Aging as a Spiritual Experience (Plus, the Power of Radical Self-Love) with Amanda Hanson aka The Midlife Muse
Show Snapshot:
Expiration dates are for milk, not for people. But in a youth-obsessed and beauty-focused culture, women are bombarded with messages that their value and worth are fleeting. Psychologist Dr. Amanda Hanson, aka The Midlife Muse, invites us to deeply question negative cultural and internal messages and offers us tools to build self-love, spark optimism and embrace aging as a spiritual experience. We get into the divine feminine, the transformative power of incremental change, and why you can't buy radiance at the beauty counter—time to invest in a "soul care" routine.
In This Episode We Cover:
The Google search result galvanized Amanda to launch a podcast and midlife platform.
How to reject negative cultural messages on aging in a youth-obsessed world.
A simple hack to reframe for ageist ideas. Ask yourself, “Do I even believe this to be true?”
How to excavate inner criticism, talk to yourself tenderly, and write an optimistic midlife narrative.
Aging as a spiritual experience.
Want more peace? Clean up your social media feeds and news sources and only follow pro-age accounts that make you feel supported and seen.
Want to feel radiant? Invest in a “soul care” routine.
We can't get to a new place doing old things.
Want to create change in your life? Focus on moving one degree a day.
Show Links:
Amanda’s podcast: Revolutionizing Midlife
Quotable:
I’m not meant to look at 50 the way I did at 20 or 30. That’s not the goal. The goal is not to go backward, for goodness sakes, the goal is constant evolution forward.
Aging to me is very spiritual, and I’m not going to miss an ounce of that. And I can't fully do that if I’m not fully in it— if I’m not fully living what that means to see and feel the changes. I won't deny myself the privilege of feeling it all.
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty [0:28]:
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. When you hear the word “midlife,” what comes to mind? Does the word midlife conjure up a sense of joy, abundance, happiness, wholeness? If the answer is no, stick around. My guest today is helping women reimagine how they see and experience midlife.
Amanda Hanson is a clinical psychologist turned transformational life coach for women. You may know her by her social media handle, @TheMidlifeMuse and from her scroll-stopping videos on Instagram where she shares ideas on radical self-love, patriarchal beauty standards, aging as a spiritual experience, the glory of going gray, living an authentic life, and so much more. I am truly so excited to be with her today and to share her contagious approach to midlife as a time of limitless possibilities. Welcome, Amanda.
Amanda Hanson [1:24]:
Oh, thank you so much for having me, Katie. I’m honored to be here and to have this conversation.
Katie [1:29]:
I’m delighted. I have gotten to know you and your work over Instagram, you share such inspiring videos, and I really feel lit up every time I engage with your material, so I’m thrilled that I get to have this conversation with you today.
I wanted to ask you about something that I read on your website. The journey to your current work, to the creation of your platform and your podcast, Revolutionizing Midlife, I learned was ignited by a simple Google search, and I would love for you to share what that Google search was and how it changed your life.
Amanda [2:04]:
Yes, absolutely. So, as I was approaching the 40 mark, which was 10 years ago, I’m now in my 50s, I was very interested in what does it really mean to be entering this midlife phase? And what was the current conversation happening? And so, just out of curiosity, I had typed it into the Google search bar, and I didn’t even finish the word “midlife” and it completed the phrase for me and said, "Midlife crisis.” And I went on to scroll and find endless doomsday articles and posts about everything that I should be fearing for what was to come.
And so, I didn’t see much positivity, I didn’t see much excitement, I didn’t see anything to be excited or hopeful for. I really thought, is it possible that we can create a different narrative? Is it possible that we don’t have to be in the scarcity of fearing this time and rather celebrating it for what it is? Because let’s be honest, it is not our 20s or 30s any longer. We are meant to be going through this phase, so I really just became curious for myself. So, it began with me doing a very deep dive for myself and really deconstructing everything I believed about what it meant to be a woman in a culture that is so youth obsessed and beauty focused, what it meant to be a woman in a patriarchal world. And I had to do it first for myself before I could ever lead anybody else on that path.
