Make it Attractive to Age: Transition with Style & Confidence with Stacy London

Ready to rewrite your menopausal story? Stacy London is here to discuss the multifaceted experience of menopause, describing it as a 'reckoning to a renaissance.' Along with Dr. Mindy, Stacy explores the profound physiological, emotional, and psychological shifts that women undergo during menopause, emphasizing the importance of self-acceptance and the liberation that can come from moving past societal expectations and people-pleasing behaviors. Basically, this episode is about embracing yourself, ditching what society expects, and leaning on others for support during this time. Stacy also threw in some helpful tips for figuring out how your style can evolve. It's really about changing how we see women in midlife and beyond. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep288 Stacy London is best known as the co-host of the iconic TLC show What Not To Wear. She was a regular correspondent on Today, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Access Hollywood, The View, and Rachael Ray for many years. She served as the spokesperson for Pantene, Dr. Scholl's, Lee Jeans, and Woolite. Her book, The Truth About Style, was a New York Times bestseller. Stacy also co-founded the brand State Of Menopause to address issues surrounding the menopause experience. She is an advisor to Evernow, a telehealth and menopause treatment platform for women's health. She is on the Board of Directors for two non-profit organizations, Chronicon Foundation and Glam4Good. Her experience in the women's health space propelled her back to fashion to help people in mid-life find a new sense of self-esteem and power in aging. She currently has a fashion brand exclusive to QVC and has a new show, Wear Whatever The F You Want. 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 am bringing you Stacy London. Where are all my What Not to Wear fans? This is the real Stacy London, and we're going to talk about fashion, aging, and menopause. It's a really fun conversation. And if you aren't familiar with Stacy, just to fill you all in, she is a prominent American stylist. She is a fashion consultant. She's an author. She's a television personality. She was best known for co-hosting TLC's What Not to Wear.

• 0:42Mindy Pelz?

  And she is bringing the conversation of midlife to a whole new level. So I love this conversation for so many reasons. For starters, Stacy and I, in the front half of the conversation, really talk about how menopause is this incredible transformation. She has some real incredible statements that she makes about how menopause is a reckoning, and you are actually letting go of what no longer serves you, and you are stepping into the best version of you yet, where you are living life on your terms. A concept that I could not agree more.

• 1:23Mindy Pelz?

  Then we, of course, she's a stylist, I had to go into asking her about how do we dress for the changes that are happening to our body? So everything from hot flashes to menopausal belly weight to, oh my gosh, now I'm a size eight and not a size six, or I'm a size 12 and I used to be a size 10. How do we navigate those moments? And how do we dress for those moments? She had some incredible tips that I think you all will really love. And then, of course, I had to ask her, like, what do you do about hot flashes? And we talked about, what do you do when you're in a situation where all of a sudden you are forgetting words? And we dove into-

• 2:10Mindy Pelz?

  How do you navigate wrinkles on your face and all of the different beauty options out there? In an hour's time, we went to a lot of different places in this conversation. So enjoy. It's, it's fun. She is spicy. She has some great opinions about menopause that I think are really necessary in the zeitgeist right now. And I think you're going to get a lot out of this conversation. So Stacy London, enjoy. Welcome to the Resetter Podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for

• 2:51Mindy Pelz?

  learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you.

• 3:06Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, Stacy, well, let me start off by just welcoming you to my community and to the Resetter Podcast. I'm so excited to have this conversation.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan and I'm so happy to be talking with all of your listeners and you today.

• 3:21Mindy Pelz?

  Thank you. Thank you. Here's where I'm going to start because I think this is a simple question that is answered in many different ways. What would you say, based off your personal experience, your definition of menopause?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  My definition of menopause is that it is a reckoning to a renaissance.

• 3:43Mindy Pelz?

  Oh.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Only way that I can describe it. It's the only way I continue to describe it. It is, it is a real reckoning. It is a reckoning with physiological, emotional, psychological, even spiritual ideas that we had about ourselves.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  I think we go through a reckoning because we are really faced with the question of our own identity and our use value in society and what we want for ourselves and what we've been taught and what we've internalized culturally as opposed to what we want for ourselves, which is something very different from those things. So it is hard. That's why there is a reckoning. And it may feel like your life is falling apart before it feels like you've gotten to this renaissance. But being post-menopausal and being sort of on the other side of this decade, forty-five to fifty-five, I'm now about to turn fifty-six. I feel like this was the decade of reckoning. And I am coming out of it more powerful, more

• 4:43Speaker 01

  with more insight into the way I want to be happy and the way I hope to give other people permission to be happy with their own lives, which is so much less about people pleasing and so much more about serving community, but in a way that has meaning for you. And I don't know how to explain it other than to say I have never been more myself than I am today.

• 5:08Mindy Pelz?

  So you just jumped right out of my next book. We're calling it, I mean, because this is a really big part that I don't think we are talking about enough. And the book is called Age Like a Girl. And what I did is, right, little juxtaposition of words. But what I did is really look at the neurochemical system that's happening when we go through menopause. And we don't just lose two hormones. We lose up to ten neurochemicals. And one of those is oxytocin. And oxytocin is that people pleasing hormone that makes us so,

• 5:47Mindy Pelz?

  makes it neurochemically sticky to please everybody around us. But then it changes and all of a sudden, we don't want to please people. So.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  I couldn't, my oxytocin went right out the window, let me tell you. And, you know, after years of what I call my acquisitive phase, when I was concerned with what other people thought, when I was concerned with external validation, when it was about having the right clothes and the right apartment and the right tchotchkes and all of the things that, you know, I thought were somehow. Markers of success. It has really been this decade of undoing that thinking that has made me more myself. And now I consider myself to be in my inquisitive phase. So as opposed to wanting things or needing things as external validation, or thinking that I'm the smartest person in the room, I now only want to be in rooms where I'm the dumbest.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  I want to be in rooms where I am only with people who can teach me and how I can learn. The things that when I remember being so self-conscious of when I was young was this idea of I didn't want to make a fool of myself. I didn't want to be bad at something. So if I wasn't good, I didn't play. If I wasn't going to win, I didn't play. And that whole sense of self-consciousness has been completely eroded by this need and desire of curiosity to learn all the things that I didn't allow myself to do when I was younger, when I was so much more concerned about other people and not myself. And now, you know, everybody used to say, or at the beginning of this menopause conversation, I used to hear all the time, well, the reason we haven't talked about menopause is because, you know, most women died by the time they got to menopause.

