Episode 13 - Leaning into Your Luteal Phase | Harnessing the Female Cycle and Learning to Live in Flow with Eleshia Harris and Mairi Taylor - Part 5 of 6

     

“Just like puberty, menopause is a completely natural process and transformation that we will be going through.” 
- Mairi Taylor -

Have you ever felt so sensitive that even the smallest thing triggered a sudden shift in your mood? Perhaps you find that you sometimes completely lack motivation, even though you’re usually a super-motivated, productive person? 

If this is the case, it could be that you’re reaching the last part of your cycle- the luteal phase. This happens after ovulation between the time when your body is preparing for a potential pregnancy and then when you move towards menstruation. It’s also completely normal to feel tired, weak, or more emotional than usual as this is when PMS (premenstrual syndrome) happens. 

In this fifth part of the series ‘Harnessing Your Female Cycle and Learning to Live in Flow’, Eleshia and Mairi talk about this last phase in the female cycle which is the luteal phase. 

They discuss the two phases of the luteal cycle, pregnancy, handling our energy shifts through the month, how to get our bodies and minds back in balance, and how we can use this time to our best advantage. They’ll also be touching on a topic that remains relatively taboo yet it’s something that every single woman experiences- the menopause. 

By tracking our menstrual cycle and making the best of each phase, we can get more educated, protect our overall health, optimise our productivity and even rewrite our menopause stories. 

Remember that there are tons of ways to make the best of every phase, and the whole idea is to become more educated and enjoy each phase of our cycles like never before.

As an added treat, I'd like to share with you the ebook: Harnessing the Female Cycle and Learning to Live in Flow, an interactive resource that helps break down the female cycle and learning to live with it.

If you haven’t listened to the previous episodes, make sure to go back and listen to all parts of this series and subscribe to The Eleshia Show. Enjoy!

Eleshia’s Essentials:

• The luteal phase is a great time to evaluate how you've been feeling throughout the month.   

• Listening to our body is important if we don't want to be depleted.

We also learned so many valuable lessons from our guest Mairi Taylor:

• You know you’re over-committing when you feel your boundaries are being pushed, overridden, or aren't met. You also have the tendency to become undernourished because you're not looking after yourselves nutritionally.

• We influence our hormones by everything we consume whether that's our food, our thoughts, or the people we're around.

• If you've got nothing left for the people who should be getting the best of you, that then leads to an imbalance. 

 About Mairi:

Mairi Taylor is an educated Home Economist, ex HR Manager, retired fitness professional, Menopause Rockstar, Women’s Wellbeing Guide, juice therapist, cacao medicine carrier, aromatherapist, and essential oil enthusiast. She walks with women to empower them to rewrite their menopause story and come home to themselves - by honouring, loving, and fully accepting the woman they are now.

 Connect with Mairi:

• Website
• Instagram
• Facebook

About the Show:

The Eleshia Show is an exciting new podcast that helps empower female business owners to put their well-being first whilst building their businesses. Tune in every Wednesday as my inspiring guests and I discuss strategies, share stories and experiences and dive into how you can build your business whilst trying to navigate real life. The host, Eleshia Harris is here and ready to share her decades of project management and wellness experience to help you start saying ‘Yes!’ to your business and life.

Show Transcript:

Intro: Hi, I'm Eleshia Harris and I am your host of The Eleisha Show. I am also the founder of eleshialifestyle.com, and I'm so excited that you're here with me and I am here with you. I'm also really appreciative. Each week, I'll be sharing strategies and stories and insights to help you enhance your wellbeing and to build your business while still navigating life. 

Because sometimes we often try and separate the two, and let's face it, if you are not well, you have no business. So let's try and work with these two things combined because we can, to enhance your lifestyle. Again, I'm really excited to have you here. I have wanted to put together a podcast for over two years, and so here I am ready to share. Let's get into this week's episode.

