Menopause Is a Portal: Reclaiming the Body, the Story, and the Second Half with Dr. Hillary McBride
5/26/20261 hr 11 min
In this episode of unPAUSED, Dr. Mary Claire Haver sits down with Dr. Hillary McBride, a psychologist, researcher, and author whose work focuses on women's lived experience of embodiment across the lifespan, and particularly what happens during the perimenopausal and menopausal transition. She brings a feminist, biopsychosocial lens to the work, looking at the intersection of biology and culture and how the stories we are handed about aging as women can shape what we actually feel, right down to measurable health outcomes. Dr. McBride opens by naming what the research literature has gotten wrong. Women's voices have been largely absent from the empirical conversation about perimenopause and menopause, and what women are actually saying when asked about their experience is strikingly different from what the medical literature reflects. They are describing not just difficulty but clarity, not just loss but a deepening sense of self, not just symptoms but a portal. Guest links: Hillary L. McBride Hillary L. McBride (Instagram) Hillary McBride (Facebook) Hillary McBride (X) Books: Hillary L. McBride To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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First 90 secondsMary Claire Haver· Host0:00
Women are saying things in, in the research data like, "I thought I was gonna be this used-up, dried-up, useless, decaying, nearly dead woman based on how I was portrayed in the media- Mm-hmm ... based on how people were talking about menopause and perimenopause, and I feel more vibrant than I've ever felt. I feel more connected to myself. I feel more empowered. I care less about what people think than I've ever cared, and I feel more passionate about the things that make me feel alive." And there's all of these, like, existential things in there too like, "Okay, I'm aware that I'm in the second half of life, which puts me in a conversation around aging and death that I, I wasn't aware of previously, but I'm still young enough that I feel like I can do something about- Mm-hmm ... the life that I'm in." It's like that really tender, important death awareness, age awareness thing that can sometimes catalyze us into living a life that we really want, and it was actually going through perimenopause and entering menopause and being post-menopausal that women said initiated for them this sense of a renewed experience of themselves. [upbeat music] The views and opinions expressed on Unpaused are those of the talent and guests alone and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. No part of this podcast or any related materials are intended to be a substitute