Hey, friends, welcome back to Uplift For Her. Today's episode is one that feels really personal, because I've seen it certainly in the women in my life and honestly in myself. Perimenopause isn't just about hot flashes or hormones. We're talking about perimenopause and this whole season of life colliding at once, work pressures, kids growing and changing, maybe caring for aging parents trying to show up in relationships when you feel tired or foggy or not like yourself. I hear women say this all the time. I don't even feel like myself anymore. I don't even know who I am. If that's you. You are not alone. Today, I'm going to share with you five practical ways you can support yourself through perimenopause, not just in your body, but really more so in your work and relationships and in your brain. These are the things I talk about with patients at uplift for her, but they're also things that I think relate to all of us. I hope they give you both encouragement and some next steps you can try right away. So if you're feeling stretched thin, overwhelmed, disconnected, or just wondering what to do next, this episode is for you. So let's get started.
We are going to dive into a really fun episode today that I hope will resonate with a lot of you. It's certainly something that a lot of people ask about, and it was an episode that was specifically requested on social media a couple times. So you ask, and you shall receive. We are going to be talking about perimenopause, but from a little bit of a different angle today. I think oftentimes when we hear about perimenopause, we're hearing a lot about hormone replacement therapy, and it's so great. And if you have questions about hormone replacement therapy, please come see us here at uplift. For her, we have lots of providers here that can help you with hormone replacement therapy, and we also have a handful of different episodes on our website. Uplift for her, there's a resources page that divides all of our podcast episodes by topic. So if you're looking for hormone replacement therapy or perimenopause, there's a whole list of episodes there that you can binge while you're walking and hopefully learn what you want to learn. But today we're going to take a little bit of a different spin. One of the things that's so important to me, and one of the reasons that I built uplift for her, was to be able to treat a woman from her whole body and her whole self, if we're just treating hormones, are we really treating the whole person, and if we are just seeing a therapist, are we really treating the whole person? It's always both. It's always your body, your mind, your soul, your spirit, all of those go together to create our reality, to create our outcomes. So as much as I want to talk about hormone replacement therapy and perimenopause, it would be negligent to not talk about what else makes perimenopause so unique. And so we're going to talk about some of the life changes that happen alongside those physical changes that can really disrupt things.
Some of the things that I hear patients tell me the most, and that I have seen the most are this perfect storm of everything flying at you all at once. Maybe that's that your career is changing. You know, maybe your children are growing up and you're realizing, I've been a stay at home mom, and now maybe I want to do something different, and you get this identity shift. Or maybe you've been working all along and you're just looking for something new, something challenging, how to change it up for yourself. So oftentimes, career changes can happen parenting. Oftentimes in our perimenopausal and menopausal transition can really change. If you're having children who are growing to be teenagers or older and moving out of the house, that's a completely different approach to parenting and affects us as women a lot differently than having little, tiny kids at home.
Oftentimes our marriage is going through flux, right? This can really be true anytime of our lives, right? It can always be going through flux, but for most of us in perimenopause and menopause, maybe we've been married for a number of years and it's just starting to hit, maybe some new snags, maybe some new growth, maybe some good, some bad. But oftentimes there's some big things to figure out and getting to know your partner, maybe in a different way. Oftentimes, we are going through big personality changes ourselves, where you say, I don't know if I'm the same person that I was 20 years ago, and then that can have impact on your marriage. Where you say, like, I'm not married to the same person I was, and you're not married to the same person that you married. How do we navigate this? How do we figure out who I am and who we are as a unit and as a family. Oftentimes our parents are starting to age and go through different challenges and may require support from us in a different way. Huge changes, I think, the biggest changes of any time in our lives, even more than puberty or having babies, and we focus so much on those changes that we go through in earlier parts of our lives, but this is huge, and so what we're talking about today is, how do we support ourselves through this big transition? Now I will go back to hormone replacement therapy just for a minute, because we have to understand that some of these changes are made more difficult if our body isn't supporting us. So if we're also feeling really moving.
