Andrea Slominski, PhD - Regency, Rise of the Feminine Midlife Archetype
Welcome to Mythic, where we explore meaningful living through the power of myth, including topics that span ancient lore, modern popular culture, and depth psychology. I'm your host, Boston Blake.
Andrea Slominski, PhD - Regency, Rise of the Feminine Midlife Archetype
About Dr. Andrea Slominski
Andrea M. Slominski, Ph.D., is a women's midlife coach, speaker, and author. Dr. A’s coaching addresses the deep work of Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging, which can shift during midlife. In her Ph.D. research and study, she explored the new life stage for women that emerged over the past 120 years. Dr. A. names this new life stage from ages 45-70—Regency—and identifies it as women's new power years. Dr. A. created a proprietary coaching method for women 40+ to guide them through the often-tumultuous transformations of peri, midlife, and menopause. She has shared her passion for mentoring midlife women at conferences, workshops, summits, and corporate events. She is a published author and has given papers and addresses at international academic and cultural conferences.
Since starting her practice in 2015, Dr. A. has supported over three-thousand women through her coaching, mentorship, online gatherings, journals, and Covid-19 support programs.
Upcoming Offerings
1. Reclaiming Your Inner Wild Woman An 8-week group class
Love "Women Who Run With The Wolves?"Join Dr. A. in an 8-Week curated, deep-dive into the classic book on women’s mythology. We’ll explore the Wild Woman Archetype, and the mythology, folk, and fairy tales in Dr C.P. Estés groundbreaking book. Learn how to reclaim your Wild Woman energy, revitalize, and recreate yourself, for yourself. Learn skills that you will use for the rest of your life.
Pack Runs July 5th. Eastern and Pacific sessions are available. Register and find out more info here https://www.drandreaslominski.com/reclaiming-your-inner-wild-woman
Listener Coupon Codes:
WILDWOMANEAST
WILDWOMANWEST
2. All Women Over 40 Face Seven Realms of Change An 8-week group class
Join Dr. A. in this transformative eight-week group class that explores the profound changes that women go through during perimenopause, midlife, and menopause.
The physical, psychological, and spiritual shifts of midlife are pre-programmed into women’s bodies, minds, and souls. Because they all happen at the same time, it makes our lives hard to manage!
To conquer these midlife changes and live their most authentic and fulfilled lives women must navigate Seven Realms of Change.
The Seven Realms of Change are a woman’s changing: Body — Self-Image — Feelings — Needs — Roles — Priorities — Goals
It’s Destiny. It’s an Unavoidable Voyage.
Yet—It is possible to Influence, Direct, and Participate in all these changes!
It is possible to understand what is happening to you and take control of the process.
It is possible to design a map, chart a course, pilot the journey, and choose your destination.
This transformative eight-week group class unlocks how to address the changes of midlife and successfully navigate the Seven Realms of Change. The Voyage begins July 6th. Eastern and Pacific sessions are available. Register and find out more info here https://www.drandreaslominski.com/the-seven-realms-of-change-group-class
Listener Coupon Codes 7REALMSEAST. 7REALMSWEST
Key Moments
- [03:43] The triple shift of women at midlife-physical, psyhological, and spiritual--and what it means that women are living longer than ever before
- [11:42] What myth can teach us about navigating these transitions
- [15:36] What is regency?
- [26:58] Some fascinating statistics on the rise in power of women.
Helpful Links
Music composed by Kevin MacLeod
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Transcript
Hey there.
Boston:I'm so glad you've decided to listen to this episode.
Boston:My guest today is Mythologist and depth psychologist, Dr.
Boston:Andrea Slominski.
Boston:And the conversation you are about to hear is mind blowing.
Boston:Uh, at least it blew my mind.
Boston:Not only does Dr.
Boston:A present a new vision for women at midlife, but she also draws on
Boston:some stats that point to an imminent sociological and psychological shift.
Boston:As women live longer than ever and control more resources than at any
Boston:other time in human history now, no.
Boston:No more spoilers.
Boston:Here we go.
Boston:Hello, Andrea.
Boston:Welcome to the podcast.
Boston:I would love for you to introduce yourself to our listeners.
Dr. A:Thank you for having me, Boston.
Dr. A:I'm really excited to be here.
Dr. A:We both have similar interests and backgrounds, and that's
Dr. A:really exciting for me.
Dr. A:My name is actually Andrea Moniset Slominski, which is horrific
Dr. A:and nobody can remember them.
Dr. A:Nobody can spell them.
Dr. A:Nobody when they see them can pronounce them, which is why I just go by Dr.
Dr. A:A, which, if your podcast people are looking for me.
Dr. A:I'm a woman's midlife coach.
Dr. A:I went back to school when I was 55, right in the middle of my midlife shift and got
Dr. A:my master's and PhD and studied archetypal and depth psychology and mythology.
Dr. A:And my dissertation was focused on women's midlife shift and women's mythology.
Dr. A:So from there, I defended my dissertation in the fall of 2019 and I'd been coaching
Dr. A:for about three years, and I rebranded my website and I rebuilt it and rebranded
Dr. A:my business and everything was terrific.
Dr. A:And then I launched it in January and Covid shut down the country in February,
Boston:Ooh.
Dr. A:Yeah.
Dr. A:you know what?
