Episode 330: That’s Totally Normal with Emily Nagoski
Doree and Elise invite sex therapist and menopause expert Emily Nagoski (Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections) on the pod to discuss why just breathing in and out is her current self-care, how to better understand what happens to our bodies during perimenopause, what to ask a doctor and when, and the importance of the lens with which you’re looking at your partner.
Photo Credit: Paul Specht
Mentioned in this Episode
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski
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Transcript
*Transcripts are AI generated.
Doree: Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.
Elise: And I'm Elise Hugh, and we are two friends who like to talk a lot about serums and we're in the thick of midlife and menopause month here at Forever35.
Doree: It's been a journey,
Elise: A very life affirming one,
Doree: A very life affirming journey. Our last guest in the series is going to be on the show next week to wrap up our series and yeah, it's been really great. I've loved all the people we've gotten to talk to and everyone has brought just different cool things to the conversation.
Elise: If you haven't heard them all, we opened with Lynn Slater, the accidental fashion icon, Lynn Slater, who is in her seventies, and then the adventurer slash former firefighter Caroline Paul, who is in her sixties. We've also had the girls who code founder Reshma Sajani, and today we have a really incredible guest too,
Doree: Really incredible guest, and also taking a little break from midlife and menopause. This Wednesday we have our annual gift guide episode.
Elise: It's kind of on theme because we should be treating ourselves.
Doree: This is true. I'll be treating myself. So Elise and I put together a gift guide for this year with our typical wide range of Forever35 approved gifts, so make sure to check that out on Wednesday. And for those of you who are Patreon subscribers, there will not be a casual chat this week. We are off for Thanksgiving, but we will be back casually chatting next week.
Elise: Yes, we'll be back next Friday.
Doree: Well, Elise, how's it going?
Elise: I'm looking forward to having a little time off and I'm doing that thing that we recommended in one of the recent mini S in which I am not preparing a Turkey. I ordered one, so feeling really good about that.
Doree: That is truly the way to go if you are hosting. Honestly, it's too much work.
Elise: It can be. I mean, sometimes I really enjoy it because bonding to spend time with your family members in the kitchen, but I don't have family coming in this year because we're traveling to them for the next holiday, for the Christmas, winter break. So it's going to be kind of a quiet one and I need it. I need the rest.
Doree: I just always find that you have to plan it out so carefully because so many things are being at the same time that if I'm cooking a Turkey in my oven, I don't have room to cook anything else. So when are you cooking the brussel sprouts? When are you cooking the stuff? All those things. I mean, I see people with spreadsheets and I mean it's It's a whole timing thing. It's a
Elise: Bath problem. Yeah,
Doree: It is. And I will say Thanksgiving is one of those meals that Matt usually takes the lead on. He usually cooks the Turkey and kind of handles a lot of it, but I think we also are going to just get Thanksgiving from somewhere nearby, maybe Whole Foods or Bristol Farms or something.
Elise: It is Forever35 approved. There's no shame in it. There's no shame in it. There's no
Doree: Shame. Yeah. I keep thinking about our listener who was asking about how to have traditions, holiday traditions when it's just you and your small family. So I don't know. I've been thinking about that a lot.
Elise: Yeah, well, it only takes what one extra time beyond the first time to make it a tradition so you can just be making
Doree: That is so true.
Elise: Exactly. It's never too late.
Doree: That is so true. I love thinking about it like that. Well, Elise, I feel like we should just get to our guest because we had such an amazing conversation with her.
Elise: She's full of knowledge and hilarious as well, and also going through perimenopause. Our guest today, and she's a previous Forever35 guest. She returns.
Doree: She is. She's a repeat guest.
