June 28, 2023 • 41 mins
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:
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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
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Boston (00:00):
Hey there.
I'm so glad you've decidedto listen to this episode.
My guest today is Mythologistand depth psychologist, Dr.
Andrea Slominski.
And the conversation you areabout to hear is mind blowing.
Uh, at least it blew my mind.
Not only does Dr.
A present a new vision for womenat midlife, but she also draws on
(00:22):
some stats that point to an imminentsociological and psychological shift.
As women live longer than ever andcontrol more resources than at any
other time in human history now, no.
No more spoilers.
Here we go.
(00:42):
Hello, Andrea.
Welcome to the podcast.
I would love for you to introduceyourself to our listeners.
Dr. A (00:49):
Thank you for having me, Boston.
I'm really excited to be here.
We both have similar interestsand backgrounds, and that's
really exciting for me.
My name is actually Andrea MonisetSlominski, which is horrific
and nobody can remember them.
Nobody can spell them.
Nobody when they see them can pronouncethem, which is why I just go by Dr.
(01:10):
A, which, if your podcastpeople are looking for me.
I'm a woman's midlife coach.
I went back to school when I was 55, rightin the middle of my midlife shift and got
my master's and PhD and studied archetypaland depth psychology and mythology.
And my dissertation was focused on women'smidlife shift and women's mythology.
(01:32):
So from there, I defended my dissertationin the fall of 2019 and I'd been coaching
for about three years, and I rebrandedmy website and I rebuilt it and rebranded
my business and everything was terrific.
And then I launched it in January andCovid shut down the country in February,
Boston (01:52):
Ooh.
Dr. A (01:53):
Yeah.
you know what?
Everything's for the good.
I have a really big office.
I can fit about eight to 10 women inhere to do workshops and that kind
of thing, which was what I was doing.
And I was doing private coaching as well.
And the whole Covid thing justforced me to learn the online
methodology really quickly.
And so over the period of theCovid shutdown and those sorts
(02:16):
of things, I developed a programcalled the Women's Wisdom Village.
I offered over 40 free online gatheringsfor women to come together and take a
look at how myth and women's mythologyand ancient stories and fairytales
and folk tales can inform our livesand help us get through the difficult
times that we were living through.
(02:38):
it was great.
I was able to really learnthe digital thing and so now I
offer a lot of digital classes.
I still do one-on-onedistance coaching on Zoom.
I do one-on-one in person coaching nowin my office of course, because now
people are coming back together again.
So it's been a journey.
Boston (02:54):
It sounds like you've learned a lot both technically
and like forward and deeper.
What's an example of that?
how can we apply myth, how can women'smyth, myth in general-- to our current
situation and to navigating it.
Dr. A (03:09):
Because of course I work with women, I'm gonna talk about
women's lives, Myth, of course,as is applicable to everyone.
It's applicable to men and women andentire cultures and the world and the
cosmos, but I can't work with all of that.
It's interesting because women,when they go into the perimenopause
shift, and it's amazing how littleinformation there really is out there.
(03:29):
And how many of my clients either tellme, how much they didn't know, or that
they had to Google it because theythought they were ill, mentally ill,
broken, Like losing their mind, whatever,as they start to go into the shift.
Going into the perimenopause midlifemenopause shift, women go through
what I call a triple transformation.
They go through a physicaltransformation, which of course is
(03:51):
the perimenopause menopause shift, andit's pre-programmed into our bodies.
It's not a disease.
Okay.
Can it be difficult?
Yes.
That's a whole nother conversation.
But yes, it can be difficult.
So perimenopause, menopauseis the physical one.
Then there's the midlife shift,which is the psychological shift.
It's the shift within psyche that isalso pre-programmed into the human
(04:16):
experience of living a life We haveour childhood, or what I'd call maiden.
We have our householder years, ourteens and our twenties growing up.
And then we shift into what I callregency, which includes midlife.
And if we are the same personat 45 that we were at 20, then
we've skipped some growing.
(04:36):
and that's okay.
You can catch up, but the psychologicalshift is pre-programmed into our psyches,
into our souls, into our collectiveunconscious, just like the physical
one is, and then the two together, thephysical and the psychological shift
together combine to create what I considerto be a spiritual shift where women
(04:59):
reassess, who they are, what they wannado now, and, basically their meaning,
purpose, and belonging at this time.
and the thing that's really miraculousabout this, and I'll never get tired of
talking about this, is that in the year1900, white women, statistically were dead
by 51 and women of color were gone by 43.
(05:22):
Now, there have always been, since thetime of Plato, individual old women
or groups of old women that livedpast 80 to 90 to a hundred or in the
medieval fairytales, the witch at theedge of the forest that lived to 120.
Yes, but Boomers and late Boomers andall the women coming up behind us are the
(05:44):
first women in the history of humanityto live past menopause as a cohort.
It's never happened before.
It's never happened before.
Our lifespans have increasedwhite women by a third women of
color by double more than double.
And so now there are entire generationsof women living past 50, 52, 55,
(06:08):
whenever women died-- They never made itcompletely through the menopause shift.
They never made it to the new settle outof the hormonal profile, the new normal
right after the midlife and the menopauseand the triple shift and the seven realms.
So we're the first women to do it.
we're moving into this new lifestage, that's like another 30 years.
(06:31):
There's no maps, there's nomodels, there's no examples.
So we're creating it as we live intoit, and the opportunities for women
in this life stage are enormous.
And it's an opportunity to recreateourselves for ourselves after
spending in the householder years,say from 18 or 19 to say 45 or 50.
(06:55):
Tending our families, our friends,our colleagues, our aging parents, our
siblings, our careers, whatever it is,the household years are crazy busy.
we're developing our own homes.
We're developing our careers.
We're going out, we're learningabout ourselves and the world.
And rah, we're moving forwardand we're gonna achieve our goals
and doing whatever we're doing.
(07:16):
So by the time women get to 45 or50, a lot of them in their careers
unfortunately, still hit a glass ceiling.
Or they're seen as aging out of theircareers because if they're seen to be
looking older or if they're seen tobe having indicators of perimenopause
and menopause, it's oh, their value isdecreasing, which isn't true because we
(07:39):
have all of our life experience, all ofour career experience, our growing wisdom.
It's just a shift we're going through.
And basically the opportunity therein going through this is that at this
time if you had children, generallyyou have empty nest or you're about
to have empty nest unless you haveboomerang children, which I have.
That's okay.
(08:00):
I love them.
Everybody needs a little support.
California is really expensive.
so it's empty nest.
Maybe you hit a glassceiling at your career.
Maybe you decide you wannado something different.
Maybe you decide you wannamake changes in your life.
The triple shift works together inthe physiology and the psychology
of women to turn their focus fromoutside, back to themselves, back in.
(08:24):
to say, now it's my turn.
Okay, what do I wanna do now Where have,now that I've been tending everyone
else's garden for the last 25 years,It's about time to, to attend mine and
see, what do I wanna do for me now?
And our shifting hormonesbasically nudge us to do that.
Our shifting psyche nudges us to do that.
(08:45):
Our shifting spirituality or spiritualunderstanding of our meaning, purpose,
and belonging shift us to do that.
And it's, it's big and it canbe challenging and it can be, of
course there are losses in aging.
I'm not A complete Pollyanna.
of course we get older and we getcreaky and we could get sick and we
have problems and your body changes,your metabolism changes, your skin
(09:07):
changes, your outlook changes.
Yeah.
There are losses if you wanna call it.
That changes as we grow older.
Of course there are, but within eachwoman's capacity to recreate herself
in her circumstances, with what shehas, with what she can work with.
Some women choose to blow up theirlife completely and do something new.
(09:28):
And some women just choose to spintheir cocoon right where they are and
do their transformational work in place.
There's no right way to do it.
There's only individual ways tocross this universal rite of passage.
And to get back to the original question,which was how does myth help us do this?
All of these mythic stories that haveto do with women show us that we are
(09:52):
not the first women to go through this.
For example, if a woman ishaving difficulty, say with
empty nest Or difficulty with areunification relationship with
a child or a daughter, whatever.
