Empowering Women in Midlife: Lucy Quigley’s Journey of Self-Discovery and Mindful Eating Practices

Have you ever felt lost in your own life, especially as the roles you’ve cherished begin to shift? Join host Heather Carey as she dives deep into the transformative journey of Lucy Quigley, a passionate advocate for midlife women facing personal crises and transitions. In this heartfelt episode of Real Food Stories, Lucy opens up about hitting rock bottom at 44, a pivotal moment that sparked her quest for identity beyond motherhood. Through her story, she reveals powerful insights that resonate with many women navigating similar paths.

Lucy’s experience serves as a testament to the importance of self-acceptance and compassion, especially during midlife transitions. She shares her newfound journaling practice, which became a guiding light for her and is now a beacon for other women seeking clarity and empowerment. This episode is a treasure trove of mindful eating practices, nutrition advice, and healthy lifestyle choices that can help you reconnect with your true self.

As the conversation unfolds, Lucy discusses the emotional challenges of midlife, emphasizing the significance of understanding one’s ‘why’ in health and wellness. The episode also sheds light on menopause health, encouraging open discussions about its impact on women’s lives and how it intertwines with nutrition and emotional eating. With insights on cooking for health, the Mediterranean diet, and mindful eating practices, Lucy’s journey illustrates how our personal food stories shape our well-being.

Listeners will find invaluable healthy eating tips and nutritionist insights that can inspire their own personal food journeys and mindful eating practices. From debunking weight loss myths to exploring family food traditions, this episode weaves together the threads of food and culture, highlighting the importance of sustainable eating and mindful eating practices. Lucy’s narrative encourages us to embrace our vulnerabilities, reminding us that strength often lies in our willingness to share our struggles.

Whether you’re seeking connection, support, or simply a dose of inspiration, this episode of Real Food Stories is a must-listen for women navigating the complexities of midlife and menopause. Join us as we explore the seven pillars of abundance and how they can lead to a more fulfilling life. Tune in and discover how to turn your challenges into opportunities for growth and transformation!

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back. And if you are just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you. And I’m really glad you’re here with me today. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relation to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. This week, I sat down to talk with Lucy Quigley, who has a very meaningful story around her own journey through midlife. Lucy had a rock bottom moment in her 40s that made her deeply reevaluate so many aspects of her life, including her body and health, her identity as a mother and a wife, as well as the deep question that I think all of us at some point in our lives ask ourselves, is this it? Anytime we give pause to looking back at what was and what we are facing in our lives. Through a great deal of introspection and the birth of a journaling practice that changed everything for her, Lucy is here to tell us how you can also practice acceptance and develop compassion for yourself to make life worth truly living. I look forward to seeing you next week. forward to you taking a listen to my interview with Lucy Quigley.

Speaker #1
I am here today with Lucy Quigley or Lucy Q. Do you get called Lucy Q some of the time? Well, I go by Lucy Q because I know it sounds silly, but I find saying Lucy Quigley a bit of a tongue twister.

Speaker #0
And I love Lucy Q. I think that’s great. So transcending personal crises fueled Lucy’s desire to connect with and empower other midlife moms, a passion she pursues as host of The Rollercoaster of Midlife, a podcast with over 300 episodes. Lucy has shared her passion for journaling in her guided journal, Your Journaling Journey. And Lucy lives in Nova Scotia, Canada with her husband, Jeff, and has two adult sons, Liam and Ethan. So welcome to the podcast. Lucy, I’m so excited to have you here today, not only because we are both women in midlife, and I think probably between us, we have many, many stories of transition and getting older, but you are also a big advocate of journaling as a way of healing, which I was very intrigued with because I am a huge fan of journaling. I know you have a story of hitting your rock bottom, as you said, and then the journey of coming out of that. So why don’t we just jump in? I would love to just hear your story and how you got into journaling and where you are today.