Eleshia: This is not the time to ignore the warning signs, ladies. This is the time to listen to the body and start to nurture it. In this episode of the Harnessing the Female Cycle and Learning to Live in Flow Series, Mairi and I are going to give you more tips and more strategies that you can implement into your life to help you in this phase of your cycle.  I'm so happy that we have had the chance to be with you over the last five weeks to help you along your journey to success. Let's just get straight into this episode because it has so much information for you. I know I say every week, but we have really done our best to pack in as much as we can so enjoy. 

Hello hello, Mairi and I are back to discuss the luteal phase. I'm excited about this one. I said that last time. 

Mairi: As we now know, it's your catch phrase. 

Eleshia: It is. I'm excited about everything. I'm always excited, I can't help that. But yes, we're going to go straight into the luteal phrase and how we can use it to our best..

Mairi: Advantage.

Eleshia: Advantage, yes.

Mairi: Because for a lot of women, this is now where the rubber hits the road, and it feels like everything's fallen off the bus. Unfortunately for quite a few women, this is now their two weeks walking hell on earth leading up to the bleed. Obviously, we want to support as many women as we can to ensure that they don't lose two weeks of the month. 

And the other interesting thing for me like anything, whether it's pelvic floor dysfunction or postnatal mummers wetting themselves and thinking that's normal, it's because it's now become common. When we are normalizing it and thinking, just go with it.

Again, because we've been talking about all the energy shifts through the month, we are meant to have a little bit of different energy. Yes, there might be a little bit of cramping and a little bit of discomfort, but not for two weeks of the month. Not for two weeks where you are looking at yourself from the outside and thinking who is this woman, and your partner and your kids are like, "This ain't my mommy."

Let's dive in and have a look because again, you could almost say there are two phases to the luteal phase.  We spoke about ovulation in our last podcast, which is when we're in that juicy lover phase.  We are in our most seductive, everything's gorgeous, we're all about the devoted listening and being in touch with our senses and it's like that high summer.

Again, with the caveat as we said before, for most women, and this is really when we're attracting the birds to the bees. The female body is getting ready for impregnation, if that is what's going to happen. If the little sperm is healthy enough because whilst we're not talking about this here,  there are huge concerns around male fertility.

Eleshia: I touched upon that in a previous episode, so thank you again for saying that because  we don't say that enough.  Anytime there's a problem, it's always looking at the woman first.

Mairi: Yes.   

Eleshia: As Mairi just said that we need to look at both parties. 

Mairi: Absolutely. As they say, we need healthy swimmers. 

Eleshia: Yes we do.

Mairi: Vaginal lubrication needs to be right because it's that which helps. It's almost like the little lanes that sperms swim up, but yes, they are huge concerns about male fertility.

We're seeing a young man showing testosterone levels of 80-year-olds. 

Eleshia: Wow. 

Mairi: Yes, we're not in a good place there so definitely it's about both parties.  As we have spoken ovulation, we start to get that switch over now where we're still going to have some estrogen hanging around, but we're going to start seeing that switch over because for me and my little simplistic brain, and obviously, people can go off and deep dive, and we can signpost you. We really want to run an energetics here, but the estrogen gets you pregnant, progesterone keeps you pregnant. 

So again, when I've been working with a lot of women,  there are concerns around fertility or they get pregnant and then, unfortunately, as we know, maybe can't keep the pregnancy. Always, always as well for me, it's an invitation to have your progesterone levels looked up, as well as everything else. As  I say, the body's getting ready to thicken the lining, and the progesterone is to keep that uterine lining intact.

So as I say, the estrogen levels will keep rising initially, and then towards the end of the cycle, if the egg hasn't been fertilized, then the corpus luteum gets reabsorbed into the body. Progesterone production comes to a halt and we then shred, and start that whole cycle again.  

So again, through the cycle post-ovulation, we still may have that high energy. Using one of the models that I work with, we've very much come into the mother phase energetically. This is like the late summer,  these are still these lazy hazy days of summer. But yes, exactly or we're maybe a little bit of a rhythm and rhyme. 