• 7:27Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Historically, bullshit. We have been having menopause for hundreds of thousands of years, as far as I can tell. And I'll tell you what, I think that menopause isn't about necessarily whether we become good grandparents or whether we become sort of the elders in our society. I think the reason that, you know, female physiology has menopause kind of instilled into it is because it is the first time we don't have to be anything for anybody but ourselves.

• 8:00Mindy Pelz?

  That's right.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  And it is a remarkable feeling. It is such an unbelievable sense of freedom.

• 8:05Mindy Pelz?

  It's liberating for sure. The transition from the people pleasing, the caring what the culture thinks of you to the place that you just described. That transition for a lot of women is not fun.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  No, it is turbulent.

• 8:23Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, so speak a little bit about that because I believe this transition from I'm gonna do be the good girl and do everything the world wants me to, to you all can fuck off now and I'm gonna be on my, do my own thing. That that transition is is scary, it's disorienting and the people around you stop recognizing you.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and I think even worse, you don't recognize yourself. And I think that that's how it starts, right? It is this, I don't look like myself, I don't feel like myself, I can't put my finger on what's wrong, but something isn't right. All of these things that sort of creep up on us and especially with no education. My anxiety got worse, my depression got worse, my rage got worse, the big, big feelings definitely started to kind of overtake my everyday. As long, you know, as well as insomnia and night sweats and hot flashes and joint pain and food allergies, you name it, I had some crazy symptom, heart palpitations, all of it. But you think you're gonna get stuck there. I remember it is a,

• 9:25Speaker 01

  there is a sense of feeling hopeless. Now, again, I say this knowing very well that feelings aren't facts. And even when you feel hopeless, and even when it seems like everything is hopeless, that may be just in that moment, you are going to come out of it. But I do think it's almost like the way an addict has to hit rock bottom. We have to experience something so turbulent that we change the way we live our lives, that we are able, and that we have the tools and we learn the tools, to be able to properly grieve and say goodbye to the person that we were, in order to accept where we're at and accept what's coming, right? And be able to receive change well. And I think, you know, it's really interesting, I'm reading Pema Chodron's We Live How We Die.

• 10:10Mindy Pelz?

  I love her.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  I love her too. And but what I love about her is that the whole book isn't about getting used to dying, right? Which is also something I do think we need to talk about, especially in midlife, our relationship to mortality changes. But more importantly, she is saying you have to be comfortable with change. You have to be comfortable with the things you don't know, or you have to be comfortable with the fact that your expectation may not be the outcome. And once you can get your sea legs around this idea that change is going to come out of nowhere, it's going to knock you down when you don't expect it. If you have tools in which to manage change, you are going to be infinitely happier during your lifetime. And because you will understand that death really highlights the value of life,

• 10:56Speaker 01

  it's going to be even more precious to you. And that's the way I feel about menopause. Just because it's so hard doesn't mean that there aren't benefits. And the biggest benefit for me was this lens perspective shift, right? Is all of a sudden, I'm not going to the gym to lose weight, I'm going to stay strong. All of a sudden, I don't care if you think I'm invisible. I know what I'm doing for myself not only makes me feel visible and powerful, it makes me feel relevant and that I'm contributing to the society in which I live, into my community. And so I do think there is a very different perspective. The first half of our life is much more about this kind of hero's journey. And the second half is really about the artist's way. It's like, what do we do with all of this wisdom,

• 11:40Speaker 01

  which I think is very different from knowledge that we have from our life experience? How do we, how do we pay it that forward? And how do we move on in a way that is going to leave a legacy? And I really do believe the legacy of Gen X is about this education, this lifetime education around female physiology, our desperate need for more research into female physiology. And also the idea that shame and fear should not play a part in this transition, that we need to embolden and empower people.

• 12:11Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So what do you, when I look at the history of the menopause conversation, we really had a cultural hush as little as like three or four years ago. And what I've been saying is I feel like now we have cultural chaos. Where women are realizing that their moods, their lack of sleep, their weight gain could be this hormonal transition. And one of the things that I have really deeply contemplated lately is we are a culture of comfort. So I could not agree more with you that this transition is for your liberation and for your moment.

• 12:52Mindy Pelz?

  But the discomfort of the transition is the rhetoric around that is take a pill, throw some patches on, put some creams on, and you will not suffer. Do you think you can get to the artist's way? Can you get to that side without suffering?

• 13:10Speaker 01

  No. I don't. I think suffering, and I think when we are uncomfortable, when we are in dis-ease or discomfort, is the invitation to become more self-aware. And it is without fail, the thing when we have to do something hard, it is where we learn the most about ourselves. And I will tell you, my perimenopausal reckoning was a fucking nightmare. Like, everything that could go wrong during that period, forty-five to fifty-five, highest rate of decrease in earning potential, divorce, depression, all of those things were true for me. All of those things were true. Is that I don't know if they were perimenopausal caused, or they're just correlated, but the

• 13:52Speaker 01

  idea that you are dealing with real-world pressure at the same time that you are sort of least physiologically able to handle pressure is not lost on me. And that was uncomfortable. It was really uncomfortable. But I don't think that change happens while we're feeling comfortable. What do we have to change? What do we want to change when we feel comfortable? We change out of necessity. When, you know, what's that Anees Nin quote? You know, she finally bloomed when it took too much not to. And I think that there's something very true about that when it comes to menopause, and particularly, I think, the female experience of menopause. And that's not to say that, and I am talking about all females, trans females, female at

• 14:37Speaker 01

  birth, it does not matter to me, however you identify. If we're talking about female physiology and we're talking about sort of sociobiology, cultural beliefs around women, then, you know, and being able to be a baby machine or give birth and that your use value is solely tied to that, that's when I get really irritated and annoyed, because this was, yes, okay, I never wanted children, so I'm not one of those people who was like, oh my god, I can't have children now. But it did occur to me that my body could no longer do something that it had done most of my natural life, right? That, those are endings that are natural. Endings don't mean the end of everything. These are natural endings. And the idea that we were supposed to have kids like into our 80s seems insane to me,

• 15:22Speaker 01

  because when would we ever have any time for ourselves if it wasn't biologically built into doing it? You know what I mean?