Speaker #1
Well, thank you so much for having me, Heather. It’s all, everything you just mentioned comes together in this beautiful mess. that’s the benefit of, you know, hindsight is 2020 is I can look back and see how everything ties together. But in the moment, it doesn’t feel that way. It just doesn’t feel that way. So as you mentioned, this part of my story starts when I was about 44. And I hit rock bottom. And that was to do with the transition of realizing that my kids were getting older, my oldest was moving on to university. And I knew that our second child would not be far behind him. And that’s when I really started to question, well, who am I? And what does life look beyond mom? Because like many women that grew up in the 80s, we sort of did that transition of, you know, going from daughter to wife to mother very quickly. And for me, I never actually stopped to explore who I was and what I wanted. Yeah, I knew I wanted to get married and I knew I wanted to have kids. And that all happened. And, you know, like all of us mothers, we put everything into our families. And we love that. We don’t begrudge it. We don’t resent it. We love that. But eventually you kind of get to the point where you’re like, who am I? What does my life look like past having kids at home? And that’s really what happened to me at 44. And it all sort of crashed down on me on, you know, what I call my darkest day, because it was all too much for me. And for a brief time, I considered tapping out. It didn’t last that long because I knew, you know, very quickly, I sort of realized that, you know, making that final choice wouldn’t be solving anything. And in fact, it would be passing everything on to my husband and kids. And, you know, that’s not something that I wanted. So it was in those really raw moments of weakness that I did something rather uncharacteristic. for myself. And I pulled out to the universe. Now you had mentioned that I’m big on journaling. Well, before this, I tried journaling and I buy all these fancy journals and you know, the cool pens and the glitter pens and, and then I sit there staring at a blank page. I could never figure out how to actually begin the process. But on this day in particular, You know, after I said… you know, I just asked the universe, just give me one thing. Tell me one thing that I need to do right now to pull myself out of a tailspin. And then I just somehow drifted into thinking, you know, if this isn’t what I want, what do I want? And I started thinking about that future version of myself. I didn’t have any concrete ideas about having a journal or starting a podcast, but I had an idea of how I wanted to feel. And what I wanted my life to look like. So I wrote down five simple statements that I felt reflected that future version of myself. And then the next day, I got up and I wrote them out again. And over the next few weeks, each morning I got up and I would write them out. But eventually I started to tie them into more of an affirmation. Now we all know affirmations, you know. Right. You know. But. So that’s what I did is I turned these statements into affirmations. And then after a few more weeks, I decided to really anchor them by tying them into my why. So that’s why I call them why formations is that it’s more than just an affirmation. You know, affirmations are very general. And sometimes when we repeat them to ourselves, your mind kind of calls you out. because you know it’s not true.

Speaker #0
Right. You can repeat, yeah, I am calm. I am.

Speaker #1
I mean, well, your mind is like, no, I’m not.

Speaker #0
Yeah. And all of a sudden you’re repeating an affirmation over and over and you sort of just can numb out from the affirmation and it doesn’t really.

Speaker #1
It just, it’s disconnected. Yeah. I am peaceful.

Speaker #0
I am calm. Right. And then all of a sudden you’re like, am I?

Speaker #1
No. But these were really anchored in who I was. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Simon Sinek talk about the power of why. But knowing your why is what really supercharges anything that you do. It drives you forward. And that’s why I sort of crafted them in that way. So I still get up five years later every morning and I write out my five why formations. They haven’t changed. They’re the same ones. I also have a, call it gratitude mantra that I write out, same thing every morning. And then I find what that does is that kind of settles your mind and it gets you to tune into what you’re feeling in the moments. And then you’re better able to get into actual journal writing and sort of unpack and decompress whatever’s going on with you at that moment.

Speaker #0
Wow. So that’s, I mean, your story is so… spot on for me too. And I think so many other women who send off their children to college. I mean, I know that when I first, I have twins and I have a younger one. So when I sent my twins off, whereas I was no different than you, I mean, I felt what is my purpose in life right now, even though I had a career, I mean, I have a career and, but my first, you know, if I had to give one of when I am statement my first statement was I am a mother and so sending them off to college felt devastating to me I mean I just I’ll never forget that I was really questioning my purpose in life I’m like what what am I doing now I’m like I have this it just yeah it took me a while to try to really adjust to a new life in that empty nesting I think that so many people you hear look, you know, I can’t wait to empty nest and I can’t wait, but I did not feel that at all. I did not have that feeling.

Speaker #1
I really questioned. Sure. you know, you think about having an empty nest because it’s going to give you more time. But I think if most mothers are honest with themselves, they’re not.