Katie [3:38]:
You know, I’ve had the exact same experience. I’m googling midlife constantly because of the podcast, I’m looking for midlife experts on certain topics and Google really needs... they need some help. Because when you do type in “midlife,” crisis is the next thing that auto-populates, and it’s definitely depressing.
I wanted to ask you, you mentioned this sort of work that you had to do for yourself, the patriarchal beauty standards that exist. I saw on a recent video that you shared on Instagram; you’re talking about these double standards with regard to age. Men are allowed to age, they achieve gravitas, and women are not. We exist in a system that tells us the only way to find worth is to stay youthful, we are bombarded with these messages about anti-aging products, it’s everywhere. So, it sounds like you did the work for yourself before you could help other people. How did you start to reject these anti-aging messages that culture constantly serves us?
Amanda [4:41]:
You know, I felt really insulted by them. It felt so limiting and so shallow that the biggest piece of interesting... part about, I guess, my personality would be how youthful I looked or how I appeared from the outside. I started rejecting it by understanding, or really excavating for myself, do I even believe this to be true? And when I really sat with it for some time and thought about all of the people that I revere, like my grandmothers who have now passed, and my aunts, and different women, I’m thinking, do I actually believe that women lose their value, their worth, their power? Do I personally believe that? And what I found was, no I don’t. As a matter of fact, I feel the opposite; I feel that as women age, there’s so much more wisdom. What I find is I want to be at the feet of those women, I want to learn from them, and I have endless stories that I want to ask.
So, when I realized I had absorbed a cultural message, it wasn’t actually mine, I was able to start to really get in and do the work from that space. But I think the biggest mistake we make is that we don’t ever question why we believe something we believe. And I will be honest is telling you, most of my clients when we go down this path, and it’s the very first question I ask them after the very first session, to really take through their next week and start asking and exploring, they come back to me and they are always astounded that so much of what they’ve been operating by was something they absorbed from a very sick culture, but not really deeply what they held to be true in their hearts. So, we can't do the work of deconstructing and decolonizing this entire system for ourselves until we pause and ask the question, do I even believe this is true? If I lived on a remote island all alone, starting tomorrow, would this actually be at the front and center of my focus for living?
Katie [6:40]:
This is such a fantastic question; do I even believe this to be true? We should be asking ourselves this question about so many things in our lives, and I love that you applied it to yourself and to aging. Regular listeners of this show will know that I have a day job as a communications career coach, I work with senior executives all the time and it was their steady drumbeat of fear around agism that put this into high relief for me; I didn’t believe that it was true that they were no longer relevant, or marketable, or had nothing of value to offer society. And that’s really why I launched this podcast, I was sick and tired of people telling me they were too old to do things because I didn’t believe that to be true and I didn’t want them to believe it about themselves.
But you know, I’m wondering Amanda, because it sounds like when you ask this question of your clients, many of them come back and say, "No, I don’t believe this, I reject it,” but there must be some that do. What happens when these patriarchal messages are so deeply embedded in our systems that we can't initially reject them? How do you help somebody who struggles to believe that it’s true that they have worth?
Amanda [7:51]:
Well, one of the first things I do is I have them get in front of a mirror and I have all these affirmations and practices. I have women do a lot of mirror work, no makeup on, completely exposed and to sit there... and it’s a gradual process right. In the first few times, for those women in particular, it’s almost impossible. It’s very difficult for them to actually look at themselves because the average woman looks at herself to critique, to fix, to move away some smudged mascara, it’s rare that we look and we are in awe or reverence. So, those women, I mean, I put all women in front of the mirror, but those women need a little bit more time.
And so, it’s really rebuilding a new narrative because I will never believe that we are stuck a certain way; everything is possible. And so, it’s for those women, it’s just going to be a slower, longer, more tender unraveling, lots of dancing, lots of mirror work, lots of journaling, it’s a very deep process that would take entirely too long for me to explain everything here because there is no quick fix. For the women who believe it’s deeply embedded, or they actually have bought into and believe that lie, there isn’t like, “Okay, do these 3 things and in 30 minutes it will all feel better.” Oftentimes, these are women who started believing there was something wrong with their bodies, or that they owed something to the world, around the age of 8 or 9; that’s when the average girl starts to believe that there’s something physically wrong with her, that she’s not acceptable enough. So, when that is sitting in your nervous system for so many decades, it’s going to take some time to excavate it and rewrite a more beautiful way forward.
