Stacy (00:00)

My guest today is Julie Flakstad, host of the Midlife Truth Project and a fearless advocate for changing the narrative around women's health. Julie's mission is clear, to ensure that women feel informed, empowered and unapologetic about their experiences. We talk about how sharing our stories can be a form of healing, why menopause deserves a front row seat in the healthcare conversation and how midlife can be the most powerful chapter yet. Please welcome Julie Flakstad to Hello Menopause.

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Julie, it is so great to have you on Hello Metapause. feel like I know we know so many people in common. And we have been sort of I don't know, like circling around each other, you know, I don't know what the way sharks do or something. Trying to get you on this podcast and are very, very excited. So welcome.

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Julie (01:54)

I'm excited to be here, the universe has aligned.

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Stacy (01:57)

Exactly. Because you know, I am so fascinated by your podcast, you're doing the midlife truth project. And I'd love to know, what was the truth that you were looking for when you started it? I mean, did you think it was you would find a truth? Or were you just trying to put information out that was true, right? Because now we have a lot of people who are are fighting because you hear one thing on social and you hear another doctor say, that's not right. Things like that.

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Julie (02:30)

No, mean, look, there's always a backstory, right? And I think that's why these podcasts are interesting, right? It's because you get a little bit behind why things are and where we ended up here. you've ended up where you are, and I've ended up as advocates, right? We have ended up here because of our own personal experience. And so I think I can't really even talk about the podcast unless I kind of talk about a little bit like how she came to be. ⁓

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And because, know, we've talked about this and I've heard you speak and I think our stories are somewhat similar. I'm 54. I kind of started into this peri-menopausal cycle when I was 46. That was like eight years ago. Nobody was talking about it. And so let's just say that my, you know, settling into my late 40s was rocky at best.

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And it felt like there was just a flow of waves crashing over me, one after the other. I could barely come up for air. I was like, tousled in an undercurrent. It was pretty terrible, right? And it wasn't just physical. Yes, I had insomnia. I had chronic UTIs. I mean, we all have different stories of how it hit us. But like you, I didn't know what was going on. But for me, in addition to feeling like crap and feeling like I was going insane, I also was going through a bunch of other stuff I think professionally in my late 40s, I was doing a lot of should have, would have, could have, because I felt like my career looked like an EKG instead of a hockey stick. And I was taught like that. Yeah, so I was frustrated. I had shame around that. I was mourning the loss of a very close friend after a brutal journey with cancer. My marriage didn't feel quite right. And I think at the end of the day, what really was like the...the nail or whatever the hammer on the nail, whatever the expression is, the nail in the coffin was that I felt lonely. I felt like I really started questioning who my real friends were and who I could be authentically me with. And I live in this kind of really sheltered little cute suburban town. And I had this movie like dream that at 46, I was supposed to have this tribe of women gathered on my back porch every Thursday night to drink wine with. And I couldn't, I didn't know who I was supposed to talk to.

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Stacy (04:22)

Nail in the coffin.

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Julie (04:47)

So anyway, so all of that said, it took me three years to swim back to shore. I did. And when I got there, I was a little bit angry about why nobody had told me that this thing called midlife, not just menopause, including menopause, but this thing called midlife was coming. Why hadn't anybody told me? And so. I embarked on kind of my year of 50 and I set out on a quest. It was very personal for me and I called it the Midlife Truth Project. And I interviewed over a hundred women in one-on-one, you know, audio video interviews with women between the ages of 45 and 57 about what their experience was settling in, approaching and settling into midlife. You know, physically, emotionally, spiritually, even financially.

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And what I found shocking is that, you know, I was not alone. Everybody was experiencing some version of the same thing. And so I called it truth. I love that word because truth is are things that we feel that we don't always share openly. And so I wanted to from all these interviews, I culled together kind of these what I would call these midlife truths.

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And I wanted to figure out a way to amplify them so that in a really architected way, so that women could feel more supported and inspired and less alone as they approached and settle into midlife. Thus, the podcast series. It was very tight. was a 10 episode. I mean, there's more to come which we can talk about, but it was a 10 episode really beginning, middle, and end audio journey with the goal of helping women feel less alone in this new challenge.

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Stacy (06:43)

⁓ I mean, I really do see the similarities in our stories. It's kind of funny. ⁓ And particularly that kind of anger of not being told what midlife is or that when you get there, you really have to reassess life on its own terms. That what experience you've had up until that point is not going to help you at that moment when you're experiencing or about to move into midlife, 45 to, you said 45 to 57, 45 to 55 highest rate of decreased earning potential depression and divorce. And I think that there are very significant reasons for that that we've never looked at. It's the lowest point of happiness for women. There's a reason why. And maybe it's menopause, maybe it's midlife. It's that we have no rule book and we are not taught to understand the feelings that we're experiencing, we're not taught to understand why would I feel lonely at 47, right? I went through this too. And it really was fascinating to me to find when sort of coming out the other side of it, I do need fewer people. I need closer people, but I need fewer people.

