Body Literacy: What We Were Never Taught About Our Bodies with Katrina Christian

THE MIDLIFE REBEL PODCAST
Guest: Katrina Christian

OPENING TEASER

[00:00]

Katrina: You know, I had to start looking at, well, what’s actually going on in my cycle? And it was Lara Briden’s book, The Hormone Repair Manual, that led me to realise, again, culturally, how much information we’re missing as women.

And so then that just naturally led me to, well, it needs to start early. It needs to start early and often.

And as a teacher, I know that it’s not comprehensive in the curriculum. I know they’re trying to make changes and they are trying to do something about that.

But there are very young children starting to get their periods now because the average age of girls getting their period is slowly getting younger.

Nadine: Younger. Wow.

Katrina: So girls of eight — and I know that did used to happen for our generation as well, but it wasn’t as common — girls can get their period at eight years of age, nine years of age.

And really, that’s not in the curriculum at that point.

So even though that child might have that teaching or mentoring through their parents, potentially, the school is not aware of it and their other classmates are not aware of it.

INTERVIEW

[01:30]

Nadine: Thank you for joining me. It’s good to have you here.

When you sent your email through to me and I had a look at your website, I was very excited about talking to you. I think this is such an important conversation across generations.

It’s a conversation that we need to have for ourselves, and that conversation is changing, but it’s still relatively new. And also for our girls, our children growing up. And that’s body literacy.

Body literacy is something that I didn’t know about. I remember thinking about it as I was preparing for this conversation: when did I actually start to realise that my periods played an important role in my mood and my training?

I’m a personal trainer and I was competing in CrossFit. My energy levels, the types of things that I wanted to eat, how I would feel more hungry.

And then obviously there’s perimenopause and menopause.

These are all quite new things. It was probably not until my early 40s that I really became aware of that, and I’m 52 now.

So thank you. And now I’ve gone on my little rant!

Thank you for joining me.

You’re going to tell us all about body literacy and how we can use it for ourselves to help us navigate our own hormones, our own perimenopause and menopause experiences, and also how we can nurture our children to have a better understanding of what’s going on with their bodies.

Katrina: Yeah, absolutely. Because I think it does start with our children, which is something I didn’t actually think about until, like you said, I think this is so many women’s experience.

We get to a certain point in our life. So it’s either when we’re trying to conceive — I know I certainly did fertility awareness when I was trying to conceive — but I still didn’t really understand exactly what the whole cycle was.

No one actually… I guess people just assume that you know.

And I think that does happen in schools a lot. I think science teachers might think that the health teachers are covering it, and health teachers might think that the science teachers are covering it.

[04:13]

Katrina: And it wasn’t until I also got to my 40s and really started looking into what my symptoms were and the things that were affecting me, and then realised — because I had period problems and period symptoms — that there was this entire cycle behind that period.

It wasn’t just a week out of your month or your cycle.

Every day or every week, we can be in a different phase. “Oh, I’m a bit more hungry this week,” or, “I’m a bit moodier.”

There are little signs that might tell you — you notice things about your body that tell you, okay, maybe I’m coming close to my period.

But quite often we just don’t even take any notice of it. And then we get our period and we take notice. And then we’re back to forgetting about it again.

And I was also thinking about this when I did start looking into perimenopause.

I thought, wow, what would have been different for me? And also, what would be different for every woman going through perimenopause and menopause now if they had a full understanding and connection to their body from the very beginning?

If they were slowly building on that information as they went through life and as it became meaningful to them?

I guess that’s where I was like, well, rather than trying to…

There is this space that has opened up a lot for women. We are learning so much more about perimenopause and menopause and all of the symptoms.

But there’s still that part where women don’t necessarily want to take the time out of their day or time out of their lives. Some people just aren’t really interested in that at that point in time, or don’t necessarily realise that they need to really be connecting to that cycle.

And so then they don’t really have the time to learn it all now.

I’ve had friends who have just said, “Just you figure it out and then you just tell me what to do.”

[06:30]

Katrina: But it’s the conversations that happen every time you go somewhere.

I was at a soccer wind-up the other day with all the mums in the kitchen, and it was really funny because we were all having small groups of conversations about hormones and perimenopause.

And then we all kind of converged and someone brought it up and said, “Oh, we were talking about hormones and perimenopause and that kind of thing.”

And I said, “Oh, we were too.”

And then I just said what I did and everyone was like, “Oh my gosh. Wow. Okay. Can you explain? Tell us this…”

All the questions kept coming towards me.

And I was like, wow, women just really don’t have this information on board.

Nadine: No, they don’t. They don’t.

So you’re obviously educating women, but you’re also educating girls as they come into puberty about their bodies and what’s changing and how to understand their menstrual cycle.

Did you start doing that first? Or was it when you had your kind of aha moment with your own perimenopause journey that you were like, “We need to be teaching our girls this stuff”?

[07:48]

Katrina: I’m actually a qualified teacher.

When I had my own children, I went through… I view these life changes as big rites of passage.