Speaker #0
Right.

Speaker #1
That nest is, you know, it’s your family is everything. And I think, you know, mainstream will classify what you and I went through as a midlife crisis. And I don’t like to think of it that way because, you know, whenever I think of a midlife crisis. I don’t even know if there was some 80s movie or TV show or something where you see the stereotypical dad that’s got some toupee and a red sports car and he’s got like a girlfriend. That’s what comes to mind. And I don’t think that does anybody justice. And that’s what I like to think of it as a midlife meltdown. Everything sort of turns to liquid, but that gives you then the opportunity to create whatever you want for your future.

Speaker #0
Yes. I mean, it definitely, right. It’s like a, here’s your blank slate. And now that you’ve accomplished a lot, I mean, you mission accomplished with being a great mom, not that you’re, you stop being a mother, but you know, you’re kicking them out a little bit and it does, it gives you this opportunity to now what, you know, but that can feel very overwhelming.

Speaker #1
Yes.

Speaker #0
I mean, the having to put the possibilities and especially if you’ve just been a mom for 18, 20 years, you know that. I mean, it’s hard to think about transitioning to something else. That was your job.

Speaker #1
Exactly. And I think it’s by having too many choices and knowing that we have so many so many possibilities. I think that’s why we get stuck. is you don’t know where to turn. And I think that’s where I got to myself is I was so stuck. I was so paralyzed by my own thoughts. I got stuck. But I was able to start moving forward just by identifying with that future self. And I write out those same five statements every day. I’ll share my first one with you. And it’s applicable to what your podcast is all about. I say, I have a strong and healthy body. And I am living a long, fulfilling life. It doesn’t make a difference if I gain five pounds, lose 30. It doesn’t matter. I’m focusing on having that strong and healthy body and what that means to me throughout my life.

Speaker #0
Yeah, I love that Y formation. I have a strong and healthy body, especially as we are getting older in this midlife. thing with our bodies transitioning and going into menopause, perimenopause, you know, hormones, our weight. Yeah. I mean, it can be a hot mess and it can be a lot of confusion. I mean, this is who I mostly see, you know, for my, my clients and my coaching is a lot of confusion and a lot of, this is it, you know, this, this is it. I send my kids off. I’m supposed to be Happy happy and oh, I’m empty, nasty now. And I get to have all this freedom and, and right. So then just physically with our bodies, we’re transitioning into it’s tangled.

Speaker #1
It is in, you know, our bodies are changing. And I’ll be honest, in a lot of cases, we don’t, you know, if you’re eating healthy and you’re doing your best to stay active for where you are in this stage of your life. Sometimes you just have to make peace with however your body chooses to be. And that’s one of the hard things I’ve been adjusting to right now is, you know, I look back to when my kids were younger, you know, I would go to, I was at home with them. So my outlet was going to the gym and I’d be at the gym, you know, 15, 20 hours a week. They had a great little daycare and I was the fittest I was in my life. You know, I had two little kids and I looked awesome. Then you sort of get into, you know, as your body starts to change, our hormones start changing long before anybody ever tells us that they are going to change. Oh yeah. Say that a lot of my hormone changes started in my mid to late thirties, you know, subtle changes.

Speaker #0
Absolutely. Right. No one, no one prepares you for that either. No,

Speaker #1
you, you know, then you sort of What worked, working out 20 hours a week and, you know, doing cardio and lifting weights and all of this great stuff, suddenly that’s not working anymore.

Speaker #2
Right.

Speaker #1
And, you know, at the time when I went through it, I was beating myself up for becoming. You know, I am a plus size curvy woman. Does it bother me some days? Yeah. I’m human like everybody else. Do I look at more slender women and think, oh shit, like, like what do I have to do? But if that’s not what my body is willing to do right now, that’s what I have to come to terms with. And, you know, I’ve recently gone on hormones and got myself sort of settled on that. And I’m sleeping. better, not fantastically, but much better than I have been. But it also seems that it doesn’t make a difference what I eat or how I move my body. The pounds aren’t going anywhere. And that’s tough. That’s a hard thing to adjust to.