Katie [9:38]:
I love the idea of excavating this inner criticism. I believe that every woman has an inner voice, I know that I have one. I was raised by a mother that gave me great messaging, my inner voice is mostly kind to myself and as I’ve gotten older, it’s gotten even more supportive. But we do have these moments where sometimes if you look in the mirror, you do look different than you used to when you were younger. When I look at myself, when you open it incorrectly and you’re staring at your chin, sometimes you’re like... Your physical appearance doesn’t look the way you maybe envision yourself. I know that you talk about patriarchal beauty standards, we want to reject them, sometimes they do feel like they’re in your brain space. We live in such a culture that prioritizes youth and beauty, what are ways that you personally have rejected that yourself that you might share with the listeners?
Amanda [10:37]:
Yeah, again like I said in the beginning, and I think it’s a really big current for me is the level of just being deeply, deeply insulted that that would be the most interesting thing about me. Because quite honestly, I feel like the way I look is the least interesting thing about me, it’s just the way that the genetics came together and a stroke of some combination. I find that the most interesting and fascinating thing about me is the beauty within my soul and I’m only interested in engaging with people who want to go to those places inside of me, and me inside of them. I’m not interested in surface level conversations, I could really care less where you get your hair done, where you bought your handbag or your outfit, or how many syringes of Botox you’re doing, that is not interesting to me.
So, when I began to reject that, it was through making sure that I cleaned up my social media. So, my social media has nothing other than pro, supportive, pro-aging, pro positive menopause messaging, I don’t follow diet culture, beauty culture, trends, clothing, all of that shit. I really keep my space squeaky clean, and it only is filled with messages that are important to me. Plus, I really am not a content consumer. I consider myself a content creator, but I don’t consume lots of content because I don’t want that poison in my system.
And so, I also am very careful as to what I choose to bring into my home, what I read, the way I speak to myself, the way I’m raising my 19-year-old daughter, and the rest of my children. I’m very... Words are important and so I choose my words carefully and I make sure that the conversations are very elevated, we rarely, if ever, talk about exterior facing parts of how we look, as a family, because again, that piece is irrelevant, so I don’t make that a focal point of my conversation, my life. And when I do look in the mirror in the morning ritual and practice in the mirror, it is absolutely holy. And so, my time in the mirror, when I start my day that way, it sets the tone for the rest of the day and it is of such love, and awe, and yeah... just gratitude for this journey. I’m not meant to look at 50 the way I did at 20 or 30, that’s not the goal. The goal is not to go backwards, for goodness sakes, the goal is constant evolution forward, and I feel like, for me, evolution forward means in every aspect.
And also, being able to shift that aging to me is very spiritual, and I’m not going to miss an ounce of that, and I can't fully do that if I’m not fully in it and I’m not fully living what that means to see and feel the changes. So, I won't deny myself that privilege of feeling at all.
Katie [13:33]:
I love everything about this, Amanda. We’re heading into a quick break but when we come back, I want to explore this notion of aging as a spiritual experience.
[Ad Break]
Katie [14:57]:
Amanda, we’re back from our break. You were saying as we headed into it that you view aging as not something to be feared, which is what pop culture and a lot of messaging tends to drive home to a lot of women, that you see it as a spiritual experience. Have you always felt this way or did your attitude toward aging change as you aged?
Amanda [15:18]:
I think I didn’t realize that I always felt this way as deeply as I do. In college I worked in a nursing home and I’ve always, from the time, as far as I can remember, as a little girl, I’ve had an affinity for the elderly and for older women in particular. I’ve always been deeply fascinated by the crevices and the wrinkles on their hands and their face, and the way their fingers picked things up, and the stories they would tell. And I’m so thankful that I have this old soul in me that has always gravitated and sought older women.