So you have puberty, and then motherhood was a huge rite of passage for me that I had to, again, discover for myself.

My eldest is 16 this year, so 16 years ago it wasn’t really well known. It was just starting to come into our minds that this could be a big, huge rite of passage.

And I decided I didn’t want to go back to teaching. I did relief teaching, but I decided I wanted to help women with connecting to their bodies.

It wasn’t menstrual cycle work at that point. It was more holistic health.

As I nurtured myself back to health after having my children and focused on nutrition, movement, sleep, all of those things, and started to see the benefits that came from doing those things, I was really focused on also being able to teach this and help other women do this as well.

Then life gets busy, COVID came along, all that kind of thing.

And then before I knew it, I was in perimenopause.

That’s when I really started paying attention to my menstrual cycle because your hormones are changing.

I’d had very bad periods from the very beginning of my life. So really, this was probably in my destiny because I was one of those people who basically ignored pain.

Or I didn’t necessarily ignore it. I just thought that everyone had pain, so I carried on.

I went to different doctors and that kind of thing, but it wasn’t until perimenopause that those symptoms really became a huge issue for me.

And then the effects of that, like low iron and low energy, I couldn’t just put that down to, “Oh, I’m just getting older.”

I had to start looking at, well, what’s actually going on in my cycle?

And it was Lara Briden’s book, The Hormone Repair Manual, that led me to realise, again, culturally, how much information we’re missing as women.

And so then that just naturally led me to: it needs to start early.

It needs to start early and often.

As a teacher, I know that it’s not comprehensive in the curriculum. I know they’re trying to make changes and they are trying to do something about that.

But there are very young children starting to get their periods now because the average age of girls getting their period is slowly getting younger.

Girls of eight — and I know that did used to happen for our generation as well, but it wasn’t as common — can get their period at eight years of age, nine years of age.

And really, that’s not in the curriculum at that point.

So even though that child might have that teaching or mentoring through their parents, potentially, the school is not aware of it and their other classmates are not aware of it.

And so it becomes a big thing and can cause a bit of anxiety.

I’m trying to get programs into younger children as well.

I think it’s not just a one-and-done thing. You need to drip-feed information as they grow and age.

Nadine: Yeah. Wow. You’ve taken on quite a task.

Katrina: Yeah, it’s hard.

And I think it’s a great time in that there is a recognition that it needs to be more comprehensive. There’s a lot of research around that now.

But yes, I feel like it’s been hard to have that as a priority because there are other things going on in the world as well.

But I believe that this body literacy — and I also teach self-literacy as well, so just language for your body and language for how you feel — I do girls’ empowerment as well because it’s all connected so much.

It is a rite of passage.

We don’t have rites of passage anymore.

So, in a way, we need other women in the community — or other men standing up for men as well — but women in the community teaching these skills, teaching these tools, teaching girls how to understand their body and how to have that self-connection of understanding, noticing and listening to their body.

And I think that forms the basis of consent education as well.

Nadine: Yes.

Katrina: And if you can carry that through your entire life, I think when you get to motherhood and when you get to perimenopause, just having already spent a lifetime listening to your body, paying attention and noticing those kinds of things, it won’t be such a big, huge, confusing thing once you get to the other side.

[13:17]

Nadine: Totally.

Lots of things popped into my head then!

One of the things you mentioned was just thinking that it was normal to be in pain.

I do some personal training, and I have a personal training client who’s in her mid-30s and she was the same until we were talking in a group and we were like, “No, that’s not normal.”

She just thought it was normal because it was just not talked about — to be in pain.

Katrina: Yeah. It’s so astounding, isn’t it?

That is actually something that got normalised for so long.

And if you look at the average time it takes to diagnose something like endometriosis or adenomyosis, which is the condition I had, it can be 10, 15 years.

Largely because girls are thinking, “Well, our periods are supposed to be painful.”

But there’s no scale of how painful it’s actually supposed to be.

Because I now teach that it shouldn’t affect your life. It shouldn’t stop you from doing anything.

My pain was eight, nine, ten. It did stop me. I did have to come home from school.

Having that history of periods and then continuing through my entire life, really not managing it properly, leads to so much depletion.

And also, if you’re not diagnosed early — even if you don’t go down that medicalised route — there really aren’t a lot of solutions for women who have those conditions right now.

But it’s just wanting to have that choice.

You should be able to choose: are there things I can do in my lifestyle? How can I address this? Can I take time to address that?

Rather than being at the point where there’s so much damage, or the endometriosis might have spread, or whatever happens, where you’re in so much pain that really your choices become so limited at that point.

I actually had a hysterectomy earlier this year.

Nadine: Oh, okay.

Katrina: Yeah. It was a very long journey for me to decide to go ahead and do it. And I always said I wasn’t going to.

But I researched a lot more about it and came to the decision to do it, and I’m really glad I did.

But maybe it would have been different for me had I explored… I definitely explored lots of options, but I was in my 30s by then.

Nadine: Yeah. Okay.