The myth of Demeter and Persephoneis a chest of pearls of wisdom.
(10:13):
That myth shows us.
So much of the grief that women gothrough in the separation phase from
their children, or that I should say,some women go through, not all women, it's
not a universal experience, and it alsoshows us the need for individuation and
separation on the part of the daughter.
And then it shows us the need forreconciliation and the rebuilding
(10:36):
of a completely new relationship,which then ends up being a
dual goddess, mother and Kore.
Entire Elusynian Mystery foundation.
So that's one example.
there's the myth of Ariadne and Theseus.
If a woman has ever been disrespected,abandoned, left behind, lied to,
(10:57):
led astray, and I could just listthem and list them and list them.
When we look at these myths, not justfrom Greek, but Celtic, Hindu, African,
Native American, you name it, themythologies around the world are just
full of these stories, which are maps.
The stories are maps, and they've leftmile markers, and they've left symbols,
(11:20):
and they've left indicators, andthey've left all these little tidbits
like Hansel and Gretel with crumbsto follow, metaphorically through our
hard times and be able to see that.
Oh my gosh.
I'm not broken.
I'm having an experience that'sunique to me cuz it's my experience.
(11:41):
But I am writing one chapter inthis amazing human story of what it
means to be a woman and live a life.
And this is my chapter,this is my experience.
And so I found that more than anything,cracking open these ancient stories
that have these universal nuggets oftruth in them really gives people the
(12:05):
opportunity to, you know, we have ourproblems and we're like under them and
we're kind of wet blanketed by them andit's hard to see our way out of them.
And it's hard to get our mental,wetware to, to jump out of the rut.
But with myths and being able to lookat these stories as human experiences,
we get to look at it from the top down.
We don't look at theproblem from underneath.
(12:26):
We get to say, oh, let's lookat the universal aspect of it.
Let's look at the myth.
How can we look at this myth andunderstand this narrative and how my story
parallels almost exactly, or pieces of it.
We even just take pieces of it.
So it's really, it's, I haveto say, I don't use this word
(12:47):
very often, but it's magical.
It really is magical, and I love it.
I just love it.
I love everything about myth andstory and in working in my different
programs, like in the 12 week.
Heroine's Journey, initialcoaching launch thing.
we do a lot of that work.
We do a lot of that work We figure outh where we are exactly, at, we're at the
(13:08):
top of this mythic midlife mountain, Idon't know about you, but it's kind of
that thing You're living your life andyou're working hard, And you're doing
your thing and you're trudging along.
and you may not have hit it yet,but cuz you're pretty young, it's
like you're climbing a mountain,
?And it's a forested mountain and it's a steep trail, and you got a heavy pack.
So you're paying attention toevery footfall, you don't wanna
trip over a root or a stone orwhatever, and the trail's narrow.
(13:31):
You're hiking up it with yourfamily and your friends or your
colleagues or whatever, and then
One minute you're hiking the trail.
The next minute it's level and youtake a step out and all of a sudden
it, you're blinded by the sun.
You're at the top of the mountain.
You're in the middle of a meadow.
Like you can't quite reallysee where you're supposed to
go and the trail disappears.
And that's that midlifething of, is this it?
(13:54):
wow.
I thought I would have Beena different place by now.
I thought it would'vedone more of this by now.
I thought it would'veaccomplished more of that by now.
I thought it would feeldifferent than it does right now.
Why does my life that felt so great lastweek feel like a too tight shoe this week?
You know why?
Why does everything seem sortof And I always used to say
(14:16):
to my friends, I said, yeah.
I was at the train stationwhen my ship came in.
I missed it,
Boston (14:21):
There's so much in here.
You're answering what I was going to ask,so I'm finding very much if I just hang
back, this is so well considered and sowell thought out and so well constructed.
One thing I just want to catch is howprofound it is that For the first time
in recorded human history, how often inthe unfolding of time does humanity get
(14:47):
to explore a new archetypal chapter?
Archetypes are embedded.
But to your point, mythleaves clues to how to awaken.
How to individuate, or that Individuationhappens at these moments in our unfolding.
What you're describing here that anentire cohort of women around the
(15:08):
world, this is a new contribution tohuman consciousness, to the collective.
And it is necessarily individualand it is part of the collective,
it is a cosmic connection point.
And the thing I want to ask about beforewe get too far away is the word regency.
(15:29):
use that word and it rings.
When you say regency, whatare you talking about?
Dr. A (15:36):
Briefly, as in antiquity and even up through the early sixties and
seventies, in, in, Women's liberationmovements and in goddess movements and
goddess spirituality from antiquitytil then women were considered to
be living in three life stages.
Maiden, mother, and crone.
And so what I researched and what Iargued in my dissertation is that, as
(16:00):
Jane Ellen Harrison says, the goddessesreflect the lives of the women.
Not the women reflectingthe lives of the goddesses.
So as we evolve, emerge into this new lifestage, we necessarily have to be in four.
So I call them maiden.
Householder because I thinkit's more inclusive because
(16:22):
not all women have children.
Women live alternative lifestyles.
They have partners.
They focus on all kinds of things.
I just like it better.
I think it's more inclusive, householderand then regent and then wise
women, and I chose Regent because.
And of course, my dissertation chair,Chris Downing, made me choose bookends.
She said, you must choose dates.
(16:42):
So I said, all right,I'll choose 45 to 70.
And now I put a plus after the70 because I think a woman self
designates when she leaves Regency.
But I.
I really felt that because this isthe opportunity for women to recreate
themselves for themselves, to takedecisions, to run their own life, to
be fully capable of having sovereigntyover everything, their body, their
(17:06):
decisions, their lives, their path,their goals, their priorities.
I really thought regent was a good wordbecause some other scholars who've come
before me, of course, whose shoulders Istood on to write my dissertation, liked
the word queen for this stage, cuz I'm notthe first one really to talk about this.
Four stages of lives has been beingkicked around since the early sixties
by different scholars and academics.
(17:30):
I don't like Queen because to me,I like Queen, it's okay, but for
me, I don't feel like a queen.
I don't have servants.
I don't have unending supplies of money.
I don't have a treasurythat I can dip into.
I don't get to travel wherever I want.
I don't have the freedom from,from worry about anything.
I'm living a life.
I'm actually in there, after theEcstasy baby, the laundry, as Ram
(17:53):
Dass said, you know, To me, queen isreally set aside and a specialized
sort of pampered sort of image.
To me, it's a, it's an image thatimplies a certain level of wealth.
Boston (18:05):
And it's removed from the day.
Daily life.
the rules don't apply the same wayto a queen or a king or a prince.
It's royalty and it'ssymbolic in a different way.
So Regent allows for thisinner experience of sovereignty
Dr. A (18:19):
And the regent traditionally in, if we're gonna go to
traditional, o e d, definitions.
A regent is someone who holds the rulingspace for someone who's not old enough.
like the prince is too young to rule,or the princess is too young to rule.
So the regent rules until they grow up.
And so to me, the regent womanholds her throne her seat of power,
(18:44):
I prefer to call it her seat ofpower for her wise woman to come.
so Regent women, I have this crazy thingthat I wrote called the Regents Manifesto
and it it basically talks about whatit means to be a regent woman and, it
just, Basically says that you're in themidst of perimenopause and menopause and
(19:05):
midlife, and that you acknowledge it andyou know that you choose your way forward.
But a regent woman to me, desires,chooses to have sovereignty in
her life, or desires to havesovereignty, and chooses to be regent.
And her power isn't given to herby another authority, so to speak.
if we're talking about Regency andthat Regent women can lead, they
(19:26):
can administrate, make decisionsfor herself, and plan her own, and,
achieve her own priorities and goals.
I just really liked the word.
I really thought it.
It felt like it embodied thepotential of the life stage.
Boston (19:42):
I have a question about that.
So something that occurred for me inlistening to you talk about Regent
before you said holding the thronefor the wise woman to, to take it.
I was thinking of it ina different direction.
Hold for the collective of womento hold space in the world for the
younger generation to be able tomanage the challenges that we face.
Dr. A (20:06):
Oh, I love that.