They have that hot summer, and now they're just chilling out a little bit more, and it's that really stepping into the earth energy. Because obviously, at this phase in the cycle, if we had made that connection, if that's what we were looking for, then we will be starting to nourish and nurture the birth.

Obviously, we're talking about birthing a baby, but women birth all kinds of things all the time. You've birthed this most amazing podcast, so you've gone through all the different phases of your ovulation while you rest to get things done. You love being in your beautiful imagery that you'd been put out. You could have seen as the ovulation phase, where you're attracting everyone in with that enigmatic smile and using all your sensuality. 

And then we can hear in the podcast how you're really listening and having those conversations. And then there'll be an element of the second phase of the luteal cycle where we very much moving to what we call our queen energy, and we don't take any BS anymore. 

That is very much about what's the system, what's the procedure, what needs to be in place, et cetera.  As I say, initially now we're in that sort of really encouraging area, and we're very much in what we call devoted, acceptance , that real love, that mother love. Obviously with the caveat that not everybody had a mother who showed that unconditional love, but we're in that unconditional loving phase.

So this is all about attention and comfort can be key. As we move on, we may look at nesting, how many women here can hands up where all of a sudden it's like all the Tupperware needs to get organized?

Eleshia:  Isn't it? Yes.

Mairi:  All of a sudden the things that peed us off, but if we're here, if we hang around in this mother phase, then as I say, unconditional love, unconditional acceptance. So really good time to again, have some of those conversations because you're going to be much more receptive to listening from a place of love rather than problem-solving and pushing and pushing through. 

If we think about that from a business perspective, how would you harness that caring, nurturing, unconditionally loving patient element in a business project? 

Eleshia: I would say this is the time for you to really focus on doing the things that maybe you have put aside. So really, as you said, honing in and I liked what you said about being the queen as well because you can still be a queen and be nurturing.

 So for me, I would say, this is the time to get your decluttering done from a business perspective as well.  Put you in your systems in place, making sure your files and everything is in place on your laptop or wherever it is all now systemized. 

This is a time for you to do your accounts because you have that headspace to do that.  A lot of the time we tend to try and leave the accounts far, far, far away. If you really hone into this time now, then you can get on top of that. So I say to my clients, get your accounts done now.

Another thing that I say is wrap up your projects now, get to a place where you're like, okay, this, this, and this can be done to close those projects out. Going back to what we said over the previous weeks,  we've started, we've scoped out the projects, we've implemented them, and now you've got the time to actually closing down, and do your lessons learned.

It's now thinking about the lessons that you've learned over time, and what are you going to take into the next project or into the next month. That's one of the things, pay your bills.

Mairi: Absolutely, and remember as well, if we think we've got that late summer going into autumn, autumn is the season of letting go. So we've also got that late summer of harvesting, and again, depending on what people's businesses are, all those contacts you've met while you're networking. Now is a good time to be doing the follow-up. 

Eleshia: Yes. 

Mairi:  You've done that some magnetism in the ovulatory phase, if that's where your energy is because as we discussed, some people wouldn't. might not be there, but then we come into this late summer phase and now it's like sitting around the fire, having the conversations, building the relationships, and then like you say, we move into autumn and think about coming in a little bit.

Doing all that great review work, but also, let's do the PDCA. We're not in the action phase. We're not in the planning, we're in the checking. What was working well, what wasn't? Almost like getting everything cleared up, ready to go back into winter, renourish, replenish, recycle back into spring.

Eleshia: Yes. Yes, I love the way you put that. And then also, looking not just in a business perspective, but looking at personal evaluation, this is a great time to evaluate how you've been feeling throughout the month.   

Mairi: If we think we've got that late summer at the first half of the cycle, and then let's say we've got the autumn in that last week before menstruation. Just to put some timelines on it but the caveat, has always been that everybody's will, some of us might have long autumn, some of us might have a short autumn but it's the queen who really comes into play in the autumn phase, and you've already made the point. 

We want the graceful queen.  We do not want the evil stepmother or the one with the horns. 

