Want to Have a Magnificent Midlife? Here's How with Rachel Lankester

Christine Li  0:01  
Welcome back to the Make Time For Success podcast. This is episode 51. If you are quaking in your boots thinking that time is passing you by and you're getting older by the minute, I want you to take a deep breath and know that this episode is going to light you up. Instead of getting your knickers in a twist as my friends in the UK might say, I would love you to learn from my special guest, Rachel Lankester, who happens to be from the UK about the opportunities and joys available to us in the period of our lives we call midlife. Rachel opened my eyes to the difficulties some women faced with being diagnosed with early menopause, but she also educated me about what all women can do to make sure they are thriving physically, mentally and emotionally in midlife. Rachel Lankester is the author of Magnificent Midlife, Transform Your Middle Years of Menopause and Beyond. She is also a midlife mentor and founder of Magnificent Midlife and online hub celebrating and empowering women 40 and over. She's on a mission to change how society perceives women, and how women perceive themselves through midlife and beyond. She certainly changed my mind about what is ahead for me in that life. And I learned so much from her inside this episode. Let's go enjoy this episode together now.

Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped 1000s of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn a powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy, and how you can create success on demand. 

Welcome to the Make Time For Success podcast. Hello, my dear listeners. It's Dr. Christine li here on the make time for success Podcast. Today. I welcome the amazing woman, author, podcast host and leader of a whole group of women, women in midlife, her name is Rachel Lankester. And as we are recording right now I am getting to know Rachel myself. We were introduced to each other by the lovely and amazing Ricki Heller, who you can hear on this podcast in Episode 10, a fantastic episode entitled Success Over Sugar. But today we're going to focus all on what Rachel has to share with us her life story, her life's journey, and how she can help you to feel more confident at midlife. Thank you for joining me today. Rachel, welcome. Wow,

Rachel Lankester  3:07  
I'm blushing over here. That was a lovely introduction. Thank you. It's such a pleasure to be here.

Christine Li  3:13  
Oh, it's lovely to meet you and to get to read your beautiful book, and to have you share your expertise on the show with our lovely listeners. Why don't we start there? Why don't we start with your new creation? Your amazing book, magnificent midlife? Could you please tell us your journey of how you got to be a book author what the story behind it has been and how you're feeling now about it.

Rachel Lankester  3:40  
I'm quite amazed that I have managed to publish a book, I still can't quite get my head around it. It took rather a long time. And like all the best creations it started out probably a long time ago. So when I was 41, which is 14 years ago, now I had a diagnosis of early menopause. And that is a whole decade earlier than it really should have been. And that put me on a journey. It sent me off discovering things because I'm a natural researcher. And I like to find things out. And I don't like to accept things necessarily, that I don't think are either true or helpful. So I went out and first of all, I found a nutritionist. And by changing my diet, I was able to get my periods back. So I went from a definitive, you've gone through menopause diagnosis to getting my periods back. And the reason why I found this out was because I was trying for a second child. And the second child wasn't to be sadly. But looking back, I wouldn't actually change what happened. It was an incredible learning experience. But it taught me that as we go through Through midlife and we go through these changes, which are physical and emotional, very much emotional as well as physical, we have much more control over our experience than we might necessarily think we have, sometimes we can get a bit of like, all the hormones are changing, we're going through menopause. And sometimes we can think, oh, there's not a lot we can do about it, we've just got to sort of go with the flow or with the lack of the flow, I like to say, but we can impact our experience menopause, we can change the way that we think about ourselves going through menopause, menopause has so many negative connotations. And my book is about changing all of that, because I really think it is an incredibly empowering time in a woman's life. And as you said, before we hit record, I start the book with saying that the end of my fertility has actually become the most fertile time of my life. And I'm doing things now that I never would have done before. And I really no book. So it's all rather exciting, really. So you might think I'd have a negative view of menopause because of what happened to me, you know, I didn't have my dream of a second child, I managed to get the periods back for a little bit, but then my body went back to what it wanted to do. And I went back into so called menopause about sort of 4546. And now I'm 55. And you might think I'd look by the girl that was terrible. But But I don't have that view at all. I really think that it can be a very powerful time. And I want women to know that I want women to be prepared, not scared. That's my little motto.

