I didn’t know just how much perimenopause was a mind, body, emotion shift for women until speaking with Clarissa. In fact, I didn’t know much about the menopause at all. I’m so glad that I had this conversation with Clarissa as I feel much more ready for this next phase in life – and believe that it will help you too.
Clarissa Kristjansson is a holistic health consultant, mindfulness practitioner, best-selling author and podcaster. She works with women going through perimenopause to help them find ways to better manage this transition. She's the author of the best seller, The Mindful Menopause, and host of Thriving Through Menopause, the podcast.
Listen below, or tune in via: Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
(Full transcript below)
Listen in as we discuss:
The mystery around the Menopause
How everyone experiences the change differently
That it’s passage into a new phase in life – and one to be celebrated
How to understand when you are in perimenopause
What the symptoms are and what you might experience
How to be with the change so that you have a smoother transition from perimenopause to postmenopause
How your sex life may be affected and what you can do about it
The opportunities for greater fulfillment and satisfaction that the transition offers
Practical tips and actionable practices to help you along the way
The best way to get supported through the change and how to be there for yourself
To continue the conversation join me on Instagram at @andreabalboni_lush
If you’d like to learn more about coaching with Andrea, book in a consultation call to see if we’re a fit.
For more wisdom, insight, tools and practices on pleasure and sexual satisfaction come visit us at lushcoaching.com
Connect with Clarissa:
Clarissa’s Gift: a PDF copy of my new book which going to be released in March to the first 20 people who message her and request one –
Email or DM Clarissa : clarissa@clarissakristjansson.com
Buy her book: The Potent Power of Menopause: A Culturally Diverse Perspective of Feminine Transformation
On sale here in ebook or paperback.
Audiobook will be available from July 2022
Episode 2 with Clarissa Kristjansson
[00:00:00] Andrea: Welcome to the lush love podcast. I'm your host, Andrea, Balboni and as a sex love and relationships, coach, it is my mission to help you experience modern day love that feels a lush in all ways. I'm here today with Clarissa Christiansen, holistic health consultant, mindfulness practitioner. Best-selling author and podcaster. She works with women going through perimenopause to help them find ways to better manage this transition. She's the author of the best seller, the mindful menopause, and host of thriving through menopause the podcast. Welcome Clarissa. It is so lovely to have you here.
[00:00:45] Clarissa: Ah, thank you, Andrea. I am so happy to be here and talking to you.
[00:00:51] Yes. We've had so many great conversations and I'm so pleased that you'll be here speaking with our audience today [00:01:00] and especially around this topic of menopause, because there's so much mystery and myth around it that surrounds it. And let's just say we don't necessarily think of menopause as a phase in life that's super sexy. I'm going to come peri-menopause it's happening. Ooh. Some even might think about it as kind of a libido killer. We associate this phase in life with when our sex drive goes down, we experienced changes in our body that don't facilitate pleasure necessarily. I'm curious as a, you are the expert in this, how much truth is there to this statement?
[00:01:39] Some of that is true, Andrea, because there are real changes, but we're all individual and they're all women who don't get talked about a lot who have a libido, surge at this time of life and for them that isn't always that great because, oh my goodness, what's going on.
[00:01:57] But for a lot of women, you know, we [00:02:00] do end up feeling tired, brain fog, irritable, moody, and we do experience vaginal dryness. As we age, those are real things and they're part of the hormonal changes in our body. So there is truth, but we're all different and we can all approach. In ways that are less of the drama and the disaster.
[00:02:24] Andrea: One of the things I love about the way you work is reframing the story around what menopause is and how we might experience it, because we do hear so many different things and sometimes the opposite's true. We hear absolutely nothing. We have very little, we talk very little about menopause to young girls and young women.
[00:02:46] So I was wondering as you free women, these are, I'm going to just use your words: ' Free women from what people say menopause should be so that they can have a positive, liberating experience.' How do you do this? Exactly.
[00:02:59] Clarissa: First of all, I think is about. Being really mindful about the type of menopause messages you take in. If we only read negative and let's face it, negative headlines sell. So that's why we see a big conversation out in social, but I like for women to start and step back and say, okay, we're not Pollyanna. We have. Rose tinted glasses saying this is going to be wonderful because it can be challenging, but we can meet challenges with a different mindset. And the mindset is, firstly, this isn't forever. And that there is life on the other side. And I think it's really important for women to hear the stories of women like myself, and many of the people who come on my podcast and to remind network who are, you know, in the sixties and the seventies, and they're doing amazing stuff.
