Ep 20 Menopause as a pathway to our authentic sexuality with Dr Laura Monk

The transition through to Menopause is complex and multi-faceted. It is a death and rebirth, a shift in identity in all the different aspects of ourselves. There is a lot of stigma around sexuality and ageing, so for many women there is great fear that their sexuality will disappear. In this episode, Dr Laura Monk and I talk about the pathway that Menopause provides to discover your authentic sexuality.

Laura is both a Psychotherapist and Sex, Love and Relationship coach who loves to work with women through midlife and menopause. Laura shares with us her own sexual awakening post menopause and we talk about the possibilities for growth and development in terms of a woman’s sexuality that Menopause can present.

In this episode you will learn:

• How our desires can become very different from what they have been previously,

• How the enormity of the menopause transition can be challenging for women in their partnerships and bring us a question of whether we bring our partner with us or not,

• The many pressures that women face throughout life that prevent them from being who they really are and menopause present an opportunity to be our true selves,

• Our sexuality which is such a core part of our humanity is rarely addressed in most mainstream therapeutic contexts,

• Your sexuality is not about your estrogen levels and the medical model assumes it is just that alone,

• Connecting to your sexual energy which is your life force energy is connecting to your energy body; that this is what makes you magnetic and attractive not all the external dressings we learn to apply.

You can find Laura on instagram at @drlauramonk and on her website www.drlauramonk.com.

Ep 19 Self love as a pathway to healing and personal growth with Gina Catherine

Self love is a concept that I am not sure everyone has their head wrapped around. Sometimes when we think of it we might think of a narcissistic type of self love. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about really loving who you are as a person, all the parts of you. Loving you sexuality, sensuality, the sense of masculine and feminine that we all have within us. In this episode I talk with my friend and colleague Gina Catherine who is Sexuality, Love and relationship coach who supports people on their journey to Self Love.

Gina and I are both cancer survivors and we talked about our own journey to self love and how it supporting our healing and gave us both a sense of deep awe, wonder, respect and love for our bodies.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How fuelling yourself with pleasure rather than rewarding yourself supports self love,

• How we have been conditioned to be humble but the underbelly of that is counter to self love,

• That your sexual energy, which is our life force energy, is an incredible source of creativity,

• When we are closed off to our sexuality it is like closing off a room in a house and never going in there,

• How celebrating yourself is not only a great boundary practice but it sets you up for self love,

• How our sexuality, sensuality, how it shows up in our lives within us is so incredibly unique and discovering the joy of it, is so rewarding and empowering.

You can find Gina and her website www.ginacatherine.love on instagram at @ginacatherine_coaching or listen to Gina on clubhouse. Gina hosts regular conversations on clubhouse. Her handle on clubhouse is Gina Catherine

Ep 17 Understanding Trauma and navigating it in motherhood and midlife with Shelby Leigh

This episode is a fantastic conversation with Shelby Leigh that sits in the intersection of our work; Trauma resolution and education and transitions or rites of passage through motherhood and midlife. Shelby is a former licensed psychotherapist, now coach and consultant - She teaches trauma awareness to coaches, therapists, healthcare professionals, and organisations worldwide.  

Shelby’s great passion is understanding and supporting folks with developmental and complex trauma in a holistic, body-based, integrative way.  Between her own journey with complex PTSD and supporting thousands of students and clients, she is ignited by supporting folks across the globe to be able to support themselves and the people they work with to move from simply surviving to truly thriving.

In the podcast we talk about:

• What Trauma is and why it sometimes shows up in our transitions through our rites of passages of motherhood and midlife,

• We discuss how many women experience a lot of contact with Medical Practitioners during these rites a passage and how you can advocate for yourself if you have trauma in your body when it comes to trauma informed healthcare,

• How slowing down can lead to much more healing,

• What trauma informed healthcare might look like,

• How we can learn to treat ourselves with greater tenderness and care and how the tenderness can come from the simplest places in our lives,

• How healing our trauma can lead us to right here into the present moment of our life, and be able to show up authentically as ourselves in our life every day.

Shelby has two fantastic online courses she runs around Trauma. Creating Safer Spaces is a course for Coaches, Therapists and Facilitators who are looking to learn and understand how they may become more trauma informed in their work. Creating Safer Healthcare is for Medical Practitioners and their teams who wish to provide more Trauma informed Healthcare. It is designed for both allopathic health practitioners and complementary health practitioners and their teams. Both courses offer expert coaching advice from specialists in their fields, theory and knowledge about trauma, and practice skills you can use to implement every day in your work. If you are interested in either course, click on the highlighted link.

You can find Shelby at her website www.shelby-leigh.com or on her instagram account @fierceheart.shelbyleigh.

Ep 16 When do I become a Woman with a capital W with Kendra Cover

Today I talk to my friend and colleague Kendra Cover who is a women’s intimacy coach. Kendra and I were wondering out loud recently recently about this and wondering What does a woman with a capital W look like, what is it that stops us stepping into womanhood and what does it look like to others. How would we know, what does it feel like inside of us?

In this podcast we explore:

• The rites of passage that women go through how poorly supported they are,

• How women feel their value comes from the roles that they take up in their lives. That we are conditioned to be a good daughter, good friend, good mother, good wife; all the time giving so much of ourselves away to others. That within these roles there comes so much discomfort that we feel that is surprising to us;

• How few archetypal roles are available to women in terms of how they show up and this narrowing down of how we ‘are’ diminishes so much of who we are,

• How learning to hold all of our emotions and listening to the signals they provide is both a source of great power and pleasure to us,

• There is so little encouragement culturally in our society to encourage and honour people really to get to know themselves on a very deep level,

• The lack of ritual and honour that exists within our society to support women through the rites of passage we go through,

• When you connect with your sexual energy which is your life force energy you can never turn it off and it is such an incredible source of vitality to us in life.

You can find Kendra on her website www.kendracover.com on instagram @kendracover and her Facebook group is called Into the wild of womanhood.