Dr. A:Everything's for the good.
Dr. A:I have a really big office.
Dr. A:I can fit about eight to 10 women in here to do workshops and that kind
Dr. A:of thing, which was what I was doing.
Dr. A:And I was doing private coaching as well.
Dr. A:And the whole Covid thing just forced me to learn the online
Dr. A:methodology really quickly.
Dr. A:And so over the period of the Covid shutdown and those sorts
Dr. A:of things, I developed a program called the Women's Wisdom Village.
Dr. A:I offered over 40 free online gatherings for women to come together and take a
Dr. A:look at how myth and women's mythology and ancient stories and fairytales
Dr. A:and folk tales can inform our lives and help us get through the difficult
Dr. A:times that we were living through.
Dr. A:it was great.
Dr. A:I was able to really learn the digital thing and so now I
Dr. A:offer a lot of digital classes.
Dr. A:I still do one-on-one distance coaching on Zoom.
Dr. A:I do one-on-one in person coaching now in my office of course, because now
Dr. A:people are coming back together again.
Dr. A:So it's been a journey.
Boston:It sounds like you've learned a lot both technically
Boston:and like forward and deeper.
Boston:What's an example of that?
Boston:how can we apply myth, how can women's myth, myth in general-- to our current
Boston:situation and to navigating it.
Dr. A:Because of course I work with women, I'm gonna talk about
Dr. A:women's lives, Myth, of course, as is applicable to everyone.
Dr. A:It's applicable to men and women and entire cultures and the world and the
Dr. A:cosmos, but I can't work with all of that.
Dr. A:It's interesting because women, when they go into the perimenopause
Dr. A:shift, and it's amazing how little information there really is out there.
Dr. A:And how many of my clients either tell me, how much they didn't know, or that
Dr. A:they had to Google it because they thought they were ill, mentally ill,
Dr. A:broken, Like losing their mind, whatever, as they start to go into the shift.
Dr. A:Going into the perimenopause midlife menopause shift, women go through
Dr. A:what I call a triple transformation.
Dr. A:They go through a physical transformation, which of course is
Dr. A:the perimenopause menopause shift, and it's pre-programmed into our bodies.
Dr. A:It's not a disease.
Dr. A:Okay.
Dr. A:Can it be difficult?
Dr. A:Yes.
Dr. A:That's a whole nother conversation.
Dr. A:But yes, it can be difficult.
Dr. A:So perimenopause, menopause is the physical one.
Dr. A:Then there's the midlife shift, which is the psychological shift.
Dr. A:It's the shift within psyche that is also pre-programmed into the human
Dr. A:experience of living a life We have our childhood, or what I'd call maiden.
Dr. A:We have our householder years, our teens and our twenties growing up.
Dr. A:And then we shift into what I call regency, which includes midlife.
Dr. A:And if we are the same person at 45 that we were at 20, then
Dr. A:we've skipped some growing.
Dr. A:and that's okay.
Dr. A:You can catch up, but the psychological shift is pre-programmed into our psyches,
Dr. A:into our souls, into our collective unconscious, just like the physical
Dr. A:one is, and then the two together, the physical and the psychological shift
Dr. A:together combine to create what I consider to be a spiritual shift where women
Dr. A:reassess, who they are, what they wanna do now, and, basically their meaning,
Dr. A:purpose, and belonging at this time.
Dr. A:and the thing that's really miraculous about this, and I'll never get tired of
Dr. A:talking about this, is that in the year 1900, white women, statistically were dead
Dr. A:by 51 and women of color were gone by 43.
Dr. A:Now, there have always been, since the time of Plato, individual old women
Dr. A:or groups of old women that lived past 80 to 90 to a hundred or in the
Dr. A:medieval fairytales, the witch at the edge of the forest that lived to 120.
Dr. A:Yes, but Boomers and late Boomers and all the women coming up behind us are the
Dr. A:first women in the history of humanity to live past menopause as a cohort.
Dr. A:It's never happened before.
Dr. A:It's never happened before.
Dr. A:Our lifespans have increased white women by a third women of
Dr. A:color by double more than double.
Dr. A:And so now there are entire generations of women living past 50, 52, 55,
Dr. A:whenever women died-- They never made it completely through the menopause shift.
Dr. A:They never made it to the new settle out of the hormonal profile, the new normal
Dr. A:right after the midlife and the menopause and the triple shift and the seven realms.
Dr. A:So we're the first women to do it.
Dr. A:we're moving into this new life stage, that's like another 30 years.
Dr. A:There's no maps, there's no models, there's no examples.
Dr. A:So we're creating it as we live into it, and the opportunities for women
Dr. A:in this life stage are enormous.
Dr. A:And it's an opportunity to recreate ourselves for ourselves after
Dr. A:spending in the householder years, say from 18 or 19 to say 45 or 50.
Dr. A:Tending our families, our friends, our colleagues, our aging parents, our
Dr. A:siblings, our careers, whatever it is, the household years are crazy busy.
Dr. A:we're developing our own homes.
Dr. A:We're developing our careers.
Dr. A:We're going out, we're learning about ourselves and the world.
Dr. A:And rah, we're moving forward and we're gonna achieve our goals
Dr. A:and doing whatever we're doing.