Again, that's all about honoring the cycle. Nourishing and nurturing yourself all the way through, because in this phase, the late part of the luteal phase, this is where we may start to feel disrespected, and that could be personally or that could be business ways. Quite often, because one of the roles of the queen is boundaries. She is who sets the boundaries? 

Eleshia: Yes. 

When we feel our boundaries are being pushed overridden or aren't met, and we're under nourished because we're not looking after ourselves nutritionally. We're over-committing. We haven't put enough fun and joy in our lives et cetera, et cetera. 

Mairi: All of a sudden, one sock on the bathroom floor and everyone's like two weeks ago, you weren't given a hoo-ha about socks on the bathroom floor, and now it has become like the marriage breaker. And again, probably the same as you, I've worked with a lot of women who this is their fate. Every month they want to divorce their husbands, or their partners, whoever/ whatever kind of relationship they're in.  . If anyone can hear that noise in the background, that's my dog rehydrating. That's a timely reminder for all of us to drink our water.

Eleshia: And pause.

Mairi:  Yes,  see everyone in this house walks a talk apart from me. 

Eleshia: I know you do, 100%. 

 Mairi: All joking aside, look at our pets. Look at animals, they sleep. What's the first thing a cat or a dog or a hamster or a rabbit does when they wake up?  They stretch. Go into that down dog, they go into that cat and that cow. We think a lot of them. Pilates moves in there, they came from animals. 

Eleshia: do group class on a Tuesday and Thursday, and we've been discussing stretching so yes, exactly. I love that.

Mairi: Back to the four phases, now that we've all hydrated, which for me, one of the simplest things any woman or man can do to get their bodies and their minds back in balance, is to stay hydrated.  I like to add a little bit of sea salt and lemon to my water,  just to keep my electrolytes balanced without having to go and buy Gatorade or anything. 

So we were saying, at this phase, we can start to feel disrespected. We can become the tyrannical evil stepmother, and that normally for me is the red flag that says I haven't looked after myself well enough in this month, because I am coming into my autumn depleted. 

Eleshia: I love the way you've just said that, and you've just articulated that because a lot of the time we don't actually look at   it being  what we've done. 

Mairi: Yes.

Eleshia:  It's everybody else is doing this and everybody else is doing that. Actually, if you take the time, as Mairi said, just to think about what's going on,  the majority of the time we can easily solve the issue  and then take those lessons into the next month.

Mairi: That's really important because how many women, and this is that time of the month particularly as you coming right up to menses,  you're ripping your bra off,  you're feeling bloated, you're feeling heavy. You got to go on that diet. You're going to go on that program. I'm going to start up, I'm going to sign up for this. Then you go into menses, then you don't do it. Then you feel like a failure, then you think you've got no willpower and then we're in a downward spiral, whereas exactly what you said. It's that time to go, okay what is going on here? We can't just blame our hormones because   we influence our hormones by everything we consume whether that's our food, our thoughts, the people we're around, et cetera, et cetera. And please, as always.

Eleshia:  Disclaimer.

Mairi: That I completely understand that some people do have genetic dispositions, so we're not taking away from anybody's medical or genetic  position.  But for most of us and including me, I'm the one that's at fault because I didn't do the water. I didn't do the rest-based living. I didn't manage my systems and procedures. I left everything to the last minute. I was spending too much time on Netflix and scrolling than actually sitting down and doing some good work.

I wasn't following up. I wasn't planning things in at the right time.  As you said, it's so important that we just go. It's a bit like as I say, a little bit of irritability but catch yourself and think, what is it that's really irritating you?  What's the root cause here, and if it is disrespect, you don't have the conversation now because you will rip somebody's head off. You just make a note. 

Eleshia: Yes, that's exactly what I was going to say. You write it down, and you come back. 

Mairi: Yes, or you can review it during menses and reflect on it. And then as your energy rises, we go back into that whole cycle again, and really start to look at things and what's going on.  If we feel our boundaries aren't being met, then we need to think about what are my boundaries? What's non-negotiable? Who do I give my love to? Who do I nurture and nourish? 