Boston (20:07):
Like holding the human family here or the human civilization, which
has been the sort of province of this,honestly, this sort of overactive hero
who won't put down the hero's quest.
And that is such a restless energy.
But for the regents to be ableto hold it, to have that in the
(20:29):
conversation just changes the wayI think about the human family.
Dr. A (20:34):
that's you.
You just changed the way I think of.
Regency, you just opened my eyes.
we need to do this more often.
Yeah, I think that's a fantastic idea.
and certainly this first generationof regent women is laying down all
of the metaphysical paths for thewomen who come behind to follow.
(20:56):
and not that you want anyone to followyour path, but certainly, thinking
of, of the myths and all the differentfairytales of folk tales and symbology
and all the different beautifulthings within archetypal psychology.
learning how to utilize themto make the most of Regency
is an example that I think.
is definitely one that's gonnabe good for women to follow.
(21:19):
And the other thing aboutRegency, and I'm very passionate.
my, my passion is climate change becauseI think, it, it's over the top of
everything else that needs to, be fixed.
Boston (21:30):
it's the only problem we've never faced before.
Everything else has a place somewherein history, but climate change is
something that is actually existentialthat we don't have a pattern for.
Dr. A (21:40):
Yeah, it's an apex predator that we've created.
And so climate change, and I findthis very interesting, and I know from
your background that you'll get somehooks into what I'm saying is that, At
the turn of the 20th century, ? 1900.
Not only did women's lifespans begin toexpand, it was the birth of psychology,
(22:00):
?It was the birth of the, the real expansion of archetypal psychology
with Freud and Jung and all thatcame past them, came with them.
Tony Wolf, Marian Woodman, all thegreat female archetypal psychologists
and psychotherapists that beganwriting and working, and it was
(22:23):
the rise of the acknowledgement of,if you wanna call it the feminine.
There's the feminine and there'sthe masculine and archetypally we
all have both of them inside us.
It's not a gender thing.
I wanna just make that really clear.
But, that the archetypal feminine, if welook at the work of Jung, and if we look
(22:45):
at some, of the, The myths and the way thegods and the goddesses and their stories
came from the psyches of the people ofthose times, we see that the feminine is
so tied to the natural world, and these.
These ideas that are supposed tobe from the feminine archetypal,
baseline, such as compassion,empathy, creativity, communitas
(23:11):
communication, are all the attributesthat we need address climate change.
and I find it interesting that women aregetting this entirely new life stage.
We're living into this entirely newlife stage when it is archetypal
female energies that are so deeplytied to the natural world at a time
(23:39):
when we have to save the natural world.
And I think that's morethan a synchronicity.
Boston (23:45):
I just went to the myth of, Actaeon and Artemis,
where, Actaeon punishment.
he leaves the city of Athens and I hecomes upon Diana Ba or Artemis bathing
in the pool, and she turns him into astag and he's torn apart by his own dogs.
(24:05):
And so what this myth demonstrates to meis an anxiety about the natural world.
Like it's, you're safeinside the walls of Athens.
You're safe inside the confines ofmasculine civilization, even though
we're, you know, overseen by Athena,but still, like this is Apollo's
law that we're dealing with and.
(24:25):
So to step into the realm of thefeminine is to risk being torn apart,
but that's also a dissolution of theego cuz now you're in the realm of the
feminine where different rules apply,different structures are required, and
those structures are not even able to beperceived by the arch, well by the human,
(24:48):
through the masculine per perception.
Am I communicating?
Am I
Dr. A (24:52):
yes.
No, I'm following you.
I'm
Boston (24:53):
Oh, good.
I'm, I haven't really workedthis before, so it's, yeah.
About making this up as they go along.
but this idea now that what'srequired that is not an accident.
That this cohort is coming up.
That there is this century wherethe feminine is taking hold.
A lot of my work is around the WonderWoman archetype, which is a flavor of
(25:14):
the Artemis archetype, but that therewas the, there were major inroads made
while the masculine was distractedby, not distracted, like World War
II is happening, and that createdan inroad for a new, participation
of the feminine and the culture.
(25:34):
And so we're still,we're riding these waves.
But it seems to me, like you said,we're, we are now dealing with an
apex predator of our own creation.
I dunno if you watched Game ofThrones, but the white walkers,
we're dealing with this and weare running out of time, rapidly.
And the solution, I dunno if it'ssolution, but the ones we need to
(25:57):
be listening to are in this realmof the feminine, the goddesses, the
women who are living those stories.
Dr. A (26:03):
Well, you
Boston (26:03):
talking.
Dr. A (26:04):
no, but it's interesting to see, when you look at.
like Forbes magazine, pretty much,you couldn't get more, more apollonian
Boston (26:12):
True.
Dr. A (26:13):
not, but they have these amazing, nods that they do to the feminine.
the world's 100 Most PowerfulWomen, or Forbes 50 over 50.
Which of course interests me.
And if you go and look at these on theirwebsite, and they change them every year.
They update them every year.
These women are in every sector, politics,culture, entertainment, business.
(26:41):
I don't know what else,healthcare, nonprofit,
philanthropy, whatever it is, and.
Our power and influence is growing.
But it's, I'm waiting for thegeometric explosion because, and
this is the thing that's, that,that's has so much potential in it.
By 2030, in the US alone,there'll be over 87 million
(27:02):
women over 45-- in the US alone.
So I think to myself, what could87 million women accomplish
if they worked together?
Like almost anything we could changepolitics in two election cycles.
We could get shit done.
We could fix stuff.
(27:23):
I don't know.
It's just what we don't realizeas a people group is that because
we've been so busy during ourhouseholder years, we're like, Ooh,
?Is that we control over 85% of US domestic spending, discretionary
spending billions of dollars.
Everything from homes to thefurniture, in the homes, to cars,
(27:44):
to vacations, to school supplies,to clothes, to groceries, to.
landscaping supplies to whatever itis, ? And and we have political power.
We have, because of our numbers, wehave economic power, we have cultural
power, and we're growing into this.
This new life stage, and we haveto learn how to grab this and use
(28:08):
this power for the greater good.
Boston (28:12):
it's something you just said a moment ago is in two election
cycles, which you say it with thatperspective, that's eight years.
A lot can be done, but eightyears the way we think of it now.
Nobody's thinking more than a month ahead.
And for women in the stage of Regencywho are now looking at such a large
(28:33):
percentage of life in the rear viewmirror, being able to see what eight
years looks like and what's possible tobe able to coordinate resources and goals
on that type of scale, which is somethingour, our government can't think, pa
can't think more than two years ahead.
Just that perspective aloneis that can change the game.
Dr. A (28:56):
It can, and it's interesting because whether you wanna talk about
being red or being blue or being whatever.
or some purple, somewhere in between.
I don't know any woman who doesn'twant her children or her family's
children, or her friend's childrenor her sister's children to grow up
(29:18):
with clean water, clean air, healthyfood, good education, good healthcare.
Throw away political affiliation, I don'tknow any woman who would say, I don't care
if my sister's children and their childrengrow up in a climate ravaged world.
(29:44):
I've never heard anyone say that.
Boston (29:45):
No.
No.
Dr. A (29:48):
And so it comes down to the fact of, you have people like, David
Attenborough and Al Gore and all thesepeople, and hundreds, thousands of people
ringing the bell, ringing the churchbell, and the enemy is here and it is
us, The thing that's also difficultabout it is it's like no matter how
(30:08):
much you and I recycle, no matter whatkind of light bulbs we use, no matter
how much solar we have on our roof,individuals are not going to fix it.
It has to be large industrial,corporate mega change.
Boston (30:22):
Yep.
Dr. A (30:23):
And it has to happen.
Yes.
And it has to happen quickly.
And the only way that's gonna happen isfor the people to insist that it happened.
Because in capitalism, money andprofit is the driver, and it has its
own psyche and its own persona andits own demands and its own needs.
(30:43):
And it doesn't lend itself tolistening to the small person, so
it's an interesting situation and Ithink archetypally mythologically.
It's gonna be very interestingto see how this plays out.