And so, I didn’t think I fully understood that until I was– I just knew that I loved older people. And then when I started to enter this midlife space, I started to realize, “Oh my gosh, I get to become one of those people! I get to become the wisdom holder, I get to become the trusted sage and advisor that the girls and the women get to come to and ask the questions.” So, as I was really searching for a leader, like really searching for the kind of leader I was ravenous for, I couldn’t find her and I was really sad that every version of a woman that was ahead of me by a few decades was still a patriarchalized version, for me. And so, after enough time I decided to become her, I decided to become the woman I was craving leadership from. So, that’s really how Midlife Muse came to be.
Katie [16:52]:
I love this notion. I also love the fact that you shared that you always were attracted to older women. When I think about the grandmothers in my own life, how impactful and special they were, they were storytellers and creators, and really, my father’s mother in particular was sort of the matriarch of a big extended family and there was such inspiration around that model; what it meant to age, how it meant you could be involved with your family and your community, and she had such elegance and such, I don’t know, just sort of, radiance around her. I love the fact that your grandmother was also that inspiration for you.
This notion of radiance actually reminds me of something that I saw on your Instagram recently because as I said, I follow you and I hope that all listeners will go spend some time engaging with Amanda’s videos. They’re always so thought-provoking, and lovely, and inspiring. But you shared something, you shared a story about being out to dinner with one of your son’s friends and some of the younger women around the table were asking you about your skincare routine, saying you just glow, and your skin is so radiant, and you said, “I don’t have a skincare routine, I have a soul care routine.” And I just adored that notion and it’s something that I want to take on for myself. I feel like I do things to nourish myself, yoga, time with friends, reading, thinking, but I’ve never really thought of it as a soul care routine, and I think that’s such a beautiful notion. Is this something that you’ve adopted in midlife? Is it something that you’ve always had? Can you walk us through what your soul care routine might look like?
Amanda [18:32]:
Yes, absolutely. I think it’s something I adopted in midlife because I realized if I really wanted to walk this out the way I dreamed of walking out this midlife experience it was going to take prioritizing my soul because that big capitalistic machine every day, even unconsciously, whether I have those accounts on my Instagram or not, simply existing in this world, we know it's everywhere. So, I knew that it was going to take me taking really good care of my soul and myself, filling myself up with those messages to combat a system that’s going to try really hard to tell me otherwise, because that’s how we make billions of dollars in these industries is keep women in fear, keep women feeling that they need more of something, and they keep opening their wallets and spending.
And so, for me, as I mentioned, I have that daily practice in the mirror every morning. In addition, I’ve been doing this work for so long now that it’s almost as if it reverberates inside of me. It lives inside of me. I feel like they’ve been regenerated, reconfigured for this new messaging, so I just hold myself in such high regard, and it’s not in a place of, “Oh, I’m so full of myself,” it is in this place of, “I’m so in awe of myself, I’m so in awe of this journey, of this life, that my heart is beating, that I get to come here another day and do this gorgeous work and raise these people.” So, I see myself through a lens of awe rather than, “Oh my gosh, look there’s another sunspot. Oh my gosh I can't believe there’s more silver hair.” I think it’s really important that I just continue to love and be compassionate about the parts of myself that are changing and see them simply as a new rite of passage, rather than something wrong.
So, taking care of my soul means really understanding, what is there inside of me? And I can't do that if I’m constantly in the noise of the world. So, I do that through dancing. Dancing is really big for me, I do a lot of dancing in the mirror. I have endless kinds of playlists from sensual playlists, you know, a lot of my work lives in the space of sensuality, and in the root chakra between the hips, and so I do a lot of that work. I do a lot of journaling to understand, in the quietest times and spaces, what’s inside there? And we can't get there, if I’m on social media listening to other people’s messages, I can't get inside to my own message. So, to get to know your soul, we have to go inside and not be afraid of spending time alone in the discovery of who we are.
Katie [21:17]:
You talk a lot about the divine feminine in your work, in your writing, on your website and your videos. You wear gorgeous feminine clothing, jewel colors, flowy, beautiful, you use language and imagery that really connotes powerful females, you make frequent references to the Queen, what is divine feminine energy to you? And this is maybe a two-part question, how can women reconnect with it if we’ve shut ourselves off from it?