Elise: That's right. Her name is Emily Naski. She is the well-known sex educator who began her career in 1995 when she became a peer health educator at the University of Delaware. She is trained to teach all about stress, nutrition, physical activity, and above all sex. She went to Indiana University for her masters and continued on to earn her PhD in health behavior with a concentration in human sexuality. For eight years she worked as a lecturer and director of wellness education at Smith College before transitioning to full-time writing and speaking. You might know her from her book Burnout, which she wrote with her sister, the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. She's also written a book called Come As You Are, and most recently the book come together, the Science and Art of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections. She's also become somewhat of an expert on the menopausal transition, so we were delighted to talk to her and just get a wealth of her knowledge.
Doree: She was so great. Before we get to her, I just want to remind everyone that you can find everything we mention on the show at our website Forever35 podcast.com. We're also on Instagram at Forever35 podcast. We post clips of our guest interviews every week. Our Patreon is at patreon.com/Forever35. We also have our favorite products@shopmy.us slash forever three five, and you can sign up for our newsletter at Forever35 podcast.com/newsletter. And just a reminder that we do take listener questions, comments, feedback, concerns, all the things you can call or text us at (781) 591-0390 or you can email us at Forever35 podcast at gmail com. And here is Emily. Emily, welcome back to Forever35. We had you and your sister on, gosh, I don't know, five years ago. It was a while ago. Was it pre pandemic? I think it was, was pre pandemic. It's amazing how much has changed and
Emily: Yet how little has
Doree: Changed, right? Yes, indeed. As you know, we like to start off by asking our guests about a self-care practice that they have. So we're wondering is there anything right now, especially given the events of the last couple of weeks that you are doing that you would consider self-care?
Emily: Let me set a frame around this. Assuming Project 2025 is the agenda, which is looking very much like it is pornography is going to be defined as anything that includes LGBTQIA two plus people, which is literally all of my work and Project 2025 on page, I believe three calls for the banning of all what they call pornography, which is to say just like LGBTQIA two plus people and all of the media that includes and welcomes them, that's all pornography. The people who make it should be imprisoned and the librarians and booksellers who shelve it should be registered sex offenders and so should people who make it. So what I'm looking at is a world where within a year I could be going door to door to my neighbors and introducing myself, hello, I'm a registered sex offender, so that's my world right now. There are a lot of people in my life whose livelihoods and lives are under pretty much immediate threat. That is not a level of safety that is tolerable by a human nervous system, and I want to level set for people.
If you're feeling that level of like this is not okay, that is an accurate assessment of how not okay is. So my self-care is breathing in and breathing out, noticing the state of my system. There's a model of our nervous system's response to the external world. It's called the Polyvagal Theory by Stephen Porges. You've probably heard of it. It proposes that there are basically three states that our nervous system can be in. There's the ventral state, which is when you've got activation of the ventral vagus, the facial social connected branch of your vagus or your 10th cranial nerve where you feel connected and safe enough and loving and peaceful and joyful. There is the sympathetic vagus, the second branch of the 10th cranial nerve where your fight or flight stress response lives. This is when you don't feel safe, your heart rate increases, your blood pressure increases, your immune system is suppressed, your digestive system is suppressed.
One of the difficult things about being in a long-term stress state is that your health erodes gradually because you're not supposed to stay in that state for a long time. Your body's not designed for it. And then there's the third vagal branch, which is the dorsal branch, which is shut down, which is where flop happens, where you like can't get out of bed, you just shut down. I don't know if this might sound familiar to you, but I've had moments where I get into a sympathetic activated state and I write 2000 words in one sitting and then I'm like, I need to eat something. I wander into the kitchen and I just stand there just staring at a wall. I am like, oh, that's very, that is fascinating. Let me notice how my body has transitioned out of sympathetic and into dorsal. It needs rest. When your body does that, your body is calling for rest. There's a book that was just released this beautiful, gorgeous, inspiring book by Trisha Hery called We Will Rest The Art of Escape. Oh, should have her on, she's a trickster and she wrote a much more comprehensive book called Rest is Resistance, but this smaller book, I think I'm going to read it every day for the foreseeable future.