[00:03:54] It's like their whole brain is revived and they've got energy and [00:04:00] vitality. So I think that's one side of it. And the other side is to really look at. How you choose to approach it, being well-informed and educated on menopause is really important. If you don't know something, then you're more likely to be afraid of it.
[00:04:18] You're more likely to listen to the negative stories and so information and getting to know your own body. Is incredibly important and cutting yourself some slack, you know, being compassionate when days are tough is good. I might, the third thing I would say is have a community. This is not a journey that any woman should do on their own.
[00:04:43] You need your friends, you need your partner. If you have one, you need to talk and be connected because then you think, well, I'm not the only person. Going through this and I'm not going crazy, which a lot of women think that they are
[00:04:58] Andrea: Absolutely community is key and then accurate information is also super, super key.
[00:05:06] And. I am curious about your story. So what is your story? How did you come to this work? How did you come to become such an expert in this? And it's actually a beautiful phase of, of transition for, for a woman. I'm curious. What's your story?
[00:05:25] Clarissa: My own story was that I came into perimenopause in my mid forties.
[00:05:31] I don't know what it was. I had so much other stuff going on in my life. My mom was dying of dementia. My marriage was going rapidly down the drain. I think his only say, and I didn't pay attention to any of those signals and signs. And at 46, I emigrated to Australia with a seven-year-old and a crazy dog on my own.
[00:05:56] And I was on a treadmill. I was working long hours, [00:06:00] but I wasn't feeling well. And I had had a lot of anxiety. And I've had anxiety. I would say that I was like the anxiety sisters. I was an anxiety sister too, but I was very good at hiding it for those years. I had lots of good routines and tactics, but they fell apart in perimenopause.
[00:06:20] And so for me, having eventually a big panic attack at the office was a turning point. Wow. And I I'd been rebuffed by clinicians. I'd been offered blood pressure medication, and that was about it. I was told I was so fat because I eat chocolate in the checkout queue. I mean, I wasn't huge. I mean, I'd gone out.
[00:06:41] I mean, I'd been very thin as a girl, very, very thin. So obviously to be sort of closer to 67, 68 kilos was a shock for me, but I would hardly describe myself as fat, but that was the extent of, of, of what I was met with. You wait, going back now a good 15 plus years. [00:07:00] People didn't talk about perimenopause.
[00:07:02] What was that word? I'd never heard of it, but eventually I made a decision to do something more. And that's how I became a mindfulness practitioner and I owe so much to Tim Goddard. My teacher there, she was a therapist. She was a mindfulness practitioner and a yoga teacher, and she really helped me to meet myself where I was.
[00:07:24] And that of course helped my anxiety. I started to sleep better and then I trained to become a mindfulness practitioner initially was working with women. Who struggling with stress, with anxiety, with sleeplessness, with chronic pain. And they were all what age? 45 to 55. And they were all being rebuffed by their clinicians.
[00:07:48] They were all feeling very alone. And then the sort of conversation about menopause and perimenopause was starting to emerge. And I thought, oh, this is me. And this is that. [00:08:00] And that's how this journey began to actually qualify and understand better about what perimenopause and menopause. And how we can really help or the women, you know, holistically and making sure that they are empowered and how they can seek help from their practitioners properly from healthcare professionals.
[00:08:22] And that really began a journey of learning for me, learning from. Formal training and learning from my podcast, guests and the women that I meet. And I think you amass that knowledge and continue to grow because it's changing. You know, what, what me as a sort of Layton boomer has experienced is different from today's gen X and gen Y.
[00:08:44] And now coming into the top of these millennials that are really beginning to come into perimenopause and we go to see them change the narrative again.
[00:08:54] Andrea: Yeah. I'm curious, as you were telling your story, which is an incredible [00:09:00] journey. Wow. What courage to make such a huge life change at a point in your life?
