Not Done Yet: A Podcast for Midlife Women

Ep. 11 - Why Your Midlife Exhaustion Is Not Just Hormones with Sheri Johnson

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Rachel sits down with her friend Sheri Johnson, co-founder of Midlife Women Rising, for one of those conversations that starts with matching outfits and ends with you rethinking everything you believe about aging, exhaustion, and why you still can't say no. Sheri spent 20 years in corporate, hit 45, and decided there had to be another way. What she found was that the symptoms every midlife woman is blaming on hormones? Go a lot deeper than that. This one is personal, funny, a little uncomfortable, and completely necessary.

In this episode:

  • Why 40 can be the year everything happens at once (new house, new marriage, a miscarriage, a cancer diagnosis, a job that expects you to be on 24/7) and why so many of us just... push through anyway.
  • The decision Sheri and her husband made to stop fertility treatments, and the grief, the relief, and the self-worth unraveling that came after.
  • The belief Sheri had to untangle: that mothers are more worthy. And why it is not just a childless-women thing.
  • Why the symptoms you are blaming on perimenopause (the exhaustion, the sleep issues, the constant overwhelm) are actually connected to cortisol, blood sugar, and the subconscious beliefs you have been carrying since before you knew to question them.
  • The three-pronged approach Sheri and her sister Jen use with clients: physical, emotional, and spiritual. Because you cannot supplement your way out of a self-worth problem.
  • What Thomas Edison has to do with why women feel guilty for taking a nap. (No, really.)
  • Why the "I don't care what people think anymore" energy on social media is real for embarrassment, but shame is still running the show underneath.
  • People pleasing as a stress response: why it is not a willpower problem, it is fawning, and your nervous system is in it with you.
  • The quiz that will show you which midlife coping strategy is costing you the most, and what belief is underneath it.
  • Rachel's very honest feelings about her period getting irregular, Sheri's equally honest response, and why "it feels like an ending" is also the beginning of something.
  • The Spanx incident. The stage. The pantsuit. Sheri brought it up and honestly, it needed to be said.
  • Why the word "midlife" makes some women cringe, and what that reaction is actually telling you about what you believe.
  • Sheri's eight-day retreat to Peru and Machu Picchu in November, because some midlife decisions deserve to be made at altitude.

Mentioned in this episode:

Connect with Rachel:

If there is a woman in your life who has been blaming everything on her hormones, share this episode with her. There is more going on. She deserves to know that. She is not done yet either.

Welcome To Not Done Yet

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to Not Done Yet, the podcast for midlife women who know deep down their story isn't finished. I'm your host, Rachel Perry, and here we're gonna talk about what's really happening in this season of life: the identity shifts, the quiet questions, the courage it takes to listen to yourself again, what it actually looks like to step into what's next, and why our boobs are hitting our knees. If you've ever looked at your life and thought, wait, is this it? Girl, you're in the right place. Because midlife isn't the end of your story, it's the moment you start paying attention to it. So take a breath and let's talk about what's really going on and what you want to do with it. Because, sister, you are not done yet.

Meeting Sherry And The Mission

SPEAKER_01

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Not Done Yet. I am so excited today because I have a friend who's joining us on the podcast. And it is, I'm just so happy to have her here because I, gosh, I have known her, I would say like a couple of years. And we met in, this is Sherry Johnson. Um, and we met in a group coaching program, and I just fell in love with her immediately. She and her twin sister actually is I met you both at the same time. And I remember, Sherry, we were checking in. I think it was it was in New York, and I'm like, wait, wait a second. They look, wait, is that the same person? I didn't realize that you guys were twins and that you were both, I had no idea. So it you are twins, right? We are, yep. Yeah, I was like, suddenly I'm like, wait, were you just sisters? No, they're twins, and they're just they're both delightful. But we have Sherry here today. Um, and we're just gonna have a really good conversation about midlife and how we are not done yet. And I want to share a little bit of Sherry's story, but before we dive in, would you just kind of give us a little background on who you are, Sherry?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, of course. And thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. And I love that you tell that story about meeting us because we've spent our lives confusing people and and then spent a very long time apart. And now that she's back in Canada and we've actually started working together, it's like this whole new thing where we're confusing people again. So it's it's funny.