• 15:28Mindy Pelz?

  That's right.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  I really, I don't, I believe that God was like actually on our side and she's looking out for us.

• 15:33Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  You know? So we do, we do have this, we have this essential moment, which starts in this very turbulent way, which makes us question everything. Our surroundings, our family, our relationships, our identity, our work-life, everything. In order to decide, hey, what is going to make me the happiest on the back end of my life? We've got a lot more days behind us than we do in front of us, and I don't say that to be morbid. I say that because to value the time that you have means that you don't have any excuses left to not change. You don't have any excuses to live in this kind of comfortable, very privileged way, instead of actually doing the work at looking at who you are and making your life better

• 16:17Speaker 01

  for as long as possible, which I really happens at this stage.

• 16:21Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And, and what do you, what kind of advice would you give to women as they're listening to this? That are like, I feel myself changing.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:31Mindy Pelz?

  But the relationships in my life are like, what's wrong with you? You're not the same person. You talked about forty five to fifty five being a career wise was tough. Like, it is really a burning down of everything that you built. And renegotiating every single thing in your life to create this new. For a lot of us, that is the process.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yes, and I think, I think the first thing I would say is find community. Right? Um, be very careful about any kind of retreat that is, you know, I've noticed now, really having seen how the menopause landscape is, is shaping up, is that not only are there now, it's not just that we're talking about it. Of course, there are dissenting opinions. Doctors are going to rival for, you know, who's right and who's wrong. And things that, that to me are not advantageous for an audience or a consumer, because you really don't know when you're being sold a false bill of goods or not.

• 17:29Mindy Pelz?

  Well said.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Be ca-, you know, be careful where you're getting your information from and who is selling you what. I think you must be discerning. But at the same time, you need to seek out community. I don't care if that's online community. Perry is an incre-, Hey Perry is an incredible app. Thousands of women, these are not doctors. These are people where you can just feel like you aren't crazy, because people will back you up and say, me too. I felt that too. This is exactly what happened to me. Don't worry, the hot flashes didn't last more than a year for me. You know, keep a record of them, blah, blah, blah. Here are the two big things you can go to talk to your doctors about. I, you need to feel like you can, you can, A, suffer not silently, but in community.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  When you have questions or when you feel exasperated, that there are people who know what you've been going through. And there are menopause mentors everywhere now, right? I mean, you know, nine books are coming out now about menopause and. It's all about feeling like you are not the only person going through this. That is, to me, the most important, that you don't menopause in isolation. To me, that's the hardest way to go through it. And I really did a lot of that because I was so ashamed about what was happening to me and that I didn't understand how to really vocalize it in any way that made sense to me. I had to do all my own research. It took me a long time to find like-minded doctors and people who wanted to discuss this. When I first said I wanted to start talking about menopause, people told me that I was committing career suicide.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  And yet, at that point, nobody was hiring me for anything anyway. I was like, I might as well talk about something that has the potential benefit of, you know, making other people feel seen and understood, rather than just sitting here on my ass, being like, well, I don't want to talk about clothes. And strangely enough, getting me back into menopause, getting me to talk about midlife, brought me back to clothes because I started to recognize our identity changes so much. So does the way that we look at how we look at ourselves, or the way that we want to dress, or the way that we want to feel. And I didn't think I'd have any interest in coming back to style, honestly. I wanted, you know, women's health. No, no, I'm not going anywhere.

• 19:35Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, no, I mean, I think, I think, you know, it's funny, when I was in perimenopause, I'll never forget, not quite understanding my hot flashes, and I was getting up in front of an audience of hundreds of people to give a presentation, and I literally looked down at my shirt, and I was, it was just wet, completely on my armpit. Like, you, you could just see that I was sweating. I couldn't make it stop. I didn't have a change of clothes, and I had to go on stage. And the only thing I had left to do was to call myself out and just be like, I'm a men, I'm a perimenopausal woman, having a hot flash. And what I learned from that was, when you go on stage,

• 20:17Mindy Pelz?

  be careful what fabric you wear, make sure everything's aren't too tight. Like, I started to learn how to dress for my menopausal symptoms.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  I, I mean, which is extremely important. And there are amazing technological fabrics coming out all the time that are about whisking away sweat, or about keeping you cool. And I think those are only going to get better over time. The other thing is that there's an acknowledgement there that I think really is so relatable. Right now, not everybody gets to go onstage and talk to hundreds of people. But even if you're getting up to make, I don't know, a speech at a wedding, right? You never want to feel like so insecure and afraid. Again, this fear thing, this shame thing, calling this out and being like, you know, my friend Carla Hall, when I, I experienced this a lot too, as well as she did, is that it's in public speaking, I would be worried that I would forget my train of thought.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  I would forget what I was saying. And that to me felt very embarrassing, like, how can I be smart enough to give a speech? And yet I can't remember my place or what I was just saying five seconds ago. But Carla, she stops and she says, I got a pause for the minnow. I lost my train of thought. What was I talking about? And the, first of all, that's an invitation to people to feel like they can discuss this with you. And especially when said with like a little bit of humor and really self acknowledgement, which I find very humbling, people relate to that. You know, we all go through that. It's sort of like having the hot flash onstage is like getting your period when you're wearing white pants. I mean, it's just one other thing that we live with, right? You know? Right. And this idea that if we share that information with other people, like, we're

• 21:55Speaker 01

  not perfect either, it, it gives everybody permission to kind of let their hair down a little bit. And this idea that women have never been taught to feel safe in their bodies is something that Latham Thomas once said to me, she is a birth doula and, and works in maternal health, and this is something I, I really, I talk about almost every time I speak. If you have not been taught culturally or societally to feel safe in your body, of course, you're not going to know very much about it. And of course, you're going to be very frightened by it. So it's everything from, you know, now we have in place to teach young girls about their period and about pregnancy, but then we just stop. And even those things, we make you feel embarrassed because ew, blood yucky, gross. Yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Then we, you know, are like, if you're not carrying perfectly, if you have, you know, preeclampsia, or if you, you know, you're, it's, your performance is not up to par. Same with IVF, where you use words like Performance and failure. And we talk about the biological end of being able to give birth, right? And this idea that it is somehow your past, your expiration date, your, your past due. As opposed to you are freed from the chains that that expiration date gave you. That expiration date expires, you don't.