[16:09]

Nadine: When you go back to talking about children or girls getting their periods and trying to educate them about it being a rite of passage and what to expect, and some of the experiences and how to manage it…

Something that just kept coming up for me was this awkwardness or discomfort.

I don’t know. It seems to be ingrained. It’s so much deeper.

I’ve got a daughter who’s nearly 11 — she’s ten and a half. We homeschool, so I say that might make a difference.

But there’s definitely some kind of point that comes where they want to start hiding their bodies.

I guess there’s probably some evolutionary thing that goes with that. It’s a security thing, especially for girls.

But not talking about periods can make girls feel awkward and uncomfortable.

And I wonder whether there is a deeper level of shame or something going on that is beyond anything that’s actually been taught to them?

Katrina: Yeah. I think, again, it’s a bodily function, isn’t it?

There is an awkwardness.

But then there’s also a cultural reason for that as well because, for so long, women have been taught to hide those things.

You were bleeding, but you weren’t supposed to tell anyone about it.

You should hide that. You should hide the period products. There should be no evidence that this is happening for you.

Nobody wants to see it. Nobody wants to know it. Just deal with it. Get on with it.

So that does play into all of those things where those symptoms then become normalised or pushed aside.

But yes, there is 100% awkwardness. I have boys and I see it with them.

That is, I guess, a normal part of growing up.

And it’s also like, “I don’t want to be talking about these things with my parent. That’s just weird. That’s embarrassing.”

So I have a few things that I do around that.

But I also want to address that I feel like that is actually changing as well.

I’ve spoken to a lot of girlfriends who have girls around that age and they’re astounded by how much acceptance there is around their body now and their periods.

They’ll wear white while they have a period and, if they have a bleed or a bit of a leak, they don’t seem bothered.

I don’t think that’s every girl, but I think that is now being way more accepted than it ever used to be.

You’d be horrified if you ever did that when you were growing up.

Nadine: I would still be that way!

Katrina: So it’s great that, by having these conversations and opening these things up, destigmatising periods and informing people, we’ve made it way more normal now to have a leak or something happen.

But in saying that, I know that is the number one concern for girls when they go into school: that they may have a leak, or someone might find out that they are bleeding or they’ve got their period.

And it is very awkward initially for them.

Especially when I go into schools. They do not want me there initially!

They’re like, “Why are you here? Please go away. I actually don’t want to talk about this at all.”

But by the end of the sessions, it’s a very different story.

They’re openly talking about it. They’re happy to be on camera and speak about it with me and give me feedback and say, “That was fun and I learnt so much about my body.”

I also do mother-and-daughter group sessions, and I always have a mother who messages me the night before saying, “My daughter doesn’t want to come. She’s not happy about this.”

And I’m like, “Okay, just get her there and we’ll do the rest.”

Usually, at the end, there’s a reverence for this important part of what girls are coming into.

They’re coming into this amazing stage of their life where they get to learn about their body and understand what their body is doing.

It’s connected to the seasons and the moon, and they can view it as a vital sign.

It’s actually quite empowering for a lot of girls if it’s taught as a rite of passage.

You’re still going to have the awkwardness, I think, in those individual conversations.

And what I say to parents is: just push through.

Just keep having those small conversations. Normalise it as much as you can with your own body.

My boys have been around period products and blood and me bleeding and all of those things their whole lives.

I’ve never hidden it from them. They’ve always seen it and I’ve always just explained it in an age-appropriate way for them.

And now they’re at this age — I have a 12-year-old and he’s like, “Oh, Mum…” He doesn’t want to hear about it.

But I still just plough ahead and give him the information.

Nadine: Pin him down! You’re going to hear this!

[22:29]

Nadine: I was actually thinking about that as you were talking, when I asked about that idea of shame.

If I look back at how my mum behaved when she had her period — and she did have bad periods, and she did leak — she got us to walk behind her in the street because she needed to hide.

But she didn’t talk about it. She didn’t really talk about her experiences.

So I think probably part of that shame is something that we witness from our mothers.

Katrina: Yeah.

Nadine: So not having that and being open about it is going to start to make it feel more normal for the next generation.

I’m now in menopause, so I missed the boat!

I always thought my kids were going to walk in on me or find… I used a menstrual cup, so they’d find the cup in the cupboard.

I was waiting for the conversation where I was going to have to explain what it was, and then it became irrelevant!

But I have had some chats with my daughter and my husband talked to my son.

Because I was witnessing their moods changing — my son’s 12, she’s 10 — and rather than just falling into that pattern of telling them off: “Pull your head in, you’re misbehaving,” or, “You’re being irrational,” actually, they don’t know that there are things changing.

If you can say, “These things are happening, so if you don’t really feel yourself, that’s okay. It’s possibly part of hormonal changes,” getting them to understand it leads to more self-acceptance as well, and acceptance of one another.

Katrina: Yeah. And everyone having that understanding that this is a difficult time in that child’s life.

Those levels of anger or frustration can just rise really quickly over the smallest thing.

But again, I think women as well — we’re often in perimenopause at the same time.

Nadine: Yes!