Elise: Thank you, Emily. It's just so well timed that you're with us and we are spending the entire month of November talking about midlife and menopause and just aging and all the questions that come with it.
Emily: You are, it'll be such a relief to talk about menopause. Yeah, I mean,
Elise: Yeah. Yeah. That's where we're at. That's where we're at. You're the perfect guest because you are both a well-known and trusted sex therapist and researcher, but you've also mentioned to me that you are in perimenopause
Doree: Yourself. Oh yeah.
Elise: So can we start with just definitions? I have questions. Is menopause a process or is it a single event and how do we know if we're in perimenopause? And I guess menopause previously was just defined as the cessation of your period, but just kind of give us some definition, some baseline to begin with.
Emily: So the technical definition of menopause is when you have gone 12 months in a row without any menstruation.
Jen Gunter in her book about menopause tells the story of going 11 months. She gets to 11 months and then she's traveling internationally and she gets a period, of course she does. And she's like overall and has to go to a pharmacy in Italy and get pads. So yeah, sudden she has to start her 12 month counter all over again. It's a delight. That's technically you've gotten to menopause when you've gone 12 full months without a period. Perimenopause is this extended period length of time anywhere from a couple of years to a dozen years where you have an increasing irregularity of your menstrual cycle for most people. So I have an identical twin and I am on the pill, so I get zero period at all.
Elise: Same.
Emily: So I will not know technically when I am fully perimenopausal and the medical advice is just stay on the pill until your 55.
Elise: Oh, I didn't know that. Alright.
Emily: That is the standard that I have read and that my medical provider has talked to me about, but I'm also watching Amelia's superior tracking. Amelia's is off the cloud, so I'm watching and there has not been one period skipped yet, and we're 47, so when this perimenopause
Elise: Started, yeah, I was going to say, how has it been for you
Emily: In retrospect? I could see perimenopause begin around 41. I didn't recognize it until I had my first hot flash, which happened at the Orlando airport in the TSA line in February of 2020. I was on my way home from the last gig. It would turn out traveling for the year, and I was standing in the line and I was suddenly like, is it really hot in this airport? They usually, it's kind of chilly in the way they can. The Florida airports very
Elise: Conditions
Emily: Usually, right. I sweat. I was so sweaty. I went into the bathroom, I took off my shirt, I pulled off my bra and I threw it out because not only was it wet, it stank and it way that was deeply unfamiliar and it does turn out that our body odor changes with perimenopause. That's something I learned. Wow. Exciting. A delight. Wow. Look, it's not fun, but it is hilarious.
Elise: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're hilarious about it. I
Emily: Enjoy talking about this with you at the airport, ripping off your bra being like what happened to you?
Doree: So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back. Why do you think it's important for people to be aware that they're in perimenopause?
Emily: Oh, recognizing that things that are happening to your body and your mind are normal. It can feel like you're going crazy, you are not going crazy. This is just like a really bonkers banana pants phase of life for anybody who's got a uterus.
Elise: And I feel like it's still pretty new or within the past maybe five years where people have talked about perimenopause at all or that this transition is something that can be happening over the course of five to 10 to 12
Emily: Years. We now live in a world where a lot of young people get sat down by a parent and say, puberty is coming. You can expect these changes, but how many of us have a parent set us down and say, perimenopause is coming. Here are the changes you can expect. I didn't get that. And what I can say is that Gen X is doing a bang up job of making sure that the generations that follow us do not have to go through the same kind of bullshit that our boomer parents went through. What my mother went through with hormone treatment and stuff. I'm not going to have to do all that stuff. The science is getting better, the education is getting better and the gender inclusivity is getting vastly better. The single best book I have read, I think all the books on perimenopause and the best one is Heather Corinna. What Fresh Hell is this? What an amazing title. Right, great
Doree: Title. Great title. How should people with uterus approach the conversation about perimenopause or menopause with their medical providers? What are the questions that they should be asking?
