There is a moment in a woman's life when something quiet but irreversible happens.

It isn't loud. It isn't dramatic. And it isn't the breakdown we've been taught to expect.

Menopause is often framed as something to manage, fix, or endure. A list of symptoms to brace for. A season to survive. What I was never offered, and what so few women are, is the deeper truth of this passage.

Menopause is not the loss of self. It is the reorganization of self around truth.

There is a spirituality to this experience that our culture rarely names. Ancient societies understood this threshold. They prepared women for it. They listened to the women who emerged from it. Today, we tend to rush her, medicate her, and ask her to return to normal even though there is no normal on the other side of transformation.

This reflection names what becomes possible when menopause is honored as a rite of passage rather than treated as a hormonal inconvenience. I speak to meeting physical changes with curiosity instead of fear, allowing ritual to replace resistance, and listening for the deeper intelligence inside each shift.

In this episode, I explore:

• Why menopause is not a breakdown, but a profound internal shift

• How fear-based narratives disconnect women from their bodies

• What happens when a woman stops bending, explaining, and bleeding energy

• Why discernment sharpens and tolerance drops in this season of life

• The difference between patriarchal and matriarchal stories of aging

• How choosing a different narrative can change the experience entirely

Here, I share my experience…not from a medical or prescriptive lens, but from a lived, embodied one. I offer this for the women walking that path now. And for the younger women who deserve a different imprint than fear.

Because menopause does not diminish a woman. It reveals her.

If this conversation resonates, consider sharing it with a daughter, a friend, or a woman you love.

To continue this work of reclaiming inner authority across every season of womanhood, my book Muse is available now…a guide for women returning to themselves.

Connect with me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/

Order your copy of Muse https://amandahanson.com/muse/?utm_source=menopause&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=episode64&utm_campaign=podcast

There is a quiet abandonment built into motherhood. After the baby arrives, the world gently but decisively turns its gaze. Questions shift. Attention moves outward. The mother is expected to hold the rest privately…recovering offstage, adapting without pause, needing little, asking less.

Within that quiet expectation, something internal begins to form. Women start to minimize their own truths. They tell themselves it's not that bad. They learn to translate exhaustion into gratitude, confusion into shame, grief into something to be endured rather than spoken. What cannot be neatly named is often swallowed whole.

Women don't stay silent because they want to. They stay silent because our culture tells them there is no room for the truth.

In this episode, I sit down with Kate Hernandez, founder of Postparty, a company built on a radical premise: that the recovery of mothers is essential, not optional. Together, we name the truths that are often minimized or ignored: the fear and guilt new mothers carry, the physical realities of postpartum healing, the emotional rupture many women experience, and the permission to hold gratitude and struggle at the same time. In this conversation, we explore:

• Why birth is celebrated while mothers are quietly abandoned afterward.

• How shame keeps mothers from asking for help when they need it most.

• The cultural obsession with bouncing back and who it actually serves.

• Why "being cleared" is not the same as being cared for.

• How virtual and in-home care can close dangerous access gaps.

• The cost of ignoring maternal wellbeing on families, children, and future generations.

• What becomes possible when mothers are finally centered and supported.

• Why postpartum never really "ends", it simply evolves.

Because birth is not the finish line.

It's the handoff into a years-long transformation and the way we show up for mothers in the weeks, months, and years after birth reverberates through families, communities, and generations.

If you're pregnant, newly postpartum, supporting a new mother, or holding your own birth story in silence…this conversation is for you.

Because when the mother is well, the family is well. And when the mother suffers, we all suffer.

If you want to continue this work of honoring the mother, not just the birth, my book Muse is available now. A guide for women reclaiming their identity, restoring inner authority, and returning to themselves in every season.

Connect with Dr. Amanda on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/ Connect with Kate Hernandez: https://www.instagram.com/yourpostparty/ Order your copy of Muse https://amandahanson.com/muse/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=kate_hernandez

This week I am joined by the incredible Gary Vee…a visionary who often speaks about hustle, but today, sits with us to talk about heart. The conversation began before the microphones turned on. With my own children gathered around him, asking questions and soaking up his words. He took the time to talk with them and share his wisdom. It spoke volumes about who he was, how he relates to people of all ages, and the valuable words he has to offer.