[00:09:05] When many of us think, okay. Yeah. Life will just be this way for a long time. You've made that change. It's incredible. How were you able to pick apart or discern between what might've been anxiety related to massive change in your life and massive challenge. And let's say symptoms of. Perimenopause and and that, and not phase of life, where are you able to, and are you able to, and can women do this?
[00:09:37] Because what I understand is every woman experiences perimenopause very differently. So what it looks like for one woman, it may look very different for another. And so how can we know what's actually just life that's given you. So much stress that we have anxiety, we have sleeplessness and what is actually part of the change in our bodies and our [00:10:00] hearts and our minds that we go through in this, in this stage of life.
[00:10:04] Clarissa: I think that's a very good question, Andrea. And I think it's a case by case individual. Experience. I think sometimes it's very hard to unpick. But sometimes it can just really hit women and then they know it's, it, it is hormonal. If you have, like, I have had a history of anxiety, then I think you just feel that dial up.
[00:10:26] It's a different level of. Your, your strategies don't work, even if you're under great stress. And even if you have good stress management strategies, you can still be impacted. I think it's like having, you know, PMs on steroids at times, you know, and, and we all know that we, women can have what are called anovulatory periods, which is when they have a period and we don't release a fertile egg that can be fertilized.
[00:10:52] And then we get a massive issue with our progesterone and we feel really edgy that's what it starts to feel like the whole time we're [00:11:00] moody and edgy and we're anxious and it is different, but you're right. Lots of factors play into that. Should I say? And it is hard to unpick sometimes for women, one from the other, but even.
[00:11:13] You notice that as you go through this time of life, you tend to find the anxiety and the irritability can often die down because once your progesterone is it kind of its new level in life you may not be experiencing the same levels of anxiety.
[00:11:29] Andrea: So that's, that's shifting as you meet perimenopause in the phase of your life with awareness, with understanding. And then my curiosity now is around how, how, what, what the tools are that you use to help women transition once. They come into recognition that this is what is happening then how, what tools do you offer?
[00:11:56] Clarissa: Yeah, I think that one of the key things I [00:12:00] start with women is to track, to begin to build an awareness, because once that is decided, there are lots of tools about mindfulness and stuff later down the line.
[00:12:09] But if you don't even know yourself, how can you know what's happening? So one of my big tools is to get women onto a tracker and to make sure you're tracking your period. You're tracking your symptoms and you look at the triggers and there are plenty of apps now out there that I might recommend to people to use and say, and that's up to where you live in the world and which one you like, but there are a number of good trackers.
[00:12:34] That's the first thing, because you can't even begin to change anything. If you don't know what's happening. And then looking at those triggers, you can say, actually, here are some things that I can change. Usually that the lifestyle in, remember we can change lifestyle and there are often lifestyle triggers that can make a lot.
[00:12:53] So the way we look at, I like women to look at that diet. We look at [00:13:00] movement and exercise. We'll look at stress management tools and techniques to really move women to having better routines, but our habits and more supportive ways of living. Those are my first, always my first tools there, because we'd be amazed at if we drop.
[00:13:20] If we cut back on alcohol, if we were to eat a plant-based diet that would create in its own, right? A lot of support getting us to move movement helps us sleep. Exercise helps our sleep and it helps on mood and it helps our memories, which is pretty good when we're brain foggy and then really managing stress and mindfulness tools in all their forms can come in there.
[00:13:48] It depends on the individual, what they like. I mean, not everybody likes to sit and meditate, so it might be breathing exercises. It might be going for a walk, mindful, [00:14:00] journaling, coloring, whatever appeals to that person, but creating some space in that life where you can just dial it down a notch and be present.
[00:14:09] And I think those are the, what I call having those rock rock habits. But then I think there are a lot of tools we also can do around self-compassion. And I love, love the work of Kristin Neff and Christopher Goma, two wonderful people in the, in the field of mindful self-compassion practicing many of their techniques.
[00:14:32] I draw much from the mindful self-compassion work books there for my clients, so that we actually. Dial down our inner critic because that's our biggest negative thing. All right. And criticism. And we're kind to ourselves during this time. It's amazing how much compassion practices, health paths. And then I would say.
[00:14:57] You know, you've got your life throated. You're starting to be [00:15:00] kind to yourself. Then I work with, well, who am I becoming? Because that for me is very important to say to ourselves, right? This is a, as you rightly said, Andrea, huge time of change on every level. Who am I becoming? What do I want from. For myself, for my relationships, maybe for how I show up in the world, what is my new purpose in life?