It's gonna be very interestingbecause unfortunately, for a couple
(31:04):
of conferences that I presented at afew years ago, I wrote and presented
on climate change cause I thoughtpeople really needed to know a lot of
pe Nobody wants to read those books.
It's not a fun read.
what life on Earth will be likeif the temperature rises four
degrees and where you'll be able tosurvive, Buy land in Nova Scotia.
Boston (31:27):
I'm making a note.
Dr. A (31:28):
yeah.
But, just to talk aboutit and say, this is real.
And.
This is something that we don'twanna wake up one day and be, oops.
Oops.
Oh, I'll be dead soon.
It won't affect me.
Boston (31:40):
And that piece, it won't affect me you said you have Boomerang children?
Yes.
So you're connected to thefuture of your children.
I don't have children.
It's my nieces and my nephewsand I look at the world that
they're going to grow up in.
It's thinking now I'mhalfway through, I, and
It is highly unlikely that it will notget pretty twisted during my lifetime.
(32:00):
During our lifetime.
I don't know that I'm a hugeoptimist in terms of what's gonna
happen in the next 20 years.
So it becomes about really ridingthis ship to get through the choppy
waters of time so that we have acivilization on the other side.
we've got some Mad Maxstuff ahead if we don't.
Dr. A (32:23):
Yep.
Absolutely.
it's like trying to course correcton an enormous aircraft carrier.
Boston (32:31):
I like that analogy
Dr. A (32:32):
It's like you can't do it in one second and the systems that we're working
with or trying to change are so enormous.
So yes, I think it'sgonna get wild and wooly.
In the next 20 years becausethe carbon's already up there.
It's already there.
We're gonna hit two degrees, or closeto two degrees if we don't, batten
(32:54):
down the hatches hard and soon.
yeah, and look at, just in the lastyear, the flooding, the tornadoes, the
blizzards, This winter in California,this, I've lived here for 29 years.
This is the wettest,coldest winter we've had.
(33:16):
Now, okay, maybe that's nothotter, but weather is not climate.
People have to rememberweather, it's not climate.
And then in the summer, itused to get cold by Halloween.
And we were outsideswimming past Thanksgiving.
we were having 90 degree weatherin November, so things are
(33:39):
changing and it's in geologic time.
They're changing very fast.
Boston (33:45):
I'm back in the Artemis myth again what this actually looks like
when patriarchal mentality steps into.
the space of the, archetypalfeminine, but which is the realm of
weather wildness and that this iswhat it looks like to be torn apart.
That this is how that goes.
(34:06):
the, this is the stags are.
Are the weather, that's what's happening.
what are some of your insightsinto how we might move forward?
And I, I'm gonna pull myself outof this, how women in Regency
might adapt to this time.
Dr. A (34:26):
I think it, to start with, I think it's a put on your own
oxygen mask first, because, I.
Now granted there are some women that sailthrough this perimenopause menopause thing
and have very few indicators, very littletrouble, have just sail right through it.
And that's fantastic.
But that's not, I wouldsay that's maybe 25% maybe.
(34:50):
Of women and then there's, and there arediffering degrees of difficulty with it.
Some women have more difficulty withthe physical, some women have more
difficulty with the psychological,and it's not like one happens and
then the other starts, they overlap.
And they spiraled together.
And the sure tapestry ofyour life begins to unweave.
(35:13):
And even though the threads are unwovenhere on this side, something new is being
woven, but in the middle, you're livingin the tension of everything you knew,
believed and thought was going to bethe way it was forever is falling apart.
And there's some kind of liminalspace that you're in, in terms
of what kind of rite of passagetransformation is gonna happen.
(35:36):
I think that as women go through thesechanges and they come to look at.
The difference between growing andliving into the next cycle, into the
next age of being human, maybe givingless focus to the patriarchal ideals
(35:56):
of what a woman should be or shouldlook like, or should act like or should
be like, and women start getting tothat point where a lot of my clients
say at 50, you know, I'll, I don't.
Give a blank what anybodythinks about me anymore.
I realize what a waste of time thatwas, and once they start to get a little
bit more surefooted as to who they arenow, ? Then they can turn around and say,
(36:18):
okay, and this is what I say to them.
What are you passionate about?
What is it?
Is it climate?
Is it healthcare?
Is it banking regulation, is it politics?
some women decide to getactive in their communities.
Some women start thinking aboutlegacy, which is huge in relationship
to climate change, Legacy for yourfamily, legacy for your community,
(36:40):
legacy for your nation, for the planet.
Other women think you know about, oh gee,what can I do to serve, about service?
a lot of women actually, coming outtatheir household years then decide to
go into politics, which where if youlook at the wave we had in 2016 of
women being elected, They were all,I think most of them were over 40.
(37:00):
so I think for women to get sure footingand then decide, okay, where can I help?
What's important to me?
And for some women it may just be thatthey're like, you know what, I'm done.
I just wanna play with my grandkidsand bake cookies and work in my garden.
And that's their life.
(37:21):
And they have the absoluteright to choose that.
and I have no judgment whatsoever, butI generally find that women at this life
stage, when they get a little bit of asure footing, then take a look around
and decide what it is they wanna do.
And even if it's, even if what youdo is be a good citizen and you
know you're doing all the rightthings and vote, oh, dear God, vote.
(37:45):
Vote for the people who are gonna, inmy opinion, work to solve the problems.
Boston (37:52):
How can people find you?
How can they work with you?
What does it look like toconnect with you right now?
Dr. A (37:57):
it's pretty easy.
You can go to my website, which is,if you can remember how to spell it.
Boston (38:03):
I'll have it in the sh I'll have it in the show notes.
Dr. A (38:05):
Okay, so it's dr andrea slominski dot com, drandreaslominski.com.
If you can't remember that,you can just look up Dr.
A Women's midlife coach.
I'll come right up on the Google.
it cracks me up the Google,it sounds like my grandmother.
I do one-on-one coaching.
I offer classes, a nine week class onthe triple transformation and the seven
(38:26):
realms of change that women go through.
during regency.
Basically you're changing body, you'rechanging self-image, you're changing
feelings, you're changing needs.
you're changing goals.
You're changing priorities.
it's a group class and so wego through and work through
one of those realms each week.
And then, I'm actually having agreat time right now teaching an
(38:49):
eight week deep dive, as a book studyinto women who run with the wolves.
I'll be offering that probably everyeight weeks, once I get through one cycle.
I'll start it again.
You can find me on Meetupthrough finding female friends.
Ov greater is the greater than symbol 50,finding female friends greater than 50.
I offer little mini,intro workshops there.
(39:12):
But basically the best way to get in touchwith me is just to hop on my website.
You can send me an email yousigned up for my email list.
And that way I'll send you thenewsletter and you'll know what's
coming up and what's going on.
I'm on different podcasts and blogs.
Facebook, Instagram.
I'm on LinkedIn, YouTube, different,YouTube has some of my, women's
Wisdom Village from the Covid, period.
(39:33):
Some of those videos.
yeah, I'm pretty much everywhere,like everybody these days.
Boston (39:37):
Great.
and I'll be sure to include all ofthe links that you've mentioned,
will be in the show notes.
So anybody who wants to workwith you can start there and go
into the wide world of your work.
Dr.
A thank you so much for joining me today.
This has been an inspiring,exciting conversation.
it's rare that something reallynew comes along and blows my mind.
(39:59):
And your work in this area, this idea ofa cohort of women, a cohort of humanity,
bringing something new to the collective
Dr. A (40:10):
Just in time
Boston (40:11):
just in time.
That's today's show, folks.
Thank you again to my guest, Dr.
Andrea Slim Minsky, andthank you for listening.
To learn more about DR a'supcoming courses and offerings,
(40:32):
check out this episode's shownotes for a link to her site.
You can find them at mythicpodcast.com.
That's also where you can findmore episodes and mythic resources
and sign up for the newsletter.
Speaking of which, I'll be using thatnewsletter to share details about upcoming
free webinars where you can dive deeperinto myth and personal development and
(40:54):
meet others who share your interests.
So if you want thosedeets, please subscribe.
And if you like the show, pleaseshare it with a friend and leave a
review wherever you get your podcasts.
I appreciate you andappreciate your support.