Amanda [21:47]:
Oh, my goodness. Reconnecting with it is going to take a group. It’s going to take constant support because we are so far gone. It’s been over 2,500 years since we took the goddess out of the stories, there’s no religion that reveres women. We don’t have any real frame of reference so my work, has a very ancient thread. In my Masterminds, I work with these women for 6 months and we go so, so far back, so deep. It is some of the most soul shifting, powerful work of a lifetime where women are completely leveled after the first couple of sessions, they can't even believe that work like this exists in the world because we don’t offer this. Everything is like, “50 and Fabulous!” “50 is the New 30,” or whatever. And that’s not what my message is, that’s not at all what I’m interested in, I’m interested in a more ancient way of being women.
And so, divine feminine is going back an accessing the parts of ourselves that were so inherent inside of us, and really, I believe that all women, if they’re open to the potential of listening, every woman is a witch. And there are things I have done... My family and I just got home from a family vacation last night and we were all talking about this, they were all going around telling stories, you know, they’re adult children now of, “Mom, remember the time...” and everybody has all these stories. There are times that are absolutely unexplainable, where I made an instinctual decision that I could never have helped anyone else understand why I was making it and it was very revolutionary, but I knew inside, because I was listening to my body, I had to make that decision. It would just as soon be someone would have to suffocate me to not make that decision.
That instinct is a lot of helping women get back in touch with that divine feminine instinct inside of them, is so much a base of what my work is. And that’s where the truth lives, where most women understand, “Oh my god, I am not the way my face looks, I’m so much more than that, I don’t believe in this patriarchal aging stuff.” So, we can’t get there until we do this divine, ancient, old work. And so, I bring women back into the deep woods, 3,000 years ago before we were silenced or hung for our instincts. So, it’s very ancient, and I use tons of rituals to help women get back there. It’s very poetic, it is very art felt, it is not of this world, I will tell you that.
Katie [24:19]:
It sounds absolutely fascinating. This is actually maybe a great time to ask this question; it sounds like you work with people, with women. Is this one-on-one? Is it through retreats? Tell us a little bit about how your work actually works.
Amanda [24:32]:
Oh yes, thank you for asking. I do have a few one-on-one clients; my one-on-one work is very deep and long. The minimum I work with someone is six months because, again, this work is not a flip of a switch. I’m not a "1, 2, 3 here’s the steps and everything is going to be better,” kind of a coach, there’s millions of those. So, I have very limited spaces, I actually have, the one-on-one coaching available spaces.
And then I also do a 6-month Mastermind where I take 24 women, two groups of 12, through a very deep 6-month journey, where we meet three times a month over Zoom, they all get a one-on-one session with me each month and then unlimited Voxer. Voxer is a voice memo app where they get to come on and ask me questions throughout the day where they’re feeling stuck or blocked around what they’re learning.
And then I have retreats; I offer retreats as well. And I have some online programs, a new one coming out, yeah, here in December. So, there’s so much availability for women to do self-lead paced programs, there is endless ways depending on... But typically, if you want to work with me personally, it’s deep, and it’s long.
Katie [25:43]:
So many great offerings and I would encourage everybody to go to Amanda’s website, that’s going to be in the show notes so you can head to ACertainAgePod.com to find all that after the show and I’ll definitely give you ways of accessing Amanda and learning more about her work.
One of the things that struck me when you were talking about the sort of, tapping back into instinct, maybe spending time excavating and rediscovering ourselves, that so many things get in the way of doing that and I think you outlined a few of them during this conversation. Women who are touched by their souls are not using survival mode Band-Aids that you talk about like wine, and excessive shopping, pills, cosmetic procedures. These Band-Aids keep us from healing more completely. We live in a culture that’s awash in all of these things. If somebody is looking to head into the new year and thinking, “I want to rip these Band-Aids off,” one way might be working with Amanda, but for people who aren’t able to do that for any reason, I know you’re not a one to two tip person, but is there a starting point that they might explore for themselves?