Dr. A:So by the time women get to 45 or 50, a lot of them in their careers
Dr. A:unfortunately, still hit a glass ceiling.
Dr. A:Or they're seen as aging out of their careers because if they're seen to be
Dr. A:looking older or if they're seen to be having indicators of perimenopause
Dr. A:and menopause, it's oh, their value is decreasing, which isn't true because we
Dr. A:have all of our life experience, all of our career experience, our growing wisdom.
Dr. A:It's just a shift we're going through.
Dr. A:And basically the opportunity there in going through this is that at this
Dr. A:time if you had children, generally you have empty nest or you're about
Dr. A:to have empty nest unless you have boomerang children, which I have.
Dr. A:That's okay.
Dr. A:I love them.
Dr. A:Everybody needs a little support.
Dr. A:California is really expensive.
Dr. A:so it's empty nest.
Dr. A:Maybe you hit a glass ceiling at your career.
Dr. A:Maybe you decide you wanna do something different.
Dr. A:Maybe you decide you wanna make changes in your life.
Dr. A:The triple shift works together in the physiology and the psychology
Dr. A:of women to turn their focus from outside, back to themselves, back in.
Dr. A:to say, now it's my turn.
Dr. A:Okay, what do I wanna do now Where have, now that I've been tending everyone
Dr. A:else's garden for the last 25 years, It's about time to, to attend mine and
Dr. A:see, what do I wanna do for me now?
Dr. A:And our shifting hormones basically nudge us to do that.
Dr. A:Our shifting psyche nudges us to do that.
Dr. A:Our shifting spirituality or spiritual understanding of our meaning, purpose,
Dr. A:and belonging shift us to do that.
Dr. A:And it's, it's big and it can be challenging and it can be, of
Dr. A:course there are losses in aging.
Dr. A:I'm not A complete Pollyanna.
Dr. A:of course we get older and we get creaky and we could get sick and we
Dr. A:have problems and your body changes, your metabolism changes, your skin
Dr. A:changes, your outlook changes.
Dr. A:Yeah.
Dr. A:There are losses if you wanna call it.
Dr. A:That changes as we grow older.
Dr. A:Of course there are, but within each woman's capacity to recreate herself
Dr. A:in her circumstances, with what she has, with what she can work with.
Dr. A:Some women choose to blow up their life completely and do something new.
Dr. A:And some women just choose to spin their cocoon right where they are and
Dr. A:do their transformational work in place.
Dr. A:There's no right way to do it.
Dr. A:There's only individual ways to cross this universal rite of passage.
Dr. A:And to get back to the original question, which was how does myth help us do this?
Dr. A:All of these mythic stories that have to do with women show us that we are
Dr. A:not the first women to go through this.
Dr. A:For example, if a woman is having difficulty, say with
Dr. A:empty nest Or difficulty with a reunification relationship with
Dr. A:a child or a daughter, whatever.
Dr. A:The myth of Demeter and Persephone is a chest of pearls of wisdom.
Dr. A:That myth shows us.
Dr. A:So much of the grief that women go through in the separation phase from
Dr. A:their children, or that I should say, some women go through, not all women, it's
Dr. A:not a universal experience, and it also shows us the need for individuation and
Dr. A:separation on the part of the daughter.
Dr. A:And then it shows us the need for reconciliation and the rebuilding
Dr. A:of a completely new relationship, which then ends up being a
Dr. A:dual goddess, mother and Kore.
Dr. A:Entire Elusynian Mystery foundation.
Dr. A:So that's one example.
Dr. A:there's the myth of Ariadne and Theseus.
Dr. A:If a woman has ever been disrespected, abandoned, left behind, lied to,
Dr. A:led astray, and I could just list them and list them and list them.
Dr. A:When we look at these myths, not just from Greek, but Celtic, Hindu, African,
Dr. A:Native American, you name it, the mythologies around the world are just
Dr. A:full of these stories, which are maps.
Dr. A:The stories are maps, and they've left mile markers, and they've left symbols,
Dr. A:and they've left indicators, and they've left all these little tidbits
Dr. A:like Hansel and Gretel with crumbs to follow, metaphorically through our
Dr. A:hard times and be able to see that.
Dr. A:Oh my gosh.
Dr. A:I'm not broken.
Dr. A:I'm having an experience that's unique to me cuz it's my experience.
Dr. A:But I am writing one chapter in this amazing human story of what it
Dr. A:means to be a woman and live a life.
Dr. A:And this is my chapter, this is my experience.
Dr. A:And so I found that more than anything, cracking open these ancient stories
Dr. A:that have these universal nuggets of truth in them really gives people the
Dr. A:opportunity to, you know, we have our problems and we're like under them and
Dr. A:we're kind of wet blanketed by them and it's hard to see our way out of them.
Dr. A:And it's hard to get our mental, wetware to, to jump out of the rut.
Dr. A:But with myths and being able to look at these stories as human experiences,
Dr. A:we get to look at it from the top down.
Dr. A:We don't look at the problem from underneath.
Dr. A:We get to say, oh, let's look at the universal aspect of it.
Dr. A:Let's look at the myth.
Dr. A:How can we look at this myth and understand this narrative and how my story
Dr. A:parallels almost exactly, or pieces of it.
Dr. A:We even just take pieces of it.