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And not because I'm not willing to do the people pleasing and turning myself inside out the way that I did when I was young. You know, it's sort of like the older you are, the fewer fucks given or whatever, whatever it feels like. But you said, you know, it was a very tight sort of arc narrative arc in the podcast. Was it around the kind of the five issues that you were talking about before, you know, physical, emotional, financial?

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Julie (08:26)

I mean, yes and no. I mean, it was a beginning, middle and end. And we started with, and what I'm so proud of is that they were, each episode is where we hone in on a truth. And we started with episode one, which is called Go Deep. And I won't kind of bore you with going through each episode, but go deep is what I like I believe in the in the world of being deep. If I could now at this stage in my life just live kind of two inches or two feet below the surface, I don't want to be surfacing anymore. I want to have real conversations with real people. So the beginning of the podcast was a setup of like, let's go deep, like let's like have really good conversations with with with with really smart people and get perspective on each one of these truths. So we spoke with we kicked off with Chip Conley, who I know you know, you know, he's amazing. I think you were there too at South By. So I've gotten to know him and I adore him. He's a delicious human. And he really set the stage, we called it Windows Open, because that is, it is really, there is, pause here. I think one of the biggest truths that I walked away with after all of these interviews was that there is a duality to aging. And I wanted to set the stage for the listeners is that there is a profound mourning and loss and anger that comes along and grief that comes along with this time in our lives. that can manifest itself in letting go of our children, our aging parents, our own vanity, our disease, so many different aspects. And then coupled, the other side of that is that there is this explosion of curiosity and inspiration and growth, right? But you cannot have one without the other, you know, or you're giving yourself a disservice. You can't walk through the world at this stage in our lives without having felt, feeling the feels, so to speak, in order to be able to really expansively lean into what this next chapter represents.

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And so, know, with Chip, we talked a lot about how this idea of the atrium, right, about like this whole, the U-curve of happiness and like what is ahead. And if we can just take time to open that window, you need the fresh air. You need perspective. And one of the things I heard from so many of the women that I interviewed was that they've been moving so fast through life. I love the word episodic too. I think our lives as women, you know, are episodic. Our 20s are marked by this. Our 30s are marked by that. It's not until we end up in our 40s where we really like need to take time to pause and like evaluate, open the window.

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Stacy (11:20)

Yeah, I mean, I kind of think that perimenopause is mother nature's way of being like, sit up, pay attention, this is about you now. Like it's sort of this built in reinforcement. But, you know, it's also interesting that you use the word truth, right? When you say the truths that you discovered.

Is that because they were things that you found in common with everybody? because I always am, I'm struck by the word truth a lot these days, right? When I think about it, I'm sort of like, what is the difference between truth and a belief? And a belief, right, is a thought that we've had over and over and over and over again, that we then deem to be true because we've thought it so many times. Whereas like my aunt said when I was five years old, I couldn't wear green and I internalized that so I never try on green, right? That kind of idea is a belief, but it's not true.

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Julie (12:15)

That's wise, I like that.

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Stacy (12:20)

Thank you. I, you know what, I've been working on this, talking a lot about this with my co-host, Clinton Kelly, about just this idea about fashion, right? You can internalize things that actually don't belong to you and you think that they're true when they're not. So when you use the word truth, I'm curious what that means for you when you came away from this 10 episode podcast.

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Julie (12:45)

So intuitively, based on my own experience, I had some hypothesis about what I experience, what I believe to be true. So when I say the word truth, I mean it is something that we feel inside ourselves. We may or may not be aware of it at first, but it's something that we don't necessarily always share openly with others. It is a truth inside us. That's how I have interpreted that word in this work that I have done.

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Stacy (13:16)

Light and shadow, yes, like to this truth, because it's sort of like what is, what people can see and what people, and the things that we don't tell people.

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Julie (13:26)

Yeah, and mean, oftentimes I've written, you know, some things where I'll say my truth is X, but my deeper truth is Y. You know, like, I think that there are layers of truth. I think that there are many women out there who, you know, go through life at this stage very performatively. And, oh, it's fantastic. I've never been better and I'm best version of me. And I'm like, really? I'm like, but you where is there no tinge of mourning and loss in there? Because I I don't buy it. I come back to you can't have one without the other, but in these collective truths, so I had an hypothesis, I interviewed all these people, and what I took away were collective truths, so collective things that we feel but don't often share with others. And it was things like, back to your first question, which is, what were some of those truths? And some of them were, I intuitively knew, but I didn't understand the expansiveness of it. So I'll give you an example.

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Two of the most vulnerable truths that we talk about in series one of the podcast was that families change. ⁓ And for those women who I spoke to who were mothers, the degree of vulnerability ⁓ and the best word I can come up with is ache. The ache that they felt ⁓ as their identity as mothers evolved and they have learned to let go of their children was so real. Like, I mean, it is, it's science fiction ⁓ to let these kids go or fly. So that was really interesting to get color and texture around that. And I interviewed Kelly Corrigan, who is an amazing writer and a keen observer of just life and life stages.