SPEAKER_01

It's so funny. It's so funny.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and she's now my business partner, which makes us even I love that closer. Yeah. So backing up a little bit from that, yeah. Um, Jen and I, my sister Jen, we work, we are business partners now together. We we help women get their bodies, their time, their energy back so that they can live their most fulfilled, purpose-driven lives in their second chapter or whatever you want to call midlife now.

SPEAKER_01

I know, I know. I love that so much, and it's so perfect and resonates obviously with me with the whole not done yet movement. It it's so true. And it, I really do believe it is a second chapter. It's kind of like our chapter. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Oh, I like that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. It's like, okay, this is it's now our time. Because I think I talk about this all the time. Throughout our 20s, 30s, and 40s, I feel like that's just time that we are almost like focusing on other people. Really, it's it's not so much us. We somehow fall to the bottom of that. And now in midlife, it's like, okay, now it's your turn. You had said earlier when we were talking before this, that you actually left a corporate career in midlife around 45, which is exactly what I did too. I didn't leave corporate, but I left my million-dollar partnership because I would just did not feel aligned. It was time to move on. And you did something similar. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Like what was it that made you want to leave your corporate job? And what did you do?

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

The Breaking Point In Corporate Life

SPEAKER_00

So I spent dabble a little bit in human resources, but I spent about 20 years in that career. I hit 40, and it was really a pivotal time in my life. It was 2012. It was a year. I was going through everything. I was working for Blackberry at the time, and we were expected to be on all the time. We have a Blackberry, right? So I was going through a very like busy culture, on all the time culture, but I was also volunteering for a nonprofit board at the same time. We were my boyfriend at the time and I were moving house from one city to another. We were getting married that year. And then on top of it, we lost his brother. My dad had cancer, and I had a miscarriage. So 40 was a really hard, tough year. And, you know, this is the thing about it. Looking back on it, I was going through pretty much all of life's major stressors, with the exception of divorce and financial ruin. And if you had asked me on a scale of one to 10 how I was feeling, I would have been like, oh, maybe about a five. And so I pushed through that and maintained it for another five years. Oh, I was also, this is when I was studying for my nutrition diploma. Okay. So, you know, five years go by. I'm throwing everything at this. I don't have kids. I'm trying to have kids. So, on top of all of this, anybody out there who has been through fertility treatments will know you're getting up at 5 a.m., driving to the closest fertility clinic. For me, it was an hour away, getting your blood drawn, ultrasounds, all the things, showing up at your desk at nine o'clock as though you just rolled out of bed and had a shower. So at 45, I feel like that's sort of really when midlife hits your fertility starts to decline. I mean, mine was rapidly declining. I knew this because they were watching my hormones. And I got to a point where I was like, there's got to be a different way to do this. I don't want to, like, I was getting to the end of that journey to try to have kids. This is really kind of, I should probably tell this part of the story because it really is what got me to where I am now. We decided not to have kids, which was a really hard decision. It comes with a lot of grief, but it's what propelled me or catalyzed my whole career, my whole business beyond that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So my husband and I decided, okay, we're we're gonna be okay. We're not gonna have kids, we're not gonna go through IVF, we're just gonna stop. But his sister got pregnant. And there was a day when I remember sitting at my in-laws and watching her swimming with her big belly and her bathing suit and being like so triggered and envious and grief and all the things, and trying to put on the happy face, right? Trying to imagine it's not there, pretend it's not there. And this pivotal question I asked myself was there's gotta be something I can do about this. Like, this can't just be the way I have to live for the rest of my life. And that started this spiral of self-growth, self-like personal development, spiritual development. And it really started this the beginning of what is now a framework, but a discovery that my own self-worth was at the heart of it. So you and I were talking about the the cut those kind of societal forces that play a role in kind of everything that we do, especially when you hit midlife, like ageism and all the things we start to believe about ourselves. If you don't have kids, my belief was, and many of the women in this sort of child-free, childless sphere, mothers are better. Mothers are better. That's like, yeah, they are somehow better than us. And so I felt like I'm not as good, I'm not as worthy, I'm not as valuable. So I spent, you know, those five years that I just talked about. I was trying to prove my worth. I don't have kids, so I'm gonna do all these other things. I'm gonna make myself just as busy. I can be just as good. Yet inside I did not believe that. So it was this discovery that it wasn't just grief that I was feeling, it was this unworthiness and starting to pick apart. I kind of think of it as like this ball of string or this like tangled mess of Christmas lights, you know, like or necklace. Like you, you're I had to tease apart like what's grief? What's the societal beliefs that are telling me I'm supposed to be a mom and I'm not as worthy if I'm not? And what do I actually want? Because I thought all along it was going to be kids and that was gonna be my purpose. So what is my purpose now? And what's my legacy? All these things. So that started a framework, really, where I was coaching childless women at first, and then I started to see that this isn't just a thing for childless women. And I see here you're nodding your head, like this is I feel like it's epidemic. I do too. And I do too. It's like it's exacerbated in midlife when your fertility and your youth, it's all going away.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I shared this on my podcast. Now I do have children, and uh, thank you so much for sharing that with us because uh I that hit me. That hit me because you know we didn't have kids for eight years, and and I just remember that's all I wanted was to be a mom. And so the and we were obviously we did have kids, but it it I just remember I remember how that felt. And to go through that and and then decide, okay, you know what, we're not going to do this, we're not gonna keep doing this. And then bring in midlife into that whole thing, it really truly does. I mean, that's heavy. And I think midlife, period, is heavy, right? Like I think it's amazing and wonderful, but like you said, the societal, the, the views, it's almost like, and it was well, let me just add