Christine Li  6:38  
I love the motto, I want to re emphasize that this book and Rachel's writing is incredible, the language, the imagery, the message of openness and acceptance, and also just encouragement to develop a more positive self view and view of aging. And midlife and womanhood is so great. It's been so pleasurable to start the book. I admit, I have not finished it quite yet. But I do say I just got it a couple days ago. So I will finish this book. And I am excited to learn more. I do feel like there's a whole phase I had of me that I feel relatively unprepared and uneducated about. So I'm looking forward to getting more information from you. Right now, before we go on, when the doctor or doctors gave you that diagnosis of early menopause. Was there a part of you just that thought, Oh, this is over. I'm quitting. My body's quitting any of those kinds of thoughts? Could you share that experience?

Rachel Lankester  7:46  
Absolutely. Yeah, it was initially it was devastating. It really was utterly devastating. And part of that was because it was such a shock. And I didn't understand what it was and what it meant for me and I write about coming out of the doctor's office night, I knew nothing about what this meant, and how to take care of myself what to do. Why did happen the whole decade earlier, I didn't know. And I was devastated, though. You know, my dream of having a second child, I'd wanted a child another one. Since the first one was born as been rather long time. I got divorced in the middle, and I was trying to find a married make a baby with me and I didn't succeed. And then I found one had a vasectomy and had three children is it's in the book. It's all very complicated. But it was the but possible. So that was the dream gone. But also, I think, in Western society, we worship youth so much. And we have been taught to believe that menopause is the end of meaningful life. I genuinely think that that's how we are taught to think about it. If we're taught to think about it at all, because it's still a very taboo subject. We're not encouraged to talk about it. There's a shame about anything sort of womanly isn't if you think about periods, and childbirth and menopause is there sort of icky things, we don't really talk about them. And I want to change all of that. And I think we really should be talking about them because they are the essence of who we are the they are the essence of our power. And when we go through menopause, we don't lose our value. But I thought and my my literally my first thought as I came out of the doctor's office was that I was now a shriveled up old prune. And nobody had actually said that to me. But I bet you if I was to do a random survey of 50 women about what they thought they would be like in post menopause, that would come up at least 10% of the time, because it's that kind of phraseology. That is very much part of my culture. It's very much over here, and I think what I've done in the book is I've researched because it's very much something in what I call Anglo culture. So the cultures that have come from Anglo Saxon societies. So that's America, that's the UK, that's Australia, New Zealand, a bit of South Africa. It's those cultures where English has been the predominant language from the start, whether there's been a colonial influence, or whatever it is, but it's based in Protestantism as well, this was all very fascinating for me as I went and did the research. You don't just have to go to East Asia to get a more positive view of aging, you can get a more positive view of women aging, in particular, in Catholic countries. So if you look at Europe, you know, you get France, Spain, Greece, which is Orthodox, you get a much more positive approach to aging. But I, my initial response was clouded was cloaked in all of this historical negativity about women getting older, and the Protestant idea that our ability to work is tied to our value. And therefore as we get older, were less able to work. And that has not caught up. Because me as a 55 year old woman, I am still up for changing the world. I'm not gonna stop anytime soon. You know, I'm not retiring. I don't want to do that now. But yeah, so that was, and it took me a long time to realize that, just because I thought these things didn't mean they were true. And that's a big theme of the book is to say, just because you think something just because you've been taught something just because the media tells you this, the media tells you need to cover up the visible signs of aging, it's rubbish. And you can actually say, No, I'm not going to buy into this anymore. And if enough of us do it, we will be very, very powerful.

