What Messages Are You Challenging at Midlife?

The frustration is palpable. Once I see it, I can't unsee it. But the process of actually SEEING it takes a minute or two, because so much of what we have been taught is so deeply embedded that we don't recognize it as a message anymore—it has become part of me

I have been conditioned. And the sad thing is, you have too.

I have been conditioned to a belief system that says

• I need to just deal with it.

• I need to stomach it.

• I need to try harder to achieve what is readily available to me.

But I'm a hustler. I'm gritty. I can do it alone. I can figure it out if only I find more balance in my life. I can learn the rules.

In my old world, the messages were more explicitly about my faith. If I prayed more, sacrificed more, looked the other way more, trusted God more, then all would be well.

But patriarchal messages are loud and clear, even outside of religion.

• Don't complain.

• Be small.

• Take up less space.

• Don't be difficult.

• Don't ask for too much.

• Learn your place.

• Learn the game.

• If you use your voice, you will be called a bitch.

• Be agreeable.

• Be grateful.

• Don't make anyone uncomfortable.

And somewhere along the way, those external messages become internal ones. They move into our subconscious and become part of the greater ecosystem of what we believe about ourselves and our bodies. We don't even recognize them as messages anymore—created by someone. They feel like reality.

Today, my messages are sneaky.

• "This is just the way aging is."

• "I don't get to feel great."

• "This is normal."

• "I should be able to handle this."

• "Everyone gets tired."

• "Maybe I just need to try harder."

So I have been taking a deeper look at how I am actually feeling. My mood. My energy. My motivation. Is it seasonal affective disorder? Is it ADHD? Do I need more dopamine and to "Eat that Frog" first thing in the morning? Am I simply worn out after years of making everything work for everyone else?

Why do I wake after scoring a 93 on my sleep app and still feel tired?

I eat clean. I am always thinking about protein and fiber. I walk, I ruck, I do yoga, I lift heavy. I take my supplements. I limit coffee. I take magnesium. I read the research and look at the biological, psychological, and social pieces. Maybe I need more interaction. Maybe I need less interaction. Maybe I am navel-gazing too much. Maybe I need a vacation on the calendar, something to look forward to in the middle of the routine of everyday life. Maybe retail therapy will help today.

And then I look at my weekends and realize something important. There was golf. Volunteering. Coffee with a new friend and a lot of laughter. Hugs from my kids. Sitting in the bleachers watching Tracey coach. Good conversations. Good women. Good food. Good fun.

My life is full.

So then I head straight to shame. What is wrong with me? I have a great life. Why am I unmotivated? Why am I less focused than I want to be? Why can't I just get it together?

And maybe that is the question we need to challenge. What if the problem isn't that women aren't trying hard enough? What if we have been trying to solve the wrong problem?

We Are Not Finished

I recently had the privilege of attending a women's curated event focused on pelvic health. Dr. Durshana Naik, a pelvic floor physical therapist and part-time comedian, had us informed, laughing, and talking about things that many of us had never actually talked about out loud. She brought her friend Patty the Pelvis to demonstrate, and somehow made pelvic health both educational and hilarious.

But what struck me most was the room. It was filled with smart, accomplished, strong women, and yet so many of us still didn't have basic information about what was happening to our very good bodies.

We are not informed.

Having a community of women who are as informed as you are - women who can talk openly about health, hormones, sex, aging, pelvic health, sleep, mood, energy, and everything else that has traditionally been taboo - is a gift. We need much more of it.

If you were born with ovaries, you will go through menopause. And menopause can be a surprisingly lonely experience, even when you are fortunate enough to have close female friends who are the same age. We need validation, information, strategies, friendship, and practitioners who listen. We need each other.

I met women at this event who were fed up with the messaging. Women who responded by taking early retirement, starting businesses, changing direction, and creating lives that worked better for them. And our hostess challenged the women in the room to advocate in the workplace: Don't give up.

One woman shared how, after gaining 60 pounds during pregnancy and struggling with the physical realities of her changing body, she had to sprint to her office and always know where the nearest bathroom was. She advocated for pregnancy parking at work.

That is what advocacy can look like. It can be personal. It can be practical. And it can change the environment around us.