[00:15:29] And I think working with women to help them shape that through coaching based tools really takes them to a space where they can begin to define the next phase, the second spring, even though that can take time to evolve, we're actually on track to embracing the post-menopausal years
[00:15:49] Andrea: so really acknowledging when life transitions happen and in our society and culture in our day and age, we've lost a lot of ceremony or ritual [00:16:00] around shifts and for women, especially in. I say beautiful transitions because they are beautiful. There's a lot of challenge and shifts that feel quite difficult at times.
[00:16:14] And then there are so many gifts that come along as well. So I think about when we first have our periods, when we first start to bleed and then when with pregnancy and children feels like another. Life transition. Should you have chosen to have kids? And then this is another kind of, really kind of a mark marker in the, in the lives of.
[00:16:38] And for each of those life transitions, at least in the society and culture that I grew up in, it wasn't really marked with much ceremony or welcoming. There wasn't much wisdom passed down from those who had gone before me. There's so much shame in, in my experience with, [00:17:00] especially with menstruating for the first time bleeding for the first time.
[00:17:05] This transition feels similar to me and that there's very, there's a gap there. It feels like such a massive gap between kind of where life going along. And then all of a sudden there's a change coming and then you're in it without much. Again, ritual or welcoming or talking about or preparation for what it means, what it means to who you're becoming, what it means, what the change means, what we make it mean, what society and culture in how society and culture relate to it.
[00:17:36] Because how we're seen after we bleed, how we're seen, when we have children, how we're seen in perceived in this phase of life, there is a relationship with how we see ourselves. communities and culture, how communities see us. So I love what you've shared about being in community, where this is happening, because it's affecting us individually as much as there is a community aspect and element to [00:18:00] it.
[00:18:00] And because we have so little support in community and the bigger kind of way that we live, it feels so nourishing and supportive to have that sense of community. And what I'm loving about what you just shared. How can we be with becoming a new it does feel like a springtime again, right? How can we be with becoming a new version of ourselves?
[00:18:26] It's kind of like a mix of excitement of the unknown of what we're becoming the potentiality there. And I think with menopause, especially, it's not viewed in that way of what potential growth or what potential beautiful experiences might I have. What's the potential there for expanding out into something exciting.
[00:18:47] Fun and sexy. We'll bring it back to sex and sexuality because I would love for you to speak more to that. So my curiosity is, as you're working with women to define for themselves what this new phase of [00:19:00] life is, how do how do you contextualize it, or maybe this is something you do in collaboration with your client with, with.
[00:19:09] Not just the greater kind of society and culture and halibut you received, but also with their personal story and their personal journey crafting that the potentiality of that feels like such a beautiful opportunity that perhaps is one of the most powerful ways of having this shift into a new.
[00:19:29] Into a new phase of life feel really empowering and good as opposed to different experience. Yeah. So I'm just wondering another question is that, that
[00:19:39] Clarissa: no, but I understand, I understand. I mean, I think it's really important for women to mark. The end of menstruation. And I think too often we let that day go and say, oh yeah, that's kind of happened.
[00:19:53] But when we're more conscious of our own bodies and our, and what's happening with them, and you do say, gosh, it is 12 months since I [00:20:00] had my last period. Now I am. Menopause in menopause and post-menopause, I think to celebrate that is really important. How you celebrate it, you may be only able to celebrate it on your own, but I think when you are part of a community, then I think many of you can come together and have.
[00:20:19] A celebration full that time and to own it that time, I'm also doing more and more writing around conscious aging, where I'd been working with women to write more about, I remember, and you can actually then put down your story and the memories that have marked this time. Up to this point, and then you can write, I am a new can write.
[00:20:43] I am becoming what you know, and allow yourself the freedom to write that freely or as a poem or something you really are there. Beginning to put concretely into, into words. [00:21:00] What this is is, is that people write wonderful things like I'm becoming invisible, but I can eat, choose to eat all the free freebie snacks that are laid out.