Dr. A:So it's really, it's, I have to say, I don't use this word
Dr. A:very often, but it's magical.
Dr. A:It really is magical, and I love it.
Dr. A:I just love it.
Dr. A:I love everything about myth and story and in working in my different
Dr. A:programs, like in the 12 week.
Dr. A:Heroine's Journey, initial coaching launch thing.
Dr. A:we do a lot of that work.
Dr. A:We do a lot of that work We figure out h where we are exactly, at, we're at the
Dr. A:top of this mythic midlife mountain, I don't know about you, but it's kind of
Dr. A:that thing You're living your life and you're working hard, And you're doing
Dr. A:your thing and you're trudging along.
Dr. A:and you may not have hit it yet, but cuz you're pretty young, it's
Dr. A:like you're climbing a mountain,
Dr. A:? And it's a forested mountain and it's a
Dr. A:So you're paying attention to every footfall, you don't wanna
Dr. A:trip over a root or a stone or whatever, and the trail's narrow.
Dr. A:You're hiking up it with your family and your friends or your
Dr. A:colleagues or whatever, and then
Dr. A:One minute you're hiking the trail.
Dr. A:The next minute it's level and you take a step out and all of a sudden
Dr. A:it, you're blinded by the sun.
Dr. A:You're at the top of the mountain.
Dr. A:You're in the middle of a meadow.
Dr. A:Like you can't quite really see where you're supposed to
Dr. A:go and the trail disappears.
Dr. A:And that's that midlife thing of, is this it?
Dr. A:wow.
Dr. A:I thought I would have Been a different place by now.
Dr. A:I thought it would've done more of this by now.
Dr. A:I thought it would've accomplished more of that by now.
Dr. A:I thought it would feel different than it does right now.
Dr. A:Why does my life that felt so great last week feel like a too tight shoe this week?
Dr. A:You know why?
Dr. A:Why does everything seem sort of And I always used to say
Dr. A:to my friends, I said, yeah.
Dr. A:I was at the train station when my ship came in.
Dr. A:I missed it,
Boston:There's so much in here.
Boston:You're answering what I was going to ask, so I'm finding very much if I just hang
Boston:back, this is so well considered and so well thought out and so well constructed.
Boston:One thing I just want to catch is how profound it is that For the first time
Boston:in recorded human history, how often in the unfolding of time does humanity get
Boston:to explore a new archetypal chapter?
Boston:Archetypes are embedded.
Boston:But to your point, myth leaves clues to how to awaken.
Boston:How to individuate, or that Individuation happens at these moments in our unfolding.
Boston:What you're describing here that an entire cohort of women around the
Boston:world, this is a new contribution to human consciousness, to the collective.
Boston:And it is necessarily individual and it is part of the collective,
Boston:it is a cosmic connection point.
Boston:And the thing I want to ask about before we get too far away is the word regency.
Boston:use that word and it rings.
Boston:When you say regency, what are you talking about?
Dr. A:Briefly, as in antiquity and even up through the early sixties and
Dr. A:seventies, in, in, Women's liberation movements and in goddess movements and
Dr. A:goddess spirituality from antiquity til then women were considered to
Dr. A:be living in three life stages.
Dr. A:Maiden, mother, and crone.
Dr. A:And so what I researched and what I argued in my dissertation is that, as
Dr. A:Jane Ellen Harrison says, the goddesses reflect the lives of the women.
Dr. A:Not the women reflecting the lives of the goddesses.
Dr. A:So as we evolve, emerge into this new life stage, we necessarily have to be in four.
Dr. A:So I call them maiden.
Dr. A:Householder because I think it's more inclusive because
Dr. A:not all women have children.
Dr. A:Women live alternative lifestyles.
Dr. A:They have partners.
Dr. A:They focus on all kinds of things.
Dr. A:I just like it better.
Dr. A:I think it's more inclusive, householder and then regent and then wise
Dr. A:women, and I chose Regent because.
Dr. A:And of course, my dissertation chair, Chris Downing, made me choose bookends.
Dr. A:She said, you must choose dates.
Dr. A:So I said, all right, I'll choose 45 to 70.
Dr. A:And now I put a plus after the 70 because I think a woman self
Dr. A:designates when she leaves Regency.
Dr. A:But I.
Dr. A:I really felt that because this is the opportunity for women to recreate
Dr. A:themselves for themselves, to take decisions, to run their own life, to
Dr. A:be fully capable of having sovereignty over everything, their body, their
Dr. A:decisions, their lives, their path, their goals, their priorities.
Dr. A:I really thought regent was a good word because some other scholars who've come
Dr. A:before me, of course, whose shoulders I stood on to write my dissertation, liked
Dr. A:the word queen for this stage, cuz I'm not the first one really to talk about this.
Dr. A:Four stages of lives has been being kicked around since the early sixties
Dr. A:by different scholars and academics.
Dr. A:I don't like Queen because to me, I like Queen, it's okay, but for
Dr. A:me, I don't feel like a queen.
Dr. A:I don't have servants.
Dr. A:I don't have unending supplies of money.
Dr. A:I don't have a treasury that I can dip into.
Dr. A:I don't get to travel wherever I want.
Dr. A:I don't have the freedom from, from worry about anything.
Dr. A:I'm living a life.