• 23:12Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Your use value only grows. But I think that because we are taught to think this way, we are so embarrassed to talk about what is natural. Because, you know, we're looking at things through a patriarchal lens. I think women's physiology is, or female physiology is so much more complicated. That if we had just studied us instead of men, we'd be a lot better off. We'd know a lot more about physiology in general.

• 23:36Mindy Pelz?

  Well, I can tell you, I am, I'm obsessed with understanding the female body and all that it comes with. I mean, we like, I mean, it's little things like the egg sends a signal out to the millions of sperm that are coming at her and she, this chemical signal decides which sperm comes in. She makes that choice. I just had Stephen Gundry on here a couple of weeks ago. And he told me that the intelligence of a, of a baby is determined by the microbiome in the mother's, in the placenta inside the mother. Like when you start to break down everything that happens in the female body, no offense to men.

• 24:18Mindy Pelz?

  But we, we are so well designed. No wonder there is fear around what we're capable of.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  It's also, it's, it's not just fear, right? It's this idea that if, if men have been sort of at the head of medical practices, you know, or medical practice for a very long time. It took a long time for women to be able to become doctors. This idea that we have always focused on men and male physiology. I think, you know, when we use words like emotional, hysterical, and we're always applying them to women. It's because we understand so little about, you know, female physiological engineering. And that we're much more complex and subtle. And that if you were studying us instead of men for those trials, instead of waiting till 1993 or 91, whenever women were invited into these tests, that we would have so much more.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Uh, information about both sexes, right? That this idea is that men are actually quite simple compared to women. And so I hate the fact that we are still playing catch up in terms of health equity.

• 25:22Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Amazing. I couldn't agree more. Talk to me a little bit about the anti-aging movement. Because as I've aged more, I'm 55. I've like, why would I be against aging? It seems to me like-

• 25:37Speaker 01

  How could you be against anything that you can't stop? That that's the first thing. So this idea of the beauty industry, uh, very much like the fashion industry. These are, these are industries that are truly built on insecurity. Right? If you don't have this blush, or if you don't have this shirt, then somehow you're not relevant. Or you're not enough. Or that you'll look somehow like the pretty people we see on these advertisements. I mean, this is still using, you know, prehistoric software here. Our brains, there's a reason we've responded to this, right? There's a reason, there's a great book called Survival of the Prettiest by Nancy Etkoff. Which is really about tracing why some of the things that we think are beautiful are beautiful.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  So the idea of a crooked nose, let's say, was not considered culturally beautiful, really. Because it meant that genetically, that if you were to mate with that person, they may have trouble breathing. If you were, uh, you know, bigger or heavier, when it was the, you know, time of the saber-toothed tiger, you'd have less chance of getting away than somebody who could run faster. Right? So all of these things are sort of rooted in the way that we think about fight or flight. The way we think about something in front of us and we're like friend or foe. You know, safety or frightening. But now it's really much more, are you part of my tribe? Do I get you? Like, look at us, we're both wearing stripes today. Like, you know, Dr. Mindy, you and I, we're the same people.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  I'm, right, I'm 55, you know, you're 55, like, all these things. You know, we're both brunettes. Like, all of these things that we use as signifiers in order to find ground, common ground with people, is how we use fashion and beauty today. Oh, you have, I see you've got that Birkin bag. Oh, all right, she's showing up. You know, whatever, whatever it is, they've turned into judgments about people rather than like, are you dangerous or not? And and I think that that is true as we as we age, we start to look for the give no fucks attitude in people. I'm very discerning in my friend group now. Oh, me too. Right? I don't have time. I do not have time. I do not waste my energy on people that I

• 27:52Speaker 01

  are are are literally taking me nowhere, are either taking me out of my zone of magic, or are just, you know, really wanna this idea of picking my brain. I'm like, no, my brain is expensive. No more picking at it. No, no little free taste test for you. Right. I don't believe in that stuff anymore because I very much believe that who we become as we age really is about this kind of self fortification in the best possible way. I mean that in terms of strength training, in terms of, you know, psychological fortitude. We are dealt a lot at this stage of life, whether it's like taking care of your kids or empty nest syndrome, elder parents, or, you know, dying parents. There are things

• 28:34Speaker 01

  that are happening at this age. I mean, certainly, look at the economy. This is the moment, if you are a single woman in your 50s who's like, you know, dependent on her own income, that you're gonna start to panic, like, will I have enough when I'm 80? So, all of these things to keep us going, keep us in the workforce, staying healthier, walking the 10,000 steps, stopping the alcohol, don't smoke, all of the things that we know are going to contribute to our longevity, we start to look at through a very different lens. Same same for like, I want all of my social relationships. I don't want transactional relationships. I want relationships that I can depend on whether I'm in a good mood or a bad mood. I don't want conditional love for my friends. I'm like, you take me or leave me, you know?

• 29:17Mindy Pelz?

  That's your oxytocin, that's the oxytocin system.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 29:22Mindy Pelz?

  It changes. And here's another wonderful thing about the female body, is that we have more oxytocin receptor sites in our brains, and we have oxytocin receptor sites in our bones, which means when we say we feel it in our bones, we are are absolutely making a fact. And what's interesting is as estrogen goes down, so does oxytocin, and all of a sudden, the superficiality no longer is good for us. We need not just emotionally more deep connections for oxytocin, but there's studies that show it actually helps prevent things like osteoporosis.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Sadly, I've already, I've found two vertebrae that have osteoporosis. The rest have osteopenia. But for me, you know, that was like, I have been on a real health kick. This year, I promised myself like as much preventative care as possible.

• 30:15Mindy Pelz?

  Well done.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  So I did the two shingles vaccines. I got a full body MRI. I went and had my DEXA scan and I mean, I was like clearing every, you know, I'm in great shape, great shape, great cholesterol looks good, blood pressure is great, heart is great. Brain is good, no amyloid plaques, things like that. And then we got to my bones. And I was just so bummed out, so bummed out.

