Wake Up With Marci

If you decided to have a kid, whether you wanted one or not, chances are either you’re dealing with an unruly teenager or they’ve left the nest and you’re dealing with that loss. If you have aging parent and they’re dealing with health issues, now you might have a situation where your kid steals your car at 3:00 a.m. and then at 5:00 a.m. you’re getting a phone call from the assisted living facility that your mother broke a hip. Let’s just keep going. Most divorces are handed out by women after 50. So, how do you navigate a divorce, a great divorce? This is Wake Up with Marcy, a space for honest conversations about healing, recovery, and women’s wellness. I’m Marcy Hopkins. Take a breath. You’re safe here. Let’s begin.

This is Wake Up with Marcy, where we have honest conversations about healing, recovery, and women’s wellness. I’m Marcy Hopkins, author of Chaos to Clarity, TV host, motivational speaker, and mental health advocate. And that moment you just heard from my guest today is something so many women experience. But we rarely talk about it honestly. For many women, midlife brings major transitions. Menopause, divorce, an empty nest, or simply the realization that the life you’ve built no longer feels like the life you want. But what if those moments aren’t the beginning of the end? What if they’re the moment you finally begin living as your real self? Today’s guest is helping lead what many are calling the pro-agging revolution. Jack Perez is the founder of Cool Life, a platform dedicated to redefining what it means for women to thrive after 50. Jack, welcome to Wake Up with Marcy. Thank you so much, Marcy, for hosting me. I’m thrilled to be here today. It’s great to have you. And I mean, menopause, come on now. I mean, we are just starting to scratch the surface on this subject. I mean, for so long, it wasn’t talked about. Oh, it Well, actually, since the dawn of time, right? I mean, it is literally I mean, we’ve been on the planet for thousands of years. And so for thousands of years, women have been going through this transition because it’s absolutely normal. And if you make it past your biological imperative, you will go through menopause. And it is it is lifechanging in a way that puberty you know they say puberty is tough. H yeah exactly is what I have to say about puberty in comparison to menopause. Yeah. Then we have the pmenopause and the menopause and then I thought once menopause hit everything would change but you still have so many of the symptoms and the feelings and the things that you’re dealing with. So super excited to educate our audience and one of the things that you shared with me is that menopause didn’t feel like a gentle awakening. It felt more like being hit by a tractor trailer. What was happening in your life during that time that made you realize something needed to change? What was happening for you? Well, I mean, yes, the tractor trailer. Think about how impactful that collision is. And so, no, it didn’t happen by degrees. It’s It wasn’t like I jumped into the pot and it was warm and they kept turning up the heat and all of a sudden I found myself boiled. No, I gained 40 pounds. So, I weighed what I weighed the day I delivered my baby. You could pick me up by my back fat, right? I was like one of those sharpi puppies, but not nearly as cute on on a person as it is on a puppy. Yeah. And if it had just stopped there, right? But it didn’t stop there. I had a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. I am not an anxious person. I have never, thank goodness, I have not had one of those anxiety issues my entire life. I’m honestly the kind of person who thinks the glass is 3/4 full if not overflowing. For that time, I was incredibly anxious. I could not find joy. I sometimes I had a hard time getting out of bed. The brain fog, mercy, I’m an entrepreneur. I run a business and my brain wasn’t available. My processing wasn’t what it was. And I thought to myself, “Oh my god, I’ve got another 30 or 40 years of this.” I’m like, “No, no, there has to be a workaround.” And now, mind you, this was a while ago cuz I’m I’m 61. So, this was, you know, seven or eight years ago. The world has changed dramatically since then. But when I was going through it, Marcy, and I went out to try to find myself some help. Yeah. I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find it. And all the medical professionals kept telling me, “Oh, you’re just going to have to get over it. It’s just, you know, do you want some Do you want an anti-depressant?” I’m like, “No, I don’t want an anti-depressant. I want to figure out what is wrong with me and solve it so that I so that my body can be what it needs to be and what it wants to be. And so I mean I you name it, I did it. If there was a supplement to be had, I tried it. If there was more exercise, less exercise, more water, less water, drink alcohol, don’t drink alcohol, you name it, I did it. And none of it, I mean, some of it would kind of mask a symptom for a little while, but then it would just come back. And at the end of the day, I did solve my problem for myself. And I went a particular route and it and I know that that route isn’t good for everyone or appropriate for everyone, but for me, it ended up being my best possible solution. And that was I went the route of bioididentical hormone replacement therapy. There was a lot of fear around that for a long time, but because of of cancer, right, the C-word, but they’re finding now that that’s not actually accurate. Is that correct? Well, it’s actually it’s actually hurts a little bit more than what you just said because those studies that they did that took women off of HRT that were already on it but because of the fear of cancer, they were misread. Basically, the data was misinterpreted. And so, I don’t think women in their 70s are angry enough, right? Because because they got cheated. And it turns out that being hormonally supported not only can help with our menopausal symptoms, but it also helps to stave off dementia. It also helps with bone density and muscle mass. There are a lot of other reasons that you want to be hormonally supported. If you think about it, hormones run the show. They run the show. M. And so when they leave, when they walk out of the arena, guess what, you know, guess what’s left behind. I don’t think we can swear on here, but I I would tell you what’s left behind.