Katrina: And so I try and explain it as almost like you’re going through a reverse puberty.

Your daughter or son is going through puberty.

And those years — they’re years. It’s not a quick thing.

I think this is the misunderstanding of perimenopause in a way.

It’s like, “Well, it happens and then I stop bleeding and then it’s done.”

No. This could happen over seven years, seven, ten years.

And that’s the same with puberty.

The puberty brain is being rewired and the perimenopause brain is being rewired.

So they’re both being rewired at the same time.

And that causes sometimes a little bit of brain snap on both ends!

I think it’s a great opportunity for mums and dads to start to have some self-compassion, and then compassion around that whole phase.

And it is a great time for women to also learn about their own bodies.

Because if you ever want to explain something well to a child and break it down, you have to really understand it.

So you have to first fully understand it yourself.

And I guess so many women, again, haven’t had that education.

Sometimes it’s a matter of re-educating yourself and then also maybe even practising menstrual cycle awareness.

Looking at the four phases of the menstrual cycle and understanding it yourself, starting to connect it to your cycle.

Then you can help your daughter if she’s going through those cycles as well, and you can teach her how to do that herself.

You’re both doing that at the same time.

You’re both learning together.

It can be a really nice way.

And it also can take away the awkwardness a little bit.

“Hey, let’s actually look at what’s happening in our whole entire cycle here, and the hormones that are coming in and out of our cycle.”

Nadine: Yeah. And I think understanding the key hormones like estrogen and progesterone — when they come in, when they’re there and what they do — is really helpful for girls in terms of decisions they make in their life going into their fertility years and contraception.

Katrina: Again, it’s that self-education that you carry through life.

Nadine: Yeah, for sure.

[27:52]

Nadine: Would you be able to talk us through some of the things that you might teach that are relevant for adult women as well as girls?

The four stages of our cycle.

And then we’ll crack on with some of the stuff you’ve been doing with perimenopause, because I’ve got some notes and I’m really curious to hear what you have to say about this experience.

Katrina: Right. Yes. The four stages — or four phases.

We kind of know two already: menstruation, the period, and ovulation. We’ve heard those.

Really, what it should be called is an ovulatory cycle because it’s actually all about ovulation.

Your body is wired to ovulate.

And that’s why, when you might have a longer cycle or a period delay or you might miss a period, it’s actually all about ovulation.

It just means that your body hasn’t been able to ovulate when it needed to, for whatever reason, which is why nutrition, diet, exercise — all of those lifestyle things — are really important.

I teach it by imagining a clock.

The number 12 is the period, and that’s always day one of your cycle.

That’s a really easy way to track it. You can just pop it in your calendar: day one, that’s when I started bleeding.

And it’s a full bleed, not any spotting or anything. Proper flow.

Usually a period lasts about three to five days, sometimes seven.

And then you move into the next phase of your cycle.

Pretty much from 12 to six o’clock, we have this phase called the follicular phase in medical terms.

For girls, I call the period phase at 12 o’clock “winter.”

We’re very quiet at that time because we don’t have any hormones at that time. We might be more introspective, a bit more sensitive, wanting warmth and not wanting to be social.

Then we come into that follicular phase, which is actually spring.

So think about that: you’re in spring.

That’s when estrogen starts to rise in the body.

And estrogen is really great for socialisation, bonding, getting things done, energy, great mood, that kind of thing.

So you’re thinking springtime: you’ve got a spring in your step. You’re ready to go. You’re starting to be more creative.

You’re wanting to go to the gym, socialise, do lots of work — you’re more productive.

And then we get down to six o’clock and that’s your ovulation.

Ovulation doesn’t always occur on day 14 because it depends on your cycle. And it can be changed, like I said, by lifestyle factors.

You ovulate for one day, but you’ll start to notice changes in your body maybe three to four days prior to that happening.

You’ll notice things like cervical mucus changes and also energy changes.

Around ovulation there’s a bit of testosterone there as well.

You’re feeling really social at that point. You’re very creative. This is the fertile time of you.

So you’ll often notice a boost in energy around that time as well.

And then, as you finish ovulation and you’re moving from six o’clock back up towards 12 o’clock again, that’s when progesterone starts to come in.

Estrogen is still there, but it’s not as high.

Progesterone comes in for the luteal phase, which is the medical term.

Ovulation is summer, and then I call that last phase autumn.

You’re in autumn.

If you think about the leaves falling off the trees, it’s a time where you might be less social. You might want to journal more.

You might start to think about things in your life that may be irritating you or annoying you.

A lot of people think, “This is just PMS.”

But often it’s more truth-telling.

It’s actually showing us things that may need to be changed in our lives.

And that’s why I really relate this to perimenopause.

Progesterone is great for calming the nervous system.

With estrogen gone — which is our nurturing, happy hormone almost — progesterone is revealing things that might need to change in our lives.

And then we come back up to menstruation again, which is winter.

Nadine: Cool. Thank you.

[33:15]

Nadine: One thing — there are some things that happen just before your period, so probably in the autumn phase, and you can correct me obviously if I’m wrong.