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And she just, she really shared her perspective on that and gave so much advice and insight and wisdom in that episode that I think will be helpful for women who are struggling not just with aging children and letting go, but also aging parents.

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Stacy (15:33)

And certainly, you know, divorce, breakups, midlife, you know, we see a ton of that.

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Julie (15:40)

Oh, 100%. And then the other one that I thought was really interesting, again, not like shocking, but the degree of vulnerability around it and the spectrum of emotion around the truth, sex is complicated. So sex is complicated, especially at this stage in our lives. And what I took away from all the interviews was, again, that kind of like financial security, like there's a huge range, right? Some are having the best sex ever. And some are having absolutely no sex, whether it's by choice or circumstance. And there's a heaping load of us in the middle that are kind of like meh, like, you know. So the conversation is not just anatomically, but we talked to, I know you know her very well, is Dr. Kelly Casperson. You know, she was amazing. And we had a really amazing, you know, again, deep, deep conversation. went right there about not just what is the

biology of what's happening to us, but what is also the emotional side of the equation that I don't think we spend enough time talking about.

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Stacy (16:47)

I couldn't agree with you more. I was like, are the physical symptoms and then there are the big feelings, right? That's what I call them. I'm like, little symptoms, big feelings. And one of the reasons that I was so frustrated really when I ⁓ acquired a menopause company that was supposed to be like first line of defense, it was really skincare. And it's not that your skin doesn't get drier, your hair doesn't get drier, but those are the little symptoms, not the big feelings and I'm like you can't get through menopause without talking about the big feelings you can't get through midlife without talking big feelings and I completely agree with you that's that's the crux of it right you want people to feel like they understand you're all speaking the same language about things that you are feeling acutely

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Julie (17:33)

The thing is about sex, which I thought was interesting. I mean, we could just talk about sex a lot. There's so many completely false narratives around sex that bother me so much. This whole idea of like, men just want it all the time and women are like, no, no, no, or whatever, whoever your partner is. Like that's so F'd up by the way, because it just makes, there's so much shame that women carry around there if their partners aren't into sex or don't define sex in the same way or, you there's just so many narratives that are wrong about that. But the other part that I think is difficult about sex is we're taught that, especially our generation, that sex is so much about penetration. And, you know, I hate to kind of go there, but, know, but it's… like how we define sex, you know, and I loved, I know if you saw the Dying for Sex with Michelle Williams, the TV series. Oh my God, it's so good. You know, it's just, and there's just one point in the series where she says, oh my God, you you Gen Xers, you think it's all about this, but like, and she has this beautiful monologue about how sex is a wave and it's a feeling and it's an emotion. And I just feel like there is, so much vulnerability and shame still for our generation around it that we're just not comfortable sharing. And here's the clincher is that the women don't even want to talk about sex because they feel like it's no longer their story to share anymore because then they're kind of outing their partner, which is, yeah, so we're just alone. We're alone up in our head about this stuff.

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Stacy (19:14)

I think that's totally true. And I think, you what you were saying about the shame being something the partner is internalizing when, let's say, somebody who loses libido in midlife is the, you know, is the person who doesn't know how to talk about it in the first place. I think these are very difficult conversations to have, particularly in romantic relationships, because you can love somebody and not want to sleep with them, and it's not personal.

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And a lot of that doesn't get talked about because we are afraid to admit we don't want sex as much as we're afraid to admit it. And I find that to be a really interesting dilemma in terms of what it means to be in love with somebody when you're at different ages, how lust and limerence are all about being younger. As we age, we wanna age and love the person. ⁓ and grow with them and change with them. So if something like this gets in the way, that can be really painful without real communication. So I can imagine that that was a very, you know, kind of deep and vulnerable conversation to have.

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Julie (20:19)

And I hope that listeners, as they listen to this or they listen to that particular series, that if nothing else, we can just offer small, tiny takeaways for how to begin to have the conversation with a partner or a spouse. And again, I go back to the same thing, just so we can feel less alone. Life can be really lonely. And I don't think any woman should feel alone about, you know, how they view financial security or how they view, you know, their sexuality.

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Stacy (20:55)

Agreed, completely. And, you I know that you have talked about midlife. I like to talk about it as a reckoning to a renaissance, but I've heard you talk about it as a reckoning and a reinvention. And you were an executive producer of her second act, the documentary co-directed by Constance Zimmer and Abby Epstein, who I know as well. I'm doing the Midlife monologues, which I'm super excited about. But you've helped sort of reshape the way that we see women at this stage of life. And what compelled you to take that project on? really, how does it reflect the broader mission that we are trying to rewrite this midlife narrative? Is it really about saying, we are just shining a light on this. We're going to create a framework. And then we're going to have like a way in which for you to understand this. Cause even the way you were talking about the podcast, to me, makes a lot of sense. You set yourself up to be able to talk about difficult things, about how you're going to talk about difficult things, going deep and, you know, having this kind of conversation, the duality that is necessary to understand midlife. Is that how you approach this project as well?