[00:21:09] And no one notices me doing that and things like people do, you know, write funny things as well, and they can. Gracefully and disgracefully, you know, and they wear bright clothes because they want to, and that sort of thing. So I think there is that, and I definitely think that a lot of women should we evaluate how they want to show up physically in the world.
[00:21:29] Maybe you do want to clear out your wardrobe and say, I'm done with the corporate boring. I'm going to wear bright colors. I'm going to cut my hair short I'm you know, and I, I interviewed on the. For an upcoming episode, somebody who is a stylist for women in later in life and how much we can revolutionize a wardrobe.
[00:21:49] So those things help us to mark a transition and step into a new role where I think in many ways, Deep down, we care a little bit less about what [00:22:00] people think about us, and that's a real brain change that, that those caring Nurtury kind of hormones, it doesn't mean will become, you know, the B word, but we actually start to put ourselves first.
[00:22:12] And I, and I think encouraging that thought processes, what does. Points of marking. It become an important part of transitioning into the new you that you're going to be for maybe 30 plus years, you know, not going to be it for five years, but for a lot longer than you've been in perimenopause.
[00:22:31] Andrea: Absolutely. Yeah. And let's do a little bit of a laser focus on one area of. Seeing ourselves differently in this new phase of life that would be encompassing, maybe dating or new relationships because many women will experience. Perhaps they're, they've, they're single at this age or phase in life, whether that's they're still single and happen for a long time or they're newly [00:23:00] single So I'm kind of curious about dating at this phase and then also perhaps.
[00:23:08] Even more curious about what happens with the redefinition of our sexual selves.
[00:23:13] Clarissa: Yeah, I think both personally, I'm the women I work with. I would say this is a time where the rules that you may have lived by no longer apply. Because when, when we are younger, there is more of an emphasis that you, you go into relationship. You're going to live together. You're maybe going to create a family if that's possible, what you choose.
[00:23:36] And there are certain rules and norms and you're following what everybody else. When we go into this phase of life, you can choose in many, many more ways than you did before, how you want to be. Now for some women, they have a partner. And that is, I think, a lot of redefining of boundaries and rules that women do need to go through at this [00:24:00] time of life.
[00:24:00] And I think often they need the help of a relationship coach like yourself, Andrea, because people are living on parallel lines. And I think a lot of us have lived on those kinds of parallel lines, bringing up children, working men, go through menopause, they have andropause. So they have their own issues that are going on.
[00:24:19] And I think often there needs to be a coming back together. But if we're single, I was saying. And all, we end our relationship and I know many women who end the relationship at 50 in their fifties and say, I'm done with this. Then it's a redefining. If you even want another relationship, I'm when no one tells you, you have to have one for the first stage.
[00:24:42] It's usually good for you to have somebody in your life that you care for and love, but you can decide. Do you want to be married? You don't have to be, you don't even have to live together. You define how you want it to be and negotiate that with the other person. You can also have a [00:25:00] lot of fun dating. I mean, why not enjoy it because there's no pressure.
[00:25:05] So you, you can go out, enjoy big connection, have amazing times. Maybe you just want a friend to go on holiday with, you know, I think that's part of this great freedom around relationships and dating. I'm not saying that it's desperate, easy, and I think a lot of that is because. You know, we have a society where all the women were not quite sure what to do with them, but, you know, I got married at 50, actually.
[00:25:32] It was my third wedding anniversary yesterday. Yes. And what say that we chose to got married for a number of reasons? Also, partly because there were complications with Brexit and things like that, and he decided he didn't want me to have to leave the country, but we didn't feel the pressure to get married.
[00:25:49] We did it because, you know, it was a better thing to do for that reason, but it's a different kind of relationship. You know, we are much closer as friends yet. We're both [00:26:00] able to do our own thing more and we're more outspoken. And it's good. And I have a second family that I love having, but I don't feel the need to have to be the stepmother.
[00:26:11] Everything is just a lot easier as, as we get older. And I think that's the first thing, but I do think you asked about sex and sexuality. We can have great sex. Post-menopause but I think it's again different.
[00:26:27] I got speaking to people like yourself and as you know, Dr. Laura, Beth Bisbee. Yeah. I mean, she's, she she's been on my podcast and I loved her whole take on it. You know, that we don't have to have sex in the way that we maybe had it as we were younger, sensuality becomes a lot more important and sex doesn't have to be penetrative.