You know, it’s so interesting you say you went to the doctor and pretty much the first thing they offered you was an anti-depressant. when I was going through pmenopause and I started very early. A lot of times women don’t even understand like they say that the norm is 50 and above, right? But I started right around 40 and I knew something was happening to me. I mean, I thought the world was collapsing. I was extremely anxious, emotional. I knew I knew that I must be hitting pmenopause. And at that time, my gynecologist said, “Absolutely, no way. No way. You’re too young.” And she wouldn’t even she didn’t even do the test. So, what happened was is I started expressing these feelings and I went to several different doctors and they all said the same thing. You can start taking anti-depressants. And that’s what I did. And then a year later she actually did the test and said, “Oh yeah, you are in pmenopause.” And the other thing that happened for me during that time is my drinking escalated. And for me, my story, I stopped drinking over 10 years ago because it got to a really bad place. And I’m now correlating that that perry menopause was happening when my drinking was spiking the way that it was. I was already a drinker, but I mean I was drinking to numb even more so. I mean, it’s a desperate time. It is. And Marcy, I had a very similar experience. I started going through pmenopause in my 40s and I misread it because I had a baby very late in life. I had a baby at 38. So in my 40s I was, you know, managing a toddler or kindergartener and I was running my own business. I was also training really hard in martial arts. So I was training 15, 20 hours a week. I wasn’t sleeping. It was insane. And I misinterpreted that as stress from I was a single mom, you know, so stress from that, overtraining my body, too much work stress. No, I mean, none of that helped. None of that helped. But had I been hormonally supported, maybe I wouldn’t have had such a terrible reaction to those circumstances, those life circumstances. Yeah. You’d be able to manage them so much better. Yeah. I identify with I identify with your with your path. It’s it’s hard. Yeah. I had a daughter when I was about 37 and I too like at that time in my 40s I started getting in front of the camera and I was taking on a lot and managing my home and my husband worked all the time. I wasn’t single but I was almost single. I mean because he worked all the time. Just the overwhelm, the breakdowns were I mean I I would never wish that on anyone but that is what so many women are going through. And I love that you are now helping others to get educated. And I I myself now I’m 56 and I have never done anything to straighten out my hormones and I would love to start that. And I hear it’s never too late. It’s not too late, but the sooner you do it, the more you benefit from it. So, I didn’t find it in my 40s, but I at least found it in my early 50s. And I’m very grateful. And I got to tell you, I don’t know what you would have to tell me what you would have to show me for me to give them up because Marcy, even if you told me, no, even if you told me you’re going to die 10 years earlier, I’d be like, okay. because those 10 years living the other way weren’t worth it. So, okay. Wow. Wow. That’s that’s pretty impactful. So, I’m chang I’m changing it today and I’m going to learn from from you and I’m excited to learn from you.

