Embracing the Mystical Journey of Menopause with Rebecca Campbell

Rebecca Campbell, a prolific writer, mystic, artist, and author dives into the often-overlooked spiritual and emotional transitions that accompany the shift from reproductive to post-reproductive years. This episode explores the discomfort of shedding old identities, creating space for new versions of ourselves, and finding the language to express these shifts to others. Dr. Mindy shares her own experiences of no longer feeling the need to please everyone, uncovering an inner voice longing to be heard. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep276 Rebecca Campbell is an international bestselling author, mystic, visionary and mum. Her creations are dedicated to weaving the sacred back into everyday life. She had her first awakening experience as a teenager and has had several initiatory awakening experiences since. A prolific creative, her books, oracles and creations inspire people to live a soul-led life. Her new book Your Soul Had A Dream Your Life Is It shows you how you can embrace life's changes and challenging times as initiations to transform! Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/. Please note our medical disclaimer https://drmindypelz.com/medical-disclaimer/.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Mindy Pelz?

  On this episode of the Resetter Podcast, I bring you Rebecca Campbell. Now Rebecca is a prolific writer. She also does oracle cards. She has been in spiritual community for years as a channel, an artist, a poet, and a mystic. And it was really her new book that drove me to bring her to you all. And the book is called Your Soul Had A Dream, Your Life Is It. And when I was gifted this book a few months ago, I picked it up out of curiosity. And what I found in here is what I would call a mystical guide

• 0:46Mindy Pelz?

  to the menopausal journey. Now, I don't think Rebecca would call it that. I think she wrote it from her own experience of her own life journey as a woman. But when you dive into these pages, you start to see so much wisdom around moments of transition. And so I wanted to bring her to you to talk about this mystical experience of moving from your reproductive years to your post reproductive years. And I feel like in this day and age right now, we have this beautiful conversation emerging about women's experiences going

• 1:27Mindy Pelz?

  through menopause. And we are looking at it from such a physiological lens. But what we haven't really given language to is the mystical journey of going from, again, your reproductive time to your post reproductive time. So I believe that Rebecca is the person to really give us language so that we can all talk about what we're feeling as we move into what Jane Fonda would call our third act of our life and the back half of our life. So in this conversation, you're going to hear us talk about the, what do you do when old versions of you are falling away? How do you handle the discomfort of these old versions of you?

• 2:12Mindy Pelz?

  And how do you make room and create safety for a new version of you to emerge? You're also going to hear us talk about how do you express that to other people? How do you talk about that with other people? This is something I have found in my own menopausal journey as I am no longer willing to please everybody around me and I feel an inner stirring inside of me of a new version of me to have voice. I have been looking for ways to share what I'm going through with those around me that I love dearly. And so in this conversation, you're going to hear Rebecca and I talk about this spiritual

• 2:53Mindy Pelz?

  experience that we can embrace about the new versions of us that are just dying to come forward, about this really interesting time in the world right now where women are finally using their voice to speak out and say what our hearts are really wanting to say. It is a beautiful conversation. It is not science driven. It is definitely more on the woo-woo lens, but I have tried to give you some neuroscience to explain the woo-woo that Rebecca is going to embrace and embark upon you in this conversation. And I think together, the two of us did the best job we could to talk about the initiation

• 3:38Mindy Pelz?

  of menopause and how profound this process can be if we're willing to go into the mysteries of life. So Rebecca Campbell and her new book, Your Soul Had a Dream, Your Life Is It. And as always, I hope this touches you deeply and moves you in a direction that serves you well. Enjoy. Welcome to the Resetter Podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you.

• 4:29Mindy Pelz?

  I want to start off by saying that I love to read and books have changed my life, both reading and writing books. And your book touched me in a way that a book hasn't done in a really long time. So not only am I excited to have you here, but I just want to say thank you because your words were piercing and I can't wait to have this conversation with you.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Wow, what an intro. I am very honored by that. Thank you so much.

• 5:00Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. You know, I'll tell you about books changing lives. When I was in my like 19, 20 years old, I had chronic fatigue syndrome and medical profession had pretty much given up on me and said, there was nothing that we can do for you. And my mom had taken me to a holistic MD who put me on a bunch of supplements and IVs and like, these things weren't popular back in the 1990s when this was going on. And my mom took me to a bookstore in LA called East West, no, called Bodhi Tree. And I was sitting at the bottom, like hanging out while my mom was shopping and literally this book jumped out at me and

• 5:44Mindy Pelz?

  it was called Living in the Light by Shakti Gohan. Do you know that book?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  I do, yeah.

• 5:50Mindy Pelz?

  And I had never really understood at the time, the power of how the mind could heal the body. And I was only 19 years old and I brought that book home and I followed the prompts and I read the whole book. And within three weeks between that book and some diet changes, I was like back, like my energy was back. I had gone back to college. Like, it really was like a transformative time. And what I learned from that is when we are looking at the healing journey, the physical healing journey, that we have to bring the mind into it. And we have to start to think about how our thoughts are creating

• 6:35Mindy Pelz?

  our physical reality. When I read your book, I started to really think about what my soul's expression was. And what did I really think about the soul? And, and did my, what purpose do I have for my soul? And so what I really want to start off with in this conversation is, do we have even a definition of our soul that we can all agree upon?