Your boobs feel a bit fuller. You might feel like — most women who I’ve come across — feel a bit heavier, like they’ve put on weight. And they’re hungrier.

Is that all in the autumn phase?

Katrina: One hundred percent.

There’s actually research that says you need more calories in that phase because you’re potentially going to make a baby.

Ovulation is when the egg has been released and that’s when you potentially have made the baby. But progesterone builds up the lining of the uterus and it makes that beautiful cushion for the fertilised egg, if it is fertilised, to nestle in there.

Obviously, if there’s no fertilised egg, then the lining is shed.

What happens just before your period is that your hormones drop off a cliff.

It’s a signal to say, “We don’t need to produce progesterone and estrogen anymore.”

So just in that week before your period, that PMS-y time, those symptoms will be really evident because your hormones have started to decline.

Nadine: Right.

Katrina: So you will feel bloated. There’s this build-up feeling.

A lot of women describe a period as a release. It’s a way to detox, in a way.

It’s like you’re waiting for that bleed to start and you’ll feel that in your body with all those symptoms.

Everyone is different in the way that they feel it, but those are the hormonal changes that are happening. You’re actually feeling those hormonal changes as they are occurring.

[35:50]

Nadine: I think that phase — well, the ovulation phase and that last phase — are really good points for women to be aware of, especially when they’re exercising.

Because strength can be one way or the other.

You can feel amazing and feel like you can conquer the world, but then in a week’s time you’re like, “How come I can’t do this? I did this so easily last week.”

Katrina: And you’ll have it as well — everything comes loose in that progesterone phase, and I think that’s when women can get more injuries.

Nadine: Right.

Katrina: In their body.

I actually was noticing my own back would often seize at that time, and I have spoken to a few women’s health physios and they confirmed, yeah, it’s your joints and your ligaments around that time.

So having a better sense of where you are in your cycle can help in lots of different areas of your life.

Nadine: Absolutely.

And great for girls, because understanding that means there’s not so much self-deprecation about, “What’s wrong with me?”

I’ve definitely had that. And I’ve heard that from loads of women: “What’s wrong with me? I could do this last week. Why am I in such a bad mood?”

Katrina: Yeah, it’s so true.

And this is one of the key parts of this: you don’t beat yourself up anymore.

You can have more compassion for yourself because you can be like, “Oh, okay. I’m actually four different people throughout the month.”

And you can also explain that to the people around you.

If your partner has no understanding, they just think, “Oh, you have a period and that’s it.”

But you’re like, “No, actually, there are other things going on in the other weeks.”

I think a really great chart I often show is the difference between men and women in their hormone profile.

Men are on a 24-hour period. Their testosterone starts low in the morning, it goes up in the afternoon and then it drops down in the evening again, and that’s one day done.

And you’ve got women’s hormones over an entire month, and it’s up, down…

That’s over a whole month.

There’s definitely a pattern, but it’s a monthly pattern rather than a 24-hour cycle.

And a lot of our lives are based around a 24-hour cycle.

Nadine: Yeah, definitely.

[38:47]

Nadine: There’s definitely a cultural change that needs to happen for men as well, isn’t there?

Because I feel like, even though I’m quite open in my conversations with my husband, I do still feel like if you say, “Got my period,” there’s that eye-roll kind of thing happening.

And when I was going through perimenopause and menopause, I’d say, “Oh, sleep,” or palpitations when training, or something would happen and I’d be feeling the feels.

And I’d put it down to perimenopause and I do feel like there’s a little bit of an eye roll.

They just don’t get it.

Katrina: But again, that comes from them not having been educated.

[39:34]

Katrina: I feel like we have almost a duty of care now to educate the boys.

Because if they don’t understand what’s going on with women’s bodies, then they don’t have the opportunity to support women either.

And that can happen in schools as well, where boys might make fun of periods or period products because they just don’t understand it.

They haven’t been taught.

And if you teach it as a normal bodily function, then it becomes normal.

That’s one of the things that I’m really passionate about as well — making sure boys are part of this conversation.

I’m working with the Shire at the moment on a program for dads and daughters.

Because dads need to have that understanding as well.

They need to know what their daughters are going through.

And it shouldn’t just be, “Oh, that’s Mum’s job.”

Nadine: Yeah.

Katrina: Because dads have a really important role in how girls see themselves and how they feel about their bodies.

So having dads comfortable talking about periods, having period products in the house, being able to go and buy them without it being awkward — all of those things make a huge difference.

And the same for boys.

If boys grow up understanding this stuff, then hopefully when they’re in relationships later, they’re going to have a better understanding of what’s happening for their partner.

Nadine: Yeah. That’s so important.

Because I guess if we’re talking about body literacy, it doesn’t need to only be literacy about your own body.

It can be understanding how other people’s bodies work as well.

Katrina: Exactly.

And having that compassion.

[42:00]

Nadine: Let’s move into perimenopause a little bit more because one of the things that really stood out to me when you initially contacted me was this idea that perimenopause isn’t just a hormone conversation.