Speaker #0
Well, it’s, I mean, and we’re up against what social media and our society says we should be, right? And then that’s…

Speaker #1
You know what? I don’t want to begrudge the next woman, but… All of these posts of women saying, I just lost 50 pounds. I just did this. I just did that. It’s great. I’m not like, I’m not knocking you down, but I also don’t know your story of how you got there.

Speaker #0
Right.

Speaker #1
You know, like there’s the trend right now that I’m seeing pop up way too often. And that’s, what’s the drug called? Ozempic.

Speaker #0
Oh, yeah. And I’m going to be doing a podcast about it.

Speaker #1
And so I looked at it and, you know, I said, thought, okay, you know, that’s, it’s questionable. I don’t know. It’s definitely not right for me because one of the possible side effects was a form of thyroid cancer and I have a bad thyroid anyway. So I’m like, well, not going near that one. But, you know, we do have all of these mixed messages out there, you know, where sure you have some Hollywood actresses that are like, hey. I’ve got a Buddha belly and I don’t care. But then you also have the other ones that must be going through punishing routines just to stay thin. Add to that, we’re also bombarded with messages about, you know, fear messages about Alzheimer’s and bone health and all of these different things going on. You’re like, can you just leave me alone for five?

Speaker #0
Yeah, I was just a mom. I was just a mom going to the gym. And you put your kids in college and you’re like, okay, now I have to become an adult. You know, I have to help us grow up and start worrying about these things, right? gaining weight and our weight redistributing through our bodies, right, our bone health, heart health, I mean, all of it. And it’s… It can get really daunting. Yeah. And not that exciting to get older, but it sounds like you really, this bottoming of yours gave you some acceptance to your net, you know, the next phase of your life.

Speaker #1
It did. It did. It gave me the time to, you know, take pause and really consider where I am, you know. Midlife in sort of call it the menopause journey is typically presented as these symptoms that we either have to be cured from or just injure. That’s all that meant. Nobody’s talking about the emotional side of what us women go through. And that’s why conversations like this are so, so important, because I go back to who I was on my darkest day. And everything that I do is to help that woman know that she’s not alone, that she’s not broken. She doesn’t need fixing. She just needs to see something different.

Speaker #0
Yes. And I think talking about it is really important. And so what you’re doing with your podcast is giving it voice. And that’s amazing because we need to be talking about these things. I have a lot of friends. I just know a lot of women. I remember when I started maybe five years ago when I definitely was like, I’m definitely in perimenopause and all this is happening. And I just couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that no one was talking about it. No one, not even my really good friends. People either were like, yeah, I just stopped getting my period and that was it. And I just remember thinking, I’m like, why aren’t we talking about this? And there’s because medical professionals aren’t really talking about it. Are you getting a lot of misinformation?

Speaker #1
Medical professionals, they don’t, it’s to my understanding, they receive no training in menopause care. They receive little to no education when it comes to actual hormones for women. And you add to that, you know, all these other things that are going on, who’s supposed to have the answers? Like, who do we turn to? And. All of our bodies are so very different. It’s not like, hey, when you’re 40, you can go on this HRT patch and take your progesterone and hey, you’re good to go. No, it is so, so different. All you have to do is look at our journeys to get pregnant or to stay pregnant when you actually give birth. All of those things, those are all markers to how very different our bodies are and how different our hormones are.

Speaker #0
Absolutely.

Speaker #1
Why would we expect that anything would be the same on the other end?

Speaker #0
I think that there’s a lot more research and just voice coming out on this whole journey of menopause. I just read a couple of articles that just came out in the New York Times. If you have a chance to take a look at those, I mean, you could, you know, I think that it’s, it’s suddenly, it’s starting to come up more and more now, but it needs a lot more discussion.

Speaker #1
North America. Where you’re actually starting to see more headway being made is in the UK and in Europe. Now, a couple of years ago, the major television network in the UK, BBC, put out a documentary with, you know, a lot of pushing, allowed this documentary to go out talking about menopause. And they didn’t think it would be very popular. I’m going to guess the BBC is run by a bunch of guys in suits. But I think somewhere in the first week, it was it had a million views. That just goes to speak of how many women are actually we’re craving to have information. We’re craving to have that connection. And I believe that they’re even something in the workplace. They’re starting to have a little bit more guidance about helping midlife women in the workplace. When it comes to managing some of those things. So we’re starting to see it begin there. Is it going to make any significant headway in the next 10 years in North America? Probably not. But that’s why we need to have these conversations is that the more women we can connect, the more we can share what we’re going through, what we’ve been through, then you’re going to start to feel, you know, a little bit more normal. in your own experiences, but you’re also going to find that connection and realize that, hey, I’m not alone.