Emily: If you're having symptoms, ask if they are typical. If you are having, for example, hot flashes, ask what is the typical frequency of hot flashes? How long can I expect this to last? What are interventions that have a low risk of unwanted consequences or side effects that are likely actually to be effective? There are not a lot for hot flashes. Sleep is one of the in burnout. Amelia and I wrote about sleep and we included a little bit about how that changes in perimenopause and menopause. And then I got there and I was like, oh, fuck this. I went multiple years without sleeping through the night.
Doree: Wow.
Emily: Yeah.
Elise: Wow. Now you recognize that it was a perimenopausal
Emily: Symptom. At first, I didn't realize that. I thought, well, it happened at the same time as the pandemic. So the two things were really tangled up with each other, and I was like, I'm just stressed out because it's 2020, which is plausible. Part of it was that,
Doree: And
Emily: Then it just kept going for years and I kept talking to my therapist and my psychiatrist and my medical providers. I got covid and then I got long. So I talked to my long covid provider and I finally found a medication that has helped me to sleep through the night sometimes. And that's great. And it turns out also my long covid provider suggested that progesterone, low progesterone is one hormonal potential cause for the changes in sleep. So talk to a medical provider about things like sleep, which is so fundamentally important to our overall health. If you are having those difficulties, talk to a medical provider. If you are having genital urinary symptoms. I experienced both pain with vaginal intercourse and delightful urinary incontinence where I would feel like I had finished peeing. But then I sat up as I stood up from the toilet, a little extra slurp enough to make my panties unpleasantly wet. Then I went to my OB GYN for my standard checkup. And because I am the person that I am, my nurse practitioner talks to me in ways, maybe she doesn't talk to other patients. And she said, wow, Emily, your vaginal rug are really flat for you being 45, I'm going to prescribe. So your vagina is actually not a flat surface on either on the walls of the vagina. It's really folded and wrinkly and juicy and lush. And part of what happens with the reduction in estrogen is that those ridges flatten out and Oh
Elise: No, the topography changes. The topography
Emily: Changes, but I love my vagina as it's, yeah, and you can learn to love it as a menopausal vagina also. And it can be really helpful. People's mileage may vary, but adding estrogen in some form can be really helpful for all of the genital urinary symptoms that people can experience. So for example, I got a prescription for vaginal estradiol. So I squirt a tube of white cream into my OU every few days and the urinary incontinence went away and after a couple of weeks, the pain with intercourse went away because the other piece of it is that the tissue that lines the vagina becomes really fragile and can tear, which is what causes the pain. Although there is no specific hormonal cause for a decrease in sexual desire or arousal. You can imagine that if you experience pain with intercourse, that's going to reduce your interest. It makes sense not to want sex. That hurts. If you're experiencing unwanted pain, talk to a medical provider about a medical intervention.
Elise: Well, this is perfect because I wanted to talk about the sex of it all and I'd love to know what this particular transition, these changes do to our experiences of sexual arousal and pleasure and all the things that you're an expert in.
Emily: So context is the big thing. Whether or not our brain interprets any sensation as pleasurable depends on the context in which we're experiencing it. My usual example is tickling, right? Not everybody. Tickling is some people's favorite thing, but it's not everybody's favorite thing. Some people, there's no context where they like it, but for a lot of people, if you're already feeling like flirty, playful, sexy, connected, aroused, trusting, loving with a certain special someone and they tickle you, that could feel fun and pleasurable and you want to lead to other things. But if that seems certain special someone tickles you when you're in the middle of an argument,
Elise: Then it's like, don't touch
Emily: Me. Even though it's the same sensation, it's the same certain special someone because your mental state is different. The way your brain interprets that sensation is completely opposite, right?
Doree: Yeah.