[00:26:49] And we can enjoy. Pleasuring ourselves more. And it's actually really important from a physiological perspective because blood flow [00:27:00] to the vagina to the vulva is important because you know what we don't use. You kind of lose as well. So being sexually active is important for our long-term health and wellbeing in, in, in purely physiological.
[00:27:16] Andrea: Amazing. What would you say to a woman who feels a drop in libido? So if she does feel a drop in libido as she's transitioning, what might you say to her? If her desire was to, to add some sparkle back into that part of her life.
[00:27:39] Clarissa: I think the first thing is to really question where the loss of libido is coming from. Is it. Because you're very tired and stressed because none of us feel like we want to have sex when we're exhausted. And I think there's sometimes a mismatch between men and women also that men often want to have sex. At the end of the [00:28:00] day. We're like, leave me alone. I've had a hold at the office and I just don't feel like it. So we need to address whether it's that. All we struggling with with night sweats that are not making us feel almost attractive. We can address that. And then if it's because sex starts to feel painful, then we need some help. I mean, we may need to lubricate more. We may need to go on hormone therapy, total hormone therapy, or we may need to just have localized vaginal hormone.
[00:28:33] Tablets. They're great. I'd say to any woman, just take veggie fam. If you can get it, it's going to be available on or off the shelf in over the counter in lots of countries. It is here in Sweden, but it is something that helps us on a practical level. Work out where it is, and I'm trying to work with your partner.
[00:28:54] If, if it's not talk to them, communication is important. Make [00:29:00] time to have sex or have a sexual intimate moment when you're not tired when you're not in the most dripping sweat and Lube lube lube lube lube. I mean, every sex therapist would tell you that because minor tears. Make a difference that they take longer to heal.
[00:29:19] And if you're having real problems and it's not getting better than that is the time to go also to your healthcare provider, to talk to them about whether you need testosterone, which many clinicians are still a little reluctant to prescribe, but which can make a huge difference. You want to libido is completely not coming back and you're doing everything you can.
[00:29:42] Th that you may need to have some other procedures. Maybe you do have a number of women can have quite severe vaginal atrophy. Then maybe you need to be talking to someone who works in deals with that, because there are procedures that can really support that. So I think, I think it's a case of [00:30:00] who are you are the things you can do yourself, or do you need more medical support in this space?
[00:30:07] Andrea: Yeah, I love that approach of working with your body and, you know, I'm a huge huge fan of self-pleasure and I'm also a huge fan of lube. No matter what age you are, no matter what phase of life you're in. If you are sexually active or exploring that those. So supportive, just a healthy, thriving sexuality, whether you're single or with someone.
[00:30:30] Clarissa: Yeah, definitely. And I think just being able to constantly communicate with your partner is so important at this time. And I think if you do at some stage feel, I need a bit of a break to assimilate all of.
[00:30:45] Then sometimes that's okay. Give yourself the permission to take about a timeout rest at the system, kind of rebalance itself, and then re-ignite to your sexual life in ways that feel right to [00:31:00] you. You know, and I think we have to learn to get over. That we should look a particular way or be a particular way.
[00:31:07] I think there's, we're freeing ourselves from all those constraints that sometimes also are there mentally for us. And I love that you mentioned grief. We are in a process sometimes of grief of losing the young woman and what that younger woman was and becoming something equally as beautiful, but just differently.
[00:31:30] Andrea: The Sage era of our lives, the wisdom holders we become in such a beautiful rich phase of life. It really, really is to really step into that wisdom and know that that's what you are now and not have to worry about all of the other stuff. And we may still worry. That's okay too. We may worry a bit less, which is wonderful.
[00:31:54] But really stepping into the power of the Sage, the power of the wisdom phase of our life and the [00:32:00] gift that that is for ourselves and for those who come before us, that we can pass on that wisdom and share it's a gift as well, a gift and giving and a gift to receive. Yeah, so beautiful. So thank you for that.
[00:32:13] You mentioned writing a menopause plan, which I love. And you also work, we spoke a bit about how you work with women. Perhaps. I wondering if you would love to speak about either the program that you've got thriving through menopause or your ad, or perhaps both the book that you've got coming up, because the more as we spoke to the more knowledge, the more experience.