Speaker #0
Absolutely. And I, and I think it even just goes beyond, should I be on hormones or not, or what type of hormones? And there’s just a whole, the whole transition is just difficult sometimes. And it’s, you know, and exploring like, who am I and what am I doing with the rest of my life?

Speaker #1
Yeah. And that’s the heart. That is also really hard because a lot of women hit this point and sure, they’re once competitive, thriving professional careers. They kind of hit a point and they’re like, I don’t want to do this anymore. You know, I don’t want to have to compete to get a seat at the CEO table. I don’t want to deal with that anymore.

Speaker #0
Yeah.

Speaker #1
And because there’s so much. spiritual evolution when it comes to this point for a lot of women. They’re sort of migrating more towards heart-centered businesses, doing things like you and I are doing, because that’s where we’re finding that meaning, that connection. And really, if you look at it, you go back to the days when we all used to live in tribes. That’s what we were doing.

Speaker #0
Right.

Speaker #1
That’s what the women were doing.

Speaker #0
Yeah.

Speaker #1
And I think it’s… We’re just doing the same thing in a more modern way.

Speaker #0
I absolutely agree with that. And I agree that we need the more that we do these heart-centered businesses and just continue to give voice is the best that we can do. And I know that you mentioned menopause and business, you know, and women being in business and everything. And I just actually was speaking to my husband, who’s an employment attorney the other day about this that he that we agree that he’s probably going to start seeing more more activity around this this subject of you know women who are in menopause and just the rights that they have and

Speaker #1
Their rights. And he’s probably going to see a lot more. And I’ve noticed this where the women are being aged out, where the men aren’t. I have one friend who you can obviously see that her company is trying to edge her out of a key role and already have a male replacement in there. And, you know, she was talking about fighting it. And I said. But do you actually want to sit at that table? If, you know, all of this is what you have to deal with constantly. Is that what you really want for your next 10, 20 years?

Speaker #0
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker #1
She said, no, I don’t want that. But she also has the right to have her job without being squeezed out. And I think more and more you’re going to see women that are noticing, hey, wait a second. boys are pushing me out of this. I need to talk to somebody. And I think really that gives us the power because we can then leverage being squeezed out with, I’m going to do something I want to do.

Speaker #0
Yeah. So to be continued, I think with that, you know, that. Oh,

Speaker #1
that’s going to be going on. Yeah.

Speaker #0
Yeah. It’s not, it’s not definitely not over. So I want to just go back to, I know you mentioned, you know, when you were in your bottoming out.

Speaker #1
you’re you know that you connected you called it the universe or you know i’m assuming that’s something like a spirituality yeah i mean that’s how i sort of related whether you call it some people might call it spirit guys some people might call it god angels whatever that means to you i just use the word the universe because it’s i don’t want to exclude anybody from the conversation based on religion.

Speaker #0
Right. So we could call it higher power, spirit, universe. But I think and agree with you that that’s important to know that or believe that you are being guided, you know, by something bigger than you. And that’s something that I’ve also been giving a lot of thought to lately and, you know, working on that, you know, that there’s the trusting that there is something bigger that. got you to, you know, maybe your bottoming out was not for nothing, or I mean, as hard as it feels, that it’s got you to a certain point right now.

Speaker #1
Absolutely. Absolutely. I call it my darkest day. But again, the power of hindsight, I can look back and say, you know, my darkest day became my greatest gift because it was because of that day. that I discovered who I meant to be, that I created the journaling practice, that I created the podcast, that I launched, I wrote my guided journal. If I think back to who I was that day in those critical moments, and if I could look her in the face and say, guess what? In five years, you’re going to accomplish all of these things. I would have just said, you’re batshit crazy.

Speaker #0
Right.