• 7:02Speaker 01

  No, it is one of the greatest mysteries there is. It, I mean, from Plato to all of the great, great, great, great, great mystics through the ages, scientists, theologians, it really crosses all different industries. And it is the greatest mystery there is. And so I think I've always been really into the mysteries. But the older I get, the more I'm convinced that the soul is not separate to nature. You know, we see the soul as like this kind of mysterious thing that's like not in our body. But actually, it's when we take our first breath that I believe the soul enters.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  And then we release that last breath, these gates of life, which I know you and I have spoken quite a bit about on Voxa, where, you know, one moment, there is life, the next moment, there is not. Like, that mystery captivates me so much. And I really, really believe that the soul is connected to this intelligent pulse of life, that same intelligence that tells the flowers when to open and close, the seasons when to come and go, us to grow in the waters of our mother's womb, our monthly cycle, if we have one, when we have one, and then it stops.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Like, there is this great mystery that is as physical as it is ineffable. And

• 8:32Mindy Pelz?

  I love that.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Mmm. And it completely captivates me, this great mystery.

• 8:38Mindy Pelz?

  A- a- as it does me and like we will go, you know, go into this that, you know, I've had a near death experience and I feel like in that experience, I started to really understand the mysteries of life and really see that there was more than what we are seeing in our everyday reality. And when it comes to the soul, I have asked myself multiple times throughout my life, but especially after my near death, which is, what's the soul's purpose? So do you, do you feel like every soul comes in with a purpose? And does that purpose change throughout your lifetime?

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes and yes. I believe that all souls come here for a reason. And some souls come here for multiple reasons. I have had regression and lifetime before lifetime experiences myself, where I actually experienced receiving my purpose for being here. And it's different from like this way that we use purpose as in like, there's this one question that where there's this one answer to what my purpose is. Like for you, it's like to be this mega, mega, mega amazing, amazing leader, author. Like it's, it's that, oh, once you become an author, you've done your, your purpose. No, no, no, no, it's much more than that.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  But I believe that many of us have our individual purpose, as in our souls come here to grow and learn and experience things on a personal level or a personal soul level. But I do believe particularly now, I think that we come here in teams, in waves. And many of us are here as part of a collective purpose. And what I see happening over and over again, for those of us who resonate with that concept, like I know that I'm here, not just for me, I want to be part of this rebirth for, I would say humanity, not the earth, because the earth is just as good, is good enough on her own. It's us that needs the waking up.

• 10:45Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  But I think those of us who feel that call for that greater purpose. Particularly these times where there is so much happening. It can feel so overwhelming because the way that we have all been raised because of the time that we choose to come into. Separation is so evident here and individualism. And so it's as if like, oh, I have this collective purpose, but it's like, no, no, no. And what, what I believe I've been receiving over and over again, particularly these past like five years where things have really heated up, where it's like we all hold a thread for the healing and rebirth of humanity. Trust the one that you're holding.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  So it's not like this great big thing that we have to take the responsibility on individually. It's this beautiful weaving, re-weaving that is happening.

• 11:40Mindy Pelz?

  It's interesting because I'm deep in research and writing my next book. And one of the, one of the questions that I've asked myself over and over again is, you know, what is the purpose of menopause? Because there, it seems to me that there has to be something transformative, purposeful about the fact that as humans, we live forty two point five percent of our life as women in our post reproductive years. And that I don't think is by mistake. And so I've been on this quest literally for like, you know, I'm fifty five years old. So for the last decade, I've been just like, why does the reproductive system shut down?

• 12:25Mindy Pelz?

  And then there's this new evolution of a woman that emerges. And I've, I've been really looking at that lens and then coming over and looking at how as women we are conditioned in this world. And there's some really interesting information from a feminist philosopher who talks about how women are really taught to be selfless in this world. You know, if you want to be a good girl, you give to others. And the reason I bring it up in this context of this, of this discussion is I feel like this, the reality of this world constantly pulls us away.

• 13:07Mindy Pelz?

  From our soul's full expression. And I feel like menopause is the moment we can pull back and start to really look at ourselves. We have time, we have mental energy, physical energy, and we can really go into a new expression of ourselves. And maybe the truest expression of ourselves. So in that context, how do you know your soul's desire? How do you know your soul is speaking to you? Like, are there ways? Is it a hunch in your body? Is it you light up when you do something? Like, there's an energy that we're not always pulsed into

• 13:50Mindy Pelz?

  that I feel like you could, you do such a great job of putting words to. That if we could have some tangible context behind this is your soul screaming at you. This is your soul wanting you to fully break free. What would that language be?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Hmm, I love it. So first of all, the best way to have a relationship with your soul is to spend time with it. Think of it like a new friend that you've, you've, you've just met. You know, you're not going to be able to recognize their, their voice in a busy room at a party or whatever, or unless you hear it over and over again. So you start by giving yourself that time, which I think is interesting with the menopausal and perimenical pause where that self-sacrificing begins to become harder to hold on to, right? There are many different ways our soul speaks to us. I think at first the soul is subtle. It's not like it's this big, big, loud voice. But through our body, we can hear it as well.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  So we have senses, which are like inner senses, right? Which are the same as our other senses, like see it, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, so that's clear seeing, clear hearing, clear feeling, clear, clear knowing.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  And and but it's all through the body that we experience it. Most people see the soul and intuition as this wishy washy woo woo thing. But it's not, it really is not, it is so physical. It's just sometimes subtle. And the more we get to develop a relationship with it, the more in touch with our bodies senses we become. Particularly as women, it's a sensual, it's the senses sensual nature. And so many of us have been cut off from it. But here's the thing, and I think this really happens, I think this happens in postpartum, I think it happens in.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Well, with a monthly cycle and it certainly happens in perimenopause and menopause where this sacred rage starts coming up.