Grief Self-Worth And Motherhood Myths

SPEAKER_01

this too. I thought it was also really interesting what you said about how society it felt like because as a not being a mother meant you just weren't worthy, right? And I think along those, not as deep as this, but I do feel, I remember someone saying to me, when you reach midlife or when you get to 50, you become invisible. And I remember thinking, I don't, I don't want to come, I don't want to become invisible. That's like putting baby in the corner. Like you don't do that. I don't want, I'm not ready to be invisible. Like I don't want to be invisible. And now some people probably are like, yeah, that's cool. Like I'm fine being invisible, but but I just don't, and I just don't feel like that's okay. And I I really do let's just dive into this conversation actually, because you had, I had shared something on TikTok oh, a couple of months ago, I feel like, where I was joking about how I took my daughter on a college tour and the tour guide had said, and for all you, you know, parents, who was it? Barry Manilo, I remember.

SPEAKER_00

Barry Manilo.

SPEAKER_01

I was like, Rob, Barry Manilo came here as if this was like a great, not as a student, but performed, as if this was amazing. And I was like, I can't stay. Barry Manilo, like, how old do you think I am? I what? And I was so offended, like laughingly offended. And I shared that in a joke, but you really brought up a really great point. You were like, why is that a bad thing if we're old, right? Like, why is it a bad thing to be viewed as old? And that really got me thinking because I'm like, why is that a bad thing? And it is cultural, right? Like we look at people who are older as like, we don't want that, right? Like we're all heading in that direction, but it's looked down upon somehow.

SPEAKER_00

Right. It's why there is a trillion dollar industry that is all based on healthcare products that make you look younger or healthcare services.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Which is and it's an unattainable standard for the average person.

SPEAKER_00

It is.

SPEAKER_01

It's it's just unattainable. And I, you know, the the things that we go through in midlife, like everything changes. Everything changes. And like everything changes. And there are emotional pieces to it that I didn't expect. Like, so I share, I'm way TMI on my podcast. And I was sharing that I have I've I've sort of reached the like irregular period stage. And I really have I had a hard time with that, if I'm being totally honest. Not that I thought that I was like still could have kids or anything, but there's it's an it was an unexpected experience for me, emotional experience. I'm like, why, why? People are like, why do you care? Like, you don't have to deal with your period. And I'm like, I don't know. I feel like it's the ending of something.

SPEAKER_00

Um you are not the only one. Oh my gosh. No. I and I at first I felt the same way. Like I kind of missed it when it didn't come. Like if you if that's possible. And I thought that I was feeling that because I don't have kids. So this really is the end of something. Like it is the end of my opportunity to have kids. But then a friend of mine who has kids said, I kind of miss my period after it was gone. And I was like, You do tell me about that. And she she said, What you're saying is like it feels like an ending. There's something, and there it is. I mean, it's the ending, right? But it's also the beginning.