One of the things that you said is that your life had gotten really small. Yeah. And what did look life look like daytoday for you? And why do you think so many capable women like we were definitely capable women but when we reach that midlife and suddenly start to feel smaller and and just start to shut down it’s multiffold right our western society doesn’t really care for people as they age I mean that’s it’s we’re a very youth centric society and we care about women in particular when they are in the procreation years. There’s just not a lot of there’s not a lot of effort to understand women after after that that segment. So, that doesn’t help. But, if I’m going to be completely honest, I cannot blame the outside world for all of the reasons that I got small. In part, it was because I wasn’t feeling like myself. because of the hormone imbalance, my insides weren’t working, weren’t functioning in the proper way. And that ended up manifesting itself in I’d look in the mirror and I just I didn’t like what I saw. I was depressed, anxious, I couldn’t regulate my emotions. Those are not feelings that make you want to go out and socialize or start a new business or be out in the world. Yeah. You don’t feel like really capable. Right. It’s just like correct. And so in in a way I made myself smaller because I wasn’t feeling well. Yeah. Yeah. And and just like you’re saying like we’re raising our kids and we’re going through this and we’re so reactive to everything. we blame ourselves or if we’re where with a partner we’re crazy, right? And it and it’s very sad. So much of this testing was also on men for the longest time these medications that they were providing for us. And so from this, you knew you wanted to make a difference for others and help women not to have to live this way. So you started cool life. Tell us about that. That’s so I I love that. And it’s spelled K U L. It is. And I I started it because when I realized how hard it was for me to navigate those waters and as I said, it started off with the physiological change. Mhm. But this time of life has so many other opportunities and challenges that present themselves that you’ve never you’ve never encountered before. Right? If you decided to have a kid, whether you wanted one or not, chances are either you’re dealing with an unruly teenager or they’ve left the nest and you’re dealing with that loss. If you have aging parents and they’re dealing with health issues, now you might have a situation where your kid steals your car at 3:00 a.m. and then at 5:00 a.m. you’re getting a phone call from the assisted living facility that your mother broke a hip. Yeah. Let’s just keep going. Most divorces are handed out by women after 50. Okay. So, how do you navigate a divorce? A great divorce. You want to start dating again. How do you date with a dry vagina? I know. Yeah. I could go on and on. Yeah. And my aha moment was I believe that information is power and I believe that the more information we have and the more that we normalize because that’s the whole thing normalizing aging. The more we normalize this process, the better off we all are. We will make better decisions quicker. we will find better paths for ourselves. And I wanted to bring that information in a consolidated digital format to the world. The thing is, Marcy, I’m not an expert on much of anything. Definitely not all these topics that we just talked about. I had to go find the women who were already in those lanes helping other women. Yeah. navigate those opportunities and challenges that we just talked about. And so I went out right that you will you have the information from the experts, right? Yes. I went out and found those people, those doctors, those therapists, those coaches, the women who had already done the deep dive, the women who already were helping their clients, their constituents, their their community in navigating those. and somehow I convinced them to share that wisdom and expertise, you know, on my platform.

What are some of the things that we experience in pmenopause, menopause that women may not even understand that that is why it’s happening? Oh god. I strange things like vertigo. I I mean things that are just so random. You know, we all know the hot flashes, but I don’t know that everyone knew at the time that anxiety or lack of joy or or some sort of depression was related to hormones and not necessarily something chemical in your brain to throw an anti-depressant at it. Right? So, those are things that I think women I want women to be aware of that and so that they can make better choices and decisions for themselves. And you know what? Just because one doctor says something, oh, for the love of God, you know, first of all, if a doctor is really honest with you, they’re going to share that they got very, very limited, minimal training on the health of postmenopausal and menopausal women. That is not where their education was focused on. Now, you know, you know, to their credit, I mean, just because I could sit here and and cast as versions and be angry, to their credit, you know, we didn’t live that long for the longest time. Yeah. It just so happens that we are at a stage in in evolution where there are the biggest number just in sheer number of women currently in pmenopause and menopause. We’ve never had this many women all at once. And in talking about some of the things that happened to us that women may not realize, and you brought it up, was the vaginal dryness, pain, no sex drive. Libido. Where did the libido go? Absolutely. Yeah. Exactly. And so there are a lot of things that happen, just not the normal things that that we all talk about. So if there is something going on with you, check into that, right? And and I I’d say even 35 and above because you may be starting very early. And some women are and it has to do with the change in our diet. There’s a lot of reasons why we’re aging differently than we were say 50 years ago. And so you’re making a very good point. I mean, if you’re starting to feel weird and off at 35, you know, you probably need to start digging around. Yeah. Yeah. 100%.