Until next time, journey on.
Hey there.
I'm so glad you've decidedto listen to this episode.
My guest today is Mythologistand depth psychologist, Dr.
Andrea Slominski.
And the conversation you areabout to hear is mind blowing.
Uh, at least it blew my mind.
Not only does Dr.
A present a new vision for womenat midlife, but she also draws on
(00:22):
some stats that point to an imminentsociological and psychological shift.
As women live longer than ever andcontrol more resources than at any
other time in human history now, no.
No more spoilers.
Here we go.
(00:42):
Hello, Andrea.
Welcome to the podcast.
I would love for you to introduceyourself to our listeners.
Dr. A (00:49):
Thank you for having me, Boston.
I'm really excited to be here.
We both have similar interestsand backgrounds, and that's
really exciting for me.
My name is actually Andrea MonisetSlominski, which is horrific
and nobody can remember them.
Nobody can spell them.
Nobody when they see them can pronouncethem, which is why I just go by Dr.
(01:10):
A, which, if your podcastpeople are looking for me.
I'm a woman's midlife coach.
I went back to school when I was 55, rightin the middle of my midlife shift and got
my master's and PhD and studied archetypaland depth psychology and mythology.
And my dissertation was focused on women'smidlife shift and women's mythology.
(01:32):
So from there, I defended my dissertationin the fall of 2019 and I'd been coaching
for about three years, and I rebrandedmy website and I rebuilt it and rebranded
my business and everything was terrific.
And then I launched it in January andCovid shut down the country in February,
Boston (01:52):
Ooh.
Dr. A (01:53):
Yeah.
you know what?
Everything's for the good.
I have a really big office.
I can fit about eight to 10 women inhere to do workshops and that kind
of thing, which was what I was doing.
And I was doing private coaching as well.
And the whole Covid thing justforced me to learn the online
methodology really quickly.
And so over the period of theCovid shutdown and those sorts
(02:16):
of things, I developed a programcalled the Women's Wisdom Village.
I offered over 40 free online gatheringsfor women to come together and take a
look at how myth and women's mythologyand ancient stories and fairytales
and folk tales can inform our livesand help us get through the difficult
times that we were living through.
(02:38):
it was great.
I was able to really learnthe digital thing and so now I
offer a lot of digital classes.
I still do one-on-onedistance coaching on Zoom.
I do one-on-one in person coaching nowin my office of course, because now
people are coming back together again.
So it's been a journey.
Boston (02:54):
It sounds like you've learned a lot both technically
and like forward and deeper.
What's an example of that?
how can we apply myth, how can women'smyth, myth in general-- to our current
situation and to navigating it.
Dr. A (03:09):
Because of course I work with women, I'm gonna talk about
women's lives, Myth, of course,as is applicable to everyone.
It's applicable to men and women andentire cultures and the world and the
cosmos, but I can't work with all of that.
It's interesting because women,when they go into the perimenopause
shift, and it's amazing how littleinformation there really is out there.
(03:29):
And how many of my clients either tellme, how much they didn't know, or that
they had to Google it because theythought they were ill, mentally ill,
broken, Like losing their mind, whatever,as they start to go into the shift.
Going into the perimenopause midlifemenopause shift, women go through
what I call a triple transformation.
They go through a physicaltransformation, which of course is
(03:51):
the perimenopause menopause shift, andit's pre-programmed into our bodies.
It's not a disease.
Okay.
Can it be difficult?
Yes.
That's a whole nother conversation.
But yes, it can be difficult.
So perimenopause, menopauseis the physical one.
Then there's the midlife shift,which is the psychological shift.
It's the shift within psyche that isalso pre-programmed into the human
(04:16):
experience of living a life We haveour childhood, or what I'd call maiden.
We have our householder years, ourteens and our twenties growing up.
And then we shift into what I callregency, which includes midlife.
And if we are the same personat 45 that we were at 20, then
we've skipped some growing.
(04:36):
and that's okay.
You can catch up, but the psychologicalshift is pre-programmed into our psyches,
into our souls, into our collectiveunconscious, just like the physical
one is, and then the two together, thephysical and the psychological shift
together combine to create what I considerto be a spiritual shift where women
(04:59):
reassess, who they are, what they wannado now, and, basically their meaning,
purpose, and belonging at this time.
and the thing that's really miraculousabout this, and I'll never get tired of
talking about this, is that in the year1900, white women, statistically were dead
by 51 and women of color were gone by 43.
(05:22):
Now, there have always been, since thetime of Plato, individual old women
or groups of old women that livedpast 80 to 90 to a hundred or in the
medieval fairytales, the witch at theedge of the forest that lived to 120.
Yes, but Boomers and late Boomers andall the women coming up behind us are the
(05:44):
first women in the history of humanityto live past menopause as a cohort.
It's never happened before.
It's never happened before.
Our lifespans have increasedwhite women by a third women of
color by double more than double.
And so now there are entire generationsof women living past 50, 52, 55,
(06:08):
whenever women died-- They never made itcompletely through the menopause shift.
They never made it to the new settle outof the hormonal profile, the new normal
right after the midlife and the menopauseand the triple shift and the seven realms.
So we're the first women to do it.
we're moving into this new lifestage, that's like another 30 years.
(06:31):
There's no maps, there's nomodels, there's no examples.
So we're creating it as we live intoit, and the opportunities for women
in this life stage are enormous.
And it's an opportunity to recreateourselves for ourselves after
spending in the householder years,say from 18 or 19 to say 45 or 50.
(06:55):
Tending our families, our friends,our colleagues, our aging parents, our
siblings, our careers, whatever it is,the household years are crazy busy.
we're developing our own homes.
We're developing our careers.
We're going out, we're learningabout ourselves and the world.
And rah, we're moving forwardand we're gonna achieve our goals
and doing whatever we're doing.
(07:16):
So by the time women get to 45 or50, a lot of them in their careers
unfortunately, still hit a glass ceiling.
Or they're seen as aging out of theircareers because if they're seen to be
looking older or if they're seen tobe having indicators of perimenopause
and menopause, it's oh, their value isdecreasing, which isn't true because we
(07:39):
have all of our life experience, all ofour career experience, our growing wisdom.
It's just a shift we're going through.
And basically the opportunity therein going through this is that at this
time if you had children, generallyyou have empty nest or you're about
to have empty nest unless you haveboomerang children, which I have.
That's okay.
(08:00):
I love them.
Everybody needs a little support.
California is really expensive.
so it's empty nest.
Maybe you hit a glassceiling at your career.
Maybe you decide you wannado something different.
Maybe you decide you wannamake changes in your life.
The triple shift works together inthe physiology and the psychology
of women to turn their focus fromoutside, back to themselves, back in.
(08:24):
to say, now it's my turn.
Okay, what do I wanna do now Where have,now that I've been tending everyone
else's garden for the last 25 years,It's about time to, to attend mine and
see, what do I wanna do for me now?
And our shifting hormonesbasically nudge us to do that.
Our shifting psyche nudges us to do that.
(08:45):
Our shifting spirituality or spiritualunderstanding of our meaning, purpose,
and belonging shift us to do that.
And it's, it's big and it canbe challenging and it can be, of
course there are losses in aging.
I'm not A complete Pollyanna.
of course we get older and we getcreaky and we could get sick and we
have problems and your body changes,your metabolism changes, your skin
(09:07):
changes, your outlook changes.
Yeah.
There are losses if you wanna call it.
That changes as we grow older.
Of course there are, but within eachwoman's capacity to recreate herself
in her circumstances, with what shehas, with what she can work with.
Some women choose to blow up theirlife completely and do something new.
(09:28):
And some women just choose to spintheir cocoon right where they are and
do their transformational work in place.
There's no right way to do it.
There's only individual ways tocross this universal rite of passage.
And to get back to the original question,which was how does myth help us do this?
All of these mythic stories that haveto do with women show us that we are
(09:52):
not the first women to go through this.
For example, if a woman ishaving difficulty, say with
empty nest Or difficulty with areunification relationship with
a child or a daughter, whatever.
The myth of Demeter and Persephoneis a chest of pearls of wisdom.