Dr. A:I'm actually in there, after the Ecstasy baby, the laundry, as Ram
Dr. A:Dass said, you know, To me, queen is really set aside and a specialized
Dr. A:sort of pampered sort of image.
Dr. A:To me, it's a, it's an image that implies a certain level of wealth.
Boston:And it's removed from the day.
Boston:Daily life.
Boston:the rules don't apply the same way to a queen or a king or a prince.
Boston:It's royalty and it's symbolic in a different way.
Boston:So Regent allows for this inner experience of sovereignty
Dr. A:And the regent traditionally in, if we're gonna go to
Dr. A:traditional, o e d, definitions.
Dr. A:A regent is someone who holds the ruling space for someone who's not old enough.
Dr. A:like the prince is too young to rule, or the princess is too young to rule.
Dr. A:So the regent rules until they grow up.
Dr. A:And so to me, the regent woman holds her throne her seat of power,
Dr. A:I prefer to call it her seat of power for her wise woman to come.
Dr. A:so Regent women, I have this crazy thing that I wrote called the Regents Manifesto
Dr. A:and it it basically talks about what it means to be a regent woman and, it
Dr. A:just, Basically says that you're in the midst of perimenopause and menopause and
Dr. A:midlife, and that you acknowledge it and you know that you choose your way forward.
Dr. A:But a regent woman to me, desires, chooses to have sovereignty in
Dr. A:her life, or desires to have sovereignty, and chooses to be regent.
Dr. A:And her power isn't given to her by another authority, so to speak.
Dr. A:if we're talking about Regency and that Regent women can lead, they
Dr. A:can administrate, make decisions for herself, and plan her own, and,
Dr. A:achieve her own priorities and goals.
Dr. A:I just really liked the word.
Dr. A:I really thought it.
Dr. A:It felt like it embodied the potential of the life stage.
Boston:I have a question about that.
Boston:So something that occurred for me in listening to you talk about Regent
Boston:before you said holding the throne for the wise woman to, to take it.
Boston:I was thinking of it in a different direction.
Boston:Hold for the collective of women to hold space in the world for the
Boston:younger generation to be able to manage the challenges that we face.
Dr. A:Oh, I love that.
Boston:Like holding the human family here or the human civilization, which
Boston:has been the sort of province of this, honestly, this sort of overactive hero
Boston:who won't put down the hero's quest.
Boston:And that is such a restless energy.
Boston:But for the regents to be able to hold it, to have that in the
Boston:conversation just changes the way I think about the human family.
Dr. A:that's you.
Dr. A:You just changed the way I think of.
Dr. A:Regency, you just opened my eyes.
Dr. A:we need to do this more often.
Dr. A:Yeah, I think that's a fantastic idea.
Dr. A:and certainly this first generation of regent women is laying down all
Dr. A:of the metaphysical paths for the women who come behind to follow.
Dr. A:and not that you want anyone to follow your path, but certainly, thinking
Dr. A:of, of the myths and all the different fairytales of folk tales and symbology
Dr. A:and all the different beautiful things within archetypal psychology.
Dr. A:learning how to utilize them to make the most of Regency
Dr. A:is an example that I think.
Dr. A:is definitely one that's gonna be good for women to follow.
Dr. A:And the other thing about Regency, and I'm very passionate.
Dr. A:my, my passion is climate change because I think, it, it's over the top of
Dr. A:everything else that needs to, be fixed.
Boston:it's the only problem we've never faced before.
Boston:Everything else has a place somewhere in history, but climate change is
Boston:something that is actually existential that we don't have a pattern for.
Dr. A:Yeah, it's an apex predator that we've created.
Dr. A:And so climate change, and I find this very interesting, and I know from
Dr. A:your background that you'll get some hooks into what I'm saying is that, At
Dr. A:the turn of the 20th century, ? 1900.
Dr. A:Not only did women's lifespans begin to expand, it was the birth of psychology,
Dr. A:? It was the birth of the, the real
Dr. A:with Freud and Jung and all that came past them, came with them.
Dr. A:Tony Wolf, Marian Woodman, all the great female archetypal psychologists
Dr. A:and psychotherapists that began writing and working, and it was
Dr. A:the rise of the acknowledgement of, if you wanna call it the feminine.
Dr. A:There's the feminine and there's the masculine and archetypally we
Dr. A:all have both of them inside us.
Dr. A:It's not a gender thing.
Dr. A:I wanna just make that really clear.
Dr. A:But, that the archetypal feminine, if we look at the work of Jung, and if we look
Dr. A:at some, of the, The myths and the way the gods and the goddesses and their stories
Dr. A:came from the psyches of the people of those times, we see that the feminine is
Dr. A:so tied to the natural world, and these.
Dr. A:These ideas that are supposed to be from the feminine archetypal,
Dr. A:baseline, such as compassion, empathy, creativity, communitas
Dr. A:communication, are all the attributes that we need address climate change.
Dr. A:and I find it interesting that women are getting this entirely new life stage.
Dr. A:We're living into this entirely new life stage when it is archetypal
Dr. A:female energies that are so deeply tied to the natural world at a time
Dr. A:when we have to save the natural world.
Dr. A:And I think that's more than a synchronicity.
Boston:I just went to the myth of, Actaeon and Artemis,
Boston:where, Actaeon punishment.