• 15:53Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  And I think we don't understand how sacred that is, how holy that is. This is like the the mama bear, the grandmother bear coming in to say, no, this way, not that way. And so it doesn't have to be, and of course, the soul also speaks through what brings you joy, what lights you up. You know, this concept of, say, light worker, which I think some people understand, some people aren't, but it's essentially being of service. You don't have to overthink it so much of like, how can I do things that again, that's putting it on yourself? No, if you follow what lights you up, you will light up the world without even trying.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  And so, but it's that the sense through the senses that we receive our intuition, which I call the voice of the soul.

• 16:40Mindy Pelz?

  You know, what's really interesting is in study or in researching for this book that I'm writing. I have been looking at all the different neurochemical changes that happen to women as they go through menopause. And one of them, as we know, is estrogen goes down. But what is not being expressed or talked about enough is that estrogen going down is not just, it it's not just estrogen. That is being affected, she has a whole series of neurochemicals that she stimulates. So when she goes away, these other neurochemicals go away too. And one of them is oxytocin. And so estrogen amplifies oxytocin. So I ended up down a path of research that I

• 17:23Mindy Pelz?

  found that women have three areas where we have the densest oxytocin receptor sites, our brain, our heart, and our bones. And I started to think, oh, that's why when we are like, I feel it in my bones. When you are in a place where you are in your truth expression, my guess is if we could take what you're saying about the soul and we could talk about this body expression that actually when you are in your soul's journey, you are actually creating a neurochemical change that you can feel in your bones and that's all done through oxytocin.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Yes. Oh, my gosh. I love this. I love getting up. Do you know what that's made me think of?

• 18:12Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, please.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Okay, let's, let's riff on this. You, you, you unpack the science of this because I think there's something in it. So

• 18:18Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  You know that it's your soul's voice. The biggest question I get asked is how do I know if it's my head or my soul or my heart, right? Now, my number one way to know if it's your soul's voice, like when you're speaking, because I, I do this in my workshops. We do a thing called inquiry and you say, my soul is calling me to, and you fill in the blank, right? I know it's my soul's voice when it drops deeper. The cadence goes slower. And there's, I'm not pushing or anything. It just like is, there's a resonance, right?

• 18:56Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Versus the head tends to be like this. You can feel it when you're saying it. It's kind of tighter and further up here, but when the soul drops in, that's, that's how I know it. And I've seen it happen over and over again, right? Soul's not pushing. It just is, right?

• 19:12Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  You can feel it in your body. You've kind of expand a little bit. You can feel truth. When you hear someone else speak from their soul, or it has that resonance, you're like, there's an openness to it. Now I know that the throat is connected to the womb area as well.

• 19:33Mindy Pelz?

  Yes. Yeah, the vocal cords and the cervix were actually the same tissue. And there's this, in, in utero, they, there were the same tissue and then they separated. But if you actually take a pic, you, you look at those vocal cords and the cervical tissue, they're exactly histologically the same.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Right. But so what is that? Cause I know that, that menopausal women in particular are off the charts intuitive.

• 19:59Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  So I wonder what the science is there.

• 20:02Mindy Pelz?

  Well, it's so, this is a lot of what I have been really thinking through is that I really feel like menopause is a coming home, back home to yourself. It, it is an initiation. It is a rebirth, which is why your book to me should, maybe the subtitle should have been how menopausal women can step into the fullest expression of themselves. Because I read it through a menopausal lens, which is, there is a old version of me that I can no longer participate in. And she wrapped herself up in all kinds of pretty bows and she came from her head.

• 20:43Mindy Pelz?

  Let's go back to your expression. She came from her head. And from that place, she was doing all the things that she thought she should do. But when she goes into her post-reproductive years, everything sort of comes from more of a body place. And it's coming from an inner knowing that I can't operate that way anymore. There is a new way for me to unfold. But that change is really scary. And I also think your book is a lot about the art of change and like, how do we actually work with our, our, our body and our brain and

• 21:23Mindy Pelz?

  now our soul's expression? How do we work with the change of that? So that, that's kind of where I tied it. And like the vocal cords and the cervix, you know, fascinating that, you know, women who have had been raped or sexually abused, lose their voice. And, and, you know, vice versa, you know, if you damage the, the thyroid, there's a lot of belief that the thyroid is injured and it's like, you're not actually speaking your voice. So I think all of those are connected. But what are, where I'd like to go with this conversation is if we have this intuition that is emerging as we go into menopause.

• 22:05Mindy Pelz?

  How do you navigate when your body and your soul is screaming at you to live life differently, to to to show up differently? How, do we have like a recipe or a formula on how we navigate that moment? Because I can tell you it's terrifying.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Hmm. So I think the first thing to do is to make sure you're coming back to the body and being conscious with the body. Right?

• 22:31Mindy Pelz?

  I love that.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  So if you're feeling rage, if you're feeling grief, whatever the emotion is, find ways to express it. Now, I know you can work out, I'm not saying working out isn't good. The type of expression I'm talking about more is more feminine. So like putting on, I've got an artist that I love called Sia. I don't know if you know her. She, she, she is able to express so many multi layers of emotion. I just put, if I'm feeling something that I'm unable to process, I'll put her music on and just for three minutes or even two songs, I'll try and move it out of my body.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Because what happens if you're, if, if something's rising within you and it's, it's scaring you as well, you're kind of gonna push it back down. You're gonna push it back down, which is obviously gonna affect your health. It's gonna affect your anxiety too. And so it's like, we have not been taught to be moved by the feminine soul. Right? We have not been taught how to, Marion Woodman, who is, I'm sure you're aware of her work. She's passed now. She was a Jungian analyst and just epic, epic teacher. She spoke about the marriage of the feminine soul in the body

• 23:54Speaker 01

  and how imperative it is, particularly for the conscious feminine. And she spoke a lot about the crowning of the elder as well.