Christine Li  12:02  
We are very powerful already. Right? We just need to let other people know. Okay, thank you for explaining the Protestantism over Catholicism and the different we take into the weeds there. No, I you explained it beautifully. And if we haven't mentioned, Rachel is calling from London, to have that all make sense fully, which is amazing. And as you were speaking, I began thinking about younger women, women, even in their teens, who are kind of beginning a battle with their bodies, because of media because of society because of stress because of changes. And that. I don't know that topic just came up that we're kind of in a habit of tussling, and arguing with our body and how it is behaving and how it's appearing and how it's feeling. And then we're trying to hide ourselves make ourselves smaller, or less noticeable or less loud, less visible. Could you talk to us about that internal battle with showing up confidently and beautifully and with strength?

Rachel Lankester  13:19  
I think it's so important, because our thoughts really do control our destiny. And you know, I say you mentioned before that I I said that ageism begins between our ears. And that's I was credit Ashton Applewhite, who's an anti ageism, activist for telling me that line. And I love it. Because we can be ages towards ourselves, we can limit ourselves, we can get to midlife. And we can, as you said, we can shrink. And I often think when women talk about beginning to feel invisible in midlife, we can make ourselves invisible, because we can shrink, we can stop taking up space, we can stop putting ourselves forward, we can wear really nondescript clothing, and, you know, I tend to go around a lot in red, that's my brand color, but I like red, and it makes me feel confident. And you know, what I want women to do is to stand up with a straight back and to be aware of the impact they could potentially have on the outside world, not just how they're feeling but to try. It's even as simple as you know, adopting that it power Woman pose, you're standing there, as if you own the place. You know, women in my community, they'll talk about going into a bar, and there'll be ignored, but maybe that's literally because of their body language, you know, if they were standing tall and forward, and if they were ignored, they didn't say excuse me. I'm here. I was next. Don't be apologetic about it. Be absolutely this is me. This is my right to be served in the order in which I was here. And I think that being apologetic, we can start to become apologetic as we get a bit older as we go through midlife because of that we perceive our own value to be diminishing, because that's what we've been taught. And you talked about the teenagers, you know, teenagers are buying anti wrinkle creams. What is that about? It's just madness.

Christine Li  15:22  
So a lot of marketing, I will say, Well, that's the thing.

Rachel Lankester  15:25  
And that is what I say in the book. Just imagine if every single woman on the planet bought the hair dye and bought the anti wrinkle creams and did all of that. You have a national economy right there, predicated on women feeling they have to cover up the visible signs of aging, and men don't men become silver foxes? Men don't worry about these things.

Christine Li  15:50  
Yes, there is a whole industry. And there's a whole culture of hyper concern about any sign of aging. As you've mentioned, I am now curious about what you know about the hormonal changes of midlife? What we should know about that? And maybe why we aren't educated more about these things. Let's start there, because I tend to ask so many questions. While so let's start with what do we need to know about the hormonal bodily changes of midlife?

Rachel Lankester  16:26  
Okay, well, for start off, people, generally, you're starting to know that the age of menopause is 51. But the average age of menopause, but menopause is actually just a moment in time. It is one year after your last period if you're over 50. And it is two years after your last period if you are under 50. And just by that definition, I know that I hadn't gone through menopause when I was told that I had, because I certainly hadn't gone for two years without a bleed. So what happens to women is that and this happened to me as well as I can't possibly be a menopause, I'm too young, it can happen so much earlier. Well, the fluctuating hormones can happen so much earlier, estrogen and progesterone start to fluctuate much more than they do with our monthly cycles. And that can happen throughout our 40s. Some women for some it happens even even earlier than that there are teenagers who've gone through early menopause, which is terribly sad. But basically, it's just about being aware of how you're feeling. And what happens in the UK, and I'm guessing it probably happens in the US as well is that women will start to feel a bit off, they won't be able to put their finger on exactly what's going on. But they'll start to feel a bit off. And eventually they might go to their doctor. And what they described, the doctor ends up with them being given a prescription for antidepressants, which is absolutely mad. Whereas what they really need is some advice on how to balance their hormones as they go through this period of fluctuation. Because once you go through menopause, everything settles down, you're then back to your basically your pre pubescent self, you know you're nice and regular, you haven't got the monthly periods, you haven't gotten the monthly cycles, you haven't got the stomach cramps. It's wonderful.