Be an emotional or irritable, it's going to be really difficult to navigate these changes and find your best relationship with your spouse if they are driving you absolutely bonkers every time they take a deep breath or take a bite of food. So that's where hormone replacement therapy can kind of level it down and make it feel like at least I'm approaching this time of my life from a place that feels like me, but still, there's still more to it than just hormone replacement therapy. I am going to talk a little bit about how we support our bodies through this transition for the same reason, if our bodies are exhausted, if we have tons of brain fog, if we're not supporting our bodies from a good lifestyle perspective, it's just going to make navigating these other big changes, really difficult, but I do want to spend a fair bit of time talking about, how do we really just cope with the changes that we have in our lives during this time? Before I dive into what to do, I do want to just lay out a couple more things in addition to what I already said about this transition, one of the big things we see is intimacy changes, and it's certainly one of the biggest comments that I received from patients is things aren't quite the same with my spouse as they used to be. This may be because we're busier than we were before. Maybe we don't know how to navigate it. Maybe it was fine. We were kind of keeping it together when our kids were little and it was busy enough that no one noticed. But now that we're starting to have a little more space as a couple, I don't know how to navigate it. Maybe our bodies are different. There's a lot of people who feel like they don't feel as attractive. Maybe they've gotten a little pooch or a little tummy, and just feel like, Ah, this is not something that I really want to share in an intimate way. And so definitely, that idea of intimacy can affect our lives, and it can be physical intimacy, and that relationship intimacy that can feel like, where are we? What just happened? Another really big issue that comes up is just the amount of what I call brain space. Our brains are so busy. They are so busy thinking about all the things, and it can feel really overwhelming. I think for a lot of people, this shows up maybe as symptoms that sound like ADHD. Certainly, there are some women who it is just ADHD, but sometimes it just feels like I cannot focus. I can't complete a task. I don't even know what I was doing, because my brain is just spinning a million miles a minute. So that amount of brain space can be really huge, and the more that we can recognize some of these things, then the more we can tackle it.
The last thing I'll say, although this could list could go on and on, the last thing that really affects us in this transition is living reactively. So we just feel like we're keeping everyone else alive, just barely keeping our heads above water. We're taking care of our kids needs. We're making sure that they have what they need for whatever sport they're involved in or whatever issue that they're dealing with in their lives at the time, we're focusing on our spouse and what do they need from me? Maybe we don't have a spouse and we're focusing on that dating aspect. Maybe we're focusing on our parents. Maybe we're serving the needs of our employer or our co workers. Maybe it's our neighbors, maybe it's our church community, but we just tend to live moment to moment, either putting out fires or addressing everyone else's needs.
And as you can imagine, that doesn't always feel very well. I know that some of you have gone through this because I've gone through it right along with you. This is not something that's unique. This is something that we're all struggling with, and definitely it's something that we can improve. So let's move on and talk about, okay, what do we actually do? What are the things that give us the biggest bang for our buck? So the number one thing I am going to go back to the physical health for just a second, because I can't not it's just who I am. But the first thing that I do want to say is fueling and resting your body. It's got to be both. It can't be just one if you're resting plenty, but you're not fueling, not enough. If you're fueling but not resting, not enough. Now let me just say I've been taking care of women for over a decade. This is the thing that I hear most consistently makes the difference is when women come back and say, I was able to fix my food. I'm eating a great breakfast. I'm eating a great lunch. I'm eating a great dinner, and what I don't hear from them is I've cut out all sugar now, occasionally I will, occasionally I will, and that's a great thing, if that's right for you, but I just don't want you to think that that's the only thing that I'm saying here. What I'm saying is, are you fueling your body? Are you giving your body what it needs to nourish itself? And this is something that we've talked about in detail on a few different episodes. So again, on our website, you can find these resources when we're talking about just food and fuel and nourishment, when we nourish our bodies, well, the body feels better. Our brains work better. I'm not hangry and craving sugar, and then my kid comes up and bugs me, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, leave me alone. Instead, I can feel good, and therefore I can approach the rest of the issues in my life from a place of feeling good, which is really, really what we want. So always thinking nourishment first.