• 24:05Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  And how in our society, we don't have many elders. We don't have many true

• 24:12Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  elder grandmothers, which has no, nothing to do with whether you've birthed children yourself. It's about, and I think this is because we have been starved of these feminine rites of passage, being ceremonially or at least consciously.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Acknowledge these initiations.

• 24:36Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  An initiation means to cross a threshold, to be not who you once were. And also, in order to cross the threshold, you have to face that I don't know who I'm becoming. I don't know who I will one day soon be. In my shamanic training, we were taught that the purpose of life, if you really, really wanna live fully, consciously, is to learn to die while still fully living.

• 25:08Mindy Pelz?

  Wow.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  And on your deathbed, whether you know it's coming or not, to actually die young. And you die young because you've allowed yourself to die over and over and over again, and be reborn over and over and over again. And I really believe, like, having experienced so much stuff with my health as well, like chronic illness and many, many things, I really, really, really believe that us not living in congruence with the soul, us resisting what is dying within us, is us resisting nature, which is us resisting life.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  And so you're actually saying no to life and yes to death, but not reverse, you know? And so slowly we contract.

• 26:01Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Yeah, you know, and you know the statistics on autoimmune conditions for women, like eighty percent of autoimmune challenges happen to women. And there's a lot of physiological explanations for that. But it's also an autoimmune condition is a turning on, on the body is attacking itself.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 26:20Mindy Pelz?

  And so I was thinking, as you were talking about if. It would, what I would love to see is a world where menopause is looked at like an initiation. It is looked at like not just your estrogen is going away and progesterone, you are actually this older version of you is going away and that there would be some kind of ceremony that would actually allow for an initiation process to begin. But we have, we, and I've, and part of my concern right now with the menopause conversation is it's become all about estrogen and patches and creams. And I'm, I'm over here thinking, no, this is a dying and a rebirth.

• 27:05Mindy Pelz?

  Yet we don't have a culture that allows us to change. We don't, we fear change. We don't, we want everybody to stay the same. I can tell you for my own self, like as I've changed, it's been hard on those people around me because they've been like, wait, I felt good with a certain way that you were and you're now showing up a different way.

• 27:32Mindy Pelz?

  So when we look at that initiation, is there a way that we can, you and I've talked about this, is there a way we can start to talk about it publicly with the people we love? Like this old version of me is dying and this new version is, is coming forward. Is there a way to actually share that with those people close to you that you have found successful?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think, I think the thing, first of all, I so love this conversation because I totally believe where we avoid change and just as we avoid talking about death, you know? Even, even birth, if you look at birth, it's all about like the delivery of the baby. It's not about the transformation of the mother, you know?

• 28:15Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  It's not about the fact that like women have been doing this since the first baby existed, you know?

• 28:23Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Anyway, don't get me started on that one.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Oh, maybe that's another conversation.

• 28:30Mindy Pelz?

  Or maybe get me started.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  But anyway, I digress. So, so, okay. The thing about change is that I think it's because we've disconnected ourselves so much from nature. Like you look up nature in the dictionary, it literally says.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Stones, plants, animals, but not, but not humans. Like, it says that we are not nature, but we are. And we know when we look at the seasons and, and all indigenous traditions and, and even if we don't have indigenous traditions that are alive now, because they're being snubbed, snubbed out, we all have them in our ancestry. We all have them. And I think that we are desperate, hungry, starving for that. And I think it's our belief that nature is separate to us that makes it okay for us to conquer it or to see it as this like evil force, you know?

• 29:34Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  But it's actually in us recognizing that we are nature and like nature, we are ever changing. That I think that that healing can happen. So that's like a bigger conversation. How that relates to us in our day to day life is that when you're in a relationship, right? And you know that you're changing or that other person is changing. It can feel like it's a personal thing versus so like spring going into summer, going into autumn, going into winter. It's just nature. It is part of our true nature and we are no different. We are not meant to stay the same.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  And so I think the more open, the more we can understand, and this is why your book is going to be so, so needed. It's so needed. Giving people a, a, a vernacular to be able to talk about it. And I think that this conversation is coming back to us. And so it can be a little bit more normal. So that's already happening. But I think navigating where you are in that map. So you're making the map and then people saying, oh, wow, I just learnt this. So bringing people along in the journey. So I know that like people pleasing is a, is a big, big one. And, and even myself, I'm a, I'm, I'm an older mother, so I'm perimenopause.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  And so that self sacrificing urge that I had in my twenties and my thirties, which I actually devoted to my work. Doesn't exist. And so I was feeling so guilty that, oh, why are all the other younger moms able to just like, give and give and give. And I, I definitely have a lit. Is it because I work? What is it? No. And so then having that language, which I'll say, talk to my husband or talk to my friends or my mom or whatever, and just say, oh, I'm, I'm finding this difficult to navigate because I know being perimenopausal, I'm actually right on track and I'm feeling guilty.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Same thing if you are a people pleasing person who's always been, you know, I'll drop everything at the, at the drop of a hat just to help whoever wants me to. You could bring it into the conversation of, so you're not distancing, you're not making it personal. And you're saying, my gosh, there's, I, I'm really changing and there's something that I'm working on, which is not being such a people pleaser. You don't have to say it in the moment that you let them down, but you're bringing them along the journey with, with you. And then, you know, not all relationships are meant to stay as they are forever as well. And, you know, if we look at things like, if we look at ourselves as nature, right?