So, what narratives around aging are you determined to challenge? What do you want to change? Well, I I I want to make it normal. I don’t want to make it I want to make it normal, acceptable. I kind of want to make it so it’s not a non-topic. You know what I mean? Like just wouldn’t that be nice if it’s just not even a topic because it’s so normal and we have the resources available to us and we we have an educated consumer and an educated medical profession that you just you just start tackling it rather than having to ponder what it is or is it bad. No, you just you’re like, “Oh, now it’s time to start this process. Let’s figure out how best, you know, your body, Susie, is going to manage this process and how how best we can get you through this change and how wonderful it’s going to be on the other side because that is the one thing that I want your audience to understand. It gets pretty darn good on the other side once you solve the riddle of the Sphinx.” You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I’m sold. I’m sold. And and I think it’s just so important that we educate young people to understand it, you know, so the conversation’s happening so they get it, what’s happening for us when we’re in it. And even for men to understand it, so there’s a little more compassion and kindness when when there there’s significant, you know, their partner is going through this and and they can be helpful along the road, too. as in like don’t touch the thermostat, dude. Just leave the thermostat on. Put on a sweater if you need to, but don’t change that thermostat. I’m not battling that with you because I’m going to rip your head off if you battle that with me right now. You know, I remember going through that. And and you know what’s great and and one of the things I want to talk to you a little bit about the marketing to women over 50 over 50 and and talking about this in the media and what brands are missing because there are some brands now I recently had someone reach out to me and it’s like this little thing that goes around your neck and it’s like a fan to help you with those hot flashes. So I think that they are trying slowly to help us through this process. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I have lots of thoughts on that because not only is the market of 50year-old women and above the largest in sheer numbers. Yeah. This cohort also happens to be the wealthiest. We own quote unquote trillions of dollars, not billions, t trillions of dollars, which is weird, right? Because if you think about it, we don’t get paid as much of men as men do. Yet, we own most of the wealth. This cohort not only is the health, it’s the healthiest cohort we’ve seen, it’s also the most educated and the most experienced cohort. And so, the brands that figure that out Yeah. They’re the ones that are going to win. The brands that figure out that you can’t just put a category in place, women 50 and over, and we’re just going to market to women 50 and over exactly the same way over and over again, and not understand the nuances, they’re not going to do as well. But the brands that are going to take the time to understand the wealthiest marketplace that also is responsible for 75 to 80% of the purchasing decisions. Hey brands, we’re the ones with the credit cards and the checkbooks. Decision makers most time. We’re the we’re the ones with the credit cards and the checkbooks. figure out what we needed and we will buy it from you. Yeah, 100%. So, it’s a great opportunity. We’re at like we’re at a place where the brands that that can get off of the mark and realize that we are not just one lump category of women over 50. Yeah, there’s a lot to be won. There’s a lot of pie to be eaten in that category. A lot pie to be eaten. And what one thing I want to say is what works for one woman and you brought this up. What works for one woman is not necessarily going to work for another one. Exactly. And that’s to hearken back to the whole normalization of aging. There are women who cannot wait to get to the stage of being a grandmother and baking muffins and reading to their grandchild and picking up their grandchild. And you know what? More power to you. But there’s another cohort of women out there who have passports and solo travel. There’s another cohort out there that is they start their own businesses after 50. Not all of those women, right? Not all of those. Then there are the women who want to color their hair, the women who don’t want to color their hair. Then there are the women who want to access them, you know, have access to cosmetic procedures because that’s how they want to age. Well, they’re going to have a different perspective and they’re going to have different needs than the women who say, you know what, I’m not doing that. I’m going to age naturally. I don’t want to avail myself of any of that stuff. That’s not for me. Well, they’re going to want different things. Exactly. 100%. Actually, it’s not rocket science. It really isn’t.

Well, it’s just like you said, becoming aware, normalizing the conversation, and just understanding the the dire need, the need for it out there. So, we’re going to pause just a moment, and when we come back, we’re going to talk about how women begin reclaiming their voice again. We’ll be right back. Are you in the first 30 days of sobriety or wondering if now is your time to start? Hi, I’m Marcy Hopkins and I wrote Wake Up You’re Not Broken just for you. It’s a real raw guide to those first 30 days. What no one tells you, what you will feel, and how to keep going. This isn’t about perfection. It’s about progress. Order your copy now on Amazon. Remember, you’re not alone. You’re not broken. You’re waking up.