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now back to the show. The second thing we want to do is rest. We want to really focus on sleep. And this is another one that I hear back from my patients, and it's so obvious, right? We know that our doctor doesn't need us to tell us to go to sleep, and yet sometimes we do, because I know I'm not the only one out there who's staying up too late, scrolling on social media or watching another Netflix episode or doing something that I know full well in my brain, gosh, I should just put this down and go to sleep. But we're using it to cope, right? We're using it to say, like, I just want to do nothing. I just want to, like, zone out for a minute. But if we are struggling, if we're struggling to show up in our lives how we want to, if we're feeling overwhelmed, if we're feeling like we can't get that brain space, one of the very first things we can do is just rest better. Can you get to sleep? Stay asleep. Protect that sleep. Make sure you're going to bed on time. Maybe you need to stop the early morning wake up routine for a little while so that you can get that rest in. I have a lot of patients who will wake up at five or six to go exercise, and that's so good. But maybe there's a time and a place. Maybe there's a time that you say, Okay, this is the season where I really focus on rest and recovery. And what I recommend doing, in that case, is telling yourself it's a science experiment. Our brains kind of rebel. They freak out if we tell them, like, hey, brain, I'm going to go to bed every night at 1030 and it's like, no, you're not. I'm not doing anything. Anyone says to go to bed at 1030 so one of the things we can do is say I'm going to do a little science experiment. Brain, we're going to see what it feels like to go to bed at 1030 for two weeks, just two weeks, and then We'll reevaluate. And sometimes that helps our inner rebel. A lot of us just want to rebel against convention and against what we're supposed to do. I'm not sure why, but it's a real thing, and it's there for many, many of us. So do that experiment of saying, How much does rest make a difference in your overall approach to showing up in life. So number one is fuel and then rest your body. The number two thing that I recommend doing to help us show up better and cope with these issues in our lives is to keep moving. A lot of us have movement tied to diet and movement tied to losing weight, and that might be okay for some seasons in life, but what we're talking about here is movements that support us in a way that's going to help us show up. So for example, there have been seasons in my life where yoga feels so good to me. It feels like I can move and I feel strong and I feel flexible, but it also helps me feel like afterwards, I'm better, ready to focus on the day and can deal with my my partner and my kids and my work better because I've had that sort of breathy Zen doubt movement. There are other times that strength training feels so good to me. This is usually when I'm dealing with really hard things and I start doubting myself, or I wonder if I can do this hard thing. And when you're doing strength training and you're lifting heavy, and you do this really hard thing, and your arms are shaking, but you're doing it anyway. For me, there's this thought, and it's kind of ridiculous, but for me, there's this thought that comes up in my brain of like, don't tell me what to do. I will do this hard thing, and you don't get to stop me. I get to do this hard thing, and then I get that heavy weight to where it needs to be, and I say, See, I told you you're not going to get in my way. I'm going to do this hard thing. So that's one of my coping skills, is sort of, if you tell me I can't, I'm going to show you that I can. And for me, if I'm getting to that point where I need that type of energy, strength training can be really beneficial. Sprinting can feel really good to me at that time again, when I'm feeling kind of weighed down and just having those doubts about, like, what am I even doing here? Like, how do I even cope with this? Where's the positivity here? Like, when things get really heavy and really hard, sometimes adding a good sprint. Number one, it gives you those good endorphins that your body is literally feeling a little bit more on fire. But that mental tie for me is really powerful to say I'm the only thing holding myself back here. If I want to change my life, I'm going to change my life. I'm going to go out and I'm going to get it Stop telling me that this is what my life has to look like, that it has to be overwhelming and that it has to be discouraging, like that sprint when you're just all out. Sprinting for me
can be huge.