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Julie (22:07)

Yeah, I mean, look, I'm going to be honest. This is a labor of love project. I started talking about this documentary two years ago. You know, we are working with an L.A. based production company. And, you know, we have been so close so many times. But getting stuff made, ⁓ you know, getting getting Hollywood media storytelling to support this. Story of midlife or men and menopause is really hard.

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Stacy (22:38)

I pitched, think it was 20, beginning of 2019, I went to LA, I pitched to every streamer and every channel, a makeover show about midlife, just midlife. I was like, there are so many key turning points. What if I show up with like a helmet and a mattress and I'm like, I'm not staying till we figure this out, right? You know, and go through all of those things, take people through all of the things they need to know about.

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Entering midlife is like sort of, it's like, you know, walking into the upside down. You have to know what's coming. And I was completely crickets. Nobody wanted to hear it. Somebody said to me, nobody wants to watch midlife women. I was like, who do you think the Real Housewives are? What are you talking about?

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Julie (23:22)

And the good news is, is I think we're slowly starting to see slowly starting to see things move. I mean, and we're actually having with She Media, I know you work a lot with them as well. We're having a really interesting panel with them in L.A. in a few weeks with Constance and Abby talking about Hollywood on midlife, you know, and what are the myths? What are the what is the media? How are they supporting or not supporting this new chapter in our lives? But without getting off on a tangent. So we've been working on this documentary for two years, really trying to get it supported. And I'm happy to say that we now have the funding.

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Stacy (24:03)

Congrats, my God. Just a round of applause. Anybody knew what it takes to raise funds for this kind of thing? I mean, that's a feat.

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Julie (24:08)

It's a feat, right? But again, I won't believe it until we're actually, the cameras are rolling. But anyway, that's the latest. no, and the really exciting part is what is delicious about this time in our lives is I feel like women are collaborative more and more so. So when we were trying to get different celebrities involved and trying to find who was the right cast.

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I learned that Constance Zimmer, I'm sure your listeners probably know who she is, she's an amazing actor. And she had co-created the Midlife Monologues with Abby Epstein. And this they have, it's really a spin off the Vagina Monologues. ⁓ And so they're calling it the Midlife Monologues. And that is a production, Broadway production piece. And so I found out that they were doing this and they had this whole creative community of which you are one.

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And I said, wait a minute, like this makes perfect sense. Like we should somehow, we should do a film version, a documentary version of this that is a part of that storytelling. And so fast forward, they've come on board, they're co-directing the documentary and we're going to have a really kind of beautiful set of actors, thought leaders, CEOs, advocates that come together and really are telling the story of her second act and really explaining and showing the duality of aging ⁓ and with the goal of rewriting that narrative. Like this is what the second acts looked like. Not what we were told, not the golden girls, but like what you see in front of you. ⁓ And we're really excited about bringing cross-generational conversations into the film about different genders, like really kind of expansively telling the story.

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Stacy (26:02)

Sure, think, I mean, that's part of it, right? Is that the story that we're telling about midlife today in 2025 resembles nothing to 2010, even 2015, right? The amount of advancements, the amount of conversations around race, gender, identity, just generally have become so much more expansive. And I really think it's incredible to document that. Now, I have a question for you about that style. Because if you're doing a documentary, they're obviously, I'm not a documentary filmmaker, but I'm assuming that, you know, part of what I remember somebody, maybe the Maisels saying about documentaries is that you're actually kind of creating artificial borders on real life to create a story. Whereas when you're making a movie, you're trying to imitate life. You're trying to make it look more like life than a scripted, you know, piece of writing.

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So is this the type of thing where you would think that you would do a lot of interviews to camera or is this more the thing like, what I feel is really missing is this idea of like, we don't show cool women in midlife doing cool things. We have to be like, I'm in midlife, I'm this, I'm that, I felt this. I don't know if you're familiar with Tim Parr who started Caddis Glasses.

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Julie (27:27)

I don't know him, I certainly know Caddis. I wish I had them instead of my $25 Amazon glasses. In case he's listening, you can feel free to send me a message.

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Stacy (27:33)

Tim, if you're listening. ⁓ But the thing about this is that I felt what was so amazing, what was so brilliant about the marketing was that he was like, see better, see differently, see clearer in a way that felt very aspirational to the age. All of the models, all of the people looked like artists or like very creative individuals. And it made me feel like we're just showing you how cool midlife is instead of telling you. Which to me, it really resonated because I was like, I spend a lot of time saying, know, wait till you get here, there's the reckoning and the Renaissance, but you wanna see people in action, like the, you know, the Constances of the world and the thought leaders of the world and the CEO is not just talking about the subject, but about being the subject.