Speaker #1
You know, but that’s what. I think that’s what happens when we open ourselves up to the possibilities and we start looking forward to and looking at the power of what can be. That’s when things start to open up.

Speaker #0
Yeah. And that got what got you to create your why formations. I am a big proponent of knowing your why, especially when it comes to weight loss and just getting improving your health. Thank you. a lot of the women that I see, you know, that’s one of the first conversations that we have is knowing why you want to lose weight or why you want to accomplish whatever the health goal is, because if you don’t have that why, you are not going to make it. I mean, I just, I know personally with my own self that if I didn’t have a why behind my own health journey, it would never. it would never stick because I had been on and off diets a million times for, you know, random reasons with no, nothing compelling behind it. So I, I know that, that deep need to have that really strong hold on, on something to keep you going when the, when things don’t feel comfortable, when things don’t feel their best, right. I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, I’m sure these Y formations that you have. Right. It sounds like you you you go through them every single day.

Speaker #2
Yeah. And, you know, when I’m writing them out.

Speaker #0
I’m thinking about, you know, maybe what I did yesterday or what I’m going to do today that supports that statement. You know, I’m not focusing on the four glasses of red wine that I had last night. It was a really bad day. Today’s a new day. Exactly. We all have them. Of course. You know, I’m not focusing on that. I’m focusing that I did my meditation, that I did my yoga, that I took care of those things. You know, and it’s so we seem to be have this default setting that when it comes to our health, it comes down to the number on our scale or the size of our genes. And I think, you know, one of the things I really try and pull myself back to is my blood pressure is amazing. You don’t have any problems with my heart. You know, I don’t have any major physical challenges, you know, and those are the things that we need to focus on is. What are those health markers saying about us? If I had diabetes, then I would be looking at balancing my blood sugar levels. And of course, with that, that you’re going to lose a certain amount of weight. But I try and focus on those numbers that do represent my health.

Speaker #1
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s whatever matters most to you. I mean, I know that when I… You know, I have my story of losing weight, even as a nutritionist and but going through cycles of the right on and off diets and everything. And and I my why really came down to my, you know, my dad had passed away when I was 14. And so he was pretty he was young and I was approaching the age that he had died. And I just didn’t want to be responsible for a health issue. that I might be creating, you know, with it. And that was my why that doesn’t have to be, that doesn’t mean it has to be anyone else’s why, but that was important enough to me. You know, my kids were pretty young and I wanted to be there for my kids. And so I, that, that, that was my very compelling why when it’s still, and I still have it to this day, you know, that it still is, is as important. So I think, right. It, it, your why is very personal to you. You know, what’s important to you may not be as important to me or pressing to me. And so it sounds like you have your, these five statements that.

Speaker #0
Yeah. And they hit, you know, one hits on health, one hits on, you know, how I like to approach life mentally. One is on building my business and my financial future. I have another one on how I show up in my relationships. And my last one. I’ll also share that one is, you know, I love and nurture myself like no one else can. And I fill my own cup because, you know, I think we all need to have that compassion for ourselves. And, you know, the most important person we can love in our life is ourselves. And that’s not always easy either.

Speaker #1
Right. Yeah. No. And that’s actually part of my my why formations. You know, if I’ll put it into that, that, yeah, the kindness and compassion. that I had to cultivate with myself is yeah, like nothing. I don’t want anything getting in the way of that. And because that’s what keeps me right going on so many, so many, you know, my business, my relationships, all of that, you know, my, my physical body. So it sounds like you have stuck with these whys and then tell me again, when, you know, so in your journaling practice, Is this something that you…

Speaker #0
developed on your own yes okay tell me just a little bit more about that that how that came because I know you said you were journaling it wasn’t really sticky right yeah and I think that was because initially you’re just staring at a blank page but by having sort of that that routine you know that process that I do every morning that’s what starts to stir up feelings of what I think I need to process at the time. It kind of gets things going. And sometimes I’m journaling about my feelings. Sometimes I’m journaling about ideas that I may have. I’ve even tried to do automatic writing sometimes. And that’s when you sort of get quiet and you just start writing and you just let the writing happen. And before you know it, at least in my experience, your, your hand can’t keep up with what’s coming out. You’re not even thinking about what you’re writing. And that’s, I can be a little bit freaky sometimes when you read back and you’re like, where did that come from?