• 30:40Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Vibration plates. One of the best things for increasing strength in the bone is a vibration plate. Cause it causes, yeah, you just get one for your house. You can, it doesn't have to be expensive. But the, the micro vibration causes your bones to hold on to calcium and phosphorus much quicker. Super easy hack.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Oh my God, what an amazing easy hack. I mean, now I'm, you know, I was already taking magnesium and calcium and D and things like that. So,

• 31:08Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  And I, it's also genetic. My mom had it, my grandmother had it. So it's, yeah, not, not the biggest surprise, but I've never heard about vibration. And that's what I was trying to get my head around. Everybody says that for bone health, impact is important, whether you're jumping rope or something. So I was like, how am I going to do that without hurting myself?

• 31:27Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  And this is so exciting.

• 31:29Mindy Pelz?

  There you go. Yeah. Rucking vests are another one that are really.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  I have, I have a weighted vest.

• 31:34Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, that, that really helps. But it's all about putting a little bit of stress. It's like why fasting works so well. You put a little bit of stress on the system and the system adapts. So like for post-menopausal women, when you fast, you create some ketones and now those ketones go up and they can supercharge your brain. So it's just a little bit of stress creates the body stronger. So there, there's, there's my advice for you on that one.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Actually very helpful because it is the thing that I was like, huh? Now I have to go back and make sure that there's no bone breakage in my urine. That will require medicine if, you know, and I really, I was like, I've been doing strength training now. Oh God. A long time. I mean, I started in perimenopause, so six or seven years ago. And that has proved very, very helpful, but sometimes that's just not enough.

• 32:25Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah, vibration plates. I'll send you some, some information on it.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 32:29Mindy Pelz?

  And you can geek out on it. So back to the anti-aging thing because it's funny. I, I ran into one of my closest friends from high school about a year ago. And she had had a bunch of work done and we got talking about menopause. And we were talking about all the work she had had done on her eyes and her face. And I stopped and I asked her and I was like, can you, can you tell me why you're doing all of that? And she said to me, well, you know, when you run into people, they ask you, they'll often say to you, you look so good. And I was like, well, what does that do for you? And she's like, well, what do you mean? I'm like, what does that emotionally give you when people say you look so good?

• 33:12Mindy Pelz?

  And she couldn't answer the question. And then I said, well, does it make you feel worthy? And she goes, yeah, actually, I think it does. But when we look at the, the toxins that are in things like botox and fillers, it's, you're now playing with hormonal Russian roulette to be putting those chemicals in your body. Plus, I believe that you're robbing yourself of a, an opportunity to, to embrace your aging. So talk a little bit about that.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not that I disagree with that, but I also think make your own choices. How you want to age, whether you're putting filler in your face or botox in your face, or having a facelift, or getting a lower third, or having your brows lifted, good for you. If you can afford it, if that makes you feel like you are tackling aging in a way that works for you, good for you. But what, what I feel is that is when women feel, feel pressured. That this idea of they must have the surgery or they must have the filler in order to feel worthy, in order to feel respected. Exactly. Because that's the only way through is to me devastating. It's one of the reasons that Justine Bateman's book about face called Face.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Was so important, right? I mean, just this idea that she has chosen to age naturally. She gets shit for that, and yet we give Madonna shit for too much filler. Like, you can't win for losing as a woman. If you're in this about, you know, being attractive, like, what are we saying now? GLPs are making everybody skinny, so we don't have to make plus sizes anymore. What? This is ridiculous. Like, for me, if you want to do that, if you want to take a GLP-1 or 3, whatever they're called, you do you. It's your body, right? This idea, I mean, and to me, the reason this is so important is because it does fall under bodily autonomy. We should be able to do whatever we want. It is our right as humans, and I don't care about being a woman or not being a woman.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  You should have control over your body. But what pains me is this idea that that's the only way to go, or that you have to bankrupt yourself in order to look a certain way, or that you feel like those things are the only way that you can feel better about aging. Because I think we need a much healthier view of acceptance around age. And that doesn't mean you don't stay healthy. That doesn't mean you don't exercise, or you don't get the right amount of sleep or nutrients. But how far do you want to take that, right? I mean, when I found out that you could have plastic surgery on your vagina, I was like, Oh, my God. Why does anybody want to do that? Right. You know, I, but. I didn't know that was a thing.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  I didn't know it was a thing either, but then I'm like, if this is, if this is something that doesn't hurt you, that you can afford, that makes you feel a certain way about yourself, you're living your life. I'm not living it for you. So, any judgment that I pass is actually none of your business, right? You need to do what's best for you. Yeah. And, yes, I wish there were more people, particularly people who are celebrities, who would embrace the idea of aging more. Solely because I feel like it is so important for us to have role models. I mean, you know, Meryl Streep is a great example. But I want people to see in the public eye that you can still be beautiful with wrinkles, that you're still powerful and capable. And you know, as admirable as if you didn't have them.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  We prize youth because youth is equated with fertility. It is a prehistoric software thought. This is all we know. So we haven't made it attractive for people to age. We haven't given them incentive to be lauded for the same kinds of things that we're lauded for in our youth. That's where I think we need to start developing more confidence around accomplishment, confidence around being just who you are. Instead of worrying that you have to have all these things or all these needles or, you know, whatever it is, dye your hair. To feel those things, to feel worthy. Worthy should be, that's the price of entry. You, you, you are alive on this planet. You are worthy.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  And your looks really shouldn't be an indication of worthiness. To me, those things shouldn't just.

• 37:30Mindy Pelz?

  But the culture has taught us, the culture has taught us, you're, you're worthy as a woman if you look beautiful. Cause now you'll get the attention of the patriarch. Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Right. And that's, and you know, particularly I find that so difficult because it's not women even helping women. Or women doing something that's solely for their own benefit. They're doing it based on this idea that this is what we've been taught. This is an invisible systemic structure and there is nobody else breaking out of it.

• 37:56Mindy Pelz?

  That's right. That's so well said. Okay. Well, we have to talk about style since that is your thing.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 38:03Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Because I still care about style.

• 38:06Mindy Pelz?