SPEAKER_01

It is of something else. I mean, exactly. It's exactly. And I think that's what I want, you know, people who are listening to remember. Like, this is, and this is what we both of us talk about. Like, this is just the beginning. This is truly is a beginning. And I think that that's

Ageism And The Fear Of Invisible

SPEAKER_01

so exciting. So let's talk a little bit about what you do now. So you refer to yourself as like a modern medicine woman. Can you give us a little bit of information on what that means to you and the things that you do now?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So one of the things that I was doing in when I just as I was turning 40 was I was also studying to be a nutritionist. And so that was what started my business away from my human resources career. So I started because, and it kind of follows my own story. I was having trouble with, you know, balancing my hormones. So that was the first thing that I did. I was working with women to help them balance their hormones. And then I had miscarriages. So, and oh, and the the network marketing connection, that was when I brought doTERRA into my business. And so I started helping women get through miscarriage from a both a physical like standpoint. So recover from that and also prepare yourself for your next pregnancy if that's what you want. And to also get through the emotional side of that. And then as my, you know, as I my fertile years started to decline, I started to realize, oh my gosh, there's all these women who never get to have the pregnancy and they need help. So I started working with the women who wanted kids, never had them for whatever reason. It didn't matter whether it was miscarriages or they're single, never found the right person, whatever. And yeah, and so coming, so I really spent a number of years coaching in between there, like nutrition coaching. But then also I started doing spiritual life coaching, like really kind of getting at the self-worth underlying and the shame and like some of those emotions that are underlying miscarriage and not having kids. And then when my sister and I started to join forces, we started to realize, okay, she's working with mostly mothers. I was working with mostly childless women, but they're all dealing with the same issues. They're just kind of manifesting in different ways. And I was really missing the physical side of it, or I felt that that was a it's a necessary piece. I mean, it's it's the entry point for most people. They want to get rid of their symptoms in midlife, the menopause symptoms, the the perimenopause. And so, as modern medicine women, we use nutrition and supplements and all of the physical stuff to help with those physical symptoms. But, or and there are usually also emotional and spiritual connections underlying those physical symptoms. It's all connected.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So we're drawing on all three of those to really help women get through that.

SPEAKER_01

That's so amazing.

A Three-Part Healing Approach

SPEAKER_01

And you I had when we were just talking about this before, but just this blew my mind actually when I had I read what you had written just about how, you know, we blame these our things on like our symptoms on perimenopause or menopause or whatever. But and you said, you know, so many women come to you exhausted and all of the things, but it's not just hormones and nutrition, but that we are also like there are unseen forces. This is what blew my mind. Like the societal expectations, the patriarchy, the ageism. You see that that plays a part in all of these symptoms as well.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. If you kind of back it up, this might be the easiest way to describe. So we have physical symptoms, they manifest differently in different people. If you back that up, we we sort of think, oh, it's just estrogen dropping. But what happens when your estrogen drops is all these other things happen with your hormones. And not just your sex hormones, it's also insulin and cortisol. And we already have cortisol running high, like in general. So cortisol and like blood sugar imbalance, that insulin, blood sugar, cortisol, those three play a huge role in menopause symptoms. So, and that really can't just be managed with physical, like with nutrition and supplements. You've got to address the cortisol. So we saw stress as being a major contributor. And there's so many women out there who are probably saying, Well, I'm not, I'm not that stressed. And yet, I mean, we just live in a stressful environment. Our bodies we do. We have Paleolithic bodies that are living in like this world of distractions and overstimulation and toxins and all the things. We are just just you just wake up and open your eyes and you're stressed. Right.

SPEAKER_01

So we've just become immune, not immune, but like we're it's numb to us because it's it's such a norm for us.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. It's just normalized that we just live with us. So if you back that up, then you've got nervous system activation. And back up from there, what's causing that is the subconscious beliefs that you have about yourself. There's where the self-worth comes in. And where do those subconscious beliefs come from? Patriarchy, ageism are all these societal forces that tell us, oh, you're supposed to look young for the rest of your life. So you need Botox, you need lipstick, you need all the wrinkle-free creams and all the things, right? The baselps, the facelift, the neck lifts, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

All of it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, and I mean, don't even talk to me about the workplace. Like when you are in a corporate environment and going through some stuff. Like I remember one of my bosses telling me she was 10 years older than me. She had flooding. So, in case your listeners don't know what that is, sometimes what can happen is you have like super heavy periods. And like you can literally like soak a tampon in an hour kind of thing. Yeah. So she was in a meeting, and I won't say who this was for her own privacy, but she was wearing a white skirt.

unknown

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00

And instead of just saying, I'm gonna go home now, she liquid this is the days of liquid paper. She liquid papered the spot on her skirt and kept on going on with her day. Like this is what we do.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. It's bananas. And we don't even realize it. Like we don't even recognize that that is crazy. Not crazy in a bad way, but like, why are we? Yeah. Why are we doing that?