Be beneficial to my brain, to say I'm in charge here. I'm going to create the life that I want to create, just like I'm going to run as fast as I want to run, so that that's for me. That's kind of how it shows up for me. And other people will have different types of movement. I think nature movement can be super beneficial getting out and just having the space and the freedom and getting that break from our phones, and hopefully going out in nature somewhere, that our phones don't work and that you have to put them in a pocket and not worry about them. Gosh, that's something we don't do enough of. And sometimes when we're feeling weighed down and like there's no mental space, and I don't know how to cope with how hard everything is, can we move our bodies in a way that just say, like, Oh, this feels like freedom. This feels like I'm not weighed down, even if you're not the fastest hiker, even if it's a five minute hike, even if it's a you know, it doesn't matter, because we're not talking about our longevity, we're not talking about our cardiovascular health, we're not talking about weight loss. We're just saying, what kind of movement can I do that supports the issues that I'm facing at that time.
I think too, if there's an issue that you're facing with a person in your family or in your life, you know maybe you're feeling lonely and you want to build greater friendships. Maybe you are struggling with a relationship with one of your children. Maybe you're struggling with a relationship with your spouse or not struggling, but just want to strengthen it. Can you use movement? Can you use movement to do that together? To say, Can we go on a walk together? There's something about moving while we're dealing with these issues that can have so much more of a productive outcome than sometimes sitting on the couch talking or talking on the phone or being in that same situation that you've been in a million times. Can you move your body? Can you clear your brain while you're talking to your spouse? Can you go on a walk where your kid can't be on their phone so you can have an uninterrupted time with your kid and just bond with them and find out how they're doing in school or find out how their relationship is going. You know, can you use movement in that way even? Can you get on the phone with them? Maybe they don't live right by you, but say, hey, go for a walk with me. You go around your neighborhood. I'm going to go around my neighborhood, and let's just talk. Can we just have a conversation? It hits differently sometimes than having a conversation while we're again, sitting in our car doing nothing, the body gets out of the way, the brain gets out of the way, and we get to really use movement to focus on that issue. So I've gone on and on, but number one, fuel and rest your body. Number two, use movement to feel better. If that's dancing, if that's dancing in your kitchen, there's no calorie count required, right? Just do some movement that feels better. I think sometimes as we age, we kind of forget what it feels like to move our bodies. And maybe there's a time that you're at home alone, that you just experiment, and you turn on one type of music, or you sway, or you rock your hips, or you you do whatever type of movement you did when you were younger, and it felt more comfortable. But can you explore that idea of moving your body and how it makes you feel energetically and emotionally? Now, the third thing, the rest of these three big things that I'm going to give you, big tips that I'm going to give you to help cope with life when life gets hard, specifically in perimenopause. But of course, these apply all the time, are going to be less of the body and more of how we actually encounter our lives. So number three is supporting our nervous system. You knew it was coming. You knew I was going to go here. Supporting our nervous system is just so key, because the temperature or the pace of our nervous system is intentionally there to change our brain's perception of life, right? So you've heard me talk about the nervous system, if you've listened to me before, I think of the nervous system as a cave woman. And if the cave woman feels like there's a danger out there, like a saber toothed Tiger, then she's going to go fight that tiger, right? So our nervous system is our fight or flight, and if we are encountering a lot of issues in life, then our fight or flight is automatically going to be revved up, because that's the equivalent of fighting a bunch of tigers. So if there's a bunch of tigers coming after us, over and over, we are going to view life through a heightened response. And when we are at a heightened response, we're going to see things as more dangerous. If you've been fighting Tigers all day, and you go back to your camp and you hear the wind blowing through the leaves, you're going to assume that's a tiger, not that it's the wind. That's the body's natural survival instinct. And if you've had things going wrong all around you, then the next thing that comes up is going to feel wrong. It's going to feel scary. It's going to feel like something bad is happening. So one of the things that we have to do when it feels like there's too much going on, our brains are too busy. There's too many hard things. I don't know how to deal with it. One of the things we have to do is we have to find deliberate space to come out of that thought process, to come out of fight or flight. Now I don't want you to over complicate this. I know that it's tempting when we're going through such difficult things, to say, Oh, easy for you to say, Mallory, like you don't know what's going on in my life. Really, there's no choice. There's no choice. You have to find a space that you can get out of fight or flight, even if it's for one minute. How you do this is completely up to you. It really doesn't matter if it feels like you came out of fight or flight.