And I really liked that.

Because obviously hormones are part of it — they’re a massive part of it — but there’s so much else going on.

Katrina: Yeah.

I think we’ve become really focused on the hormone conversation because we finally have permission to talk about it.

And that’s fantastic.

Women need to understand what’s happening hormonally.

But I also think that when those hormonal buffers start to change, you start to feel things that perhaps you’ve been able to push through before.

Things you’ve tolerated.

Things you’ve carried.

Things that maybe weren’t working in your life, but you had the capacity to keep going.

And then suddenly you don’t.

And that can show up as anger. It can show up as rage. It can show up as anxiety. It can show up as, “I cannot do this anymore.”

And I think sometimes we immediately say, “That’s hormones.”

And yes, hormones are involved.

But what is the anger telling you?

What is the frustration telling you?

What is your body actually trying to communicate?

[43:45]

Nadine: Yeah. This is really interesting to me because it’s something I talk about a lot on the podcast.

This idea that in midlife, things that perhaps we’ve accepted for years suddenly become intolerable.

And you do start questioning everything.

Who am I?

What am I doing?

Why am I doing this?

Do I even want this anymore?

Katrina: Exactly.

And I think that’s where body literacy becomes much bigger than knowing when you ovulate or knowing when your period is coming.

It becomes: can you listen to yourself?

Can you recognise what you need?

Can you recognise when something doesn’t feel right?

And then can you trust yourself enough to do something about it?

That’s where I think body literacy and self-literacy really come together.

Because you can know all of the information about hormones, but if you don’t trust yourself, it’s very difficult to act on what your body is telling you.

[45:00]

Katrina: And for me, that became really obvious in my relationship.

I was going through perimenopause and there were things happening in my relationship that I had probably tolerated or worked around for a long time.

And suddenly I couldn’t.

I had to look at myself.

I had to look at my nervous system.

I had to look at my patterns.

I had to look at what I was doing and why I was doing it.

And that was difficult.

But it was also a really important part of perimenopause for me.

Because it wasn’t just, “How do I stop these symptoms?”

It was, “What is this phase of my life asking me to look at?”

Nadine: Yeah.

And that’s such a different conversation, isn’t it?

Because if you just see perimenopause as symptoms that need to be removed, you potentially miss what else is happening.

Katrina: Exactly.

And I’m definitely not saying women should suffer through symptoms.

Absolutely not.

There are lots of things that can support women.

But I think we also need to have the conversation about what is happening underneath all of that.

[46:30]

Katrina: We have spent so much of our lives caring for everybody else.

Women are often the ones holding everything together.

You’re looking after the children. You’re managing the home. You might be working. You might be caring for parents.

You’re remembering appointments.

You’re remembering birthdays.

You’re remembering what everyone needs.

And then your body gets to this point where it’s almost like, “No. I can’t keep doing this.”

And that can feel really confronting because maybe your identity has been built around being the person who can do all of those things.

Nadine: Yeah.

Katrina: And then suddenly you’re tired.

Or you’re angry.

Or you can’t remember things.

Or you just don’t want to do it anymore.

And there can be a lot of guilt around that.

Nadine: Absolutely.

Especially that idea of not wanting to do it anymore.

Because women can feel like, “Well, what’s wrong with me? I’ve always done this. Why am I suddenly so annoyed by everybody?”

Katrina: Exactly.

But maybe the question isn’t, “What’s wrong with me?”

Maybe the question is, “What needs to change?”

[48:00]

Nadine: That fits so beautifully with the whole idea of the Midlife Rebel as well.

Because there is this questioning of the rules we’ve lived by and the things we thought we were supposed to do.

And sometimes we don’t even realise they are rules until we suddenly don’t want to follow them anymore.

Katrina: Yes.

And I think perimenopause can really bring that up.

Because you start to recognise where you’ve been saying yes when you wanted to say no.

Where you’ve been putting everybody else first.

Where you’ve been ignoring what your body needs.

And I think that’s why nervous system work was such a big part of my own experience.

Because I had to learn that I could respond differently.

I didn’t have to keep repeating the same patterns.

[49:00]

Nadine: How did that affect your relationship?

Katrina: It was difficult.

There were definitely points where I was questioning whether the relationship was going to continue.

And I think that happens for a lot of women at this age.

There’s so much changing.

Your children are changing.

Your body is changing.

Your identity is changing.

And suddenly you’re looking at the relationship and thinking, “Does this still work?”

For me, I had to do a lot of work around myself first.

Rather than just saying, “This person needs to change,” I had to look at what I was bringing into the relationship.

What were my patterns?

What was I tolerating?

Where was I not communicating?

Where was I expecting someone else to know what I needed when I wasn’t actually saying it?

And that was really valuable.

[50:30]

Katrina: I think one of the biggest things was boundaries.

And again, that comes back to body literacy.

Can you recognise what a yes feels like?

Can you recognise what a no feels like?

Can you recognise when you’re exhausted?

Can you recognise when you need space?

And then can you communicate that without feeling like you’re letting everybody down?