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Julie (28:28)

Yeah, no, I mean, as a writer, you know, that's what we say. We say you have to see, don't tell. Right. Like you've got to you've got to show it. Don't not just tell it in words on paper. And so that's 100 percent what the documentary is going to be about. It is going to be about, you know, through the storytelling views of people who are using their platforms to to to reshape the cultural narrative around aging. It is going to be very much, ⁓ you know, a an expose, a tapestry of women who are living her second act in a way that is inspirational, but that's also vulnerable. Again, I don't think you can get to this place of curiosity and inspiration and kind of your rainbow self with all of your talents and your curiosities, to come back to that word, without having let go of the rope.

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Like I always come back to that, like that like, you know, we're fighting so hard for so long, but if we just can just let go of the rope and like, and know when we have this amazing long road ahead, this wonderful runway of decades ahead that we can continue to grow into ourselves and be who we want to be. ⁓ But you can't do that without letting go of the rope.

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Stacy (29:49)

Absolutely. I mean, I could not agree with you more. All of these analogies, know, these metaphors.

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Julie (29:55)

I know, I live on my brain's metaphor.

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Stacy (29:57)

Listen, it makes so much sense to me that, you I used to say that I felt like the letting go is that you also have to trust in the fall, right, or the descent. It doesn't necessarily have to feel like you're jumping out of a plane, but you have to feel the difference. You have to feel the difference on the way down to like… unlike Katy Perry actually kissed the ground when you figure out where you're at. It's like a little bit like Dorothy in Kansas. You're being tossed around with a ton of differing information, things that will work for you, won't work for you, scams, all of the things that you're talking about with your immediate family, your friendships, your romantic relationships. To me, it really is all of the things that we've learned up to this point no longer serve us. So it's sort of about using a rule book or writing a rule book as we do it.

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Julie (30:53)

And I think that there's little, like, I think sometimes I can talk in platitudes and, you know, about, you let go of the rope and to your point, like, and not be afraid of the fall. But I think that there are micro ways of doing it. And I think we have to remind ourselves and everyone listening that this, these are, you have to, you know, there's trial and error, you know, you've got to like try letting go a little bit and see where you land. You know, it doesn't have to be this monument just saying, you don't have to go quit your job, you know, and follow and open the bakery, you know.

⁓ And but you can make small micro changes and and kind of see how that feels see how you said give yourself permission to kind of you know, like a cat almost like just feel your way I mean I often say again another analogy follow the breadcrumbs blah blah blah, but I do think you know, I think about it often in terms of friendship friendship was another midlife truth that it sounds very like, oh yeah, of course, friendship matters. But no, like a truth, a midlife truth is friendship matters. And so, and to sit with that and well, what does that mean? You know, I think back to your conversation about like, oh, less is more. I think it really is that as we age, friendship matters more and more. There is a lot to celebrate, but there is a lot of mourning and loss that comes. Big things happen as we age and we need, you know, I call them oak trees, you know, they're deeply rooted, they're firmly planted. They can weather you in any storm and you don't need 20 of them. You might only need like one, you'd be lucky to have one. But, you know, or a few, and then you've got flowers and you've got weeds and there's a whole garden, right? A friendship. but I just think that, that when it comes to friendship we need to how do you get there right and then these micro changes of letting go is like try to be vulnerable More with people who you believe to be an oak tree or believe and see where it goes You know find out who who responds with what you give them vulnerability Are they giving you vulnerability back like these are all small? Changes that we need to kind of think about as we age ⁓ in these truths.

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Stacy (33:14)

Yeah, I mean, I really think about that. I, you know, now it's being said in more than one book, but I remember it from Frank Lippman's book that, you know, not loneliness is a worse epidemic. It's loneliness or prolonged loneliness is something in older people like akin to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It's that bad for your health. And I have to say, I really feel that to be true. Like the more that I age, the more importance I place on my social interactions. I feel a great deal of pressure about work, a great deal of pressure to keep making money when as we age, the chances of decreased earning potential are so great. And you need an outlet for...

those big feelings, right? It is a lot of grief and it is a lot of mourning. But also when good things happen, you want those same people who are rooting for you, who will talk about you in rooms you're not in, to be the ones supporting you. And it really has, in the last couple of years, I've really noticed how particular I am. But I've also noticed that once I have an oak tree, if they're like, you've got to meet so and so, that person sort of has a pass. I'm like, if the oak tree says so, I'm willing to meet this little bush or whatever.

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Julie (34:32)

Yeah sapling I call him sapling. I get it. And it is explosive, right? And this is all, and it goes back to intentionality, right? If there is like kind of one of several words that are important in this stage of life is be intentional, right? Be intentional about friendship, be intentional about motherhood, be intentional. You've got to surround yourself with some wisdom, with some guiding lights.