SPEAKER_00

And we've all done, like, you probably know someone who has done something like that. You, in fact, you told a story. You told a story about, and I don't know if you've told this on your podcast yet.

SPEAKER_01

I'm sure I have.

SPEAKER_00

You've told it on Instagram, so I'm assuming it's fair game, but you were at a speaking engagement.

SPEAKER_01

When I peed my pants. Yes. Yes. That's so, do you know what's so funny? Is I actually shared a similar story of me peeing my pants on Mother's Day, but actually that's not the story that Sherry is talking about. Yes, I had gone on stage, I was emceeing an event, and I was wearing a pantsuit. And on the under the pantsuit, I was like, I'm gonna wear Spanx because I needed to suck it all up. And I thought I needed to. And I was like, well, I'm just gonna wait to go to the bathroom until lunchtime. So lunchtime rolled around and everyone left. And I was like, okay, now I can go to the bathroom. But as we all know, as we get a little bit older, and this was what? I guess like five years ago, maybe more than that, actually, six or seven years ago. But anyway, it's not even aging. It's like I had to go so bad. And I was like, I'm just gonna pee. You know how there's like there's a hole in Spanx, it's like a pee hole where you can just, and I had mastered this, I thought. And so I sat down, I pulled my like my jumpsuit down and I was like, oh my gosh. And then I was like, why am I not hearing it in the toilet? And I looked down and I was literally peeing all over my clothes, all over my shoes, all over the floor. And I continue on about how I tried to clean it up and all the things. But as I ran, I was like, I have to go change. I have to go home or back to the hotel room and change. And I didn't know if I had an outfit to change it to. But as I left, I lied. I was like, the people who were in charge of the event, they were like, where are you going? And I was like, Oh, I'm having a bra like malfunction. Like, I need a I put on a, I don't even know what I said, but it was because I didn't want to be like, I peed my pants. Uh-huh. I was so embarrassed that I had done that. That I was like, let me just make something that's more socially acceptable, which is like my strapless bra broke or something. In my mind, that was more. Is that the story you're talking about?

SPEAKER_00

It was, yes. And and you touched on it the when you started to tell the story, the fact that you felt like you needed to wear the Spanx and you know, just like a lot about it went back to the like you're right, you're going on stage in a minute, and you've got to race back to the hotel. Like, imagine what kinds of things are going on for women behind the scenes that we don't know about and we feel like we can't talk about it.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. And you know what? Men don't deal with it. It's like not to get on, but this does not happen. This is not something that they deal with. So, yeah, that makes total sense that all of the these are the societal expectations that we put ourselves that we're under. And I mean, it's a whole nother story. We can go into like, you know, seeing my girls, you know, as they're, you know, going through it all. It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's crazy.

Sleep Exhaustion And Rest Guilt

SPEAKER_01

But um, well, how do let me ask you this what is the solution? Or how do you help women who come to you exhausted and not sleeping? Because here's something else that I I this occurred to me last week. You know, the exhaustion that's so many midlife women have, we're always like, oh, it's because I'm not sleeping because of hormones, or it's it's, you know, it's because I'm going through perimenopause or menopause or whatever. But what if part of it is also because we're denying ourselves? We're continually kind of going back into the whole like the outside forces, the external forces that are affecting our nervous system. What if part of that exhaustion is also because you were ignoring what we really want?