That is really difficult for women who have spent decades being the person who does everything.

Nadine: Yeah.

And I think that’s where the self-trust piece comes in as well.

Because you have to trust that your needs are legitimate.

Katrina: Exactly.

And you have to start making space for the things that are important to you.

You start looking at the things in your life that are not serving you anymore.

One of the biggest lessons for me was looking at the things I wanted to make time for and making sure those things were happening.

And then everything else potentially had to be a no.

[52:18]

Nadine: It’s not easy though, is it?

Because when you think about it — how old are your kids?

Katrina: Sixteen and thirteen.

Nadine: So it’s not over yet!

Really, you might be thinking until they’re 20, maybe, if you’re lucky, they might have moved out of the house.

That’s a massive chunk of time that you’ve basically dedicated to other lives.

Katrina: Yeah.

And I guess by the time they get to that 10, 11, 12 age, they’re becoming more independent.

So you do have that time to start thinking about: who am I beyond my role as mother?

Although you’re always going to be the mother.

That’s actually really important to do because I like to look ahead a couple of years and see what’s coming.

I’m 48 now, and I know I’m going to have a bit of a breakout when I get to 50.

Nadine: No, it’s great!

Katrina: Yeah. Like you said, even getting to that point feels like a rite of passage.

Nadine: I say to people, it’s just the warm-up.

The first 49 years are the warm-up for the next bit!

You don’t necessarily have it all sorted out as soon as you hit 50, but it just feels like: I’ve made it this far. Now I’m getting it.

Katrina: Yeah. I feel like I’m heading that way.

And again, I know it’s going to take time to move into that era.

But it’s also going to coincide with my children.

My eldest will go off to university. He’ll leave.

And so I’m also thinking ahead: my children will be… that’s my job, to raise them to be independent.

Yes, they’ll come in and out and potentially come back and live with us again.

But at the same time, what is my life going to look like outside of that?

Because I love being a mum. I wanted to be a mum above everything else.

[54:50]

Katrina: When I had my hysterectomy, I went through a lot of grief.

I thought I’d already processed a lot, but removing my uterus definitely had an energetic effect on me.

And I was in so much grief for the raising of young children because I’ll never do that again until I have grandkids.

And that was really hard.

I was so sad.

I was thinking of death.

It was a real grief phase that I had to go through.

And I was like, okay, at least I’m doing a little bit of that now, where I’m letting go of all of those times with them.

They’re memories now.

But I’ll have this next phase of my life with them, which is a different level of involvement, I guess.

You’re more like a mentor now. More like a coach to them at this age.

Nadine: Yeah.

Who knows what that will bring up — the empty-nesting situation?

Katrina: You deal with one piece of it and then another piece comes!

[56:11]

Nadine: What I’ve come to learn about midlife from the people I’ve spoken to is that perimenopause is this massive thing.

And we’re questioning purpose, identity.

Then we’ve got empty nest.

Then we’ve got caregiving for elderly parents that comes.

It just keeps giving!

Katrina: Maybe we have to do all of the other things!

Nadine: Yeah, exactly.

But I do also hear really good things about following your dreams and not needing to wait for anything.

Just do the thing that you love doing.

All of those things are really cool as well.

Katrina: Yeah. I mean, it’s why I’m doing this work now, because this is my passion.

[57:09]

Nadine: So tell us a little bit more about how your work works.

You’re going into schools and teaching the programs.

Is that particularly in your local area? Do you travel all over the place?

Katrina: It’s in my local area.

I live in Margaret River, but my parents live in Perth, so I can go up and travel to Perth and do schools up there.

I offer programs in schools.

I have two arms of my business, really.

There’s body literacy, which is the menstrual health stuff.

That’s everything from your first period all the way through to understanding what endometriosis is, what adenomyosis is — all of those things.

And then I’ve got the self-literacy stuff, which is around girls’ empowerment.

So making sure girls are able to develop that inner voice and know how to listen to that inner voice.

Figuring out who they are.

How to communicate well with friends.

Friendship dynamics.

Comparison stuff.

Social media stuff.

All of the things that our girls need, because I think they all link together in bringing them through.

The programs I offer are for primary schools and then for high schools.

And then I have the initiative that I’m doing with the Shire, so that’s the experience with the dads.

And then I’m available for one-on-one coaching or helping parents out, supporting teachers or whatever it is.

Nadine: And do you do any online work?

Katrina: Not at this point, but I definitely can. I’m available for that sort of thing.

But I’ve mostly been trying to focus on my schools.

Nadine: Well, it would be continuous work, wouldn’t it?

Because there’s always another year going up into the time where it’s relevant to talk about it.

[59:29]

Nadine: I was just curious, especially for women who want to educate themselves with this stuff.

There are different levels.

There’s the level of just understanding what’s going on with your body.

But then there’s a level of actually putting some things into practice to help become more aware and for it to be part of your normal everyday life — paying attention to your periods and your lifestyle and how that impacts your periods.

I just wondered if you did anything around that or had any advice on that.

