WIWIK S1E9 The Body Whispers Before It Screams
[00:00:00] I just want to thank our partner, Mira Fertility Tracking, for working with us to help women to get connected to the opportunity to actually measure hormones at home. It is the technology that I personally used during my menopausal transition. It was life changing for me. You can find more information on Mira on our website at menocoaching.
Irene Ortiz-Glass: com and you can also find it on our show notes. We look forward to supporting you and your hormone transition.
Hello and welcome to What I Wish I Knew. I’m your host, Irene Ortiz Glass. What I Wish I Knew is dedicated to providing women with information and a guided path to finding healing, purpose, and joy. It is also to provide women with power and permission to go inward during perimenopause and menopause, to find their inner [00:01:00] compass, while also actively making choices that allow them to thrive during this period of time in life.
Irene Ortiz-Glass: In this season, we are focused on issues surrounding the menopause transition. and what I wish I knew. On today’s podcast, I’m very excited um, to be speaking about Menopause Day. Um, October is Menopause Month. Um, just a little excerpt here. Since 2009, the International Menopause Society, in collaboration with the World Health Organization, has designated October as World Menopause Awareness Month, with October 18th celebrated as World Menopause Awareness Day.
The purpose of the day is to raise awareness. of the menopause transition, but also options for healing. So, this is a really important day for me for a couple of reasons. One is the opportunity to create awareness through education, and also I’m very excited to share that on October 18th, my book, The Body Whispers Before It Screams, will be available to the public on [00:02:00] Amazon.
So, in prep for that, um, I’m going to be sharing a little bit today about the book. I’m reading a couple excerpts out of the book. If you have interest in pre ordering the book, you can go online at mennocoaching. com and feel free to send us your email, um, register with us and we will send you the link once it’s available.
So let’s go directly to a couple of pieces of the book. So there’s a chapter that I wrote called A Desperate Journey. I now understand that during the perimenopause transition, many women experience great hormonal and overall body system dysregulation. The physical and emotional pain is often so great we can hardly tolerate it, leaving us feeling hopeless.
Some fortunate women will have it easy and experience very few symptoms. Others will experience them all. Unfortunately, we rarely talk about it. It’s a dark secret that few share. Most of us silently suffer as the struggles of depression and anxiety are often only found in the tears that flow down our faces in the shower.
We are ashamed to admit that we are changing and cannot control what is happening. And we are terrified. Millions of women are dying inside. Some are [00:03:00] even being admitted to psychiatric hospitals, medicated for issues of hormonal imbalance. Others are losing their entire zest for life and no longer find intimacy possible.
They feel dry, tired, fat, sweaty, and all alone. 29 million women a year are going through the change, and have no idea what it means or what is actually happening. And there is very little education, awareness, or support from doctors unless you have thousands of dollars available to pay out of pocket.
Having the financial ability to pay for the support needed during perimenopause is out of reach for many women. Even in some of the most modern countries, healthcare for some is still a privilege, not a right. I’ve personally spent over 40, 000 in the last 10 years trying to find answers for myself.
Doctors often plug holes to solve problems, focusing on treating symptoms rather than underlying causes. But I’ve been blessed to meet some systems thinkers who look at the body as a whole system and have taught me what that means. They’ve each played a role in [00:04:00] helping me get my life back. But I never would have gotten there if I hadn’t been my own advocate for my own healing in addition to doctor’s care.
My goal through this book, my What I Wish I Knew podcast, and my mental coaching practice is to educate, empower, and give hope to every woman suffering in silence. It’s for the woman who quit her job because she needed to find safe spaces for her healing. The woman who’s divorced because she felt misunderstood and ashamed of the power of her emotions.
And the woman who walks around in a fog wondering why she is so bloated and tired and why she feels as though she’s being set on fire at night. You don’t have to pretend anymore. You have what you need to heal. A radical, counter cultural love for yourself and the power to embrace your mind, body, and soul.