All right. I am so excited to continue this conversation about menopause and we’re talking about all the ways that we can help ourselves, right? But one of the things that I wanted to talk about was how do we begin to reclaim our voice again? And there’s also there are the the medications and the things that we can take that will help us. But how can we start shifting our mindset and doing the work to help us through this process? Well, I got to tell you, community is huge. There are plenty of studies out there that basically link longevity and health to relationships and community and it has a bigger it has a bigger impact Marcy than say your BMI or whether you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. Women I mean everyone needs community I believe but I am focused on women and that is that’s my area of expertise. I’m only going to talk about women. women really thrive in community with other women. And when we were younger, a lot of us were far more competitive with one another, which we came by that honestly. You know, I don’t know what you’re what you’re you know, coming up through the ranks, but I I was in corporate America for a while, and I would look at that room and I would see that there was only one chair in that room for a skirt. And if my skirt wasn’t in there, too bad for me. And so it made it made an environment where you felt more competitive because of the scarcity model that that we all that we lived in. If we lived in worlds that were more dominated by men, which was what I lived in. Yeah. Now, every seat at my table has got a skirt in it. And I can always bring up another chair or I can scoot over. I’ve lost all that weight. There’s room in my chair. I will share my chair. And that is how we claim our voices because we lift each other up. Sometimes, you know, sometimes we are our own worst enemies. Ladies, do not ridicule a woman. Do not make fun of a woman if she chooses to go gray. Do not shame a woman if she chooses to color her hair and be a slave to that. We have got to stop doing that on internally. When somebody judges someone else, right, that’s just a lot of times that’s something that’s that’s gone on for them. Maybe it’s a mirror for them. Maybe projection. Absolutely. Absolutely. But we got to stop it. We have to stop it. Yeah. Because we’re only hurting ourselves. Only hurting. We were brought up that way. Somebody in the home is always judging or we surround ourselves with others that are doing the same gossiping and judging. So the people you surround yourself with are very important. Yes, they are. Back to community. Back to community. But you also come to a point in your life where you have to make a decision about how much you’re going to let your family of origin stuff hang on, you know, and at this point in our 50s and our 60s, holy cow. But we got to sometimes we have to do the things to this is what I’ve learned and what I’ve done through my process is is changing the way that I think about things and that’s through daily practice. Right? So sometimes we can’t just continue on that auto drive and just say, “Well, that’s how I was brought up.” And it doesn’t just change automatically. There are things that we have to do to change that. Whether it’s forgiveness, gratitude, meditation, prayer, you know, there’s a lot of things that we can do to create the change. Therap therapy. Don’t forget about therapy. That’s therapy. Again, therapy is very important, but therapy generally is once a week and these are practices we’ve got to do daily to create the change for ourselves. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah.