Because if you're trying to do it to everybody all of the time, then you can become depleted. If you are a mom  who's running a business whether if it's your own business or incorporate or wherever, and you are giving all of that love to your team and your customers, your partner and your kids aren't. There can be guilt coming, there can be a shame.

If you've got nothing left for actually the people who should be getting the best of you, that then leads to an imbalance. 

Eleshia: But equally, if you don't have enough for yourself  then you're also going to feel terrible. If you're not giving to yourself and then you feeling shit about it, then the partner and the family are going to get the brunt of that as well.

Mairi: Yes, so it all comes down to boundaries and it all comes down to being able to say what are your needs, what do you need? Which comes back to the scaffolding we talked about during menses. What are your needs, and do you actually need to have a conversation with your partner about what your needs are?

It's a little bit as well like going, don't be booking me or expect me to want to go to Alton towers. I live in the Midlands or wherever during this phase, because I don't have the energy and I'm not going to enjoy it.

Book it in. Here's the plan. Here's where I am. This is the time of the month when I am like fun, fun, fun, high energy. Let's do it. Let's put it all in there. We'll all enjoy it so much more. And again, that isn't a sign of weakness for you as a woman, it's let's harness on natural energies and our natural flow.

Eleshia: Exactly. So should we talk about food? 

Mairi: Yes. So the foods, this is where a lot of women can find that they've got sugar cravings.  When we're looking at food such as rich in B vitamins, green leafy vegetables come all the way through. We still want our cruciferous vegetables because we're going to come into menses, so we want to make sure everything's working properly.

 Foods rich in calcium and magnesium, so magnesium becomes a big help with any effects of fluid retention, which can make us really uncomfortable. High fiber foods help your liver and large intestine flush anything out. And again, we want our bowels to be working properly. 

Again, healthy natural sugars help with any dip in estrogen so get your roasted veggies on. Get your cacao on,   so I'm not anti-chocolate.  It's all about the quality. I like to make my own chocolate. I don't know. Can when we share a recipe? 

Eleshia: Yes, let's do it. 

Mairi: We can make our own chocolates so that we can enjoy that.  We want lots of complex carbs. One of the things I learned to do whilst I was still cycling was this is where I want to be leaning in. I want to be getting my cups on,  so I'm just going to enjoy it. 

So rather than denying it and then eating my way around the house, it's like, "Yes, I'm going to have some sweet potato fries. I'm going to do the brown rice.  I'm gonna have more porridge," and things like that. Keep everything balanced.  If you want to keep your blood sugars balanced, cinnamon. So smelling cinnamon oil or adding cinnamon to your porridge. I put it in my smoothies. I put it with my cacao. 

Eleshia: I practically use cinnamon every day. 

Mairi: Yes, absolutely. Cinnamon is also a good oil for boundaries. We want to be balancing our blood sugars and we want to be aware of the fact that again, energetically. So I just went, this is my cop time so I'm going to honor it. I'm going to honor it, I'm going to support my body, and then I know  there'll be another time of the month when I won't.

You might still need  some good high-energy foods in the first half of this period because you're still going to have the energy for strenuous exercise. Maybe the week leading up to your period, scaling back, back into your walking, your pilates, your yoga, your barre, shortening it down. It might also be a good time just to review your exercise. 

Eleshia: Exactly. Exactly, because again, like we've said in previous episodes, you need to listen to your body. You really do,  because you don't want to be depleted. You don't want to get to that stage where you're like, "Oh my goodness, I hate this type of exercise" because it could just be the phase that you're in.

Mairi: Definitely. For me, I could have saved myself a fortune, and have a personal training. If I have to put, what if I had a personal trainer who, when I said, I only want to do 30 minutes today, they're like, no  you're still going to do an hour. So I then will get to the point where I would be so depleted or so crying or so whatever, I just would then be like, I'm not coming because I was still prepared to pay for an hour session. But I knew I only have 30 minutes in me, and actually I would have then been inconsistent over the month rather  losing. 