Emily: So what's important to recognize is that menopause is a massive change in context. Your body is changing. And a lot of millennials, y'all are coming up behind me. I'm the tail end of Gen X, born in 1977, have done a lot of really intensive, profound work on loving their bodies, on being able to look in the mirror at the parts of themselves that they were taught for so many years they're supposed to feel ashamed of, but they can look at those parts and be like, no, I love me. I'm so grateful for the fricking fracking miracle that is my body. The one and only thing I will have with me on the day I die that I had with me on the day I was born. And then five years from now, it's all going to be different. And you got to start from scratch.
You got to do the same because if you feel great about a partner and their touch and they touch your belly and you feel great about your belly, that sensation, your brain's going to interpret it as pleasurable. But if you feel great about your partner and great about their touch and they touch your belly and you don't feel great about this very different belly that's going to hit your sexual breaks and there's no hormonal change that happened, what happened is your body changed and you live in a culture that told you your body's not supposed to ever fucking change. That's the worst. It's definitely not supposed to age.
And so each of us as individuals and all of us as a collective have to battle against that and make the choice that our bodies are excellent precisely as they are today. I don't want to make it sound like people need to be fricking superheroes and love every change of their bodies. You love your vagina the way you don't want it to change. I felt that way about my boobs and gravity wins. That's just real. And instead of going through all the deep emotional work of learning to love my boobs as they are now, I just put on a bra, I put 'em up where they used to be, and then I don't have to worry about it. And then I feel good about my boobs because they're where I'm used to them being. And that feels awesome. Don't be a hero. You can also use the tools at your disposal to just make it a little easier.
Elise: Yeah. Okay. Let's take a break and we will be right back in your latest book, come together, you write about how we shouldn't even be pursuing passion or that idea of trying to keep the spark alive as we are aging or we're in a relationship for a longer period of time longer. So that is kind of the sex advice that comes from a lot of books, reignite your passion,
Emily: But
Elise: Instead you argue that we should pursue pleasure. So I'd love for you to clarify the difference between pleasure and then the spark,
Emily: Right? So tell me if this sounds like a familiar narrative to you. I call it the desire imperative. Early on in a relationship, you're supposed to have this super hot and heavy, can't wait to get my hands on. You can't wait to put my tongue in your mouth feeling. And then that's a reason why you stay together. And gradually over time, life gets complicated and maybe you buy a fixer upper house or you have kids or jobs get complicated or happens and the sex sort of drops down on the priority list. And then you get to a time like menopause. And apparently all of your sexuality just drifts away on the sea of your hormones leaving you to hold hands with your partner at sunset on a beach or whatever the fuck we're supposed to do.
Elise: And just to be clear, this is the cultural narrative. This is the
Emily: Cultural bullshit narrative that we have been sold. And I do mean sold because our options, if this is the real narrative, our options are either just give up on sexuality. And let me be clear, there are absolutely some people who get to menopause and are like, don't have to worry about that anymore. Don't have to worry about being sexual anymore. It's off the table. And then there are other people who are like, I really want sexuality still to be a part of my life. And we're told that we should invest our time and energy and money in trying to keep that spark alive to light, that spark to make it. It was early on in the relationship. And what I want to say is when you look at the actual research on people who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term, they do not talk about spark. They don't talk about feeling horny. Sexual desire barely scrapes into the top 10 characteristics of extraordinary, magnificent sex. The people who have extraordinary sex talk about authenticity, vulnerability, empathy, empathy, empathy, connection, pleasure. And it makes sense even at the really surface level that like, oh yeah, it's a lot easier to be interested in having sex that you like and it's not a dysfunction not to want sex you don't like.
So when we center pleasure instead of desire, all of the other puzzle pieces fall into place. I'm not saying this is an easy transition to make, and in particular for people who were raised their entire lives to believe that their pleasure doesn't matter, that their body is there to be of service to their partner. And after all this time, maybe they've been having sex and they're not a hundred percent sure they could recognize pleasure in their body if it happened. Those are folks who are going to have to be starting from basic questions. What does pleasure feel like for me?