Speaker #1
Right. Yes. I’ve definitely done that too. Yeah, I’ve had a journaling practice since I was 10 years old. I mean, someone must have given me a journal for, you know, the ones with the lock on it, the little key. I got one as a gift and that it just opened up my entire world. I just loved being able to house all my feelings and emotions and everything into just blank pages. And I have been actively journaling. since then, but it became even more important to me when I was, I think more now it has become even more important to me, you know, but just going through like my, my weight loss, like journey, you know, that whole thing. I don’t think I could have done it without my journal. I think it was, it was part of the compassion and the kindness that I, you know, I just, I needed to be writing that down, having that conversation and dialogue with myself. consistently and even so now you know and then going through midlife going through the transitions of being an empty nester and and all you know all of that gets put into my journal and processed in my journal and i’ve tried other things too i mean i’ve done i’m sure you know julia cameron her morning pages yeah i’ve i’ve gone through iterations of that and but i and i’ve gone through times when I don’t write in my journal as much as normal, but it’s my journal is always with me always. I mean, it comes everywhere with me just in case, you know, just in case I have to write something down for me.

Speaker #0
I almost can’t start my day properly unless I, because I journal first thing in the morning, I get up, I go make myself a tea. I come upstairs, I sit down at my desk and I do my journaling. I also have, and this is a great tip because this is great for, you know, to listen to while you’re journaling, but also anytime that you’re in a funk and you need to be picked up, make your own playlist. I have a playlist with some songs that sort of relate to, you know, different aspects of my life and sort of lift me up. Like one of them is Bon Jovi’s Limitless, because I think that says it all. There’s the one that Pink Sings that was from The Greatest Showman on Earth,

Speaker #1
you know, million dreams,

Speaker #0
you know, so. make your playlist and keep it there for when you’re journaling, when you’re in a funk, you know, whatever it is, those, if you have those rare moments where you get to be in the car alone and you need to blast your own tunes, you know, have that because it’s incredible the way something so simple can just create such a sudden shift for yourself.

Speaker #1
No, I love that idea. I think that’s, that’s. something I know so simple that I have that’s my journaling idea like how come I can journal so besides the journaling tell me just a little bit more about it sounds like you have a pretty solid morning routine yes yes and but it’s

Speaker #0
I like I said I can’t really start my day properly unless I start it like that there’s a rare occasion where um you know we may be traveling and you know I can’t do it before we hit the road type of thing you But normally, I start every day by journaling. Most of the time, I’ll incorporate meditation afterwards. I’ll do my yoga. I’ll work out. I do everything for me. I tick all of my own boxes first thing in the morning because then they can’t be put off. For me, if I know if I leave it till the end of the day, it’s not going to get done.

Speaker #1
Yeah. No, I definitely, I’m such a fan of a morning routine. and I try to do, you know, right. my journaling, my walk, my exercising, meditating, the whole thing. And right. Because once the day goes on, you’re my chances of things.

Speaker #0
I just don’t feel like it now.

Speaker #1
Right. Yeah. The end of the day. And right. So it’s, yeah, I think a morning routine is a really nice practice.

Speaker #0
And it makes it easy. It makes it easy for our brain to not resist it. If you do the same thing every day and you do the same thing every day for months and years, right down to making the tea, lighting the incense, putting in your earbuds, listening to your music, having your favorite pen, having everything right there, it’s so much easier.

Speaker #1
Yeah. And it goes along with that why. I mean, you have to have a why behind the reason, the compelling reason to do a morning routine. But you know that once you start it, it’s just… Probably something you feel like you can’t live without or you’re really feeding yourself if you don’t do it.

Speaker #0
All I have to do is look back to who I was on that day. What’s my why? I don’t want to be there again.

Speaker #1
I mean,

Speaker #0
it doesn’t mean that I don’t have my bad days. It doesn’t mean that life doesn’t still, you know, dip and come up for me. We’re all human.

Speaker #1
Of course.

Speaker #0
But it’s just how you weather that.

Speaker #1
Your journal. Tell me just a little bit more about your journal. It’s a, you can purchase this.