Boston:he leaves the city of Athens and I he comes upon Diana Ba or Artemis bathing
Boston:in the pool, and she turns him into a stag and he's torn apart by his own dogs.
Boston:And so what this myth demonstrates to me is an anxiety about the natural world.
Boston:Like it's, you're safe inside the walls of Athens.
Boston:You're safe inside the confines of masculine civilization, even though
Boston:we're, you know, overseen by Athena, but still, like this is Apollo's
Boston:law that we're dealing with and.
Boston:So to step into the realm of the feminine is to risk being torn apart,
Boston:but that's also a dissolution of the ego cuz now you're in the realm of the
Boston:feminine where different rules apply, different structures are required, and
Boston:those structures are not even able to be perceived by the arch, well by the human,
Boston:through the masculine per perception.
Boston:Am I communicating?
Boston:Am I
Dr. A:yes.
Dr. A:No, I'm following you.
Dr. A:I'm
Boston:Oh, good.
Boston:I'm, I haven't really worked this before, so it's, yeah.
Boston:About making this up as they go along.
Boston:but this idea now that what's required that is not an accident.
Boston:That this cohort is coming up.
Boston:That there is this century where the feminine is taking hold.
Boston:A lot of my work is around the Wonder Woman archetype, which is a flavor of
Boston:the Artemis archetype, but that there was the, there were major inroads made
Boston:while the masculine was distracted by, not distracted, like World War
Boston:II is happening, and that created an inroad for a new, participation
Boston:of the feminine and the culture.
Boston:And so we're still, we're riding these waves.
Boston:But it seems to me, like you said, we're, we are now dealing with an
Boston:apex predator of our own creation.
Boston:I dunno if you watched Game of Thrones, but the white walkers,
Boston:we're dealing with this and we are running out of time, rapidly.
Boston:And the solution, I dunno if it's solution, but the ones we need to
Boston:be listening to are in this realm of the feminine, the goddesses, the
Boston:women who are living those stories.
Dr. A:Well, you
Boston:talking.
Dr. A:no, but it's interesting to see, when you look at.
Dr. A:like Forbes magazine, pretty much, you couldn't get more, more apollonian
Boston:True.
Dr. A:not, but they have these amazing, nods that they do to the feminine.
Dr. A:the world's 100 Most Powerful Women, or Forbes 50 over 50.
Dr. A:Which of course interests me.
Dr. A:And if you go and look at these on their website, and they change them every year.
Dr. A:They update them every year.
Dr. A:These women are in every sector, politics, culture, entertainment, business.
Dr. A:I don't know what else, healthcare, nonprofit,
Dr. A:philanthropy, whatever it is, and.
Dr. A:Our power and influence is growing.
Dr. A:But it's, I'm waiting for the geometric explosion because, and
Dr. A:this is the thing that's, that, that's has so much potential in it.
Dr. A:By 2030, in the US alone, there'll be over 87 million
Dr. A:women over 45-- in the US alone.
Dr. A:So I think to myself, what could 87 million women accomplish
Dr. A:if they worked together?
Dr. A:Like almost anything we could change politics in two election cycles.
Dr. A:We could get shit done.
Dr. A:We could fix stuff.
Dr. A:I don't know.
Dr. A:It's just what we don't realize as a people group is that because
Dr. A:we've been so busy during our householder years, we're like, Ooh,
Dr. A:? Is that we control over 85% of US
Dr. A:spending billions of dollars.
Dr. A:Everything from homes to the furniture, in the homes, to cars,
Dr. A:to vacations, to school supplies, to clothes, to groceries, to.
Dr. A:landscaping supplies to whatever it is, ? And and we have political power.
Dr. A:We have, because of our numbers, we have economic power, we have cultural
Dr. A:power, and we're growing into this.
Dr. A:This new life stage, and we have to learn how to grab this and use
Dr. A:this power for the greater good.
Boston:it's something you just said a moment ago is in two election
Boston:cycles, which you say it with that perspective, that's eight years.
Boston:A lot can be done, but eight years the way we think of it now.
Boston:Nobody's thinking more than a month ahead.
Boston:And for women in the stage of Regency who are now looking at such a large
Boston:percentage of life in the rear view mirror, being able to see what eight
Boston:years looks like and what's possible to be able to coordinate resources and goals
Boston:on that type of scale, which is something our, our government can't think, pa
Boston:can't think more than two years ahead.
Boston:Just that perspective alone is that can change the game.
Dr. A:It can, and it's interesting because whether you wanna talk about
Dr. A:being red or being blue or being whatever.
Dr. A:or some purple, somewhere in between.
Dr. A:I don't know any woman who doesn't want her children or her family's
Dr. A:children, or her friend's children or her sister's children to grow up
Dr. A:with clean water, clean air, healthy food, good education, good healthcare.
Dr. A:Throw away political affiliation, I don't know any woman who would say, I don't care
Dr. A:if my sister's children and their children grow up in a climate ravaged world.
Dr. A:I've never heard anyone say that.
Boston:No.
Boston:No.
Dr. A:And so it comes down to the fact of, you have people like, David
Dr. A:Attenborough and Al Gore and all these people, and hundreds, thousands of people
Dr. A:ringing the bell, ringing the church bell, and the enemy is here and it is
Dr. A:us, The thing that's also difficult about it is it's like no matter how
Dr. A:much you and I recycle, no matter what kind of light bulbs we use, no matter
Dr. A:how much solar we have on our roof, individuals are not going to fix it.