• 32:19Speaker 01

  It is like, if you, if you keep going, it's like you're betraying yourself instead of that person. Right. And you know, the health, the health risks of doing that. But you're also, if you are denying yourself and you're still in relationship with, with that person, maybe you're denying them of something as well. Because if they want that people pleasing, then, and you can't give it, then someone else will enter their life that maybe is meant to, or maybe they'll be empowered to take care of themselves. And something else will come as a result. So this is the web. Like, once you connect in with the soul and the soul leads you physically in the body,

• 33:03Speaker 01

  it's like there's this golden thread that's woven through your life. And other people are woven around you as well.

• 33:11Mindy Pelz?

  And so you, you're saying then from that perspective. If you looked back, I like this idea of a golden thread. Like, if you look back, there is an inner knowing you've had your whole life. And what I'm interpreting from what you just said and what I've experienced in my own menopausal journey, is that inner knowing starts really screaming at you. It, once you hit those post-menopausal years. And you can no longer put everybody's needs ahead of your own. And you start to really, you know, come into this place of, this is who I am.

• 33:54Mindy Pelz?

  And, but in that, there is, it's like, I think of it like a chrysalis, you know, the caterpillar coming out of the chrysalis. It's painful, and if you look at the statistics, my audience has heard me say this over and over again, but they're haunting, that between 45 and 55 is the most common decade for women to commit suicide. And 65 to 70% of divorces that happen after 50 are initiated by women. When I look at the, just those two statistics, I look at the neurochemical changes that are happening, and then I hear you talk about this way that the soul wants to express itself.

• 34:34Mindy Pelz?

  I think, really, the challenge that we have is that we are not putting language to this massive initiation into the truest version of yourself. And so, the more we can talk about it, the more women can experience it, and the more we can all, men and women, make room for it. So, talk to me, because I know many of your books have been about initiation. Are there, are there strategies? Are there golden rules for initiation when you know you're at the beginning of an initiation process?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Well, the first thing about initiation is that if you say yes to it, the phrase that I say, I text my friends when they're like, oh, my God, I'm on the edge, I can feel this initiation happen, I can feel the fire of it. And I say, well, you're going somewhere sacred.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  And I think this is really important, like that analogy of like going into the chrysalis as well. Like, we know that that if you were to slice the chrysalis open in the in between of of being the caterpillar to the butterfly, it's just gonna be messy gunk and organs. It is, it it's it's not pretty. It is not pretty. Birth is not pretty.

• 36:04Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Birth is not pretty. It's beautiful, though. And, yeah, and so I think the first thing is, is that it's not, a lot of people see transformation, you know, particularly of like, I just wanna meet, read the transformational books, awakening books.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  It is not a pretty process. It is a beautiful process, though, and it is the most natural thing in the world, too.

• 36:30Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  And so I think that that that I think the most important thing is to work out what is your ground, what can you rely on, what is holding you?

• 36:41Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  And I think that's why when people are faced with initiatory experiences, whether it is a a rite of passage, like like menopause, perimenopause, or if it's something like a heartbreak, deep grief, the end of a career, children leaving home, which often happened at the same time as the the hormonal changes as well. We need to, I think so often, we find spirituality, we find different communities because we're, we need something to hold us.

• 37:17Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  You know, in a deeper way than before, right? So we need that those deeper roots. So, yeah, I, the first thing I would say is what is holding you? What can you, what can you lean back on that isn't necessarily like your existing friendship or your existing whatever? How can you give yourself the depth?

• 37:35Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yes. And then also what I heard and what you said is, understanding, when you, when you said your friends are like, I'm at the beginning of an initiation, is understanding that the discomfort of things changing is actually the beginning of new versions of you and life that are emerging. And I think we hold on to the, you know, we don't want, we don't, I can tell you for me, I, let me just say, I'm not a fan of discomfort. I don't, I don't, and, and so I can hear. So I can hear what you're saying and then I'm like, yeah, and discomfort sucks.

• 38:14Mindy Pelz?

  So even if myself is like, this is an initiation, I can't wait to see who I'm going to become. Let me go find my tribe of people to support me in this. The discomfort is still really a difficult place to live. And in menopause, a lot of women live in that discomfort for a decade. So, you know, is there a language we can help women understand, what do you do with that discomfort?

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Well, I think, I think the first thing is, is I always go looking to nature. First of all, I think this human journey is full of sweetness and ecstasy, as well as grief and sorrow and agony. I wish it wasn't, but the polarity is real on this planet. And whenever we have a decision to make or an initiation to say yes to or no to, like, I don't know anyone who's going to say yes, right at the beginning. No one is going to do that. We're going to be in the contraction until it becomes more painful. So I've got an example of when I knew I needed to change my careers, I knew I was being called to do this work, right?

• 39:29Speaker 01

  I resisted it, resisted it, resisted it. I, I knew from when I was a teenager, it wasn't until I was in my mid 30s that I was like, finally like, okay, I'm going to go for this. Like fully go for it. And it was because the only thing harder than not, than answering the call for me was not answering it.

• 39:50Mindy Pelz?