That's what I think anyway. But you know, so it starts a lot earlier, I think it's very important for us to be curious about what's going on. And also to keep a diary. So one of the first things that women may have is a hot flash. And that may be a really obvious sign that hormones are changing. And they don't quite know why a hot flash happens still. But it is one of the earliest indicators and feeling off. But anxiety can come on anger, we get more angry. And I actually I like this because I like to frame it positively that you know, anger is just another word for passion. And if we can turn our anger into our passion, then it can be a really powerful force for good. But we're frightened of our anger because we're taught to be small, we're taught to be good. We're taught to, you know, collaborate and be nice. And all of that was actually as we go through menopause and we have less estrogen I call estrogen the biddable hormone. I call it the hormone that keeps us in control. It's the one that makes us nurturer, everybody else. It makes us want to have children it makes us want to look after the children. Well, when we have less of that. We have more of a hormonal parity with men. So no wonder men might be a little bit scared of postmenopausal women. Because we don't care so much. We're more prepared to put ourselves higher up that totem pole of influence than we might ever have done before. And I think that is the power and the gift of menopause. But going back to the hormonal changes. So there are certain things we can do to try and balance our hormones. Obviously a lot of women like to do to take menopause hormone therapy. I went on that for early menopause, but I came off it at so called normal menopause age of 51. And personally, I prefer to manage things naturally. So you can you can take HRT, but always remember that the HRT is only ever going to balance your sex hormones, you know, you've got all your other hormones, we've got over 100 of them. And it's all a delicate balancing act. So it's not necessarily going to be the panacea that you're looking for. And I like to think of, and I've talked about menopause as a gift already. But I really think it is a gift because I see those issues that happen with menopause, like the hot flashes, the anxiety, the achy joints, all sorts of things like that. They are the body's way of telling us that all is not right. So it's like an early warning system, I think. And it's telling us if we're curious, and we listen to what we might want to think about changing. And my book is about that. It's all about how to think about what's going on with the body and emotionally and think about what we need to deal with to be able to thrive long term. So that's what's what's going on in the perimenopause years. But some of the things we can do, we need to get a handle on our stress. If we are stressed, we are likely to have a worse experience of menopause. And I have no doubt that it was my very stressful work environment, I'd worked in a really stressful corporate job for a long time that caused my early menopause. I've no doubt about that. And also, my response to the early metaphor, made it worse because I had bought into all the negative narratives about how bad this was. And it was the end of my value to you know, the planet and everything else. So you know, we need to get a handle on our stress. And the body is telling us to do that in midlife, I think midlife and menopause is a really good time to sort of take stock and think about all the things we need to do. Diet and lifestyle are massive, but diet, for example. So caffeine is going to cause hot flashes, alcohol is going to cause hot flashes, sugar is going to cause hot flashes. And one of the things that helped me get my periods back by changing my diet was to cut out all sugar, I cut out alcohol, I cut out caffeine, I cut out sugar.

The idea was to get my blood sugar levels stable. And when our blood sugar levels are not stable, that's when the body can really suffer hormonally because the body just can't cope. It's got the hormonal fluctuations, and then we are causing fluctuations as well. We are making the body believe that we are in fight or flight because our blood sugar level has dropped. And then we eat the carbohydrates or the sugar and then we have a spike. So we go up and down all over the place. And it doesn't help at all. So think about the diet. Think about stress levels. It's a time to up the Exercise Exercise has been proven to help women through menopause. It's very interesting, because in some cultures and I talk about this in the book, you know, some women don't notice anything other than their periods of stops. In fact, that was the case for me. I didn't even notice that it was only by having the hormone test that I got this information. I haven't noticed anything at all. But I will say we've been working with our wombs all our lives and midlife and menopause is not the time to start fighting with them. It's much better to embrace what's happening. Learn from it, take the gifts that it's going to give us in terms of teaching us about ourselves, then we can thrive.