Speaker #0
Yeah. So what I did is it was one thing that you hear a lot of coaches and celebrities talking about the power of journaling, but. Nobody’s really telling you how to start or what to do. Sure, you go online and find some prompts and that type of thing. But you’re still ultimately looking at a blank page, trying to figure out what prompt you want and all of that. So I decided to put together, it’s a really simple 90-day journal where each day has two pages. And one page is to get you to tune into your feelings where you are right now. There’s a little bit of gratitude. And I do give… simple affirmations just so people can start to get used to them. And even they can take them and morph them into their own Y formations. And then the second page is a simple guided prompt and the lines to let your thoughts flow. And for the first 30 days, there are guided prompts. And then for the next 60 days, they’re, they’re blank pages. You still have the first page where you’re getting in tune with your feelings and all of that. But the page is blank because typically after 30 days of journaling, you kind of have your feet under you and you can find your way and journal some more. And I did make sure to use a larger font because I know.

Speaker #1
That’s important.

Speaker #0
I know that, you know, your eyesight can get a little bit squirrely. And I also made sure that the lines weren’t super tight together because, again. You want to have the space to be able to see without, you know, trying to squeeze your writing. Very important also.

Speaker #1
I know I can get very picky about my journals and what they, you know, what kind of paper it is and my pen and everything. So that I love all of that. That’s yeah. You know, I, I am pretty much blind now without my reading glasses.

Speaker #0
I got my reading glasses. I got my distance glasses. Me too. I know. Whatever. But I also included some other tools and resources in. in the guided journal. It’s called Your Journaling Journey. It is on Amazon. You probably will have to actually plug in the title in order to find it because it is relatively new and it’s not hitting all of the algorithms and ranking up there yet. But it’s a good size. It’s eight by 10. So it’s a good size. Yeah,

Speaker #1
that’s another.

Speaker #0
It’s not a teeny tiny book or anything like that. It’s a good size. It’s got a soft cover. And I share a bit more about my story in there as well. And yeah, there’s enough in there to get going and start to find your way with journaling. But if you’re not sure you want to head down that road yet, I think I have it on sale right now. So it’s an even easier investment right now. But if somebody who’s listening doesn’t quite want to go there yet, I do have a seven-day version available on my website completely free. It does have a couple of the other tools in it as well. And that’s under, if you go to my website, therollercoasterpodcast.com, it’s under resources.

Speaker #1
Okay, well, I will definitely put those links in the show notes for the podcast. So everyone can go there and link that way. That sounds great. Your journal sounds fantastic and very useful for people, especially who are new to journaling. So it’s something I always encourage with anybody I speak to. And I think that sounds like a great first step.

Speaker #0
I think it’s really important that we as midlife moms acknowledge how much change we’re going through. You know, so much of our identity was anchored in being moms. And this, you know, midlife crisis, midlife meltdown, however you want to call it, is a… It’s an identity crisis. We’re having to figure out who we are and what we want for the rest of our life. And I think we really need to have that compassion for ourselves and be softer and gentler with ourselves because, you know, if anyone knows how to beat herself up, we are good at doing that to ourselves. And I think we really need to stop. There’s so much harshness out there that I really think that we need to start by, you know, having that. love and nurture for ourselves.

Speaker #1
Yes. I mean, like we said, compassion and kindness has to start, I think, with you first. And then, I mean, it has to come from you first, then you can give it out to the world.

Speaker #0
Exactly.

Speaker #1
Well, Lucy, thank you so much. This has been a fantastic conversation. I love talking about. Your bottoming out story, just because it sounds like it just blossomed into something so fantastic and your Y formations and your journaling practice. And this has been, I think, just a really important conversation for women in midlife. We know that we need to get the word out, right, on this transition and we’re doing it.

Speaker #0
Thank you so much for having me today, Heather. It means a lot to be able to share my story with whoever out there that needs to hear it.

Speaker #1
Have a great day and we will be, I’m sure, talking soon.

Speaker #0
Take care, Heather.

Speaker #1
Thanks. Bye. And as always, if you loved this podcast, please consider gifting me with a five-star review. It is so helpful for me to get the word out on real eating, our real bodies, and real food stories. Thank you so much and have a great week. Bye for now.