Once we started recording, he continued the conversation with the same authenticity. We stripped away the layers of "shoulds" and expectations that society places on us. We explored what it really looks like to stop apologizing for who you are and start celebrating it. Gary shares his unique perspective on why the fear of judgment is what's standing between you and the life you crave, and how self-awareness is the ultimate form of self-love.

Inside this episode, we discuss:

• Why success doesn't shape character…it exposes it

• How fear gets passed down quietly through generations

• Why so many adults are still waiting for approval long past childhood

• How entitlement replaces gratitude and erodes resilience without us noticing

• Why failure is formative, not damaging

• What happens when self-awareness replaces performance

• The moment adulthood actually begins

If you have been feeling the call to reinvent yourself, to pivot, or simply to show up more boldly in your own skin, this episode is for you. Remember, it is never too late to become the woman you were always meant to be.

If you want to continue this work of remembering who you are beneath the noise, my book Muse is available now. A guide for women reclaiming identity, authority, and their inner voice.

Connect with Dr. Amanda on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/ Connect with Gary Vee: https://www.instagram.com/garyvee/ Order your copy of Muse https://amandahanson.com/book/

By the time a woman reaches midlife, she has usually learned the rules: stay pleasant, stay young-looking, stay non-threatening. Don't take up too much space. Don't show the edges. And definitely don't age out loud. The cost of that agreement, however, is the slow erasure of her voice, her authority, and her truth.

In this episode, I sit down with actress Constance Zimmer to talk about aging in Hollywood, the fear and grief that can come when opportunities narrow after 50, and the sovereignty that emerges when women refuse to go quiet. Constance shares the story behind her iconic Entourage audition, how her most "unlikable" characters became the most relatable, and why she's now building spaces for women to tell midlife stories across stage, screen, and community.

Inside this episode, we explore:

• The myth that actors "choose" roles - and what it's really like when opportunity chooses you

• How Constance landed Entourage by walking in with nothing to prove and everything to own

• What shifts for women after 50 in Hollywood - and why the silence can feel terrifying

• Why midlife often becomes a creative ignition point tied to purpose and legacy

• The vision behind The Midlife Monologues and creating platforms where women's stories are centered

• The cultural cost of erasing women's aging faces - and the message it sends to our daughters

• How women heal through truth-telling, witnessing, and community - without fixing or performing

This episode is for the woman who can feel the old programming creep in - the voice that says, "Stay likable. Stay small. Stay young." If this conversation moves something in you, share it with a sister who needs the reminder. Because that's what sisters do.

Connect with Dr. Amanda on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/ Connect with Constance Zimmer: https://www.instagram.com/constancezimmer/

So many women tell the same quiet story: "I'm fine. I'm grateful. I'm doing it all." And yet… There's a glass of wine waiting every evening just to soften the edges enough to keep going.

In this week's episode of Things Your Mother Never Told You, I sit down with Colleen Freeland, the woman redefining what sobriety means for high-achieving, overwhelmed women. Her work is not about labels or lifelong abstinence. It's about emotional sobriety - the art of living without the chaos, pressure, and self-abandonment that make us reach outside ourselves for relief.

Colleen brings a radically compassionate perspective: Most women don't have drinking problems. They have disconnection problems.

Inside this conversation, we explore:

• Why Type A, hyper-capable women often use alcohol as a bridge to survive the life they've built.

• How emotional numbing becomes a default for women who never learned to feel their own needs.

• Why shame-based sobriety models can backfire - and what actually creates lasting change.

• The truth about "mommy wine culture" and the billion-dollar industry marketing alcohol as self-care.

• How creating small, honest moments of pleasure and regulation can begin to untangle long-held patterns.

• What happens when a woman finally tells the truth: I'm not okay, and I can't keep living this way.

• The real reason midlife becomes a turning point, and why so many women "wake up" during these years.

This episode is an invitation to pause. To listen inward. To meet the woman you've been overriding for far too long.

If something in this conversation lands in your body - share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Your revolution begins within.

Connect with Dr. Amanda on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/

Connect with Colleen Freeland: https://www.instagram.com/thehangoverwhisperer/ https://emotionalsobrietycoaching.com/

Most of us were taught some version of the same story: Good women are modest. Quiet. Selfless. Desire is dangerous. Pleasure is suspicious.