  I know. And I, and it's, I, I think I can tell you that I dress for different reasons now.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:12Mindy Pelz?

  I mean, my number reason, number thing I dress for is comfort. And then the second thing that I dress for is how do I feel in this? Do I like this? Is this working for me? As opposed to are people going to like this? So, and I think about that shift and what we need to know there.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  I, I, I think that shift is essential. I think that it happens during this reckoning when you're like, nothing fits me. I hate my clothes. I wouldn't wear what I wore at 25 at 55. I'm not the same person. It's like saying that I, you know, I love Brussels sprouts, but I hated them as a kid. Like you change every seven years, every cell in your body has changed. It has been regrown and rebuilt. To think that your style is going to stay the same, or that you're going to get the same benefits by keeping the same style would be silly, right? Everything in life changes. So first, we have to adapt to the idea that you're not going to stay static and that your style evolution is something to embrace and accept and be curious about and excited about every step of the way.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  And one of the most difficult times, I think, that we really struggle with identity is in perimenopause. And this is where I think style becomes such an incredibly important tool. Now, again, this is not about, well, I look great and therefore people are going to tell me I look great. And therefore that's the only way I can create my own confidence. I think this is about the opportunity to create your own confidence by controlling the narrative of who you are. You have complete domain over that. All the agency is yours. You want people to think that you are, I don't know, some crazy kind of like, you know, hippie vibe, gypset, you know, great, you know how to dress for that role.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  You want people to think that you're competent, clever, you can, you can intimate all of these things by the way that you carry yourself and the way that you dress. Now, I agree with you. Comfort was definitely not a top priority for me when I was younger. I wore five inch heels every day for 15 years, right? Couldn't pry them off my feet. I don't believe in that now because I have arthritis and it hurts. And I would only wear a high heel for a special occasion or a photograph, right? That's like who I am now. But that doesn't mean that my interest in shoes has changed. It hasn't. I look for a different kind of shoe now. I believe in comfort, but I don't disbelieve in elegance. I think you can have both. And part of that is what I wanted to do in terms of making clothes,

• 40:38Speaker 01

  in terms of just saying, hey, I know how to style this for you, or hey, let's shop in your closet first. I also want it to be like you can be stylish and relevant and whatever that means for you in terms of your age, if I give you clothes that make you feel that way. So that's sort of, you know, What my my new style contribution is, isn't just about how you style yourself, but about clothes that feel good if you're having a hot flash. About clothes that feel good even if you've gained weight in your midsection, because all my pants are elastic and they're pull on. You know, things that that still look tailored and fashionable, but that have the use value that we need as we age. That to me is very important.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  It's also why I do see quote unquote age appropriate clothing as being more comfortable and yet still elegant. We we don't need to put in the same amount of effort to get the same amount of return in how we feel about ourselves as we age if we're making our clothing simpler. And and I don't mean that just to say like I only wear black or I have a capsule collection. No, I think we still need, we want to define what that style looks for us today. And look, I I'm looking at your sweater, right? This idea that something can be colorful and bold and really like stand out is wonderful, right? Because like you're giving yourself permission to also be bold and stand out. And that's very exciting to me. When I think about a lot of women our age,

• 42:02Speaker 01

  just in terms of economics and the way, you know, you shop in Europe, you buy maybe a seven or eight new pieces a season, and that's all you wear, right? So this idea of a uniform, I think, is something that appeals to women as they age. But I still want their uniform to be individual to them. That uniform could be 10 to 12 outfits that you hang up together, that you wear, like, you know, this is a great cocktail party outfit. This is great for brunch with the girls, just so you have your go tos. And then you continue to experiment from there. But everything that you put on really has to, it really now, I think, has to, I want to criteria, but really both criteria, which is that it should have use value

• 42:46Speaker 01

  in your closet and in your life, and it should be something that brings you joy. And I sometimes you're gonna do a splurge and it's a bag and it's amazing and it's the most impractical thing ever, but it brings you so much joy that you love it so much that it's worth the price, right? Doesn't matter how many times you wear it, it's worth it because you love it. And then there are the things that I consider to be workhorses in your closet, the best pair of black trousers. You don't need 50 pairs of black trousers, you need three, you know?

• 43:16Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  And that's how you start to discern the kinds of things you that look best on you and the outfits that you know become sort of the backbone of your wardrobe.

• 43:26Mindy Pelz?

  Right. What are some of your fashion tips for the menopausal belly? I can tell you I've done a lot of videos on YouTube about menopausal belly weight. It seems to be the thing that women are the most concerned about. What is it? Can you give us some advice on how like, are we embracing it? Are we, are we hiding it? Are we, I can tell you, I can tell you my strategy was low-rise jeans, just let it kind of hang over there, you know?

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's one way to do it. And then there are other people who will say high-rise jeans because they feel like they want to contain their midsection, right? But, but the thing is, I don't believe in the word hiding. I will never use the word hiding. I know when somebody is hiding because when somebody's hiding, they're usually wearing black, an oversized sweater that covers their ass and like baggy jeans or, or baggy sweats. And the whole point is that they don't want me to see them, except for the fact that when it looks like you're trying to hide everything, I can tell that you don't like your body. So how do you accept what you don't like about your body and dress for that? In other words, I say you're either finding ways to complement the things you do like about your body and also finding ways to consciously camouflage the things

• 44:38Speaker 01

  you don't love. And I know that sounds a little Gwyneth to be like consciously camouflage, but it's that you are aware that you don't like something about your body, but that doesn't mean you're discounting it and pretending that it's not there. Because the easiest way to have a problem get bigger is to ignore it. So the easiest way for you to dress in a way that's not flattering is to ignore that there's a part of your body you don't love. You cannot love a part of your body and still dress it well.

• 45:08Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, okay, give me an example. What's a part of body that you see women not love?