And then there's other people who are going to be like, I know what pleasure feels like. And yeah, I had friends, this is a real thing that really happened to me about 10 years ago, was visiting some friends. They had seven academic degrees between them and two children under five. And they were like, just out of curiosity, Emily, how do couples sustain a strong connection over the long term? And I told them the advice that I have income as you are, which is forget about spontaneous desire. Let it be responsive. You put your body in the bed, you let your skin touch your partner's skin, and a lot of the time your body's going to go, oh, right, I really like this. I really like this person. And it turns out people who sustain a strong sexual connection, this is what a lot of their sex life looks like.
They show up in a good enough state, they let their skin touch and they go like, oh yeah. Oh yeah, this is really good. And so as I'm saying this, I do my like, you let your skin touch your partners skin. The wife in this hetero relationship pushes away from the table with a disgusted face at the idea of letting her skin touch her husband's skin. And I was like, okay, so there's your problem. The problem is not that you don't desire sex, the problem is you don't like the sex that's available in this relationship. And that is a deeper conversation.
Elise: Yeah, that's a whole different conversation.
Emily: That's a whole other sitch. And I wrote the book because writing Come as You are. My first book was so stressful that even though I was thinking about sex and writing about sex and learning about sex all day, every day, I was so stressed that I lost all interest in actually having any sex. In my case, I really wanted to want sex in a way I knew you
Elise: Gave yourself a hard time about it. If I
Emily: Recall from the, because you were sort like the shit out of myself. I'm this sex expert, I'm this expert here. This is supposed to be easy. I'm supposed to know how to do this. And I tried to follow my own advice. I put my body in the bed, I let my skin touch my partner's skin, and I burst into tears and then fell asleep. But I knew that if I could just get there, wherever there was, I was going to like it. One of the benefits of being a sex educator is that I do actually really like the sex available to me in my relationship. I would not stay in a relationship where I wasn't able to create joyous, connected, playful, wonderful sex. So the solution for me is different from the solution for someone who doesn't like the sex.
Elise: So we're having you on for midlife and menopause month, but as I'm hearing you talk, do you give different advice as a sex educator to young people versus older people?
Emily: For older people, I mostly talk about, Hey, bodies change. That's reality. It is the ones who get older. The lucky ones as an anthropologist friend of mine said because she died at 55 because the ones who get old are the lucky ones. And to frame watching their partner's body change and allowing their partner to watch their body change, frame that as a privilege and a delight and a pleasure. Occasionally I get asked, but what if I'm not attracted to my partner anymore? I have been to a lot of maternal health conferences, for example, and there's generally a partner panel. It's a lot of dads.
There's also a lot of parents, co-parents of other genders, but a lot of dads and almost always, all of those dads say either I didn't even notice the changes that she's worried about or they say, I love it. I love everything about what changed is so hot. Is so hot. She's so hot. My wife is so hot. So I believe that almost all the time when you look at your partner's body, you're looking through lenses that are tinted by the quality of your relationship. So if you really like your partner, if you really enjoy them as a person, you trust and admire them. If you are grateful to be their partner, when you look at them, you're going to see all those feelings and you're going to like what you see. But if you are frustrated and annoyed and you feel like they're not there for you, so it's hard to trust them, then what you see, you're not going to lick no matter what it is.
Doree: Emily, before we let you go, we would love to know what you have kind of learned so far in your own aging journey and how are you kind of thinking about it as you get older? And I should also say, I think we're exactly the same age. I was also born in 1977, so everything you're saying I feel like I especially relate to.
Elise: That's Doree's solidarity.
Doree: That's my solidarity.
Emily: No, but yeah, we'd just love, so you too, we're in the sixth grade when Kokomo was a big deal.
Doree: Yes.
Emily: What's Kokomo?
Doree: And I also mean you probably danced to the Humpty dance on your eighth grade dance.