SPEAKER_00

So you have hit the nail on the head. That's such a great example, actually, because sleep exhaustion, like it's it's it's so pervasive in our society. So the way that we approach that, it's it's a three-pronged approach. So, yes, there's physical things you can do for exhaustion, for sleep. There's supplements you can take to balance out your cortisol that's gonna help, you know, to support your adrenal glands to help you sleep, um, to help you sleep better. But then there's also that societal pressure that says, you gotta be productive, you gotta be efficient, you gotta be the woman who can do it all. And that woman never rests. So she feels guilty for taking a nap. She feels guilty if she's not done everything before she goes to bed. So she just keeps pushing the bedtime later because, oh, I just gotta make the lunches. Oh, I just gotta, I got one more thing to do. And so that's where the self-worth comes in. We feel like we're not worthy of rest.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So, and that comes from part partially society. Well, okay, let's break down society. It's it comes from patriarchy, it comes from women entering a workforce where being able to thrive on like five hours of sleep is celebrated. And that by the way, this is so fascinating to me, came from Thomas Edison when he created invented the light bulb. He was like, We don't need sleep anymore because we can see. So sleep is a waste of time.

SPEAKER_01

Wow, I had no idea.

SPEAKER_00

Me neither. I thought I thought that was so fascinating. I had to mention it. But those are the kinds of things like that becomes like the water we swim in, the air we breathe. Like we don't even think about where it came from. But there's all these people going around, like CEOs and high-powered men and in high-powered positions, saying, Well, I only need five hours of sleep and I'm in the office by 7 a.m. And so women feel like they need to do that. Yeah. And we don't have the the bodies, like our bodies are cyclical, they are not nine to five, they were not meant to live like that.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

So there's, and we feel like in order to be valuable in the workplace, or wherever, it doesn't even matter, that we need to follow that. We need to show our that we're capable and we're strong and we're we don't need as much sleep either, and we can do all the things. So we we push through and we multitask and we keep going when our bodies are actually asking for rest.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I mean, especially in corporate America, that's just kind of a a joke, right? Like it, yeah. So let me

People Pleasing As A Stress Response

SPEAKER_01

ask you this. I know that you have a a quiz that people can take it called which midlife coping strategy is costing you the most. Is that something that because here's what I would love to talk about a little bit, and then we'll just kind of wrap up. But I think, and correct me if if you teach something different, but we don't kind of going back to what we were just saying, we don't even know that we're coping. We don't even know. We don't even realize that that's what we're doing, right? We we it's almost like we don't recognize that we're under stress because this is just what we do as women. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Totally.

SPEAKER_01

So, what are some of the uh things that they'll come up with on that quiz? Like what are some of the coping strategies?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So one of the first ones Let me, I think I'm gonna pick two.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, one of the ones that I think most women will resonate is people pleasing. And most women out there, at least in the crowds that you and I run in, already know they're people pleasers and they call themselves recovering people pleasers. Yes. Yes. And yet they still find themselves picking up the phone when they have a friend calling who they know is going to need emotional support and they're not capable of giving it. They will still say yes to the project at work because if they say no, well, I'm in my 50s, so I got to be careful. You know, it's not something you say out loud, but that's running in the back of our minds, right? Um, and what's really so what they're gonna find out is there's within that quiz, there's six of these coping strategies. There, we don't think of them as coping strategies, we think of them as just things that we do. People pleasing is just that's what we do as women. And they'll find out whether like what is their dominant one, but then they're also going to find out what's kind of underneath of that. So with people pleasing, the reason why recovering people pleasers still can't stop is because they're not, it's not a matter of willpower and like just trying to say no. That usually doesn't work. It's what we're doing is avoiding the shame that comes with saying the no, because we've been taught that nice women are reasonable and helpful and nice, and they don't disappoint people. They please. So that's gonna send you down a shame sprawl. What happens to a lot of recovering people pleasers is they say no and then they see the look on the other person's face, or it's like their mother who is starts begging, and they're like, Oh, all right, all right, I'll just do it. And and they abandon themselves. Right. Because that is, especially when it comes, I feel like especially when it comes to your parents, you want to please 100%. They're the ones that it hurt us to say no to. So you have to get to what is the what we break down in that quiz is what's the what's the coping strategy? What's the stress response that's under that? Because it could be fight or flight or freeze, fawning is actually a people pleasing. What you're doing is like it's fawning, right? It's huh, yeah. Right? It's when um dogs do this, they like get submissive when they're with like an alpha dog, they roll over, they might like paw a little bit or they'll bow their heads. That's what we're doing. We're fawning. So you're going into a stress response when you're people pleasing, your nervous system is activated. You're like you, you know, you probably feel your heart rate ramping up. You're like you're just starting to get flustered because you're trying to think of the way to say, no, I really don't want to do this. And there's a subconscious belief underneath of that. So that's that people pleasing is going to like that raises your cortisol, which is then going to impact your symptoms. So if you're doing that all day long.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Now, a lot of people that I talk to, a lot of midlife women will say, Oh, that's one thing that I don't do anymore. I'm I don't care as much about what people think. But I which is great. And I do think that there's a level to that, but I also think sometimes it's so ingrained in us that we don't even realize we're still doing it.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. You know, there's the whole the I don't care movement on social media. And I love that. But at the same time, a lot of those same women are like, like they might not care. There's a difference between embarrassment and shame. So when they say I don't care, they're no longer getting embarrassed about wearing whatever the heck they want. They're no longer getting embarrassed about, oh, I I walked into, I don't know, the door in the coffee shop. Right. Um, like they they don't care about that stuff anymore. They don't get embarrassed, but they still feel shame.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And it's the shame that causes the people pleasing.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. Yeah. And so it's like that deeper level. So how can people find