• 45:12Speaker 01

  So I know a lot of people who don't love their tush. They don't love their hips. They think their hips are bigger, right? So I would advise, look, you know that you like your top half better. Wear things that are sleeveless, wear things with a deep V, wear things that are going to really create attention up top. Do darker colors and universally flattering shapes that define a waist like an A-line skirt or a mid-rise jean go directly over the midsection and cut that body in half, right? Or if you know that you want to do something, you're just, it's creating geometric shapes and symmetry. So where you want to camouflage things, you can do that with volume or wearing something tighter, depending on how you are styling the other half of your body.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  So it's like putting a puzzle together. You don't have to love your hips in order to wear something that's going to flatter your top half and really elongate your body and get people to look where you want them to look, like we're both doing vertical stripes. That forces your eye up and down. If these were horizontal, this would make my chest look wider. If I don't want my chest to look wider, then I would wear something vertical, right? Or if I wanted to add volume or distraction up here so that you're not paying any attention, maybe I would create more width on top, a small waist, and then width on the bottom so that you've got that hourglass balance. So it's never about hiding.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  It is really, I say this in my book, which I wrote over a decade ago called The Truth About Style, but one of the first things I say in the book is you have got to stand naked in front of the mirror until the emotional connection that you have in terms of liking or disliking anything about your body just becomes objective. You can say, I like my boobs, I don't like my tush. The minute you can say that, you're actually dealing in reality. And it's only in reality that you can dress yourself best. You actually are fitting what you have, the raw material you have to work with. If you think that you're going to dress for the body you wish you had, good luck. You're never going to look right in the clothes. So.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Radical self-acceptance is another part of the change, right? Radical self-acceptance, once you go through this kind of tumult and this reckoning, what you come out of this as is, I cannot change what is. The same way I cannot change aging. All these billionaires who are trying to live forever, what idiots. I mean, you know, when you could solve world hunger instead, to me, that is a waste of time. I am much happier to think that there is a time limit on my life than to think about the fact that I would be wasting all the money that I could be helping the world with on myself. So for me, it's about taking as good care of this vessel to take me as long as I'm going to be able to go for as long as possible.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  But this idea that we won't age really is such a disservice to who we are. This is a natural occurrence. It is a natural, just like the biological end of fertility is a natural ending, so is dying. So this idea that we, everybody thinks it's cute to be old, but nobody wants to age, is really something that we have to get out of, right? I don't want to talk about my cute little 99-year-old grandmother. You know, she lived to be 99 and she was like five feet tall and totally Sicilian and, you know, there was, I love the fact that she used to do her hair in this big bouffant and she was amazing. But it's not just that my grandmother was cute when she was old.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  I remember now, when I was born, she had to have been post-menopausal or still kind of crazy menopausal. And she would do all these weird things. I remember her like eating the hunks of cheese or jars of soybeans. She took tons of vitamins, probably why she lived to be 99. But I don't really remember her getting from where I was as a baby to where I was when she died. I just remember her, you know, as this old lady, not all the other things she did to become an old lady. And we don't talk about this progression, this stage, this radical transformation enough, and how much it requires a certain amount of faith and acceptance

• 49:31Speaker 01

  that what's happening is meant to happen. You know, just because societally we put these...

• 49:38Speaker 01

  You know, ridiculous standards on how we're supposed to look and how we're supposed to age as people. I can't think of anything more torturous than, you know, essentially saying to somebody, you no longer matter, which is what our society does with people who are aging and the elderly. I hope that it is us and our generation that is going to change the way we think about aging.

• 50:00Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. You know, for the longest time, I was obsessed with the Aboriginal women that come through my Instagram newsfeed. And when you see, see a woman who's really wrinkled, what I see is wisdom. I'm like, wow, if those lines could talk, what would they tell me? What kind of life did she live? And then it got me thinking, well, if everybody, you know, tries to slow down aging, how are we going to find the wisdom keepers? How, what does wisdom look like? You know, if I, I, I was living in LA until the, until the fires happened. And I would, yeah, I would walk, yeah, thank you. I lived in the Palisades, right at the epicenter. And all my clothes were there too. So I, I got an opportunity

• 50:44Mindy Pelz?

  to buy new clothes. But, but here's what the interesting thing that I think we don't discuss enough is if everybody's trying to stay young, how are we going to find wisdom? What does wisdom look like?

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Because I think it's conflating two things sadly. What, you know, what we look like, it doesn't necessarily speak to, let's say, everybody's like, oh, you look great for your age. You look great for 55, right? But you're still 55. And so wisdom to me is not the same as knowledge. Wisdom is really, is based in life experience. And knowledge are things that we, you know, we discover, we can pick up, we can learn, all of that. So when I think about wisdom, I think about what it is that I'm saying to people that comes directly from my heart or directly from life, life experience as opposed to like when I feel like I'm teaching something, you know, which is like giving people knowledge. I don't know that I need deep, heavy wrinkles for you to be able to relate to the fact

• 51:43Speaker 01

  that I have wisdom. Because if something that I say resonates with you, then I think that that, that will stay with you regardless.

• 51:49Mindy Pelz?

  That connects. Yeah.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  And I don't think that we are going back to the, the. You know, certainly not in the like sort of media or, you know, film, television realms, like when we see glamour, that is still going to be hard, even though, you know, I am seeing progress. But, but even, even character actresses, like we, we, we still put such pressure on people to look a certain way.

• 52:14Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, we do, yeah, especially our celebrities.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Yes, and that's the thing. I think the more celebrities buy into it, the harder it is for the average person not to.

• 52:26Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, agreed.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Even, you know, when people can't afford it, even when these are things they should not be spending their money on because they, they have bills to pay, you know, it does, that kind of pressure is really hard. I did Botox for a long time and I stopped recently and I don't know how I feel about it. I'm not sure whether I'll go back to it or not go back to it. I don't know that I want to be putting any more Botox in my body, but also, you know, eventually those muscles will be so slack that my brow will just fall down. And I'm like, I don't, I think I'm probably better off just aging without it, you know? But it takes, to each their own and everybody sort of needs to, to figure that out.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  I just don't think that by play acting with all of the things that we have at our disposal, like, you know, plastic surgery or cosmetic dermatology or different hairstyles or dying your hair, whatever it is, is really going to be the thing by which we measure wisdom. It's never going to be the thing that we have to, we're never going to have to look to a wrinkle or, you know, an unblemished, you know, worked on face to know if somebody has wisdom. Like unfortunately, I think those things are, get conflated. You know, we want these kind of, we want the wisdom of the crone. Although I, you know, I keep saying that there, I, I worked with this executive producer and we decided that.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  You know, Jung had the three archetypes of women, right? The maiden, the mother, and the crone. There's really a fourth one in between mother and crone, which is enchantress. And that's where we are right now. We're here to make our own magic. And if that magic is in the way that you present, it's the same thing as wanting to wear yellow on a cloudy day. If getting botox is going to lift you, elevate you, make you more confident, create better interactions between you and other people, then I'm all for it. And if that's not where you get your self-worth, if that's not the well, you know, from which you're drinking, even better. Fantastic. We need to have room for everybody to be the version of themselves that they think is best.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  And if they're living this happy life, who are we to judge anyway?