Right then, well done. You. You made it mission accomplished. This can be done with grounding nature time standing with your feet on the grass or the Earth. This can be done with maybe talking to a friend. This can be done with taking some deep breaths meditation. This can be done with physical touch. For some people will really calm them down. Maybe you just need someone to hug you or hold you, and that helps you feel like things are coming down. It doesn't matter how you do it, if you need more tips to do it. I have many episodes on this and again on that. On our website, we have it all broken down. I will give you my best secrets. They are not secrets. I share them willingly, but you have to do something to get your body to come out of that fight or flight or or you're just going to keep going with this perpetual cycle of this feels like a danger. Feels stressful to me, so I'm going to approach it from a place of stress, which is going to make it feel more stressful, which is going to make me approach everything else from a place of stress, it will be ongoing and ongoing, and it does not feel good, and we don't have to live our lives that way. I know that if you are in a state of feeling overwhelmed, that it may feel like you're just stuck there and life is too hard, there are just some things that are too hard that I cannot get out of fight or flight, and I challenge that, I will say you deserve something different than that. It doesn't mean you have to completely ignore or suppress your problems, but you can find a moment where you say, but in this moment, I am out of fight or flight, and then you'll go back to your problems. But find those moments to get out of fight or flight.
Have you ever tried red light therapy at uplift for her, we are big fans, and we and I use it ourselves regularly. Red light therapy helps support energy healing, reduce inflammation and improve skin health, and there's more and more data to support that. One of my favorite at home options is the loom box, a powerful, clinical grade device that combines red light with near infrared light, so you're getting both surface level and deeper tissue support. It's easy to use and makes consistent red light therapy actually doable. One of the things that I love about the loom box is how easy it is and how compact it is, so you can grab it out really quickly, use it while you're in bed getting ready to go to sleep, and then put it away and not have to unpack a big, complicated device. I use it most nights as I'm going to bed, mostly just for relaxation. I find I feel very calm and wake up with good energy. So it is one of my favorite wellness add ons. If you're thinking about adding it to your wellness routine, we have a link in the show notes that will save you $250
off of a loom box. You can also find it on our favorite products page at uplift for her.com now back to the show the fourth step that I recommend is creating space. Now this can go along those same lines, but it's a little bit different. When I mentioned that idea of brain space, how often does our brain have a chance to just be I think of it as breathing like does our brain just have a chance to just breathe? I know that doesn't make any sense, but that's how it feels in my mind. So often, like I mentioned, we're living reactively, and we're living in everyone else's problems, and we're just saying, Okay, so for this problem, I'm now going to do this behavior. For this problem, I'm now going to do this practice. Instead of just having a moment where we say, can I even, like, think for a second, can I even process? Maybe I don't think, can I just not think for a minute? I see this show up, a lot of sleep disturbance where people can't turn their brains off before bed, or they can't, they'll wake up thinking about things and can't turn their brains off. The more we can find little, tiny sips of space throughout the day, the more that our brain can start to calm down. I think the bathroom is a great time to do this, because it's, it's usually we're alone, not always, but usually we're by ourselves. It's also something that we naturally do many times a day. Hopefully, if you're going to the bathroom, you should be going to this private space a few times a day at least. And being able just to say, brain, how are things going? I'm not going to worry about my to do list. I'm not going to set an intention. I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to take a breath and let my brain do whatever it wants to do. Stop lights are another great time to do this. This can be when we're at a stoplight, just to have that cue of, oh, there's a stoplight. Can I just turn off my music, turn off my podcast, turn off anything else, and just be in silence for a minute. For me, I find that when I really get revved up, when I'm really struggling, or things feel hard or overwhelming, I have to stop listening to things. Maybe I have to go on a social media fast. Maybe I have to turn off all the music and podcasts, any Marco Polo, you know, anything that's kind of coming up, I just need to drive in silence. And that can really help turn down the volume of my life, you know, make it feel like I can have this, this calming down. A lot of people say setting boundaries. Now I don't love the idea. I don't love the concept. No, let me say that differently. I don't love the phrase setting boundaries, because boundaries feels like fences. It feels like we are building these walls around ourselves. And I like the idea of living in safety. I.