  Exactly.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  So we come up to this point where how much, which, which am I gonna choose? It's gonna be uncomfortable no matter what. I can pretend it's not, pretend it's not for however long. But how can I let, how can I open through this? This is why birth has been such a great teacher for me. Because if you think about what happens when you are giving birth is it's the contraction and the expansion, contraction and the expansion. The same thing happens when we're processing trauma as well. Expansion and then we contract, but then we expand a little more, contract, and then we expand a little more. Same thing happens with the awakening process. It's all coded in nature.

• 40:32Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, that's so well said. And so, you know, what I hear in that from a like practical standpoint is when you're feeling that urge to step into this new version of you. Yeah, getting into nature, getting around connection, slowing down, understanding the soul is trying to express something. These, these are, this is menopause, that's menopause. And yet we have a very medical approach to this transition, just like birth, just like birth. So I've been really geeking out lately on the word liminal.

• 41:16Mindy Pelz?

  And I love liminal spaces. Like I think that there is a liminal space between when you're awake and you go to sleep. There's like, when you get into bed, there's sort of like, you're, you know, you're moving from one state to the next. I think the morning is the same thing. There's a liminal space from waking up into, from asleep until, into where you're awake. And I've been thinking that we don't give enough conversation to the power of insight in those liminal spaces, which is what I, what I hear you talking about. And so, talk to me a little bit about.

• 42:01Mindy Pelz?

  Where, because I think the soul is telling us something in those liminal spaces. And you talked about it being in the body. But when an insight comes in, like a thought in that liminal space or an inner knowing, is there a way we can grow that insight into into something that's more tangible for our life? Does that, does that make sense?

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, totally. So the, it's the difference between knowing in your mind and the inner knowing, right? So the moment you're trying to be certain of something, you're coming from your head. The moment you go into, I wonder what a mystery.

• 42:43Mindy Pelz?

  Ah, like curiosity.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  About it. Yeah. You're in the soul. And I think it's interesting around that. I think the older we get, the, and particularly on the spiritual path, the first part of your spiritual awakening I call is awakening of the mind. You are like, oh, my gosh, like you might find about, out about past lives or life between lives and, you know, all of this stuff. And you're like, I need to find the purpose of life as if there's this finite answer that you're going to reach. The further you go along your spiritual journey, you realize all there is is the great mystery. But in that great mystery, all of the codes of life.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  And I think it takes a certain maturity to be in the I wonder. But when you're in the I wonder, you're in surrender. You're in the merging with spirit. So actually, it's like a contradiction because the more you open to it, the more you will receive, that you will have that inner knowing for.

• 43:48Mindy Pelz?

  So it's like the, the classic statement, the more I know, the less I know. Like the more I know, the more I realize I don't know.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. But then the more, the more you loosen your grip. On having to know, the more you will know.

• 44:04Mindy Pelz?

  That's right. That's right. Fascinating. That's the other side of it. Oh, my God. That's that's so good. Now, I want to go into, because I know you have written about this. I heard you on Nancy Levin's podcast, talk about the mother line and the ancestral energy that comes through mother line. And you said something on that podcast that just blew my mind. And it was around this idea that our eggs are developed when we are in our mother's womb. And our mother's eggs were developed when she was in your grandmother's womb. And I started

• 44:45Mindy Pelz?

  to think, yeah, that makes sense that the eggs in our ovaries are this genetic connection to all our mother, our grandmother, our great grandmother, like, it is a connection through the whole line. So I had this thought that what happens when you go into menopause, and now you're out of eggs, I'm just, just for the sake of simplicity, you don't have any more eggs. I think that that is also a time to release yourself from the mothering that came through your ancestral line. And it's an opportunity to actually step in and

• 45:28Mindy Pelz?

  mother yourself. That there is something energetic there that we cannot miss in this shutting down of this reproductive system that was created through the maternal line.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  I completely agree. And I think that when, when I wrote this book that I wrote, I wrote it as an older mom, but I had a, I'd had a mystical experience years before around the mother line, right? So I had this imprint from that. But then when I gave birth to my son while I had already, I was entering perimenopause. I saw that. I saw my separation. I I saw the inherited rage, grief, et cetera, from my feminine line. All the way back to the original mother, including gifts and all of that as well.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  But in my postpartum period, it all erupted out. And I was always confused as to is this postpartum or is this perimenopause?

• 46:41Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  And I think it was both. I think it was both. And for me, it it was a period that was e- extremely intense at the beginning. I go all in when I'm in something.

• 46:55Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, me too.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Very, very, very, very intense. And I remember the day that it finished. And I had this experience. I was literally just driving through the countryside where I live here. I'd just been to a somatic session with my body worker. Uneventful, I was feeling really chilled, but all of a sudden, I had this experience of my my soul coming fully in and going back down the line all the way to the to the original point. When I had my son and gave birth to him and I started experiencing a lot of ancestral stuff.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  My grandma was also near end of life and there was definitely something happening between her, my mum and I. And it was almost like my grandma and I were expressing this rage together. It was incredible. But that felt like it was it was coming from the line through me. But this moment was.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  And I knew it was over. And then it was literally to the day that I knew I need to teach on this now. Like, I had no desire to, but it was like, and it's done. And I think that while my experience was quite full on, I do think many, many, many of us are going through it. And some of us are experiencing it through rage and grief. I think we're also experiencing it at a time when the collective is experiencing this too. And so it's more intense. It really is more intense. I'm also fascinated by the midlife transits as well, astrological transits.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Pluto, Scorpio, Uranus, opposition, which lead into those years of, of perimenopause.

• 48:53Mindy Pelz?