⁓ and perspective because this is a challenging time. is again, biggest midlife truth. Midlife is the most explosive time in a woman's life because nobody has prepared us for it. Are there other explosive times? Yes. Are they culturally celebrated as you talked about with Chip? You know, are they, do we have knowledge about them and education about them? Yes. But this one, we don't. So like news flash, we have to give ourselves some grace ⁓ certainly about that.

I will just do a shameless pitch because you wrote the forward for this.

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You know, again, everything I'm leaning into right now as a result of the work around the Midlife Truth Project is around trying to amplify female stories, trying to amplify what the truth is around aging and midlife. so whether it's the podcast, which we're now we're going to launch season two under a different, very limited series umbrella, again, a set of conversations with. Thanks, I'm excited about it.

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Stacy (36:02)

Congratulations! We'd be able to get that wherever we get our podcast.

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Julie (36:08)

100 % on all platforms. ⁓ so, but they are meant, season one, like it's meant to be listened to one through 10, you know, it's an audio journey, which is a little bit different than some other podcasts. But then you've got the documentary, is, which is going to set, we're going to start pre-production on the summer, called her second act. That's going to be great. But here comes, yay, drum roll, drum roll, an anthology, a book that I just, we just did a podcast for yesterday. It's called Midlife Private Parts and they are revealing essays that will change the way you think about age. And you wrote the foreword for this, so thank you.

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Stacy (36:47)

It feels like it was a hundred years ago. I'm not gonna lie.

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Julie (36:52)

I mean, it's not even coming out June 24th, but you can order the pre-copy of whatever it's called. can't wait. Yeah, and so there are 24, I think there's something like 24 or 26 essays all about different aspects of midlife, what I would call truths. And I am one of the essay writers in the book and it was such a joy to be a part of that collaboration. And that's what I think this is about. think this is a… it's our shared stories, it's about coming together, it's about being a part of connective tissue that can set the stage and hopefully help the next generation understand that there is such a long, beautiful runway ahead. It is not the end, it's the beginning.

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Stacy (37:40)

I completely agree. And I also think that you are ⁓ it's so I don't mean this to sound condescending at all. I'm really I'm like, it's with like such admiration. But I'm saying I just think it's so intelligent to hit sort of this omni media kind of platform. So there's the book, there's the documentary, there's a podcast, there are ways for people with different kinds of ⁓ passion for entertainment to be involved in the movement, right? Because it really is one.

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And my argument is that this is Gen X's legacy, that we are in fact finally speaking truth to power about midlife. I mean, we're actually speaking about it for the first time. And what that actually means is that we are creating a much smoother path without that reckoning, without that Mack truck barreling towards you for every generation that comes after us. No, I don't think any other generation after we're done with all of this, is going to think, I don't know what to do if I'm perimenopausal, or I'm not sure what to ask for if I'm having trouble sleeping, or just the idea that letting go of one's youth really is grief, and it really does require mourning. You can't get around it. But then there's also the acceptance of what's to come. And it's the first time that anybody's talking about the dark side.

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Julie (39:07)

But can you imagine though, like maybe it's actually maybe it will actually be different because if the next generation seize, show don't tell, seize and we model for that generation what this aging, what this new chapter looks like. Maybe there won't be as much mourning about letting go of some of these, of our former selves because we won't be, they won't be as attached to it.

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Stacy (39:37)

Well, I hope that you're right, right? Because I'm also hoping that a lot of the things that we've internalized, particularly as women or just, you know, people with female physiology have really been around this concept of thePatriarchy. These are patriarchal values. When we say goodbye to our youth, we're saying goodbye to the beauty that we felt in our youth or the bodies we had in our youth. That's also particular to our age, right? I grew up, you know, ⁓ the same time as you, essentially thinking that Kate Moss was the perfect body. Times have changed significantly. We are much more body positive. We have much more body acceptance. So younger generations may not feel tied to the same kinds of things that they're saying goodbye to. But I do think when you, the two phrases that I hear from every person I have ever talked to about the beginning of perimenopause was, I stopped feeling like myself and I didn't look like myself. And even if those are not significant changes to other people, they are significant changes that there's no coming back from the idea that you are no longer, if you were ever able to biologically have children. I never wanted children, but I had to stop and be like, wow, something my body's been able to do since I was actually 11 is no longer possible. So there are things that I think are just inherent in the way that we live life. We have to say goodbye. Maybe we can say a better goodbye. But without grief, you don't have the love and curiosity for the future, right? There's no goodbye without hello and hello without goodbye.

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Julie (41:24)

100 % back to duality, 100 % and there's duality in each one of the truths that we uncover through the Midlife Truth Project. There is a duality in motherhood, there is a duality in sexuality, there is a duality in planning ahead for financial security. There is duality and it's about us being comfortable enough within our own skin to kind of look at both look at both sides and as a humankind, know, God, what a gift to give to the next generation is to show them and model for them that two things can be true at the same time.