So again, I think it's really important for women to acknowledge physically. It's not weakness. It's how we were designed because at this phase, we're getting ready again for a bleed. We'll be at that phase where there's maybe pregnancy.

We are meant to ebb and flow. It is how we were designed and the more we can honor it, the more we can lean in, the more we can replenish and nourish at the right times, the more, and I hate this term but I'm going to use it.

Go on, use it. 

We can smash it out in those other two weeks because you will come back so much stronger, so much more nourished. You will be flying. 

Eleshia: Yes. Yes. Woo. 

Mairi: And the last thing I'll say is this phase is also a huge red flag for your menopause. 

Eleshia: Let's talk about that. 

Mairi: Because if you are struggling at this phase, that is a red flag for how your menopause is going to be, because it's progesterone that we lose first, and I'm talking here about a natural, and I've said that with bunny ears. It comes with natural menopause.

Progesterone drops first. Progesterone is our balancing hormone. It's counteractive to that energetic, go get him, estrogen that we get in the first half of our cycle. And for many women, we have the situation where either we're  estrogen dominant and it's bullying or progesterone in this half, which is why we just don't get that beautiful balance and ease and grace, or progesterone is lazy. A little bit and I'm lazy. 

I would say for most women, and I may get shot down in flames by people who look at this and testing and all the rest of it, but most of us are probably estrogen dominant because of the way we live our lives, the products we put on our skins, the fact that we're constantly in superwoman.

So if you are really struggling with this time of the month, it's a real red flag to the fact that you are going to come into your perimenopause depleted. You're already struggling with your progesterone levels, and that is a concern because that's when we start to see women coming into their forties with more anxiety or feeling discombobulated or irritable or whatever.

So really important that we don't ignore this, and we look at the whole picture, the life cycle. I know you've got another episode, with another good friend yours looking at menopause belly fat, and also, it's about knowing your numbers because we have to get ourselves in check.

You cannot turn up at the start of the race on menopause depleted, under-nourished and like, do I have to now think about this? 

Eleshia: Exactly. Thank you so much for saying this because this is one of the reasons why Mairi and I said that we wanted to do this because it's for the education of one, your phases and how you can harness it. But also how we turn up to menopause because I   cannot emphasize enough, from my perspective, my mom, it just happened.

 It was not a great experience. I always remember that, and I always think to myself, I don't want that for myself. There are so many people that I know that say, "I don't want to think about it. I don't want to think about it. When it happens, it happens." But we can do things to prevent it from being difficult. 

Mairi: 100% and I am on a mission to help women rewrite their menopause stories.  That your history is not your destiny. Your mother's story is not yours to finish writing the chapter on. For me, I chose to go through it naturally. It was at times a white knuckle ride, but I can also pinpoint that I wasn't always walking my talk, but also, there were emotional stressors. There were external factors coming in. 

Eleshia: Yes. 

Mairi: But that was the route that I chose to go on. I'm not anti- women doing whatever they need to do, but what I am anti is people going it's out of my hands and out of my control, and not being informed consumers and not being educated on their own bodies and in denial. Because just like puberty, it is a completely natural process and transformation that we will be going through.

We both have stories to join us, as well  as our friendship.  For me, menopause is a privilege denied. Getting older as well is a privilege. Aging is a choice. And we're both here to say, if we come downstream, if we do the work,  you're so lucky because you've got those years in front of you and you're doing the work now that I was only picking up in my mid to late forties. One of the things that's really important is, if any lesson comes out of the last 12 months, because we're recording this at the time that we're coming out of, hopefully fingers crossed, global pandemic is that slowing down is quite actually good for us. 

Eleshia: Yes. So we have given you all so much to think about and consider, and just so much information over the last four weeks. I really hope that you've enjoyed these episodes and as a bonus, because Mairi and I are so passionate about it. We're going to come back and speak about ,  Mairi's menopause journey with you guys.

