then you owe me one. I walked out to the car where my mom was waiting to hear all about it. To my young mind, my mom had showed her hand For the first time in our relationship. She let me know what she envisioned for my future. I was to marry, and I was to marry well, and I was going to be a wife and a mother and a mother.
Speaker 2:Well, delia, don't you have a third song on your playlist? We haven't mentioned it, I do. You know. It's amazing how many songs are about loss of love and heartbreak. I call them musical confessions. So, thinking about the third song on this episode's playlist, I settled on Carole King's You've Got a Friend. Because through it all the maiden years to becoming a woman, to becoming a mother, then the warrior stage and finally the wise woman truly good friends are a woman's lifeline on her journey through celebration and tragedy. Our friends are the treasures we collect along the way, they will be with us for their lifetimes and our lifetimes. My female friends are always, always at the top of my gratitude list and, speaking of friends, I want to thank my guests, andrea Beeman, denise Kay, colu Debrau, annabelle Scarborough and our maiden goddess Lexi for sharing their precious lives with us. So, delia, any final words? I'm going to leave that to our maiden goddess Lexi. I asked her what she would say to her mom to ease any worry about her becoming a teenager, and this is what she had to say.
Speaker 4:So I want her to, you know, feel my baby's growing up but, like, I love her and I support her. Being older doesn't mean I can't connect with you. It doesn't mean that I can't hang out with you. It just means that I'm evolving as well as you are. We're all still learning, and being able to be okay with that I think is really important, because I think kids sometimes hold their parents to a standard that's not real Like. I feel like sometimes parents the perfect role model, but I feel like it's very important for the kids to also understand that you know they're still learning and you got to be okay and that's a that's, that's the way of life. So being able to see that I think is really important.
Speaker 2:From the mouth of babes. Hey, thanks so much for listening. I'm Delia Quigley. This is 5 Body Wisdom interviews with ourselves. You know you can share your feedback on the shows on my fan page at 5bodywisdomcom. May your day be filled with joy and a lot of laughter and, most of all, a lot of love. All right, Until next time.