• 54:43Mindy Pelz?

  Well said. Yeah. Well, you know, I used to say that on weight all the time when the body positivity world was really out there.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:51Mindy Pelz?

  I would say if you're overweight, you look in the mirror, you love everything you see, your blood work is great, then I don't, you don't need to be a size two, be whatever size you want to be.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I'm also, we're, as women, we're tied to numbers, sizes, weight, age.

• 55:07Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  What the fuck? You know, I'm sorry, I keep cursing. I have such a potty mouth.

• 55:11Mindy Pelz?

  No, you can curse all over my podcast.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  I apologize. But it makes me, it makes me fucking crazy because it's like, you're a size 12. So, so is the rest of the country. 12, 14 is our, is our average national size. 5'4" is the average national height. You don't want to be a 12, cross out the one, boom, you're a two. This is all magic. This, I mean, like, these sizes are so random, who gives a shit? You know, there was a great company years ago that didn't use sizes, like, small was, I don't know, pretty, and medium was beautiful.

• 55:41Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, they renamed it.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  And large was like sexy. And they did all these different things that I was like, this is how we should be sizing clothes. They should just be descriptions of-

• 55:49Mindy Pelz?

  Ooh, I love that.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  -that create self-confidence, not a number. Because I remember walking into a store in LA, I was, I was with a friend and we were shopping for her. And I said, okay, can we try this dress in a size eight? And this woman looked me directly in the eye and said, we don't carry larger sizes here.

• 56:07Mindy Pelz?

  Oh my God.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  Size eight? I was like, are you out of your mind? What world are we living in that like a double zero or a zero is somehow something we aspire to?

• 56:19Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, right, right. Talk about your new clothing line on QVC. And I want you to say you made it just for menopausal women, but I don't know if you did that. Is it for all women?

• 56:31Speaker 01

  I made it for women in midlife and I did make it with some menopausal things in mind. But bigger than just midlife. So a lot of the lining in some of our like mixed media shirts all takes away sweat, wicks away sweat, things like that. But you know, in my new clothes, if there's a zipper, I'm making it a bright neon color. So you don't need your reading glasses to see it.

• 56:53Mindy Pelz?

  Oh my God, that's amazing. Yes.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Things like that. But also to do things that are basics, that are cut well, so that you look like you're wearing a suit when you're literally wearing stretch jacquard, which is like a knit and kind of amazing. I've done that with three piece suits. I've done that with, I did a brocade suit that's all flowers. I did some amazing brocade coats, leather jackets, leather trenches, things like that, that I feel are staples that you should be able to get for prices that are not crazy expensive, yet are made with quality and you know, an eye on really good fabrics. And you know, the other thing is that we do tend to limit our spending as we age.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  And I want you to have pieces that still kind of give you pep in your step when you get up in the morning, that still make you feel you're participating in relevant style and feel good about it where you are. Not that you're trying to impersonate a younger version of you or anything like that. So there's a lot of good animals for grownups. Ideally, this idea you can mix and match almost everything from each of the collections will always have something that goes with it. And to you know, make it a little bit easier to get dressed and not, and not wear herd pants. Cause who needs herd pants anymore?

• 58:11Mindy Pelz?

  Right. You know, it's interesting. Leanne Rhimes is a good friend of mine.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 58:16Mindy Pelz?

  And when, when I evacuated from the fire, I had this moment because the fires were all around our Palisades house and I only had a couple of minutes to get out.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 58:26Mindy Pelz?

  And so you walk into your closet and you look around and you're like, all of this is replaceable.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:33Mindy Pelz?

  And all of a sudden, I realized in a second, how much time and effort I put into like actually buying these clothes and, and being attached to them. But in the moment of a crisis, I didn't care about them. So the fire left my neighborhood and was heading towards Leanne. And so I told Leanne, you better start packing up your clothes. And then we got in this really interesting discussion over the next couple of days of what she packed up. And she told me that like she packed up her onesies and her hats. Those were as important as her Grammys. I was like, what? And it's just, it's really interesting

• 59:13Mindy Pelz?

  in a crisis moment, how you decide what's important and what you put effort into and which clothes matter to you and which ones don't. It's a fascinating test. And Leanne went on to tell me, she's like, from now on, when I shop, I'm going to ask myself, would I take this in a fire?

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, look, clothes are clothes, right? And in a life precarious emergency, I hope that everybody will be like you and say, you know, I can walk away from this. What I do hear a lot of people saying is they don't know why they chose what they chose when they left. And there were a lot of things that they regretted not taking.

• 59:53Mindy Pelz?

  Of course.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  And it really made me think of the things that, you know, like what could you put in your safe? Or what could you put in something that is, you know, detachable, that you can pick up and take out all your important papers? It really, it really made me think about the way in which we prepare versus the things that we have attachments to, right? That are artificial attachments, not real ones. A lot of people said to me, they were upset they forgot something like their grandmother's brooch or something that

• 1:00:20Mindy Pelz?

  Well, for sure.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  has much deeper meaning.

• 1:00:22Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  But there is something about the fact that, you know, disaster puts life into perspective. And it's just what, this is a perfect way to kind of come full circle. When we talked about the fact that, you know, the beginning of the menopause experience is turbulent, it is a reckoning, it is hard. And you really sometimes have to break something, lose something, grieve something in order to see that there is so much more ahead of you. And I hope that's what the conversation around menopause right now is doing.

• 1:00:52Mindy Pelz?

  Agreed. Appreciate this. This was fabulous. Appreciate you and we will talk with you another time.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Okay. I would love that.

• 1:01:00Mindy 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.