So, tell us what you said you lost the weight and I know that that’s a big one for women. How did you do that? To be honest with you, I lost the weight because my hormones were balanced. I was so estrogenheavy, even though I didn’t have any estrogen, but of what I had, the estrogen was overriding progesterone and I had no testosterone. And so once I got the concoction just over time that and I kept, you know, it’s not like it’s not like all of a sudden I kept my I have healthy habits. I have been a lifetime athlete. I eat whole foods. It’s It’s not like, you know, I’m I’m binging on Big Macs and I lost the weight. No. Yeah. No. Your body body changed. So, for those out there, like, where are we going? What’s the first thing we can do? Like, yeah, I got to get this figured out. Is it our gynecologist? You can start there. It depends on um how well trained your gynecologist is and how make sure of that, right? Yeah. Or how old she or he may be because, you know, they they may be still confused. I mean, I just went to a new general practitioner, an internal medicine doctor. My my hormone doctor is somebody different. And when I was talking to my internal medicine doctor, because I have some other issues now because I’m 61 and stuff is falling apart. Um, I told her about my hormone replacement therapy and she kind of raised an eyebrow at me like, hm, we might have to talk about that. I’m like, we can talk about that all you want, but I’m letting you know right now we’re working within the framework of keeping him. I’m not getting rid of them. And, you know, she’s my age. She’s 61 and she’s definitely come up through the ranks of where where the that study misled practitioners and took women off of HRT for years. And also she because of her age wasn’t medically trained to the level that she should have been on women’s medicine during pmenopause and postmenopause. And so you have to realize that the medical practitioner that you’re talking to may not know much more than you do. And so you just can’t take their word for it and just say, “Okay, you know, that’s an answer. I don’t like it, but I’m going to take it.” You need to figure it out. And there are other practitioners out there who specialize like find yourself someone who specializes in I hate to use this word, but this is the word they use in geriatric medicine for women. Oh no. Yes, ma’am. I know. I hate to use that word, but that is that is the word. So you need to find you need to find an expert on who who focuses on hormones and geriatric medicine for women. Yeah. And have start having those conversations with those individuals. It makes sense though. It does like Yeah. And I’m not I’m not very good about going to the doctor and um I need to because I’m I’m generally healthy, right? and and it’s just but I need to to start moving forward because first of all the brain fog right now is just can be debilitating at sometime I’m like is there something wrong with me? I mean am I like early dementia? Like, well, you know what? It’s it’s funny that you say that because there was actually a big study done out of the UK where all of these women were leaving the workforce early because they were misconstring their hormone related brain fog with early onset dementia. Wow. And so, think about think about what that does to our society. You’re losing valuable resources with tons of experience, all that intellectual property, and they’re walking out the door where a little hormone could fix that. Like, like really? That’s like throwing the baby out with the bath water, right? Oh my god, you’ve got me super excited. Tell you that. Oh my god, that’s crazy. That’s crazy. And so through Cool Life, you can find all of this information. Is that correct? Yeah, we talk about it all. Like I said, we talk about it from the gray divorce to dry vagina to good, you know, what what kind of skin care should we be using now and what kind of clothing to hide, you know, we don’t have the body that we used to have. And so, you know, how do we want to dress and what, you know, but you don’t have to dress like a frumpy old lady if you don’t want to. If you want to, more power to you. Do it. Do you. But you don’t have to and there are choices to be made. And so we address, we talk about it all. We talk about it all. And like I said, I it’s not me telling you, it’s the experts from around the world that somehow I managed to convince to get on this path with me. And I’m very grateful. So yeah, I started it. Yes, it’s my platform, but it is only valuable because of the wealth and depth of expertise that you can access. Yeah. So needed.

So what does self-discovery look like in in midlife? I like to talk a lot about self-discovery and vulnerability. So for those out there that are looking to rediscover themselves, what could that look like in midlife? So I think it happens sort of by degrees, right? Because in order to rediscover yourself or in some cases discover yourself because we’ve had so many roles that have been placed upon us through society and ourselves and our families that not all of us h have been necessarily tuned in to who we really are until you get to the place where stuff starts to go away. Yeah. your parenting requirements start to go away. Your uh obligations as someone’s son or daughter goes away when your parents pass. potentially your responsibilities or roles as a partner to somebody goes away because either you left them, which so many women are doing after 50, or they pass away because we’re getting older. And your corporate job got up and walked out or you walked out of your corporate job. And so all of these things start being stripped away. The things that we sort of built our lives on, the the things that we were identity, right? And now it’s changed. Yeah. And it’s they’re go they’re complete. It’s not that they’re changing, they’re disappearing. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing nothing quote unquote is replacing them. The only way to replace them is to do some digging, some soulsearching, some trying on different hats. There’s nothing wrong with trying something on and going, “Oh, I thought I wanted to do that, but guess what? I don’t.” Okay. Well, you know, this is a great I thought I wanted to learn a third language. I’m bilingual and I thought I wanted to learn a third language. I’ve always wanted to learn Portuguese since I was a kid. I was like, I want to learn Portuguese. Yeah. So, I went to Lisbon, got an apartment for six weeks, took 60 hours of intensive Portuguese. I went to school every day for three weeks. And you know what I discovered? I discovered that I like knowing languages, but I don’t like learning them. And so I’m like, you know what? I don’t want to do this. Yeah. I tried it on. And I tried it on pretty wholeheartedly, right? I did 60 hours of intense training and then decided, yeah, I’m kind of done. I don’t want to do you say I love that you say it’s okay. We’re we’re we are trying on new hats and seeing what works for us and and trying new hobbies or going back to things that we enjoyed at one time. And this is and discovering and discovering new things that we may not have ever thought of doing. It is so much fun. It is so much fun as long as we can stay healthy. That’s the thing. You got to stay healthy. That’s priority one is our health. That is for sure. Yeah.