  Interesting. You know, you know, the ancestral inheritance that we have is really interesting because science can prove this. And so just to kind of pull the people who are listening to this that are a little more science oriented. You know, I, I'm, I have, when I've heard of ancestral trauma or ancestral energy. I, I think with ancestral trauma, my brain is like, look, I have enough trauma already going on in this world. Like, I don't need to take on like that ancestral trauma. Um, but when we look at neuroscience, it's really interesting because they've done studies where they'll take a rat. And it's horrible study, but, and they will torture the rat, create pain.

• 49:36Mindy Pelz?

  And then they will put the smell of cherry blossoms into the rat's cage. And what they have found, and the, and it's a female rat, is that when you gave cherry blossom smell to the, to four generations down.

• 49:53Mindy Pelz?

  To the rats that came out of that female, that cherry blossom smell initiated the same reaction. So there is something that happens in that handing down of ancestral trauma. And I think it's, we don't give it enough oxygen. And so then that leaves me with the question of like, well, how do you know, you've said rage a couple of times now. And I'm thinking, how do we know if rage is just our soul being like, I want to actually speak my truth now? Or, hey, I came from a lineage of women that have an expression and are angry about something that is coming through me.

• 50:38Mindy Pelz?

  Is there a way to know the difference between that?

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Well, I'd love to add another layer to that.

• 50:43Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, please.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Particularly for us as women, which is we, not all women on the planet, but a lot of women on the planet actually have a voice now. And so those generations before us weren't able to express it, weren't able to say no, weren't able to speak their inner truth. They had to be quiet, be nice, be pretty, you know?

• 51:09Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Let's just box it in. And so this is what I mean by the collective moment that's happening. It's so multifaceted and I think unprecedented as well.

• 51:20Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  And that's what I noticed with this, like, this image I kept seeing when it was happening to me of my grandmother. She was, she had dementia, you know, she's as, but it's, it was classic dementia right at the end of her life. And she was yelling and screaming and upset. And I was experiencing the same feelings at nighttime. I'm like, what is this?

• 51:47Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  You know? And I think this is like the privilege of who we are right now, that we actually, there are ways for us to express it and begin to talk about it. Whereas previous generations, you just couldn't. And so, you know, it's like when I do a, I used to teach workshops, right? I still do now, but I remember the first retreat that I did and I texted my friend because it was here in Glastonbury and there was between a couple of women, some sisterhood stuff. Came out and I'd never experienced it this intensely before. And I texted my friend earlier and said, oh, I'm really upset. Like, I'm like, what have I missed? Like,

• 52:29Speaker 01

  how have I not held the space right? And she said, by any chance, is there, do you have more support than you've ever had before? And I said, yes. And she said, the more supported and safe people feel, the more stuff will come up and rise to the surface because the container is there. And that's what I think is happening right now collectively.

• 52:50Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, so you just answered something for me because I have also been looking at cultural trends and asking myself, like, the Okinawa women, we look at these women with such, such respect because they have, you know, Okinawa has some of the most centenarians compared to any other place on the planet. And most of those centenarians are women. And when I've dove in to like, what do they do to get to that? So many of them get to a hundred. And one of the things that they do is they create MoIs. And MoIs is a gathering of women

• 53:31Mindy Pelz?

  where we share resources. So as I'm listening to you talk, I'm thinking, I am seeing these gatherings of women and in a time like we've never seen before. And I'm also seeing the rage in women come out in a time in which we have never seen before. And you just explained that, like, when you feel supported, then there is a safety in which for that rage to come out. But yet, we live in a culture that doesn't like our women to be angry. So is there an appropriate way to express rage?

• 54:13Speaker 01

  So good. Dancing is my favourite way, like Excellent. Moving your body in whatever way that you want to. I, I've done a lot of screaming into pillows. I've also started doing practices in my groups where we collectively release it. Cause sometimes we're, we're releasing stuff that is not just ours, you know? Right. Maybe it is as well, but it's, it's way more than that as well. So using your voice. And I know that, you know, maybe don't do it in, in your house without telling anyone. Yes. You can go out somewhere in nature, for example.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  You know, I, I used to do this with a friend of mine, my friend Amy Firth. She's used to be my podcast producer, actually. I went to university with her. And she really has been, she, she does the work of the feminine, like me. We've always been big feelers. When we were in our twenties in London, we were definitely like tapped into that feminine rage. I think, like growing up, I think it's connected as well with that adolescent rage. I think it exists in different hormonal times in our lives. What we used to do, oh my God, I don't know why we did this. There were two things that we would do and it was when we were drunk. Sometimes I think this is Yeah, cause the filter's down.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Drink and stuff, yeah, filters, but it also allows us to express things that we box in. And so we used to, when we would be walking home through the streets of London. I don't know why we decided to say this, but we would literally, I wrote it in my second book, Rise, Sister Rise. We'd walk down the street and she would yell out. I'm a whore. I'm a whore, basically. Right, right. I would cock up laughing and then it'd be like, you go, you go. And I would say it too. It was really, it had nothing to do with what we were actually doing, but it was all to do with this wild woman.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Power that was within us that had no where to be expressed in our lives.

• 56:25Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Right?

• 56:25Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  And we would do another thing. When my, my friend Blair passed, he passed very suddenly and we were grief stricken. Just like, you know, how could this happen to someone so young? And again, it was when we were drinking because it just let us do it. And together with our other housemate Jackie, we would, we would call it, I now know the, the, the cultural practice of, of my ancestry is keening, where you would grieve together openly. And so we would do it and we, we'd just call it wailing and we would, we would sound the sounds in our body and then like, laugh so much because it was just ridiculous what we were doing.