(10:13):
That myth shows us.
So much of the grief that women gothrough in the separation phase from
their children, or that I should say,some women go through, not all women, it's
not a universal experience, and it alsoshows us the need for individuation and
separation on the part of the daughter.
And then it shows us the need forreconciliation and the rebuilding
(10:36):
of a completely new relationship,which then ends up being a
dual goddess, mother and Kore.
Entire Elusynian Mystery foundation.
So that's one example.
there's the myth of Ariadne and Theseus.
If a woman has ever been disrespected,abandoned, left behind, lied to,
(10:57):
led astray, and I could just listthem and list them and list them.
When we look at these myths, not justfrom Greek, but Celtic, Hindu, African,
Native American, you name it, themythologies around the world are just
full of these stories, which are maps.
The stories are maps, and they've leftmile markers, and they've left symbols,
(11:20):
and they've left indicators, andthey've left all these little tidbits
like Hansel and Gretel with crumbsto follow, metaphorically through our
hard times and be able to see that.
Oh my gosh.
I'm not broken.
I'm having an experience that'sunique to me cuz it's my experience.
(11:41):
But I am writing one chapter inthis amazing human story of what it
means to be a woman and live a life.
And this is my chapter,this is my experience.
And so I found that more than anything,cracking open these ancient stories
that have these universal nuggets oftruth in them really gives people the
(12:05):
opportunity to, you know, we have ourproblems and we're like under them and
we're kind of wet blanketed by them andit's hard to see our way out of them.
And it's hard to get our mental,wetware to, to jump out of the rut.
But with myths and being able to lookat these stories as human experiences,
we get to look at it from the top down.
We don't look at theproblem from underneath.
(12:26):
We get to say, oh, let's lookat the universal aspect of it.
Let's look at the myth.
How can we look at this myth andunderstand this narrative and how my story
parallels almost exactly, or pieces of it.
We even just take pieces of it.
So it's really, it's, I haveto say, I don't use this word
(12:47):
very often, but it's magical.
It really is magical, and I love it.
I just love it.
I love everything about myth andstory and in working in my different
programs, like in the 12 week.
Heroine's Journey, initialcoaching launch thing.
we do a lot of that work.
We do a lot of that work We figure outh where we are exactly, at, we're at the
(13:08):
top of this mythic midlife mountain, Idon't know about you, but it's kind of
that thing You're living your life andyou're working hard, And you're doing
your thing and you're trudging along.
and you may not have hit it yet,but cuz you're pretty young, it's
like you're climbing a mountain,
?And it's a forested mountain and it's a steep trail, and you got a heavy pack.
So you're paying attention toevery footfall, you don't wanna
trip over a root or a stone orwhatever, and the trail's narrow.
(13:31):
You're hiking up it with yourfamily and your friends or your
colleagues or whatever, and then
One minute you're hiking the trail.
The next minute it's level and youtake a step out and all of a sudden
it, you're blinded by the sun.
You're at the top of the mountain.
You're in the middle of a meadow.
Like you can't quite reallysee where you're supposed to
go and the trail disappears.
And that's that midlifething of, is this it?
(13:54):
wow.
I thought I would have Beena different place by now.
I thought it would'vedone more of this by now.
I thought it would'veaccomplished more of that by now.
I thought it would feeldifferent than it does right now.
Why does my life that felt so great lastweek feel like a too tight shoe this week?
You know why?
Why does everything seem sortof And I always used to say
(14:16):
to my friends, I said, yeah.
I was at the train stationwhen my ship came in.
I missed it,
Boston (14:21):
There's so much in here.
You're answering what I was going to ask,so I'm finding very much if I just hang
back, this is so well considered and sowell thought out and so well constructed.
One thing I just want to catch is howprofound it is that For the first time
in recorded human history, how often inthe unfolding of time does humanity get
(14:47):
to explore a new archetypal chapter?
Archetypes are embedded.
But to your point, mythleaves clues to how to awaken.
How to individuate, or that Individuationhappens at these moments in our unfolding.
What you're describing here that anentire cohort of women around the
(15:08):
world, this is a new contribution tohuman consciousness, to the collective.
And it is necessarily individualand it is part of the collective,
it is a cosmic connection point.
And the thing I want to ask about beforewe get too far away is the word regency.
(15:29):
use that word and it rings.
When you say regency, whatare you talking about?
Dr. A (15:36):
Briefly, as in antiquity and even up through the early sixties and
seventies, in, in, Women's liberationmovements and in goddess movements and
goddess spirituality from antiquitytil then women were considered to
be living in three life stages.
Maiden, mother, and crone.
And so what I researched and what Iargued in my dissertation is that, as
(16:00):
Jane Ellen Harrison says, the goddessesreflect the lives of the women.
Not the women reflectingthe lives of the goddesses.
So as we evolve, emerge into this new lifestage, we necessarily have to be in four.
So I call them maiden.
Householder because I thinkit's more inclusive because
(16:22):
not all women have children.
Women live alternative lifestyles.
They have partners.
They focus on all kinds of things.
I just like it better.
I think it's more inclusive, householderand then regent and then wise
women, and I chose Regent because.
And of course, my dissertation chair,Chris Downing, made me choose bookends.
She said, you must choose dates.
(16:42):
So I said, all right,I'll choose 45 to 70.
And now I put a plus after the70 because I think a woman self
designates when she leaves Regency.
But I.
I really felt that because this isthe opportunity for women to recreate
themselves for themselves, to takedecisions, to run their own life, to
be fully capable of having sovereigntyover everything, their body, their
(17:06):
decisions, their lives, their path,their goals, their priorities.
I really thought regent was a good wordbecause some other scholars who've come
before me, of course, whose shoulders Istood on to write my dissertation, liked
the word queen for this stage, cuz I'm notthe first one really to talk about this.
Four stages of lives has been beingkicked around since the early sixties
by different scholars and academics.
(17:30):
I don't like Queen because to me,I like Queen, it's okay, but for
me, I don't feel like a queen.
I don't have servants.
I don't have unending supplies of money.
I don't have a treasurythat I can dip into.
I don't get to travel wherever I want.
I don't have the freedom from,from worry about anything.
I'm living a life.
I'm actually in there, after theEcstasy baby, the laundry, as Ram
(17:53):
Dass said, you know, To me, queen isreally set aside and a specialized
sort of pampered sort of image.
To me, it's a, it's an image thatimplies a certain level of wealth.
Boston (18:05):
And it's removed from the day.
Daily life.
the rules don't apply the same wayto a queen or a king or a prince.
It's royalty and it'ssymbolic in a different way.
So Regent allows for thisinner experience of sovereignty
Dr. A (18:19):
And the regent traditionally in, if we're gonna go to
traditional, o e d, definitions.
A regent is someone who holds the rulingspace for someone who's not old enough.
like the prince is too young to rule,or the princess is too young to rule.
So the regent rules until they grow up.
And so to me, the regent womanholds her throne her seat of power,
(18:44):
I prefer to call it her seat ofpower for her wise woman to come.
so Regent women, I have this crazy thingthat I wrote called the Regents Manifesto
and it it basically talks about whatit means to be a regent woman and, it
just, Basically says that you're in themidst of perimenopause and menopause and
(19:05):
midlife, and that you acknowledge it andyou know that you choose your way forward.
But a regent woman to me, desires,chooses to have sovereignty in
her life, or desires to havesovereignty, and chooses to be regent.
And her power isn't given to herby another authority, so to speak.
if we're talking about Regency andthat Regent women can lead, they
(19:26):
can administrate, make decisionsfor herself, and plan her own, and,
achieve her own priorities and goals.
I just really liked the word.
I really thought it.
It felt like it embodied thepotential of the life stage.
Boston (19:42):
I have a question about that.
So something that occurred for me inlistening to you talk about Regent
before you said holding the thronefor the wise woman to, to take it.
I was thinking of it ina different direction.
Hold for the collective of womento hold space in the world for the
younger generation to be able tomanage the challenges that we face.
Dr. A (20:06):
Oh, I love that.