So tell us about your book Metamorphosis stanzas. Let’s Yeah. Yeah. So I you can figure out your menopause situation and you can remedy those symptoms and blah blah blah blah, but that doesn’t mean you’re done because life is evergreen and new stuff happens. And the new stuff that had happened to me was, you know, my son graduated and left left like and I didn’t realize how hard that was for me. My sister, whom we are so close, moved 3,000 miles away. Something that I had been trying professionally failed at a level, a epic level. It felt like I Oh, I lost a lifetime relationship with a friend. And I didn’t think you could break up with people you weren’t sleeping with, but apparently you can. And so, so I I I lost that relationship. And it all came at me at once. And I was it wasn’t hormonal, circumstantial, and I was so deep in sadness and and feeling like I didn’t I didn’t know what to do with myself. I am a writer. I’m an essayist. I have written hundreds of essays. Usually they’re all tongue-in-cheek kind of self-deprecating under the umbrella of Jack Smack. And it’s about the midlife process and midlife aging and all that stuff. And I thought that I would write a bunch of essays about what what was going through. Yeah. What I was going through. And when I went to start writing Marcy, an essay did not come. It just didn’t come. Yeah. But what came out was a poem. a poem. Yeah. And you know, I get asked like, “Have you written a lot of poetry? Have you been a poet your whole life?” I’m like, “No.” Outside of my junior year of high school where I was forced to write a sonnet and a ha coup and whatever the heck else we were supposed to write, I have never written poetry. But for whatever reason, that’s what happened. And so I decided to give myself like a 30-day challenge, right, to focus on something outside of what I couldn’t control because I could control that. And I would get up, I’m an early riser. I get up at 3:00 in the morning and I’d get up and I would write a poem a day. And after 30 days, I realized I actually have a midlife transition book in my hand. Yeah. And so I published it. I published it. I think that’s awesome. I think that’s amazing. Well, congratulations on that. And I Yeah, I would love to to read some of that poetry. And um send me your address and I’ll send you a copy of it. And what’s really what’s really nice about it is that some people are like, “Oh, I don’t do poetry. I don’t get poetry. I poetry doesn’t, you know, it’s not commercial. Poetry is definitely not commercial.” Yeah. But what I did was I recorded each and every poem in my closet and included a QR code with each one. So if you want me to read it to you, you just put your camera up to the phone and I’ll read it to you. Oh, that’s fun. That’s fun. I love that. I love the interaction there.

So to close this, what do you wish more women understood about midlife that society has gotten completely wrong? Well, um because it’s it’s the best part. Okay. It is it is so much better. It is so much better than being younger. It really really is. Yeah. So, I love the hormone replacement and how we actually can get on the other side of this and live a happy, productive life. And that’s what that’s why I do this show, right? To bring on people that can allow us to learn more, normalize the conversation, and be better on the other side of it. So, I’m I’m just so grateful that you came on the show. And how can we connect with you? You can find me on cool life kelife.com. It’s a website. It’s open for every you can get all the information. Doesn’t cost anything to to look at the information. And if you want to directly contact me, just go to the about page. You can send me an email. I’m I’m easy to find. I’m also all over socials, too. But um if you really want to get to me, go to the website and drop me an email directly if you if you need to get to me. I’m sure your socials are on there. So, thank you again for coming on the show and giving us hope and and I am super excited to take this information and move forward with it in my own life. And for that, for all those out there, if today’s conversation resonated with you, please share this episode with a woman who needs to hear this message and like and comment. And I’m going to ask Jack if she can answer those questions for you. And just know that your interaction helps. It allows us to reach more women that are going through the same because midlife isn’t the end of the story. Just like Jack said, it’s the beginning and it may just be the moment that your real story begins. This is Wake Up with Marcy. It’s time to wake up to your worth and I’ll see you next week.