Amanda [26:58]:
Yeah, I mean, here’s the thing and here’s the truth of it: we can't get to a new place doing old things. So, if you want to create change in your life, I would just suggest, just take something, 1% of change a day. If we do 1% every day, in 100 days, you’ll have 100% change in your life and then you get to add a new 100%. So, I tell clients not to get overwhelmed with the work but if you’re feeling like, “I know there’s got to be a better way,” and this is what I always say. I had this feeling when I was entering midlife, I just really thought it was all supposed to be more magical. And so, if you are questioning or feeling like, “Gosh, life doesn’t feel like it should be so full of suffering. Where’s the magic, where’s the mystery, where’s the sensuality?”
If you’re asking yourself that, then the best place to start is just add 1% of change, 1%! And so that 1% may look like, “Today I’m actually putting my phone down, I’m not going to sit here and numb scroll, I’m going to actually put that bottle of wine away. And instead, I’m going to dim all the lights, I’m going to light some candles, and for three minutes, I’m just going to dance for myself, I’m going to let go and hear the music and let my soul jut be moved.” And it’s through connecting with ourselves, we are never going to find our way outside of ourselves. It’s not going to be in a bottle, it’s not going to be in a prescription, it’s not going to be in a procedure, it’s going to be through connection in your soul, and that doesn’t happen in loud spaces.
Katie [28:37]:
I love all these ideas that you just outlined because they feel so doable, and you know, I have three kids, sometimes I joke, I’ve got a husband, a pandemic puppy, two jobs, and life can feel really full, and this notion that I hit on earlier like, I want a soul care practice, I want to be able to spend time bringing intention to my days, but sometimes it just feels overwhelming, and I love that you outlined very small ways that we can make big changes if we apply them step by step over the course of 100 days. So, thank you for sharing that, it makes it feel exciting and possible which I think is one of the biggest things we need to feel in order to get into action on things that we care about.
What do you recommend, how we talk to our daughters about all of this? You shared that you have a young adult daughter yourself. I have a 22-year-old. In order to help them break through some of these patriarchal systems that we’ve all struggled through... I feel like my daughter really has a great sense of self. Do you talk to your daughter differently than you would, say, a woman in midlife around these messages, or is it the same?
Amanda [29:51]:
It’s the same. And I don’t talk to her as much as I show her. Like, we cannot teach something that we are not doing. So, if we are not doing it, if we’re telling our daughters, “Just love yourself. You’re so amazing just the way you are. You were made perfectly,” and yet we turn around and criticize ourselves and treat ourselves differently, then they pick up on how we treat ourselves, not what we tell them. So, it’s how we move in the world. And as a very powerful matriarch in my own family, my sheer existence is the leadership.
So, I have a show in Miami this Friday. My daughter, who goes to school in another part of Florida, is going to be driving back to perform, she’s a singer. She’s going to be singing in my show, and she was saying, she’s like, "Mom, I just don’t know how,” and she’s been performing for a long time, but she’s like, "I just don’t know how I’m going to sing that first song without crying,” because I have her singing a song that is so powerful and it’s basically questioning... It’s this song called “The Daughters,” and it’s really saying, "I know that there is God, the Son, and the Father, but I’m still looking for a god for my daughters.” Really this idea of where is the leadership for the girls? Where is the leadership for the women? And I will be damned if I am not the leader for my daughter and for all of her friends whose mothers aren’t able to be. So, it is in the way that we lead ourselves as women that is the way they will lead themselves. It’s through the way we show up. So, my daughter feels so insanely in love and safe in herself because she’s watching me do it.
Katie [31:35]:
That’s so beautiful, Amanda. Thank you for sharing that. And how glorious to see your daughter perform in something that you’ve created that sounds like it’s going to be so special.
I’m curious, you said that you started the Midlife Muse because you were in search of the leader that you wanted to see for aging, for midlife, for entering this period of wisdom, that you became the leader that you needed for yourself. While doing this work, while encountering so many other women in midlife, have you found new leaders? Have you found new inspiration from other women you’ve interacted with in midlife that you could point us to?