We Need Women to Stay

We need women in the workplace. And we especially need senior women in the workplace. We need women in leadership, in boardrooms, in decision-making rooms, in the C-suite, in entrepreneurship, in every place where decisions are being made about the future.

And we need to say this loudly:

We are not finished.

We have worked diligently and HARD, dammit, to get where we are. We have accumulated experience, knowledge, relationships, perspective, wisdom, and hard-earned understanding. We don't need a lack of support to be the thing that keeps us from contributing.

But that is exactly what can happen when women's health is treated as a personal inconvenience rather than a workplace issue.

Pivotal partnered with Gallup to survey more than 5,200 U.S. adults about women's health, their experiences getting care, and what happens when that care falls short. The findings put numbers behind something many women already know: when women cannot get the care and support they need, the consequences don't stay in the doctor's office. They follow us to work.

"Barriers can arise before women even get to a doctor's office. For many, the survey found, cost, caregiving responsibilities, and other competing demands stand in the way.

And a lack of adequate care at some of the most critical health stages of women's lives - from pregnancy to menopause - has lasting impacts on women's career trajectories, keeping them stalled on the career ladder or pushing them off of it entirely.

For women, barriers to care are barriers to opportunity. And the barriers to care are far too common. Women need a healthcare system that sees them, listens to them, and takes their pain seriously. That's the world women deserve, and the one Pivotal is working to build."

The numbers are sobering. 42% of women in the workforce say their health has limited their career in some way.51% of women reported at least one negative healthcare experience in the past five years, compared with 39% of men. And 30% of women said they had to push to be taken seriously or receive the treatment they needed.

And menopause is part of this conversation. Among women who have experienced menopause or perimenopause, health challenges related to this transition can affect how much effort women can give at work, whether they pursue promotions and leadership positions, and whether they take extended leave or leave work altogether.

Think about that for a minute.

These aren't women who suddenly stopped being ambitious. They didn't suddenly stop having something to contribute. They are women navigating a healthcare system that has historically underinvested in women's health while simultaneously navigating workplaces that may not understand what is happening to them.

This is a systemic issue.

Organizations lose when women leave. They lose experience, institutional knowledge, leadership, relationships, and talent that took years, sometimes decades, to develop. And we lose something collectively when experienced women disappear from the rooms where decisions are made.

We have spent years talking about the importance of representation in organizations. We understand that who is in the room can influence what gets noticed, what questions get asked, and what experiences are considered.

So I find myself wondering: Would some of the things that happen to women make it as far as they do if more women were in the room? Would someone have said, "Wait. That's not okay"? Would someone have recognized the problem before it became a crisis? Would someone have asked the question nobody else thought to ask?

Representation doesn't solve everything. But absence matters.

And this is why we need women to stay. Not because women need to work themselves into the ground proving their worth. Quite the opposite.

We need workplaces that recognize that women in midlife are not at the end of their usefulness. They may be entering one of the most valuable stages of their professional lives. This can be the "no more BS" phase - the phase where you know what matters, you know what doesn't, you've learned from your mistakes, you've survived things you never thought you would, and you have perspective and wisdom.

And perhaps you are finally less interested in making everyone else comfortable.

We need that woman in the room.

So What Can We Do?

We start by getting curious. What is actually happening in my body? What symptoms have I normalized that deserve attention? Am I exhausted because I'm "getting older," or is something worth investigating? What do I need to feel well? What kind of support would allow me to continue doing the work I care about?

Then we advocate. Ask questions. Get a second opinion. Find practitioners who listen. Learn about your own health. Bring your questions into the room.

And talk about it.

One of the most powerful things we can do is make women's health less private, less shameful, and less taboo. Tell your friends what you are learning. Share the name of the practitioner who finally listened to you. Tell another woman what you wish someone had told you five years ago. Create workplaces where women can say, "This is what I need," without feeling like they are asking for special treatment.

And if you are a woman in a position of leadership, use your position to make the room better for the women coming behind you. Don't quietly make it through and pull the ladder up behind you. Leave the door open. Better yet, hold it open.

We don't need to become smaller to make room for the next generation.

We need to make the room bigger.

Because we are not finished. Not even close.