But for these purposes, we do have to have these moments where we say, No one gets in. I'm setting a wall. I'm building a fence. You don't get in. Now, at some point, we want to take some of those boundaries down and say, I'm ready to go out. I'm ready to go make new friends, or I'm ready to go explore new things in my life, or see how I feel and who I really am, and like we want to get rid of some of those boundaries and move outside. But definitely having that idea of setting boundaries for yourself can be part of creating space of maybe you say no to that volunteer activity this time. Maybe you say no to that family dinner so that you can have maybe you don't go to your parents, but you stay with your little, small family, and just say, we just need a little space. We just need a little bit of quiet. Maybe you don't go on that trip. That could be fun, but, but maybe it's a little too much for you at that time. So give yourself permission to have space. Now, the second part of that is looking for joyful activities. Can you create space? But can you do something that's joyful? This is something, as a mama of young kids that can be really difficult for me, actually, because life is busy and your brain is constantly trying to live reactively. You're trying to solve problems. And so when your kids are like, Mom, will you play a game with me? You're like, Oh, of course, because I'm a good mom, I'll sit down, and then I don't give them a second thought, right? I'm sitting there, and then I'm kind of annoyed, because they keep wanting me to play this game, and I'm trying to solve life's problems in my brain. So if we can find that space and do something joyful for me, one of the most joyful things that I can do, if I can get my brain to do it, is to intentionally focus on my kids like I almost have to just stare at them and really just watch them and be mindful and notice what they're actually doing and what they're actually saying, and when I do that, they're actually very adorable and and that can be a really nice time to actually let that in. But so often I'm so busy, and my brain is so busy that I'm not even letting it register. I'm just thinking about, Oh, I needed to get them ready for bed, and they have school pictures tomorrow, and I need to pack their lunch, and I need to do these things that I don't even get to be present when I am present. So looking for those joyful moments. Maybe those joyful moments are something with a friend. Maybe they're by yourself, maybe they're with a spouse. Maybe they're with your children, or not with your children. Maybe going to work is your joyful moment? Maybe going shopping or just being by yourself at the grocery store. It doesn't matter what it is. But can you proactively find that joyful moment? And then the third part of that one is living proactively, finding some way to live proactively. We live so reactively, and when we live reactively, we're responding to everyone else's needs, we feel very disempowered, and that's very unsatisfying. It's one of the main reasons that we can feel unsatisfied or discontent in our lives is when we're not having a say in it, right? We're just saying I'm doing everything everyone else needs me to do. Now this doesn't mean that we have to to burn our lives down and move across the country. You can still do what you're doing. You can still live reactively. But what can you do to also live proactively. Can you take a night off? Can you go on a vacation? Can you plan something that hits a need differently than what you're used to? Anything proactively is going to help you feel a little more empowered and thus a little more satisfied because you chose it. You're creating this life instead of just living what the life everyone else is telling you to live all right. Fifth tip here, as we wrap up this last one, is thinking about your key relationships and prioritizing intimacy. And this can be physical intimacy or social intimacy, but it's something that I hear the most from people, is I'm lonely or I'm not connecting, and I think it often bothers us more than a lot of our physical symptoms, our physical symptoms can definitely get in the way of our intimacy, but But certainly, there's more at play here
for more talks on intimacy, again, that I have many episodes that we've gone over how to really improve your relationship with your spouse, so I won't get too much into those details, but I do think it's worth it. It's worth finding the time and the energy and the vulnerability to address intimacy in all of our relationships, and whether that's with your spouse, your children, your friends, your girlfriends, your family members. What does that look like for you to have a relationship that's meaningful? Does that mean a certain number of times of talking. Does that mean getting together a certain number of times a year for a partner? Maybe that means a certain type of physical touch, like maybe it's the hand on the lower back while one of you is washing dishes, or maybe it's a hug and a kiss before you part, or every time you greet. What are those things that would feel like that would feel close to me. I have someone in my life who I am close to. I think the same thing with our children. Our children need intimacy from us, and we can have intimacy from them, and so maybe that's that you increase the number of hugs you're giving them. I think over the last years, physical touch has decreased, probably because of it.