What To Tell The Overwhelmed Listener

SPEAKER_01

that quiz? Where is your where is the quiz?

SPEAKER_00

Midlifewomenrising.com slash quiz.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Midlifewomenrising.com forward slash quiz. And that's going to be in the notes. So let me ask you, I feel like I could talk to you for hours. So many more things I want to touch on. So we're going to have to have you back. But this is a question that I love to ask people who come on to the podcast. This is kind of a new thing because it's a newer podcast. So I'm starting this trend. But here's my question for you. If there's a woman listening right now who's in the thick of it, right? Feeling overwhelmed, feeling invisible, maybe a little lost, and she just needs someone to tell her the truth, to be like, listen, what do you what would you tell her?

SPEAKER_00

Oh my goodness. I know I should have told you that ahead of time. Yeah. I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is you are worthy, but that it's so easy to sort of intellectualize that. It's much harder to get to the heart of like to really embody that. Um what would I say to her? Well, I think it would be more a little piece of advice, which would be to start looking at what do you believe? What do you believe about yourself? What do you believe about the world? What do you believe about midlife? You know, some people say to me when when so Jen and I have a podcast and it has the word midlife in it, midlife rising. And I floated that title around in some of the business groups I'm in, and the women in midlife were like, oh, cringe, like don't use the word midlife. Really? Yeah. So even the word all it is, is it's midlife. Life. It's just a word, but we're making meaning out of that. So what is it that you believe about midlife? What are you telling yourself about midlife? So I think that would be what it's I suppose. What I would tell her is that you've got underlying beliefs that are coming from society, from you know, patriarchy, pronatalism, ageism, that are leading you to believe things about yourself and about midlife. See if you can get to those.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, that's so good. That's so good. And yes, I did want to like talk about, give a shout out to your podcast, Midlife Rising.

Retreat Plans And Final Sendoff

SPEAKER_01

So definitely check that out. Thank you. Um, and you you have a retreat coming up. When is it?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yes. It's not till November. Yeah, it's not till November, but we're going to Peru and we're going to Machu Picchu. And Machu Picchu sells out. So we've got a few weeks left before we need decisions. So yeah, that's an eight-day retreat for midlife women specifically.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, amazing. I love that. I love that. That's my goal too. I would not to go to Machu Picchu, but uh to have not done yet live experiences because I think that could be so powerful. You know, there's so much amazingness that happens when you're in the same room with other women, um, other midlife women who are ready to do to do what's next because we're not done yet. Sherry, thank you so much for being here. We do need to continue this conversation. So whether it be on your podcast or coming back to mine, we need to continue this conversation for sure. You are a wealth of information. Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you so much for having me. It has been such a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01

I just love you. I just love you. And listen, if you're if you are listening and you're like, oh my gosh, this is such an amazing episode, go find Sherry. Sherry, where can they find you on the socials?

SPEAKER_00

Midlife Women Rising.

unknown

Perfect.

SPEAKER_01

Just check it out, y'all. It will all be linked in the show notes. And if you know another midlife women woman who this might resonate with, be sure to share this with her because we are not done yet. And we need to spread the word so that we can because imagine what happens when midlife women decide, oh yeah, we're not done yet. Like, look what happens. Imagine the incredible moves that will happen within this world. So that's the mission. Jerry, thank you so much for being here. I so appreciate it.