Christine Li  24:14  
I your entire approach to talking about this set of issues and concerns. I love the tips that you've given me and our listeners. I'm going to recaps, watch your stress. Take stock of what is causing you that stress and really take an active role in making sure that you protect your body and mind from any toxic stressors that you can control. And do believe in yourself to the level that you feel that you can have an effect on the stress vibes that are coming into your life and into your home and workplace. The second tip is to consider your diet and lifestyle as also a component that's so connected with stress levels, the COVID period that we're in, I believe I, if I can share my own story, I think I gained a few more pounds that then was reasonable, probably because of a more sedentary lifestyle, stress, a feeling of being trapped sometimes. And also what is there to comfort us, but food oftentimes. So I have recently tried to take that whole system of behavior back. But I do agree that diet has a huge role in how we feel about our bodies, our wellness, our sense of self, so connected to diet, and then the importance of putting in exercise if you don't have exercise in your schedule, and making a frequent visitor a frequent friend in your schedule. This is how I'm trying to get over the the extra pounds is to say I schedule around the exercise. Now I don't have the exercise be an afterthought, or the last thing that is put in the schedule, because then it's not gonna happen. I also liked what you said about the hormones changing and allowing us to be on hormonal parity with men. But then my mind went to the thought that there's no other scaffolding for women, in terms of the beliefs about what women can do in later life. That was too extreme a comment, but there's little scaffolding that can support a woman who is interested in showing up more being bolder, having a bigger voice, taking on male systems and co working with men at a high level. Can you talk about how we can co create as women, new systems, new philosophies for women showing up more showing up more powerfully in later life?

Rachel Lankester  27:03  
Okay, I'm gonna start with the whales. So I learned one of my early guests on my podcast was a woman called Darcy stanky, who's written a book called Flash count diary, and it's a personal memoir about her menopause experience. And she describes how her Minervois experience was completely transformed, but by her encounter with a whale, and by her discovery that there are two creatures on this earth who go through menopause, there are human females, and whales. And when whales go through menopause, they become the leaders of their pods. For 50 odd years, yeah, they don't shrink back into obscurity. They don't sit in the corner on deck knitting, you know, they're out there, leading their pods. And you can extrapolate that the evolutionary reason for women to go through menopause like whales is that we are far more useful to our communities, post menopause as leaders than as breeders, when I heard that when I learned that experience, and in fact, Darcy actually gets in a boat. And she goes, she gets obsessed with this whale called Granny, otherwise known as j two, but Granny, and she finds this whale because you can identify the whales from their dorsal fin. And she tells me this story in the podcast, she makes me cry, because it's just so inspiring. And it completely turns around what we think about menopause, doesn't it, it could then become something that we actually look forward to. No more periods, no more period pain, no more emotional fluctuating, you know, over the cycle of them every month, you know, and we don't need to worry about getting pregnant anymore. If, you know, obviously, there are issues to deal with, like me, I wanted to and then couldn't. But if we reframe it, and then we reframe it, in terms of, this is my time, I don't need to be nurturing everybody else anymore. But I know so much. I have so much experience, I have so much wisdom. And the world needs me. This is very much the point in my book that the world needs us. And I talk about how you've only got to look at the countries that have dealt better with COVID You know, they're often led by women and you know, we don't tend to go to war, we don't tend to, you know, create issues that testosterone we collaborate and we can move that nurturing energy into bigger nurturing energy. So we might have nurtured, you know, smaller things and we can start nurturing bigger things and having an impact in our communities, or in our villages or our towns or our cities. Whatever. But to believe that that is our role and our potential as a postmenopausal woman. And that really excites me, I just have this vision in this army throughout the world of these postmenopausal women just changing everything and going, Oh, not having that anymore. We're doing it this way. Now. Yes, thank you very much. You've messed it up enough. Thank you move on.

Christine Li  30:27  
We love this message, we believe you. You're making me think of different movements in the United States that are led by women, for gun control. Moms Demand Action, I think is what it is called. And I love it. And we can all be a part, right? Because it does start with the self belief and how we can strengthen our potential from what's between our ears, I totally agree with you. I'm going to shift our conversation just slightly to make sure that we cover the topic of procrastination, because you did mention to me that you were able to overcome your own procrastination to be a podcaster and an author. So I'd love to hear your journey there, too.