Amanda [32:17]:
That’s a great question. it is, there’s very few, actually, I’m not going to lie. It’s quite disappointing. I am going to pull up, there is one woman actually that I do love and follow, and her name is Sarah Dunham or Sarah Durham. Let me try to find exactly because she talks a lot– So, on Instagram she goes by @SarahOfMagdalene, her name is Sarah Durham Wilson, she is another woman that I really love and follow and one of the very few, quite honestly, because there are so many still, I see patriarchalized versions of women saying, “Oh, I’m pro midlife,” and yet, it really doesn’t look much different, it’s just... they’re marching around doing it in a way that is still very damaging and is very wounded feminine energy. So, I have to be honest, it’s very scarce out there, for me personally, in terms of leadership that I feel is going to actually move the needle for us as women. Otherwise, we’re just doing performative feminism.
Katie [33:36]:
Gotcha, okay, that makes a lot of sense. So, @SarahOfMagdalene, I will look her up. I’m curious to learn more about her. For people who are listening and really excited about everything that Amanda is sharing, I would direct you to two former guests that I’ve had on the podcast; Christine Marie Mason, the founder of Rosebud Woman, who talks a lot about the divine feminine on her podcast and in her work and writing, she’s wonderful. And Omisade Burney-Scott, who talks about the liminality of menopause, menopause as a portal into a new way of being versus the sort of, sense of loss that it's often marketed as. Omi was a guest on the podcast as well and really has a beautiful point of view around this midlife and menopause as a moment of transcendent change. So, I will add those to @SarahOfMagdalene.
Amanda, this has been so fun to be with you. I just really adore getting to have conversations with people whose work I admire from afar. I know spending a lot of time on social media can be very corrosive, as you shared earlier on the show, but I also find that there are certain voices that are inspiring and that lift us up, and I put you firmly in to that camp, so I so enjoyed getting to know you a little bit better during this conversation.
We are nearing the end of our time together, I wanted to head into a quick speed round because I could always spend more time with guests than we have allotted for the show, and we want to end on a high-energy note and share a bit more of you and your work with our listeners. So, if you’re ready, I would love to dive in.
Amanda [35:20]:
Sure.
Katie [35:21]:
Let’s do it. Okay, so these is just one- to two-word answers. It’s easy, and hopefully, it’s fun.
I know that you say revolutions start with small rituals that turn into transformative routines. You have a newsletter around this, and people should sign up for it. What is one daily non-negotiable in your morning routine?
Amanda [35:40]:
Mirror work.
Katie [35:41]:
Mirror work, okay. What’s another fitness or lifestyle choice that fuels your peace?
Amanda [35:47]:
Lots of water.
Katie [35:49]:
Nice. Is there a skill or attribute you’ve acquired in midlife that eluded you when you were younger?
Amanda [35:56]:
Self-trust.
Katie [35:57]:
I like that. Okay, you just celebrated a birthday, which I saw. Happy birthday. What is one new thing you want to do, see, or try before your next birthday?
Amanda [36:07]:
Publish a book.
Katie [36:09]:
Ooh, I love it. Finally, what is your one-word answer to complete this sentence: As I age, I feel _____.
Amanda [36:16]:
Holy.
Katie [36:17]:
Gorgeous. Thank you so much Amanda. Before we say goodbye, how can our listeners find you, the Midlife Muse, and your podcast and learn more about your coaching work?
Amanda [36:27]:
Yes, my website is AmandaHanson.com. And then on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram I’m @MidlifeMuse, also on Facebook which I’m rarely on. And then, I would say, my podcast, Revolutionizing Midlife, I wrapped that up in July while it’s still there and it’s still being downloaded constantly; I think that I stared my YouTube last week for my birthday, and that’s going to be my newer platform that I will be participating on.
Katie [36:59]:
Fabulous. Amanda, thank you so much.
Amanda [37:01]:
Oh, thank you so much Katie, I really appreciate it.
Katie [37:04]:
Thank you, Amanda. This conversation was such a treat.
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Before we end, two last items. If you love and appreciate this podcast, I would love an Apple Podcast review. Reviews help the show grow. And second, have you visited our new sister account over on Instagram, Age Out Loud? We want to feature your Age Out Loud story. If you believe your age stands for something, head to Instagram @LetsAgeOutLoud and share your story at the link in bio.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time, and until then: age boldly, beauties.