I’m just here to help you tap into them. So, you know, when we talk about how many women go through this, um, statistically speaking, by the year 2025, 1.1 [00:05:00] billion women, billion women, will be post menopausal. So if there was ever a time for awareness and education and options that are nontraditional, that look at the system, that look at the whole body and what actually is going on, it is now.
And so I want to now share a little bit about being in the wilderness and what this can feel like for many women. And the title of this chapter is called Jesus in the Wilderness. Entering the wilderness of perimenopause is no joke. Yet we joke about it all the time. Our society makes fun of something debilitating, which breaks my heart.
Menopause the Musical is a parody on women being forgetful, sexually dysfunctional, and soaked in night sweat. It brought in millions of dollars and still sells out in days. I remember going to see it with my mom in my early 40s, wondering if it was in fact funny to experience these things. I truly believe that this attempt to downplay this change is why [00:06:00] we feel the need to remain silent as women.
This kind of attention gives society permission to laugh at something extremely serious and even life threatening. There’s nothing humorous about the wilderness. It is fiercely dark, and some days it’s all we can do to just put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes one hour at a time. The anxiety, night sweats, insomnia, brain fog, and extreme fatigue are beyond anything one would laugh about.
In the New Testament of the Bible, wilderness is translated from the Greek word, aramos, which means an isolated place. Wilderness is also defined in the dictionary as an uninhabited or uncultivated area. The wilderness of perimenopause is somewhere we have never been before. There are no rules, no instructions on how to navigate.
It’s a feeling of being lost, alone, forgotten, and far, far from home. I believe that this is God’s purpose for this period in our lives. It’s not that he wants us to suffer, but rather that in our time in the wilderness, [00:07:00] It’ll serve as a purpose if we are willing to explore the terrain. The mental puzzle transition for many is about being pushed far enough to find ourselves again.
But it can feel very lonely. My only comfort was in knowing others had gone through long periods in the wilderness and survived. Even Jesus. So, my entire purpose of this podcast series, and of developing mental coaching as a service offering, is to provide. Not only really great data for women, but also a holistic approach to healing that is mental, spiritual, physical, hormonal.
I hope that this day is filled with wonderful doctors who want to help, filled with education that empowers women, and that we change the narrative. That we’re not talking about, you know, an irritable woman who’s sweating. Or bloated or has gained weight, but we’re talking about thriving in life by connecting all the [00:08:00] systems and all the dots in our lives, both personally and physically and professionally, and that’s the work that we’re about.
So I’m just grateful to have a place where all of this can exist and to live in a country where we have freedom to share, um, and learn from each other. And so I hope this gives freedom to people, and most importantly, I hope it gives you a voice with your doctor. With your spouse, with your friends, and that you’re not afraid or ashamed to share what you’re going through so you can find the help you need with whatever resources you have available to yourself, but most importantly, with your own advocacy that’s based on really solid science and education about what is happening in your body.
It is more than a patch. It is more than just your hormones. There’s many, many parts of your body and mind that are affected by this change, and we have underestimated that. So my hope is that you move into a space of seeking answers for yourself and know that there’s resources available for you through us or through others that view this as a systems [00:09:00] approach.
I welcome you to visit the website, mentalcoaching. com, listen to the podcast through YouTube or Apple, share it with people that you care about. I get endless texts and emails from people saying that this information is changing the way they interact with their doctors. There’s questions that they’re asking, labs that they’re requesting.
That’s why I did this. My hope is now that this sort of gets set on fire, um, the month of October. So thanks for listening. I look forward to, um, giving you a lot more insight in my book. I’m so thrilled, um, to have this out in the world and I just thank you for being part of this journey with us.
What I Wish I Knew is produced and distributed by EIQ Media Group, LLC. Elevate your emotional IQ with podcasts and content focused on leadership, mental health, spirituality, women’s health, overcoming adversity, and more. [00:10:00]