Elise: Okay. I absolutely cool kids. Alright, back up. Cool kids. I know the
Emily: Macarena. I know I had Macarena. I'm pretty sure I was in college when the Macarena happened.
Elise: I'm only five years younger than y'all. But yeah, I guess it is kind of a different eighth grade experience for sure.
Doree: You're elder millennial, you're an elder millennial, and we are tail end of Gen X. So it's a different situation.
Emily: We have different cultural
Elise: Touchstones.
Emily: The people 10 years ahead of us, the 57 year olds now
Are like, they're doing the work for us. They have really made big positive changes so that we are meno pausing into a world that is more accepting of our aging bodies. Ade Bernie Scott and the Black Girls Guide to Surviving Menopause is a spectacular resource in every social media platform. I've been waiting for a book. I don't know if there's going to be a book, but I would love for there to be a book that and what fresh hell is this are my two favorite menopause resources. And it's not a coincidence that one is a black woman and one is a non-binary person. These resources are being led by people who are like, no, no, no, we're cracking open space for more than just the cis white middle class women.
Elise: Yeah, we will be sure to link to those. But yeah, reflect for us a little bit. Emily.
Emily: It's so complicated because there's this overlap with Covid and because I have long covid, it's overlapping with being disabled, physically disabled for the first time in my life. And so I have just sort of been awash in confrontation with the expectations I had for my body that it no longer meets the physical strength that it had, that covid took the pliability of my vaginal tissues, that perimenopause has taken my sleep. Oh my God, oh my God, the sleep. And so I have talked over the 30 years of my career, a big game about turning with kindness and compassion toward the difficult parts of yourself and practicing. And I have been called on to be compassionate and patient with my own body in brand new and profound ways.
Being accepting toward my body when I go to do something that was easy 10 years ago and my body just doesn't do it anymore either because of menopause or because of the physical disability of long covid. And there's this big combination of anger at what I lost and grief at what I lost and hope that maybe some of it can be restored, but also despair. What if it never comes back and can I love the body that I have now? And so you're talking to me at an inflection point in my relationship with my own body in a lot of big ways. And boy, am I glad I have the background that I have. I'm not sure how I would do it if I didn't already have a long established practice of noticing my state and being nonjudgmental about it being like, yeah, I have a feeling about this change that's happening and I'm allowed to have that feeling and that feeling is not permanent. And what if I tried to lean a little bit in the direction of feeling affectionate toward this change? I'm just going to do a really gently, I'm not going to try to force myself to put on a happy face and say, this is all great. What a treat, what a delight, how much I love this. No, I'm going to be really gentle and patient and kind with myself the way I would be. Our dog is 15 years old
And she gets up slow and she goes up and down the stairs slow. And I could get impatient with her and be like, come on, thunder her, come up the stairs. Or I could be like, it is a treasure and a gift every single day. I get to watch this dog trundle slowly up and down the stairs, and I'm going to love every little step that she takes and the way she tilts her head because she couldn't quite hear me, but she thinks I said, carrot, what a gift I'm going to be as. I'm going to try to treasure myself as much as I treasure my dog.
Elise: Well Emily, thank you for being so open and vulnerable with us during this inflection time. And hopefully it was in some way nourishing for you too. I
Emily: Feel like it's the only way that I can turn because I do feel so privileged to bring to my own experience, my background as a sex educator and as a women's health advocate. And if it's this hard for me and it is hard for me, but what would it be like if I didn't have these resources? So I feel like it is absolutely a gift to me for me to be able to talk about this in hopes that it might help somebody else be like, oh, that's normal, and I should go to the doctor and get some vagina cream. Yes, indeed. Get you some estradiol. Let's end on that note. Where do folks find you? Where do folks find you? Emily naski, emily naski.com. You can sign up from a substack sometimes. I'm on Instagram, but social media is hard.
Doree: I know it. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was great as always to get to talk to you.
Emily: It's truly, genuinely my pleasure.