As I said, I can't emphasize it enough. It is part of our season, it is part of our life cycle. This is not something that is going to go away. If we get to the age,  as Mairi said, if we get there, we're going to have to go through it. So let's be a little bit more open and honest about the conversations that we need to have, because there will be somebody who's gone through it before you who may be able to help you along your journey. 

Mairi: Absolutely, and the other thing as well is which will be my final comment about it because I'll save it all  for our next podcast on, is most women now live on average 30 to 40 years post-menopause. That's a hell of a long time to think that your life is over, and that you have nothing to do,   which is why I show up as my alter ego, the Menopause Rockstar. Because I, for one, want to be rocking the next 30- 40 years of my life.

Eleshia: Yes. I'll be with you.   I need to make sure that I know exactly what I need to do now, and that is why, as you said, we've sat down and discussed this because I just feel that if I know the information I need to share it.

Mairi: Yes. 

Eleshia: I've got very good friends who have the expertise, so let's share and collaborate and help. We have covered all four phases. As I said, we will be back next week to discuss menopause, so hopefully you all tune in for that because I think it's really important, and maybe get the family to tune in as well. So they get to know. 

Mairi: Yes, I'm really looking forward to it. I'm so honored and so grateful that you've invited me on here and some of the podcasts that you've already shared, the work with Uma, that have a huge impact on menopause. Because if you're holding onto grief, that is going to have a huge impact and that's part of my story as well.  I was so thankful for that episode because it actually is so beautifully aligned with the work that we're doing.

Because if you are a woman who is holding on and struggling with grief, and your ain't going to be showing up as the graceful queen in the last phase of your cycle, and you may also find yourself that like you and Uma were showing, is we just go into superwoman to push through, to stop us feeling the emotions, to stop us leaning in. 

Every post, every podcast, it all comes back to all of these emotions, all of these feelings. Their showing up as well is  also interlinked. Again, if you're listening to this one because you thought all the hormones were interesting, I do invite you to go back and listen to all of the episodes,  the grief episode, because you and I were discussing offline. It doesn't just have to be grief over death of a loved one. It could be grieving a friendship. There so many things, but storing those emotions and not doing the work and releasing them sits in the body and causes the body to feel like it's in chronic stress all the time. When it's in chronic stress, it's not going to be making these beautiful hormones keep you vibrant and vital.

Eleshia: That's such a good point and a really nice way to end this conversation. Thank you so much for saying that, Mairi, because without getting emotional, you're right. I know my mom was holding onto a lot. 

Mairi: Yes. 

Eleshia: It's really important that we get to look at the relationship that we do have with grief, and try and work through that.

Mairi: Yes, definitely. 

Eleshia:  Alright until next week. We are signing off. Thank you so much for being here. As always, I really appreciate your knowledge and your wisdom and your expertise, Mairi. It's an honor to know you, and a pleasure to have you as my cohost for these,  we may as well say it was six weeks because it was six weeks. Here's to much more collaboration. 

Mairi: Absolutely. All the best everybody. And obviously, reach out if you've got questions or queries. If we don't know the answer, we can signpost you to so many amazing women who can.

Eleshia:  Yes. Brilliant. Okay then, bye-bye.

 

 Wow. We just finished part five of this series.  How much information have you received? How much information have you started to implement? I want to know,  tell us. Give us some feedback. I really hope you have enjoyed it.  Mairi and I loved having these open and honest conversations with you, and this is not the end.

If you really enjoyed these last five weeks where we've gone through all of the phases,  Mairi and I sit down next week to go through her menopause stories. Wow, I haven't got there yet. So this was great for me, and I know it's going to be great for you just to hear somebody's experience, if you haven't already, because there are so many things to consider and so many things that we can start to put in place now to help us to go through that next season of our lives with a little bit more ease.

So again, thank you so much for listening to these episodes.  If you know somebody who needs to hear this information,  please share this series with them.  We are on a mission to help and support as many women as we can to ensure that they are getting the best out of their lives. Take care.