Dr. A:It has to be large industrial, corporate mega change.
Boston:Yep.
Dr. A:And it has to happen.
Dr. A:Yes.
Dr. A:And it has to happen quickly.
Dr. A:And the only way that's gonna happen is for the people to insist that it happened.
Dr. A:Because in capitalism, money and profit is the driver, and it has its
Dr. A:own psyche and its own persona and its own demands and its own needs.
Dr. A:And it doesn't lend itself to listening to the small person, so
Dr. A:it's an interesting situation and I think archetypally mythologically.
Dr. A:It's gonna be very interesting to see how this plays out.
Dr. A:It's gonna be very interesting because unfortunately, for a couple
Dr. A:of conferences that I presented at a few years ago, I wrote and presented
Dr. A:on climate change cause I thought people really needed to know a lot of
Dr. A:pe Nobody wants to read those books.
Dr. A:It's not a fun read.
Dr. A:what life on Earth will be like if the temperature rises four
Dr. A:degrees and where you'll be able to survive, Buy land in Nova Scotia.
Boston:I'm making a note.
Dr. A:yeah.
Dr. A:But, just to talk about it and say, this is real.
Dr. A:And.
Dr. A:This is something that we don't wanna wake up one day and be, oops.
Dr. A:Oops.
Dr. A:Oh, I'll be dead soon.
Dr. A:It won't affect me.
Boston:And that piece, it won't affect me you said you have Boomerang children?
Boston:Yes.
Boston:So you're connected to the future of your children.
Boston:I don't have children.
Boston:It's my nieces and my nephews and I look at the world that
Boston:they're going to grow up in.
Boston:It's thinking now I'm halfway through, I, and
Boston:It is highly unlikely that it will not get pretty twisted during my lifetime.
Boston:During our lifetime.
Boston:I don't know that I'm a huge optimist in terms of what's gonna
Boston:happen in the next 20 years.
Boston:So it becomes about really riding this ship to get through the choppy
Boston:waters of time so that we have a civilization on the other side.
Boston:we've got some Mad Max stuff ahead if we don't.
Dr. A:Yep.
Dr. A:Absolutely.
Dr. A:it's like trying to course correct on an enormous aircraft carrier.
Boston:I like that analogy
Dr. A:It's like you can't do it in one second and the systems that we're working
Dr. A:with or trying to change are so enormous.
Dr. A:So yes, I think it's gonna get wild and wooly.
Dr. A:In the next 20 years because the carbon's already up there.
Dr. A:It's already there.
Dr. A:We're gonna hit two degrees, or close to two degrees if we don't, batten
Dr. A:down the hatches hard and soon.
Dr. A:yeah, and look at, just in the last year, the flooding, the tornadoes, the
Dr. A:blizzards, This winter in California, this, I've lived here for 29 years.
Dr. A:This is the wettest, coldest winter we've had.
Dr. A:Now, okay, maybe that's not hotter, but weather is not climate.
Dr. A:People have to remember weather, it's not climate.
Dr. A:And then in the summer, it used to get cold by Halloween.
Dr. A:And we were outside swimming past Thanksgiving.
Dr. A:we were having 90 degree weather in November, so things are
Dr. A:changing and it's in geologic time.
Dr. A:They're changing very fast.
Boston:I'm back in the Artemis myth again what this actually looks like
Boston:when patriarchal mentality steps into.
Boston:the space of the, archetypal feminine, but which is the realm of
Boston:weather wildness and that this is what it looks like to be torn apart.
Boston:That this is how that goes.
Boston:the, this is the stags are.
Boston:Are the weather, that's what's happening.
Boston:what are some of your insights into how we might move forward?
Boston:And I, I'm gonna pull myself out of this, how women in Regency
Boston:might adapt to this time.
Dr. A:I think it, to start with, I think it's a put on your own
Dr. A:oxygen mask first, because, I.
Dr. A:Now granted there are some women that sail through this perimenopause menopause thing
Dr. A:and have very few indicators, very little trouble, have just sail right through it.
Dr. A:And that's fantastic.
Dr. A:But that's not, I would say that's maybe 25% maybe.
Dr. A:Of women and then there's, and there are differing degrees of difficulty with it.
Dr. A:Some women have more difficulty with the physical, some women have more
Dr. A:difficulty with the psychological, and it's not like one happens and
Dr. A:then the other starts, they overlap.
Dr. A:And they spiraled together.
Dr. A:And the sure tapestry of your life begins to unweave.
Dr. A:And even though the threads are unwoven here on this side, something new is being
Dr. A:woven, but in the middle, you're living in the tension of everything you knew,
Dr. A:believed and thought was going to be the way it was forever is falling apart.
Dr. A:And there's some kind of liminal space that you're in, in terms
Dr. A:of what kind of rite of passage transformation is gonna happen.
Dr. A:I think that as women go through these changes and they come to look at.
Dr. A:The difference between growing and living into the next cycle, into the
Dr. A:next age of being human, maybe giving less focus to the patriarchal ideals
Dr. A:of what a woman should be or should look like, or should act like or should
Dr. A:be like, and women start getting to that point where a lot of my clients
Dr. A:say at 50, you know, I'll, I don't.