Katrina: I call them clarity sessions.

Basically, we can do one session or a couple of sessions.

I think everyone is so unique and individual in what they’re experiencing.

So it’s looking at paying attention to that whole cycle, educating women on how to view it and then how to track it for themselves.

Once you’re good at doing that, that’s a great skill that you’ll always have.

But then it’s looking at the things that are coming up around that and around your symptoms.

Again, going back to so many women saying, “I’m experiencing this and I’ve got that…”

You go to the doctor and you’ve got maybe seven minutes to explain something.

You’re not necessarily getting the information you need.

You might get something to help with the symptoms that you’re having, but there’s not a lot of conversation around why you would need that, why they’re prescribing it, and other things that you can do in your lifestyle to support that.

Because I think that’s only one piece of the picture.

[1:01:23]

Katrina: I see a lot of women now — because perimenopause is a much more talked-about area and doctors are more informed and they’re able to prescribe hormones — going and getting hormones straight away.

And they don’t necessarily have an understanding of why they’re taking it, what dose, and how it’s helping their body.

Potentially, it’s actually not addressing those deeper symptoms.

Women can be on that for six months, for a year or whatever, and still be like, “This is not really… I’m still struggling with my sleep,” or, “I’m still really angry at my husband,” or whatever it is.

So again, it’s that conversation of, okay, let’s go a bit deeper.

I can support women to figure out what the underlying issue actually is and then give them tools and practical ways to address that.

And again, it’s not a quick fix.

I think that’s why hormones have become so popular, because they seem to be like this…

Nadine: Yeah.

Katrina: And I’m definitely not opposed to them.

But have you addressed all these other areas of your life?

Even if you are on hormone support, you should still be addressing those things because, like I was saying, there are so many things going on for you in this phase of your life.

You need to make sure your life is set up so that you have the energy and vitality for the things that you want to do.

[1:03:13]

Nadine: Yeah, I agree.

And if we see it as a rite of passage, which is what it is, then we want to embrace that.

I know if you’ve got bad symptoms that can be difficult to get your head around.

But it feels like it’s one of those things that could easily just get shoved under the carpet: just have to deal with it, move on.

When actually this is a really precious time of our lives.

Katrina: Yeah. It’s a time of recalibrating, I think.

Nadine: That’s exactly what I was going to say.

Katrina: We know from the research now that the body is recalibrating.

Your nervous system is rewiring, which is one of the number one reasons I looked at and addressed my nervous system when I was going through my relationship issues.

Because that was a really great opportunity for me to rewire my nervous system.

You don’t know when else you get that opportunity.

It’s like those moving walkways.

You could walk, or you could hop onto one of those and get there a lot quicker.

That’s how I feel about this phase.

Your brain is rewiring. We know that those things are happening, so we can use them to our advantage in this life phase.

But I think what happens is this life phase is extremely busy for a lot of women.

They are quite often the sandwich generation.

Sometimes they are caring for older parents at that time.

They have children going through puberty, or even just young children.

And then there’s career stuff, work stuff.

And then there’s the cultural conditioning that goes with that, which is: you’ve got to show up as Superwoman.

You just have to go.

[1:05:27]

Katrina: So many women haven’t recognised that they’re in a different phase of life.

I know women who are up at five and they have lived a whole day before they even get to work.

Then they get to work and work is like a break!

Then they work all day, and then they come home and they’re ferrying their kids to different activities.

They’re doing the homework.

They’re doing appointments.

They’re doing dinner.

They’re doing the pets.

And then they’re just falling into bed absolutely exhausted at 8:30.

Then they get up again and do it again.

And I’m like, wow.

But what is the cost of that eventually?

Because whilst you may have been able to do it in the couple of years before, you’re actually entering a new phase where your body is not going to like that anymore.

It’s going to stop.

It’s going to tell you in other ways, “This is not happening. This is not helping me anymore.”

Your brain also…

We talk about brain fog as a major factor.

But how much is brain fog and how much is just: you’ve got so many things that you can’t keep holding it all?

It’s a moment in time where the body says and the brain says, “That’s enough. I can’t keep operating like this anymore, and you’re going to have to make some changes.”

[1:06:54]

Nadine: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a big one.

Oh look, thank you so much for joining me.

I encourage you to create an online course for children.

Katrina: For children?

Nadine: Well, for girls!

So that you can spread the word more.

I just don’t think it can be talked about enough.

And if there are ways of teaching our girls — obviously I’m a homeschool mum — having material that I could share with my daughter I would find extremely helpful.

And I think other mums that I know in the same phase of life would agree that it would be helpful.

No pressure!

Katrina: Perfect. I love doing this thing.

Nadine: Yeah, it’s great.

It’s been really great to have you here, Katrina.

I’m super grateful for this conversation and the work you’re doing.

[1:07:52]

Nadine: Hey there, Rebel.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Midlife Rebel Podcast.

If you’d like to support the show, you can buy me a coffee by going to Buy Me a Coffee, forward slash Midlife Rebel Podcast.

Thanks for listening.