But that story is not holy. It is a tool of control.

In this conversation, I sit down with my dear friend Dr. Kimberly Rose Pendleton - intimacy scholar, coach, and former evangelical insider - to talk about how purity culture, patriarchy, and religion have shaped our bodies, our bedrooms, our marriages, and our sense of worth as women.

We speak about the heartbreak of watching purity culture move from private dogma into national policy...while raising daughters in the midst of it. And we name something I see every day in my work: women who are exhausted from doing it all, flirting with "trad wife" fantasies, simply because they're desperate for one place to finally surrender.

Inside this episode, we explore:

• How purity culture quietly trains women to disconnect from their bodies, their desire, and their pleasure.
• Why so many powerful women secretly fantasize about being dominated - and what's really underneath those fantasies.
• The rise of "trad wife" culture and the hidden longing for safety and rest that makes it so seductive.
• How to hold both: being a woman in her full power and having a place to soften, lean back, and be cherished.
• What happens in our marriages when we stop dimming, start telling the truth, and allow our identities to expand.
• Why your pleasure is not frivolous - it is a form of spiritual and political rebellion that liberates everyone, including the men you love.

This conversation is for the woman who feels a million miles away from her own body...the woman who is quietly wondering, "Is it selfish to want more?"

It is not selfish. It is your birthright.

If this episode stirs something within you, share it with another woman who is ready to step out of martyrdom and into her own aliveness.

And if you are ready to remember who you've always been - to reclaim your desire, your voice, and your pleasure - join me at MAGNETIC in Phoenix, December 5-6. The revolution begins within.

Connect with Dr. Amanda on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/

Connect with Dr. Kimberly Rose Pendleton: https://www.instagram.com/drkimberlyrosependleton/ https://www.kimberlyrosependleton.com

Join the Movement at MAGNETIC in Phoenix – December 5–6 http://www.amandahanson.com/magnetic

For generations, women have been taught to quiet themselves in love - to shrink, to compromise, to hold the emotional weight of the relationship while asking for so little in return.

But something is changing.

In this episode, I sit with my daughter Ava, and with the man she chose, Chris, and together we step into a conversation that feels less like an interview and more like a blessing. What they are building together is not naïve young love - it is intentional, emotionally intelligent, a deeply human partnership.

What unfolds in this conversation is not perfection. It is evolution. It is a story of a young woman who would not abandon her truth, and a young man who chose to rise and meet her. A story of the next generation doing what so many before them could not: building a relationship from intention rather than inheritance.

Inside this episode, we explore:

• What happens when a young woman refuses to abandon her values in order to be loved.
• What it looks like when a man chooses curiosity over defensiveness - and growth over comfort.
• The importance of accountability, communication, and repair in healthy partnership.
• How generational healing happens through the relationships our children create.
• The power of raising boys - and men - to listen, witness, and emotionally attune.
• Why the next generation of love demands emotional intelligence, not perfection.

This is not just a relationship conversation. It is a generational conversation. It is a window into what becomes possible when daughters are raised to honor themselves, and when sons are encouraged to feel deeply rather than armor up. It is the embodiment of the evolution so many of us have prayed for.

It is proof that the next generation is not waiting for change.

They are creating it.

If this episode moves you, share it with your daughters, your sons, your partners, or the people in your life who are crafting their own path in love.

And if you are ready to deepen into your own becoming - to soften, awaken, and rise - join me at MAGNETIC in Phoenix, December 5–6.

The next generation is rising. Let us rise with them.

Connect with Dr. Amanda on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/

Join the Movement at MAGNETIC in Phoenix – December 5–6 http://www.amandahanson.com/magnetic

For too long, women have been told that good mothering means perfection - tidy homes, obedient children, unshakable patience. But perfection is a prison. What our children truly need is our presence.

In this conversation, I sit down with Dr. Shefali Tsabary, clinical psychologist, best-selling author, and the woman who shattered the myth of the "perfect mother." Through her pioneering work in conscious parenting she has given women permission to break generational patterns, to stop parenting from fear, and to finally turn inward - toward their own healing.

Dr. Shefali reminds us that parenting is not about control, it is about connection; that our children are not ours to mold, but mirrors showing us where we are still unhealed.