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Stacy (42:00)

actually more than two things can be true, right? I mean, that's what's so amazing about all of this. I think obviously to put things in terms where they're concrete and people can understand, it's a duality. It's also a multiplicity, right? And this idea that I always thought it was funny when people would ask me about work-life balance. I'm like, it's like you're saying the only two things are like work and like recreation. There's just, I always think of it as harmony. How am I living in harmony with all of these different kind of notes and lines in the music.

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Julie (42:33)

One thing I just have to laugh at, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I have to laugh at is because my daughter's 17 and so I came home yesterday with the book and I was like, oh my God, Hannah, look, I was woo! And like all jazzy hands and she was like, wait, what? So she's like, wait, when did you do that? And I was like, oh, you know, in the middle of, you know, like that hat and this hat, we all wear these different hats and all that stuff, but it never, it struck me the most when I realized I was updating my bio for some sort of, you know, speaker thing. And I realized I added like the word, like I started like, I feel like every six months I start adding a new title to the bio. And I really, sat with that and I was like, is that embarrassing or amazing? That like, I'm a producer now. Like, you know, like, you know, I am speaker, writer, producer, you know, banker, mother. I think, again, I go back to modeling to our friends, to our family, to the younger generation, and also to the upper generation, you know, and saying like, you know, we are modeling what this act looks like and hear us roar. It is fantastic.

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Stacy (43:50)

It's so exciting. mean, and the way you talk about it, I think is so grounded, right? It's both enthusiasm and realism about what this ⁓ experience is like, which I think a lot of people are trying to describe and a lot of people are finally becoming interested in. know, I started talking about menopause really seriously at the end of 2017, right? And so think about that. That's like, I don't even know how, eight years ago?

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And nobody was talking about menopause. People told me I was gonna commit career suicide if I talked about menopause, because fashion was so much sexier. And I was like, actually, they're all part of the same thing, right? It's the things that we don't talk about, the things that we keep in the dark, that, you know, it's like the monster under the bed. If you have a flashlight, you realize they're dust bunnies. And it doesn't mean they're not difficult, or you may be allergic to dust, or whatever it is, but at least you're realistic about what the challenge is that's facing you.

And we are shining a light, I think, on the areas of midlife that have not been really vocally or written about or expressed so clearly ever.

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Julie (45:02)

Yeah, read, you one of the things I read about you somewhere was that you love to talk about things that people don't like to talk about. And, and that struck me because I so believe in that because my dad always taught me like, if you have a question, you know, dollars to doughnuts, somebody else has a question that has the same question.

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Stacy (45:09)

I thought I was the only one and like dollars to donuts, there's a billion of us.

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Julie (45:32)

There's so many, right? And so I do sometimes like go on a little hunt and maybe people think I take up too much space because of it. But I am kind of like a probing, curious individual. so when we talk about when they said to you that you were crazy committing career suicide, talking about menopause, like I'm like, I'm kind of now enjoying ripping the bandaid off of other topics. I live, like I said, in a very kind of vanilla suburb. And, you know, I think it's really fascinating when I all of a sudden out of nowhere would be like, so do you masturbate? And people are like, wait, what? What are you talking about? ⁓

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Stacy (46:06)

You can get sex toys, you know, but on subscription now. So, you know, those are the things I completely agree. And for me, one of the things that I felt so strongly to talk about is death. And everybody was like, great, now you've gone from like gross to morbid. And I was like, it's that my entry into midlife made me change my lens and perspective about my health. And really that changed everything, right? It's no longer, my God, I ate a cupcake, I've got to go to the gym and run for eight miles until I take those calories off. I go to the gym because I want to be able to walk when I'm 85. I go to the gym because I want to be able to take care of myself and live in my own house. I don't want to go to a retirement community or a nursing home. I want to be able to take care of myself. And the key word for me, for 2025 was community because I also believe in a lot of ways we're going to need small groups of people that are not like the grassroots or the online masses and thousands of people, but your neighbors, your close friends and neighbors who can help you take care of yourself, watch your kids, do the things that we did in sort of smaller, you know, even agrarian societies. I think we're gonna need that. The more we start to see technology move faster than we're able to keep up where we have to relate to each other in some way that feels human.

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Julie (47:32)

I think that's beautiful. think, I don't think we spend enough time really focusing in on how we're going to continue to build community. think we are way too isolated. Even, you for myself, you know, I'm a solopreneur and that's probably what attracts me so much to these collective projects. And if I will be my happiest, if I can continue the next 30 years being involved with really smart women and talking about female truth, not just midlife truth, like I'm right here right now, but like I want to talk about other truth too, other female truth that can help change the narrative around so many different issues. ⁓ And being in a collective, just, love.

I mean, I really do want to end up on some sort of kibbutz somewhere. I mean, want to end up on Chip Connelly's freaking...

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Stacy (48:24)

Modern Elder. I asked him, when are you starting to build condos?