• 57:06Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  That our body had the memory that that's what we were meant to be doing. We needed to drink to give ourselves permission to do it.

• 57:15Mindy Pelz?

  Isn't that interesting?

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then now I've been on this journey of unpacking these ancestral indigenous traditions that are from my ancestry that were definitely not passed down and we all had them. And I think that, that, that deep down, we do know how to take the lid off. And I think it's why a lot of us drink.

• 57:40Mindy Pelz?

  Um, I, I, yeah, I drink. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it, it is really, it's sad. Uh, and, and you know, there's a, there's a real interesting movement right now to everybody is like, stop drinking, stop drinking. And I feel like we need more context to that conversation. And part of that needs to be, especially for the perimenopause menopausal woman. I, I, I, the more I study this, the more I am convinced that the drinking, the anger, the crying, the, all of that is because you are shedding an old version of yourself. And you're in confusion and there's a new version that's coming out.

• 58:22Mindy Pelz?

  And so now society has been like, and you don't drink, don't drink. And I'm not advocating that people drink, but I think there needs to be, like, I would love to take every forty year old woman and just be like, it's, you're about to go on a journey you've never experienced for, before. And it's really a journey back to yourself. And it's going to have a lot of highs and lows, but if you stick with that process of it, you're going to love who you become in the, in the, on the other side of that.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  It's, it's really, it's so, so interesting. And I think, you know, I, I've got an example regarding alcohol on the other side. My, my, I, I drink, my husband doesn't. He didn't drink regularly, but he struggled to like, you know, once the switch, the off switch was on, he just loved having a good night out kind of thing. But knew it wasn't, it wasn't beneficial for him. So he made that decision. But after it, I noticed that he had a lot of anger, that he needed to have a place to go. And he, it was, it was, he pushed it down. And then was this one time where, I remember he, he expressed himself the, it wasn't at me, but he expressed anger, right?

• 59:36Speaker 01

  And I, I called up my friend, Binnie Dansby, who is this, the wisest person I know. She's in her mid eighties. And I called her and just said, Craig just did this. And I expected her to say, oh, how terrible, how terrible. And she said to me something that redefined my understanding of anger. And she said, how wonderful that he feels safe enough to express that and not keep it bottled up.

• 1:00:04Mindy Pelz?

  Beautiful, beautiful. That is so beautiful. What, what do you say? I mean, this, this is what, you know, large reason why I wanted to bring you to my podcast was A, to expose people to the book. Because I think this is a tool I know I have picked up multiple times since it came out. Um, and I found some, oh, this explains what I'm feeling. But really, this is a mystical conversation of a transformation through the lens of menopause. And I believe that a lot of people would be like, oh, this is so woo woo. But there is so much we can learn from the woo woo. So talk a little bit about what you would say to somebody who is listening to this

• 1:00:49Mindy Pelz?

  and thinking for the first time about menopause as a mystical experience, not as a physiological experience. Are there words of wisdom we can give that woman? Is there, you know, and, you know, something that we can leave this conversation on? That launches women into really embracing this incredible time.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  Hmm. Well, the first thing I would say is that this whole life is a great journey for the soul. And that we have these thresholds, which are really invitations, opportunities for us to say yes and more fully live. And so I would say it's a spiritual invitation as well as a physical invitation. And the physical is inviting the spirit to come even more fully in. And you know, that word inspired just means in spirit, to live, to be a spirited person. It's, it's, that's the spiritual journey.

• 1:01:51Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah. And I think that's the journey of menopause. And that is what I really am hoping that we don't lose now in this new opening of a cultural conversation. That has been like, let's put some cream and patches on. I'm not saying don't do that, but I'm hoping what people will gleam from this conversation is that there's something deeper here. Let's not miss it. Let's not miss it. It's uncomfortable. But if you can stick with it and you can get into nature and gather your people around you that create safety for you, you can actually emerge into a whole new version of you. And back to what you said about wise elders. I think this is what the planet needs right now.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Yes, I literally, I totally agree. Like we need you. We need you initiated. And maybe you haven't had someone to initiate you. So you initiate yourself so you can then initiate someone else. The children of the world and those yet to come are craving it, aching it, needing it. The planet is needing it.

• 1:03:00Mindy Pelz?

  Bingo. That's it. That is exactly it. So, thank you for that. And again, I have so many questions because I've just really thought about this journey from so many angles. And where can people find you? I will, I mean, I literally cannot say enough. Go run out and get your book, Your Soul Has A Dream And Your Life Is It. I don't know if people would initially think that this is a transformation book, a guide to transformation, but that is absolutely how I read it. So, how do people find you? How do you find your other work? So they can dive into your teachings?

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Yep, just head to my website, I'm rebecca campbell dot me. And yeah, I'm all over social media, YouTube, and all of those places. I've got lots of books, oracle cards.

• 1:03:50Mindy Pelz?

  What are you doing on YouTube? I love YouTube. You said you joined your YouTube channel.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I've got my podcast, Returning With Rebecca Campbell. There's an amazing episode with Dr. Mindy on there. You'll just love it. It's the spiritual side of fasting. We had so much fun talking about it. And yeah, it's really just videos for your spiritual journey to really invite you to just love your life and to live with more meaning and purpose.

• 1:04:15Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Well, go check out Rebecca's YouTube because I think YouTube offers, you know, you can take a conversation like this and then you can really start to look at it from a bigger lens. So, appreciate you so much, Rebecca. Thank you.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  Thank you, everyone.

• 1:04:32Mindy Pelz?

  Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So, please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.