Boston (20:07):
Like holding the human family here or the human civilization, which
has been the sort of province of this,honestly, this sort of overactive hero
who won't put down the hero's quest.
And that is such a restless energy.
But for the regents to be ableto hold it, to have that in the
(20:29):
conversation just changes the wayI think about the human family.
Dr. A (20:34):
that's you.
You just changed the way I think of.
Regency, you just opened my eyes.
we need to do this more often.
Yeah, I think that's a fantastic idea.
and certainly this first generationof regent women is laying down all
of the metaphysical paths for thewomen who come behind to follow.
(20:56):
and not that you want anyone to followyour path, but certainly, thinking
of, of the myths and all the differentfairytales of folk tales and symbology
and all the different beautifulthings within archetypal psychology.
learning how to utilize themto make the most of Regency
is an example that I think.
is definitely one that's gonnabe good for women to follow.
(21:19):
And the other thing aboutRegency, and I'm very passionate.
my, my passion is climate change becauseI think, it, it's over the top of
everything else that needs to, be fixed.
Boston (21:30):
it's the only problem we've never faced before.
Everything else has a place somewherein history, but climate change is
something that is actually existentialthat we don't have a pattern for.
Dr. A (21:40):
Yeah, it's an apex predator that we've created.
And so climate change, and I findthis very interesting, and I know from
your background that you'll get somehooks into what I'm saying is that, At
the turn of the 20th century, ? 1900.
Not only did women's lifespans begin toexpand, it was the birth of psychology,
(22:00):
?It was the birth of the, the real expansion of archetypal psychology
with Freud and Jung and all thatcame past them, came with them.
Tony Wolf, Marian Woodman, all thegreat female archetypal psychologists
and psychotherapists that beganwriting and working, and it was
(22:23):
the rise of the acknowledgement of,if you wanna call it the feminine.
There's the feminine and there'sthe masculine and archetypally we
all have both of them inside us.
It's not a gender thing.
I wanna just make that really clear.
But, that the archetypal feminine, if welook at the work of Jung, and if we look
(22:45):
at some, of the, The myths and the way thegods and the goddesses and their stories
came from the psyches of the people ofthose times, we see that the feminine is
so tied to the natural world, and these.
These ideas that are supposed tobe from the feminine archetypal,
baseline, such as compassion,empathy, creativity, communitas
(23:11):
communication, are all the attributesthat we need address climate change.
and I find it interesting that women aregetting this entirely new life stage.
We're living into this entirely newlife stage when it is archetypal
female energies that are so deeplytied to the natural world at a time
(23:39):
when we have to save the natural world.
And I think that's morethan a synchronicity.
Boston (23:45):
I just went to the myth of, Actaeon and Artemis,
where, Actaeon punishment.
he leaves the city of Athens and I hecomes upon Diana Ba or Artemis bathing
in the pool, and she turns him into astag and he's torn apart by his own dogs.
(24:05):
And so what this myth demonstrates to meis an anxiety about the natural world.
Like it's, you're safeinside the walls of Athens.
You're safe inside the confines ofmasculine civilization, even though
we're, you know, overseen by Athena,but still, like this is Apollo's
law that we're dealing with and.
(24:25):
So to step into the realm of thefeminine is to risk being torn apart,
but that's also a dissolution of theego cuz now you're in the realm of the
feminine where different rules apply,different structures are required, and
those structures are not even able to beperceived by the arch, well by the human,
(24:48):
through the masculine per perception.
Am I communicating?
Am I
Dr. A (24:52):
yes.
No, I'm following you.
I'm
Boston (24:53):
Oh, good.
I'm, I haven't really workedthis before, so it's, yeah.
About making this up as they go along.
but this idea now that what'srequired that is not an accident.
That this cohort is coming up.
That there is this century wherethe feminine is taking hold.
A lot of my work is around the WonderWoman archetype, which is a flavor of
(25:14):
the Artemis archetype, but that therewas the, there were major inroads made
while the masculine was distractedby, not distracted, like World War
II is happening, and that createdan inroad for a new, participation
of the feminine and the culture.
(25:34):
And so we're still,we're riding these waves.
But it seems to me, like you said,we're, we are now dealing with an
apex predator of our own creation.
I dunno if you watched Game ofThrones, but the white walkers,
we're dealing with this and weare running out of time, rapidly.
And the solution, I dunno if it'ssolution, but the ones we need to
(25:57):
be listening to are in this realmof the feminine, the goddesses, the
women who are living those stories.
Dr. A (26:03):
Well, you
Boston (26:03):
talking.
Dr. A (26:04):
no, but it's interesting to see, when you look at.
like Forbes magazine, pretty much,you couldn't get more, more apollonian
Boston (26:12):
True.
Dr. A (26:13):
not, but they have these amazing, nods that they do to the feminine.
the world's 100 Most PowerfulWomen, or Forbes 50 over 50.
Which of course interests me.
And if you go and look at these on theirwebsite, and they change them every year.
They update them every year.
These women are in every sector, politics,culture, entertainment, business.
(26:41):
I don't know what else,healthcare, nonprofit,
philanthropy, whatever it is, and.
Our power and influence is growing.
But it's, I'm waiting for thegeometric explosion because, and
this is the thing that's, that,that's has so much potential in it.
By 2030, in the US alone,there'll be over 87 million
(27:02):
women over 45-- in the US alone.
So I think to myself, what could87 million women accomplish
if they worked together?
Like almost anything we could changepolitics in two election cycles.
We could get shit done.
We could fix stuff.
(27:23):
I don't know.
It's just what we don't realizeas a people group is that because
we've been so busy during ourhouseholder years, we're like, Ooh,
?Is that we control over 85% of US domestic spending, discretionary
spending billions of dollars.
Everything from homes to thefurniture, in the homes, to cars,
(27:44):
to vacations, to school supplies,to clothes, to groceries, to.
landscaping supplies to whatever itis, ? And and we have political power.
We have, because of our numbers, wehave economic power, we have cultural
power, and we're growing into this.
This new life stage, and we haveto learn how to grab this and use
(28:08):
this power for the greater good.
Boston (28:12):
it's something you just said a moment ago is in two election
cycles, which you say it with thatperspective, that's eight years.
A lot can be done, but eightyears the way we think of it now.
Nobody's thinking more than a month ahead.
And for women in the stage of Regencywho are now looking at such a large
(28:33):
percentage of life in the rear viewmirror, being able to see what eight
years looks like and what's possible tobe able to coordinate resources and goals
on that type of scale, which is somethingour, our government can't think, pa
can't think more than two years ahead.
Just that perspective aloneis that can change the game.
Dr. A (28:56):
It can, and it's interesting because whether you wanna talk about
being red or being blue or being whatever.
or some purple, somewhere in between.
I don't know any woman who doesn'twant her children or her family's
children, or her friend's childrenor her sister's children to grow up
(29:18):
with clean water, clean air, healthyfood, good education, good healthcare.
Throw away political affiliation, I don'tknow any woman who would say, I don't care
if my sister's children and their childrengrow up in a climate ravaged world.
(29:44):
I've never heard anyone say that.
Boston (29:45):
No.
No.
Dr. A (29:48):
And so it comes down to the fact of, you have people like, David
Attenborough and Al Gore and all thesepeople, and hundreds, thousands of people
ringing the bell, ringing the churchbell, and the enemy is here and it is
us, The thing that's also difficultabout it is it's like no matter how
(30:08):
much you and I recycle, no matter whatkind of light bulbs we use, no matter
how much solar we have on our roof,individuals are not going to fix it.
It has to be large industrial,corporate mega change.
Boston (30:22):
Yep.
Dr. A (30:23):
And it has to happen.
Yes.
And it has to happen quickly.
And the only way that's gonna happen isfor the people to insist that it happened.
Because in capitalism, money andprofit is the driver, and it has its
own psyche and its own persona andits own demands and its own needs.
(30:43):
And it doesn't lend itself tolistening to the small person, so
it's an interesting situation and Ithink archetypally mythologically.
It's gonna be very interestingto see how this plays out.
It's gonna be very interestingbecause unfortunately, for a couple
(31:04):
of conferences that I presented at afew years ago, I wrote and presented
on climate change cause I thoughtpeople really needed to know a lot of
pe Nobody wants to read those books.