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Julie (48:28)

Exactly, sign me up. And so yeah, I just think that that community, I think it's a great word ⁓ and we have to figure out what we're going to do to create more of it within our tiny little micro world and at large.

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Stacy (48:43)

Micro and macro, agreed. It was really interesting. I was at TED and somebody was talking about parenting skills and how people have gotten worse at parenting because we stopped trusting our neighbors. Sometime in the 70s or 80s, you do you know where your kids are? And kids were being like abducted and there were more serial killers that we knew about all of that stuff. But we stopped trusting our neighbors.

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We didn't let kids play ball outside anymore. And there's something about that, that one, that becomes sort of helicopter parenting and it doesn't allow children to kind of ⁓ express or learn independence in sort of a natural way. But even more important to me was this idea that there should be communities where you do feel safe, where you do know everybody on your block, where everybody's sort of looking out for each other. And, you know, we have been so divided by so many things in the last couple of decades about race and politics and you name it. Sexual orientation, gender, these are things that have pushed us away from each other instead of creating the fabric that is really necessary to relate to each other on a human level, not even an opinion level, right? Just who we are as people. ⁓ So it will be very interesting to see how those micro communities develop.

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Julie (50:04)

Yeah, I think, I mean, dare I say it, I think the digital, one of the things I'm proud about for our generation is our ability to be so flexible and nimble. Like if you think about it, we are the only generation, like we have had to be so amorphous, like in terms of this digital generation, like we came into this generation with zero technology and we've had to figure out our entire lives, like in being hit in the head with technology, like our children grew up with it. The generation above us never had it. We were in the epicenter of it. And so I hope that as we now go into this new chapter of our lives called midlife, which is, again, decades long, is that somehow we can figure out how to use technology in a way to create communities so that it is back to the loneliness thing, that we feel less alone, and that we can find each other and spend time with each other in a way that feels meaningful. I don't know exactly what that looks like yet, but I am optimistic, like the internal optimist. ⁓

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Stacy (51:12)

I'm optimistic because of the projects that you're doing almost create community by making the project. So to me, that's where that starts to come in. You've got the book, you've got the podcast, you've got resources to help create that community and also to be discerning about that community. So we are sort of an action item oriented podcast.

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And ⁓ if you could leave us with one or two things that you think are either great advice for somebody who is beginning to feel like middle age might be affecting them, or just great advice about how to ⁓ take on a few of these challenges, whether they're physical, emotional, financial, what's a great starting point for us?

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Julie (52:05)

The podcast series.

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Stacy (52:08)

The podcast Series - the Midlife Truth Project, correct? And you should listen to it in order 1 through 10.

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Julie (52:13)

Midlife Life Truth Project, yes.

But I think outside of that, I think one simple piece of advice would be to set intention across any aspect of your life, you know, whether it be friendship, I'm going to I'm going to call that friend like she is an oak tree. I have not we have to so when it comes to friend being intentional about I'm going to spend more time with that person who is so meaningful to me, whether it be on the phone or go take a plane or go have lunch.

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Go be intentional with one's time. So intentionality. Intentionality about, really am so happy when I do this. Go spend more time doing that. Good things will come. ⁓ So I think intentionality is simple and as cliche as it sounds. I think it's really important as we age. ⁓ That's number one. I also believe in, these are very kind of like tactile or very kind of specific things, but I have seen them at work.

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I'm across so many different women that I have encountered. So the second thing would be to say something out loud. To saying things out loud to someone or in front of the mirror takes it off your heart and into the universe. And that changes. It changes how you feel. Something about saying it out loud and hearing it makes it true comes back to truth. ⁓

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It's something I feel, don't always share with others. Sometimes you can just share it with yourself. You know, I have a complicated relationship with dot, dot. So, and then I like the world in threes. So have to think of a third. I think that nature is in threes. Everything's in threes. ⁓ What's a good third one? I can't, these are all a little bit cheesy, but - put your oxygen mask on first.

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Stacy (54:19)

Yes, I agree with that.

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Julie (54:21)

Like I love like being in partnership. ⁓ I love my children. I love you know my mother. I love the work that I do but at the end of the day I can't show up for anybody unless I show up for myself and it took me years of therapy to figure that out.

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Stacy (54:40)

I totally get it. And I, you know, I still think there are people who think, oh, no, my kids come first or my pet comes first or whatever it is. But I really do believe that. And I really think that that's, those are wonderful action items. I feel like if everybody does those three things, we've already moved the needle. So Julie, I want to thank you so much for your time. This was fantastic.

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Julie (55:16)

It's so good to be in conversation with you and I'm so excited about all the work that you're doing and the new season for you and all the different projects that you were involved in. And I will just say thank you for leading the way. I have been immersed in this conversation around menopause since it really started and you have been a Titan and you have just been just fighting the fight for so many women and I just on behalf of everyone thank you for doing what you're doing. ###

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