[00:32:37] That the more stories perhaps even that, that are heard and shared from those who walked before us can be so, so supportive and really make for a positive experience if you'd like to share.
[00:32:51] Clarissa: Well, I mean, it would talk about really that the program of course, is, is called Thriving through menopause and. It's really [00:33:00] what I talked about, you know, that sense of where you are, the thing, the fundamentals that you can change in your life, the mindset, and bringing a mindful approach to this time of life and your purpose.
[00:33:14] But I am very excited about my new book, which is coming out in March. It's a collection of 11. People's stories, including mine. We are aged from early forties to eighties, so we're certainly getting a spot and we're, we're global. And we have one man talking about his experience of supporting his partner through this time of life.
[00:33:37] And I think it's cool. The potent power of menopause, and it is all about really, exactly that. Exactly what we've been talking about throughout this podcast, Andrea. Every single person that has had a challenge or is going through challenges. A couple of the women are, are younger. So they're actually in the middle of their own personal [00:34:00] challenges.
[00:34:00] And then some of us who have come through and they're saying, you know, this is hugely transformative. People have written about starting new businesses, becoming politically active about one woman left a religious order to. Get married and start a whole different life, which is, it is a big thing. It's not a small thing to, to break free from being a numb, believe me, you know, that's a big thing.
[00:34:29] And I think what we see is despite the difficulties that people have and ha, and have had how powerful this transformation has been. How so many of us have stepped in and become stronger wiser leaders in our own way, in, in the world and are speaking out in the world and saying, you know, we don't subscribe to the, the misery only stories and the negativity, but to the power of this time and that [00:35:00] older women are forced in this world and we can change.
[00:35:04] The lives for other women, but we could also, you know, change the politics of this the, our countries by saying, we want more equality. We want to be heard. We want to be taken seriously. And we know you're no longer saying, oh, a man sort of gray and attractive women are older and attractive and not in a stereotypical type of way as well.
[00:35:28] Andrea: I'm sexy sixties. I like it sexy seventies. I like it works through to, oh my goodness. Eighties. Yeah, I could go on and on it's yeah, there's so much opportunity there.
[00:35:43] And I love the fact that there's a man who writes about that in the book coming up. I can't wait to read his story because it really talking about sex. We didn't talk about that so much until now in this podcast, but it is one of the keys to good sex. So if you want to have. Sex talking [00:36:00] about it is absolutely key to that.
[00:36:02] So sharing it can feel so, so vulnerable, and we are not necessarily used to talking so openly about our, our experiences of sex, even with those that we're having it with. Sometimes especially those that we're having it with. And it's so, so healing and brings us that much closer when we can, we can share what's happening and request, ask for.
[00:36:25] And the support that we might need, and if that other person's available for it, wonderful. And if they can meet us only half way, and we know to reach out to community, to friends, to others, to help to help bridge the gap. And so it is repairative, it is. So beautiful too, to be able to express ourselves fully at this phase in life.
[00:36:48] And in whole new ways, I see so many colors. Now we've spoken about so much possibility from wardrobe changes to lifestyle changes to partner changes to [00:37:00] having sex in a different way. There's just so many different ways to, to live this. And In such a beautiful way. So yeah. Thank you so much for sharing so much wisdom, so much insight, so much experience.
[00:37:13] And I feel like it's a gift to have this have had this time with you and I'm sure everyone listening also feels the same for sure. So how can we get more? How can people stay in touch with you? How can they stay connected? How can we.
[00:37:29] Clarissa: Yeah, wonderful. Well, obviously you can connect with me on social I'm there on Instagram and Twitter.
[00:37:37] And on LinkedIn, LinkedIn is obviously myself and Instagram and Twitter. I'm thriving through menopause or some version of that can listen to my podcasts where Andrea has been a fantastic guest as well on an episode that was downloaded hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times people read.
[00:37:56] Appreciated that so much. And if you want to connect with me, you can also connect with me on my website. That's Clarissa christianson.com. There I am. You can read about my programs. You can send me a message set up a time to talk.
[00:38:15] Andrea: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Clarissa. Hope to see you again soon. Yeah, it was my pleasure.
[00:38:21] Clarissa: I love talking to you. Thank you, Andrea. For this opportunity.