It's not a fun read.
what life on Earth will be likeif the temperature rises four
degrees and where you'll be able tosurvive, Buy land in Nova Scotia.
Boston (31:27):
I'm making a note.
Dr. A (31:28):
yeah.
But, just to talk aboutit and say, this is real.
And.
This is something that we don'twanna wake up one day and be, oops.
Oops.
Oh, I'll be dead soon.
It won't affect me.
Boston (31:40):
And that piece, it won't affect me you said you have Boomerang children?
Yes.
So you're connected to thefuture of your children.
I don't have children.
It's my nieces and my nephewsand I look at the world that
they're going to grow up in.
It's thinking now I'mhalfway through, I, and
It is highly unlikely that it will notget pretty twisted during my lifetime.
(32:00):
During our lifetime.
I don't know that I'm a hugeoptimist in terms of what's gonna
happen in the next 20 years.
So it becomes about really ridingthis ship to get through the choppy
waters of time so that we have acivilization on the other side.
we've got some Mad Maxstuff ahead if we don't.
Dr. A (32:23):
Yep.
Absolutely.
it's like trying to course correcton an enormous aircraft carrier.
Boston (32:31):
I like that analogy
Dr. A (32:32):
It's like you can't do it in one second and the systems that we're working
with or trying to change are so enormous.
So yes, I think it'sgonna get wild and wooly.
In the next 20 years becausethe carbon's already up there.
It's already there.
We're gonna hit two degrees, or closeto two degrees if we don't, batten
(32:54):
down the hatches hard and soon.
yeah, and look at, just in the lastyear, the flooding, the tornadoes, the
blizzards, This winter in California,this, I've lived here for 29 years.
This is the wettest,coldest winter we've had.
(33:16):
Now, okay, maybe that's nothotter, but weather is not climate.
People have to rememberweather, it's not climate.
And then in the summer, itused to get cold by Halloween.
And we were outsideswimming past Thanksgiving.
we were having 90 degree weatherin November, so things are
(33:39):
changing and it's in geologic time.
They're changing very fast.
Boston (33:45):
I'm back in the Artemis myth again what this actually looks like
when patriarchal mentality steps into.
the space of the, archetypalfeminine, but which is the realm of
weather wildness and that this iswhat it looks like to be torn apart.
That this is how that goes.
(34:06):
the, this is the stags are.
Are the weather, that's what's happening.
what are some of your insightsinto how we might move forward?
And I, I'm gonna pull myself outof this, how women in Regency
might adapt to this time.
Dr. A (34:26):
I think it, to start with, I think it's a put on your own
oxygen mask first, because, I.
Now granted there are some women that sailthrough this perimenopause menopause thing
and have very few indicators, very littletrouble, have just sail right through it.
And that's fantastic.
But that's not, I wouldsay that's maybe 25% maybe.
(34:50):
Of women and then there's, and there arediffering degrees of difficulty with it.
Some women have more difficulty withthe physical, some women have more
difficulty with the psychological,and it's not like one happens and
then the other starts, they overlap.
And they spiraled together.
And the sure tapestry ofyour life begins to unweave.
(35:13):
And even though the threads are unwovenhere on this side, something new is being
woven, but in the middle, you're livingin the tension of everything you knew,
believed and thought was going to bethe way it was forever is falling apart.
And there's some kind of liminalspace that you're in, in terms
of what kind of rite of passagetransformation is gonna happen.
(35:36):
I think that as women go through thesechanges and they come to look at.
The difference between growing andliving into the next cycle, into the
next age of being human, maybe givingless focus to the patriarchal ideals
(35:56):
of what a woman should be or shouldlook like, or should act like or should
be like, and women start getting tothat point where a lot of my clients
say at 50, you know, I'll, I don't.
Give a blank what anybodythinks about me anymore.
I realize what a waste of time thatwas, and once they start to get a little
bit more surefooted as to who they arenow, ? Then they can turn around and say,
(36:18):
okay, and this is what I say to them.
What are you passionate about?
What is it?
Is it climate?
Is it healthcare?
Is it banking regulation, is it politics?
some women decide to getactive in their communities.
Some women start thinking aboutlegacy, which is huge in relationship
to climate change, Legacy for yourfamily, legacy for your community,
(36:40):
legacy for your nation, for the planet.
Other women think you know about, oh gee,what can I do to serve, about service?
a lot of women actually, coming outtatheir household years then decide to
go into politics, which where if youlook at the wave we had in 2016 of
women being elected, They were all,I think most of them were over 40.
(37:00):
so I think for women to get sure footingand then decide, okay, where can I help?
What's important to me?
And for some women it may just be thatthey're like, you know what, I'm done.
I just wanna play with my grandkidsand bake cookies and work in my garden.
And that's their life.
(37:21):
And they have the absoluteright to choose that.
and I have no judgment whatsoever, butI generally find that women at this life
stage, when they get a little bit of asure footing, then take a look around
and decide what it is they wanna do.
And even if it's, even if what youdo is be a good citizen and you
know you're doing all the rightthings and vote, oh, dear God, vote.
(37:45):
Vote for the people who are gonna, inmy opinion, work to solve the problems.
Boston (37:52):
How can people find you?
How can they work with you?
What does it look like toconnect with you right now?
Dr. A (37:57):
it's pretty easy.
You can go to my website, which is,if you can remember how to spell it.
Boston (38:03):
I'll have it in the sh I'll have it in the show notes.
Dr. A (38:05):
Okay, so it's dr andrea slominski dot com, drandreaslominski.com.
If you can't remember that,you can just look up Dr.
A Women's midlife coach.
I'll come right up on the Google.
it cracks me up the Google,it sounds like my grandmother.
I do one-on-one coaching.
I offer classes, a nine week class onthe triple transformation and the seven
(38:26):
realms of change that women go through.
during regency.
Basically you're changing body, you'rechanging self-image, you're changing
feelings, you're changing needs.
you're changing goals.
You're changing priorities.
it's a group class and so wego through and work through
one of those realms each week.
And then, I'm actually having agreat time right now teaching an
(38:49):
eight week deep dive, as a book studyinto women who run with the wolves.
I'll be offering that probably everyeight weeks, once I get through one cycle.
I'll start it again.
You can find me on Meetupthrough finding female friends.
Ov greater is the greater than symbol 50,finding female friends greater than 50.
I offer little mini,intro workshops there.
(39:12):
But basically the best way to get in touchwith me is just to hop on my website.
You can send me an email yousigned up for my email list.
And that way I'll send you thenewsletter and you'll know what's
coming up and what's going on.
I'm on different podcasts and blogs.
Facebook, Instagram.
I'm on LinkedIn, YouTube, different,YouTube has some of my, women's
Wisdom Village from the Covid, period.
(39:33):
Some of those videos.
yeah, I'm pretty much everywhere,like everybody these days.
Boston (39:37):
Great.
and I'll be sure to include all ofthe links that you've mentioned,
will be in the show notes.
So anybody who wants to workwith you can start there and go
into the wide world of your work.
Dr.
A thank you so much for joining me today.
This has been an inspiring,exciting conversation.
it's rare that something reallynew comes along and blows my mind.
(39:59):
And your work in this area, this idea ofa cohort of women, a cohort of humanity,
bringing something new to the collective
Dr. A (40:10):
Just in time
Boston (40:11):
just in time.
That's today's show, folks.
Thank you again to my guest, Dr.
Andrea Slim Minsky, andthank you for listening.
To learn more about DR a'supcoming courses and offerings,
(40:32):
check out this episode's shownotes for a link to her site.
You can find them at mythicpodcast.com.
That's also where you can findmore episodes and mythic resources
and sign up for the newsletter.
Speaking of which, I'll be using thatnewsletter to share details about upcoming
free webinars where you can dive deeperinto myth and personal development and
(40:54):
meet others who share your interests.
So if you want thosedeets, please subscribe.
And if you like the show, pleaseshare it with a friend and leave a
review wherever you get your podcasts.
I appreciate you andappreciate your support.
Until next time, journey on.
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