Inside this episode, we explore:

• The radical truth that our children don't need perfect mothers - they need conscious ones.

• How to dissolve the guilt, martyrdom, and self-betrayal that women have been conditioned to carry.

• Why healing our own wounds is the greatest gift we can give the next generation.

• The epidemic of disconnection among our boys - and how mothers can help bring them back to life.

• The urgent need for the matriarchal voice - for women to lead not like men, but as mothers of the world.

This conversation is a mirror - one that invites you to look tenderly and honestly at yourself. It is a reminder that true liberation is not a battle cry, it's a homecoming.

If this episode stirs something within you, share it with another woman ready to step out of perfection and into presence. And if you're ready to remember who you've always been - to soften, awaken, and rise - join me at MAGNETIC in Phoenix, December 5–6.

The revolution begins within.

Connect with Dr. Amanda on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/

Connect with Dr. Shefali Tsabary https://www.instagram.com/doctorshefali/ https://www.drshefali.com

Join the Movement at MAGNETIC in Phoenix – December 5–6 http://www.amandahanson.com/magnetic

For centuries, women were taught that the sacred lived outside of us - in churches, in scriptures, in the hands of men who told us how to pray.

But there was a time before that. A time when women gathered in circles, when our emotions were seen as holy, our bodies as sacred, and our desires as divine.

In this conversation, I sit down with Sarah Jenks, ordained priestess and co-founder of The Living Temple, a woman who has remembered what was once ours and is bringing it back to life.

Sarah once had everything she was told she should want: marriage, success, motherhood - and yet felt empty inside. The moment she stepped into her first women's ceremony, her body remembered something ancient. And from that remembering, her true life began.

Inside this episode, we explore:

• The moment Sarah stopped living by the patriarchy's checklist and began living from her soul.

• How ceremony and sisterhood are not "woo" - they're ancient medicine.

• The deep conditioning that keeps women small, silent, and disconnected from themselves.

• That equality inside the home is the next frontier of women's liberation.

• Why reclaiming the sacred feminine is not rebellion - it's remembrance.

This conversation is an invitation to bring the holy back into your daily life. To find the divine in the chaos, the beauty in the ordinary, and the power that's always been yours.

If this episode stirs something in you, share it with another woman ready to come home to herself.

And if you're ready to experience this work in person - to gather, release, and rise - join me at MAGNETIC in Phoenix, December 5–6.

Your remembrance begins now.

Connect with Dr. Amanda on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/

Connect with Sarah Jenks https://www.instagram.com/sarahjenks/ https://www.sarahjenks.com

Join the Movement at MAGNETIC in Phoenix – December 5th & 6th http://www.amandahanson.com/magnetic

For so many women, the story begins the same way: waiting to be chosen, waiting to be loved, waiting for someone to see our worth. We were raised on fairy tales written by men - tales where our value was confirmed only through someone else's gaze.

In this episode, I explore one of the most profound energetic shifts a woman can make: the evolution from princess energy to queen energy.

The princess is well-intentioned, but she is always seeking - approval, validation, belonging. She is waiting for the world to tell her she's enough. The queen, on the other hand, no longer waits. She has learned to source everything she once sought - love, worth, safety - from within.

This transformation is not about hierarchy; it's about maturity of energy. It's about remembering that everything you've ever longed for is already yours.

Inside this episode, I share:

• How the media and culture conditioned us to crave approval instead of cultivating self-trust.

• The emotional difference between seeking and being.

• How to recognize when you're reacting from princess energy in love, work, or friendship.

• What it looks like to self-source validation, pleasure, and intimacy. Why grounding in your queen energy changes the way you walk into any room, relationship, or decision.

The moment you stop waiting to be chosen, and choose yourself, you reclaim your throne.

I hope this conversation inspires you to notice where the princess still runs the show, and to lovingly call your queen forward. She's not above anyone. She's simply at home within herself.

If this episode resonated, share it with another woman ready to rise into her own sovereignty.

And if you're ready to fully embody this work—to step into your power, presence, and self-sourced magnetism—come join me at MAGNETIC in Phoenix, December 5–6.

Your throne is waiting.

Connect with Dr. Amanda on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/

Join the Movement at Magnetic in Phoenix – December 5th and 6th http://www.amandahanson.com/magnetic