Doree: Well, she was great. And as someone who was also born in 1977, I feel like we have that unique,
Elise: You share the same Chinese Zodiac sign.
Doree: Yeah, we have that unique perspective. 1977 was one of the baby bust years, so there's actually not that many of us. Oh, cool. Solidarity. Solidarity for all 19 s seven seventies, mid to late seventies babies eighties. There've just been the oil crisis. It was a weird time. It was a weird time in the
Elise: Country. See Carter Carter presidency. Inflation was through the
Doree: Roof. Yeah. Everyone's like, I'm not going to have a kid. I mean, it's kind of reminiscent of the state of the world, although I would argue right now it's probably worse anyway. Well, I mean the birth rate has been going down.
Elise: That's true.
Doree: Anyway, enough about that intentions.
Elise: Yes. How did you do with your intention last week?
Doree: I did. Okay. I will say I am still having those moments of gratitude every time I play tennis. It's very interesting, especially if I play during the day, just looking up at the Southern California very blue sky. And I played a match on Sunday in the San Gabriel Valley, and it was these courts that were kind of just plopped down in the middle. I could see a mountain range. It was just very, very, very peaceful. Except for the plinking sound of pickleball coming from neighboring courts because they converted half the courts into pickleball courts. So other than that, it was very peaceful and lovely. But yeah, I've been having that feeling a lot lately, which just trying to take it day by day. And then this week, I mean, this week is one of those weeks where I'm like, okay, family in town. Thanksgiving kid is off school. There's just going to be a lot to kind of get through. And similar to last week, I simultaneously want to be like, okay, I just have to get through this. But I also want to appreciate, I mean, it's Thanksgiving. I want to appreciate that I have family coming into town. And so it's a balancing act, I would say.
Elise: Yeah. I feel like I should try and put up holiday decorations early. This is not my intention, but because we have all this time off from school, maybe that's an activity I can do. Oh yeah, that's a good idea. I'm very stressed about what I'm supposed to do with my kids without travel or school. This is really occupying my brain. But last week, just to check in on intentions, I'm trying to stay on assignment here. Last week, my intention was to journal every day, and I made it, even though some of the days that I was journaling, it was like three or four sentences performed the wedding. Did it?
Doree: That's
Elise: Okay. But I feel like I was kind of doing it in a perfunctory way to make sure that I did it. So maybe I need to put a little bit more heart into it. But you
Doree: Know what I'll say though, along those lines, because as you know, I do a one line a day journal, which is very short and perfunctory, but there's a lot that you'll remember just by jotting a few things down. I don't actually think you need to go into great and gory detail about every single thing that happens. And in fact, I think that creates a lot of pressure for journaling because I look back on these one lines. You know what I mean? It's not a lot. And I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that trip to Huntington Gardens and the things that we did. And it's just like these little things that sort of jog my memory. So I don't know. I would be kind to yourself. I don't think it's just perfunctory.
Elise: Okay. Yeah, that's a good framing for it. And then this week, obviously in the spirit of the holiday, I intend to give thanks. Nice. Really lean into the gratitude and saying that out loud and modeling it for everybody else, for my family. And I will start by giving thanks to all the listeners in the community for really, and you specifically Doree, for welcoming me here into this community. And it's just really been, the pleasure has been mine. It has been really fortifying even, and especially as we go through this really turbulent time in the country and in the world. So thank you all for being there. Thank you all for being such an awesome and supportive community.
Doree: Well, I am very grateful to you and yeah, I'm just so, and to our team, yeah, our team, Sammy and Sammy and Sammy Sam's, we only have people named Sam or Sammy on our team. If your name isn't Sam, need not apply. And just so grateful that we get to keep this show going. So that is because of you. So thank you. Yes. Alright, everybody. Forever35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Elise Hugh, and produced and edited by Sam Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and our network partners acast. Thanks everyone. Thank you to Acast too. Oh yes, thanks Acast. Bye.