Exposure to media and social media, and we're all busy, and we're all separate. We're all kind of living separately on our devices, and we all need that touch, those hugs, just regular touch through the course of a day. So if you're looking for intimacy with your children, can you have that physical touch? Maybe an awkward hug, and they're saying, like, Mom, where's this coming from? Like, you don't usually do this, but do it anyway, you know, let that be for you and for them to have that type of touch. So as we think about intimacy, I know this may seem like a weird tip when what we're originally talking about is sort of the changes that come in life with perimenopause, but I think that lack of intimacy, or loss of intimacy, is one of the main things that we see. We also see it with friends, right? That maybe we've had friends through our lives and through busyness and through change and through moving, maybe we've lost some of our closest friends, and how do we build those relationships back? It's worth thinking about. How do we just pause and know what we want from a relationship? And that can really be a nice counterweight for all of the things that are happening in this life transition, like Wei mentioned, like marriage is weird and work is weird, and kids with Relationships are hard, or whatever it is that's that's adding up to feel kind of hard.
Can we counterbalance that with a really wonderful relationship? And you get to choose what kind of relationship? Maybe that's a relationship with a pet. Maybe it's meeting new people and volunteering places. Maybe it's going to those wine and paint nights that you meet someone and just sit and relax and and have that type of casual interaction. It doesn't matter, but I do think the idea of closeness in our lives is one of the things that is lacking that makes all of these other things seem so much harder is because we are living so lonely and so isolated sometimes. So I hope this has been helpful. Those are my top five tips. I hope that you will give me some feedback. I'd love to hear what works for you, what doesn't work for you. If you have anything that I left off the list that you would really prioritize when we're talking about this stage of life. I know that a lot of you are in this stage of life, and gosh, I wish us all well, really, but there's good things. There's so many good things in this stage of life. We get to feel empowered, and we get to not care so much about some of the little things that weigh us down when we're younger. So there's so many things that we get to do that can make this the very best time of life. Even in the midst of hard things happening, we can do that. We can live in a way that we can handle the hard things, but still feel like we're thriving, and I hope you do, and I'd love to hear from you if this episode was helpful to you. I hope you'll share it. I hope you'll comment on it or subscribe, whatever it is that you can do to give us a follow really helps us continue to provide this education for free to you and to people like you. So I hope you can take this and take it with you and find some benefit there. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. We are grateful for the incredible support from our sponsors and to all of you listening. We couldn't do this without you. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing on your favorite platform. You can find us on our website, uplift for her calm YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And if you found value here today, please share this episode with someone who would benefit from it. Leave us a comment or give us a review. It really helps us reach more listeners like you. Thank you for being part of our community. Stay tuned for our next episode. Lastly, this information is for educational purposes only and not intended to be medical advice.