Rachel Lankester  31:13  
Okay, so my procrastination, I am convinced was just entirely based in fear. It was just nerves and being frightened of putting myself out there. I'm highly introverted. And yet I have a big message and a big voice. So trying to balance that out was was really tricky. And it took me a long time to start the podcast. But now that I do it, I absolutely love it. And I had to learn it and do it. And I'm also quite competitive. So when I saw other people doing podcasts, I thought, I gotta get my boogers out there. Because I've got important things to say, and people are not hearing me. So I think the podcast was easier the book, the book was more difficult, much more difficult. And I know that at each stage of the process, I procrastinated because I was frightened. I was frightened. Because once once a book is written, it's there. And people can tear you apart, you know, for what you've written. And when you were describing earlier, I was nearly in tears again, because it was just it's so beautiful. And thank you so much. But it is a labor of love. It is it is like the baby I didn't have it really is yes. And I have poured my heart and my soul into it. So it's very vulnerable. And that was that took a lot of I suppose, bravery, courage or just foolhardiness to think, Okay, I'm gonna put this out there, you know. And it's funny. When I showed the book to my mom, I gave her a copy. And she said, Oh, I'm going to give it to my friends. Why is it we'll just go and read the book about sex this chapter about sex first, because because you might not want to just just check it out first. And you said Oh, yes, I did notice that in the table of contents. So I was nervous, then, you know, what was she going to think about it? But I, I have to say I just saw the, you know, I've got this has got to be everything. But I know about this topic. It's got to include everything. And sex is a very big part of midlife insecurity, especially as we go through menopause. So yeah, I think it was how did I deal with it I just kept plodding on I think I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. And it was also it really was the lots of people writing books about menopause. And nobody was saying what I was saying, and I didn't agree with what they were saying, either. And that made me more determined that I had to get my voice out there. So yeah, but I think just keep on going. But there was a whole year during COVID I got pretty down. And I didn't write and I couldn't write. And I shelved it for quite a while. And then I got a therapist, and she got me back on the wagon. And then I started again and then I had much more energy to get it done. So I think yeah, keep putting one foot in front of the other and get help talk to somebody about it get some accountability as well. That was brilliant. Then I told my community that I was doing it and then I was like, I've got to do it now because I've told them

Christine Li  34:38  
Yeah, beautiful. Keep other women close. Absolutely. I just want to share something funny you use the word foolhardiness because I'm not in the UK. I was hearing that word as full heartedness. Oh, I want to just add that for our listeners that that's a big belief of mine. If it's in your heart, it means It's enough to push forward. It, that's all you need. They really don't need anybody's approval. You could push anything that is creatively in your heart out. And that's why Rachel and I have beautiful podcasts to share with you and an avenue to reach people with our hearts now, and with our messages to not hold yourself back, not shrink yourself. You can knit and lead to. Yes, I do believe that and you can be yourself and be strong and be visible. Be powerful. Change the world. Just figure out what is on your mind and heart to do so Rachel, you have been an amazing guest. Thank you so much for sharing your heart and your beautiful new book magnificent midlife with us. Could you please share with our listeners how they can stay in touch with you and how they can get the book?

Rachel Lankester  35:53  
Yeah, so you can find me I'm magnificent midlife everywhere. So on. All the social channels are magnificent my life. My podcast is called by numbers and my life. And my website is magnificent my life.com. And if you put slash book, you will get to the page where you can get my book. And if you put in slash resources, you will get to a page where you can get some free midlife resources to help you on your own magnetism in life journey. And yeah, so that's it. Really. That's where I am. That's where you can find me.

Christine Li  36:22  
Okay, beautiful. I'm so glad you're my new friend. I'm going to stay in touch with you. And thank you again for the gifts you've shared with us today.

Rachel Lankester  36:30  
Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to your listeners.

Christine Li  36:34  
Okay, we'll see you next week. Take care have one take care of yourselves. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time For Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. Talk to you soon.

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