Dr. A:Give a blank what anybody thinks about me anymore.
Dr. A:I realize what a waste of time that was, and once they start to get a little
Dr. A:bit more surefooted as to who they are now, ? Then they can turn around and say,
Dr. A:okay, and this is what I say to them.
Dr. A:What are you passionate about?
Dr. A:What is it?
Dr. A:Is it climate?
Dr. A:Is it healthcare?
Dr. A:Is it banking regulation, is it politics?
Dr. A:some women decide to get active in their communities.
Dr. A:Some women start thinking about legacy, which is huge in relationship
Dr. A:to climate change, Legacy for your family, legacy for your community,
Dr. A:legacy for your nation, for the planet.
Dr. A:Other women think you know about, oh gee, what can I do to serve, about service?
Dr. A:a lot of women actually, coming outta their household years then decide to
Dr. A:go into politics, which where if you look at the wave we had in 2016 of
Dr. A:women being elected, They were all, I think most of them were over 40.
Dr. A:so I think for women to get sure footing and then decide, okay, where can I help?
Dr. A:What's important to me?
Dr. A:And for some women it may just be that they're like, you know what, I'm done.
Dr. A:I just wanna play with my grandkids and bake cookies and work in my garden.
Dr. A:And that's their life.
Dr. A:And they have the absolute right to choose that.
Dr. A:and I have no judgment whatsoever, but I generally find that women at this life
Dr. A:stage, when they get a little bit of a sure footing, then take a look around
Dr. A:and decide what it is they wanna do.
Dr. A:And even if it's, even if what you do is be a good citizen and you
Dr. A:know you're doing all the right things and vote, oh, dear God, vote.
Dr. A:Vote for the people who are gonna, in my opinion, work to solve the problems.
Boston:How can people find you?
Boston:How can they work with you?
Boston:What does it look like to connect with you right now?
Dr. A:it's pretty easy.
Dr. A:You can go to my website, which is, if you can remember how to spell it.
Boston:I'll have it in the sh I'll have it in the show notes.
Dr. A:Okay, so it's dr andrea slominski dot com, drandreaslominski.com.
Dr. A:If you can't remember that, you can just look up Dr.
Dr. A:A Women's midlife coach.
Dr. A:I'll come right up on the Google.
Dr. A:it cracks me up the Google, it sounds like my grandmother.
Dr. A:I do one-on-one coaching.
Dr. A:I offer classes, a nine week class on the triple transformation and the seven
Dr. A:realms of change that women go through.
Dr. A:during regency.
Dr. A:Basically you're changing body, you're changing self-image, you're changing
Dr. A:feelings, you're changing needs.
Dr. A:you're changing goals.
Dr. A:You're changing priorities.
Dr. A:it's a group class and so we go through and work through
Dr. A:one of those realms each week.
Dr. A:And then, I'm actually having a great time right now teaching an
Dr. A:eight week deep dive, as a book study into women who run with the wolves.
Dr. A:I'll be offering that probably every eight weeks, once I get through one cycle.
Dr. A:I'll start it again.
Dr. A:You can find me on Meetup through finding female friends.
Dr. A:Ov greater is the greater than symbol 50, finding female friends greater than 50.
Dr. A:I offer little mini, intro workshops there.
Dr. A:But basically the best way to get in touch with me is just to hop on my website.
Dr. A:You can send me an email you signed up for my email list.
Dr. A:And that way I'll send you the newsletter and you'll know what's
Dr. A:coming up and what's going on.
Dr. A:I'm on different podcasts and blogs.
Dr. A:Facebook, Instagram.
Dr. A:I'm on LinkedIn, YouTube, different, YouTube has some of my, women's
Dr. A:Wisdom Village from the Covid, period.
Dr. A:Some of those videos.
Dr. A:yeah, I'm pretty much everywhere, like everybody these days.
Boston:Great.
Boston:and I'll be sure to include all of the links that you've mentioned,
Boston:will be in the show notes.
Boston:So anybody who wants to work with you can start there and go
Boston:into the wide world of your work.
Boston:Dr.
Boston:A thank you so much for joining me today.
Boston:This has been an inspiring, exciting conversation.
Boston:it's rare that something really new comes along and blows my mind.
Boston:And your work in this area, this idea of a cohort of women, a cohort of humanity,
Boston:bringing something new to the collective
Dr. A:Just in time
Boston:just in time.
Boston:That's today's show, folks.
Boston:Thank you again to my guest, Dr.
Boston:Andrea Slim Minsky, and thank you for listening.
Boston:To learn more about DR a's upcoming courses and offerings,
Boston:check out this episode's show notes for a link to her site.
Boston:You can find them at mythicpodcast.com.
Boston:That's also where you can find more episodes and mythic resources
Boston:and sign up for the newsletter.
Boston:Speaking of which, I'll be using that newsletter to share details about upcoming
Boston:free webinars where you can dive deeper into myth and personal development and
Boston:meet others who share your interests.
Boston:So if you want those deets, please subscribe.
Boston:And if you like the show, please share it with a friend and leave a
Boston:review wherever you get your podcasts.
Boston:I appreciate you and appreciate your support.
