Dr. Amanda: When do we stop looking at ourselves with awe and wonder? What happens on a woman’s journey, a young girl’s journey, where she goes from wow to oh my gosh, this is embarrassing. I need to fix this. And how much time and money and resources in a woman’s life are then spent on that missing the absolute miracle that is before her.

Stacy: Welcome. Welcome. I’m so excited to be here today and have a conversation that I think is so important with a woman who is really pioneering a conversation about womanhood, about midlife. And for me, this is a really relevant discussion. I’m 39. I am entering this phase where I’m starting to get targeted with Botox ads and all of the anti aging serums and I’m looking around and seeing friends and people that I admire and respect going kind of down this pathway of trying to stop their aging process.

Stacy:And I’ve had to come to this interesting crossroads for myself of asking the way that I want to age. And I’m really grateful that at this crossroads for myself, at this place that I’m in, I met this week’s guest. So let me introduce you to Dr. Amanda Hansen. Dr. Amanda Hansen is a leading voice in the world of psychology among women. Her unique approach that merges clinical psychology with ancient holistic practices has reached hundreds of millions of women worldwide. Her debut book, Muse the Magnetism of Women who Stop Abandoning Themselves, will be released in March 2025. Welcome Amanda. I’m so excited to have this conversation with you.

Dr. Amanda: Thank you so much for having me, Stacy. I am too. I think it’s a very urgent and necessary conversation.

Stacy: So, so important. And you are out there on your various social media platforms doing this work of sharing the spirituality of aging, sharing your experience. Experience inspiring women. I would love to know. Oh, I know about your backstory, but I’d love for you to share with our listeners about your backstory. What led you into this anchored mission that you have today to uplift women globally?

Dr. Amanda: Yes. So, I mean, I’ve been a clinical psychologist for 26 years, and it was about the time of my life where you are, you’re 39. It was right when I turned 40, that I started to hear a lot of messaging that I wasn’t as aware of or paying attention to as if there was a page of a calendar that was about to be flipped. And all of a sudden my life was going to combust. And by that, I mean the messaging around aging. Like, oh, are you. How are you feeling? You’re turning 40. What are you planning to do? And I’m like, planning to do about what? And then the conversation started evolving around what women were doing to hide or mask any signs of aging. It was really about, how can we cover this up?

Dr. Amanda: As if this was somehow like sign of failure. And by contrast, I was watching all the men in my life who seemed to. And my husband, who’s six years older than me. It was a non event as he entered 40 and beyond. It was actually revered and celebrated like he was at this point, place of like, power and wisdom in his life. And I remember being quite angry thinking, how do we as women have such a different experience and a different storyline and different expectations on us? And so I vowed to myself at 40 that I wanted to do this differently, that I was going to get on a path of really merging into the belief that watching myself age was a power was going to be. I decided it was going to be a beautiful, honoring, spiritual experience.

Dr. Amanda: And so I just wanted a different narrative because when I was looking online about what midlife meant and midlife crisis was everywhere, it was doomsday. And I thought, I just refused to believe that. Similarly to how I approached childbirth when I was researching about childbirth options and there were so much fear, I thought, no, I’m not going to buy into that. I’m going to do this differently. And I created these beautiful experiences. And I thought, I want to do that for aging as well. I want to create a beautiful journey for myself. And that was 12 years ago. And here I am still on that journey with so much gratitude for the fact that I decided to deepen into this. And now it has just me speaking about it. It has attracted several.

Dr. Amanda: We’re almost like at 350 million women now around the world who are so attracted to this message and saying, wow, there’s no one leading like this. There’s no one talking about it in this fashion. And I think women are just really hungry for a new narrative. It doesn’t mean it’s for everyone, but I think I have a responsibility to share this because there isn’t a lot of conversation about what it gets to look like on the other side.

Stacy: It’s such a beautiful message and such a different way of thinking about aging. Like I mentioned in the introduction to this conversation, met you at an important point for me. And actually what’s interesting, when we met, I don’t think I had really been thinking about aging much at all. But to your point, as I’ve gotten closer to 40, well, number one, I’m getting a lot more Instagram, you know, reels. And I actually went in and blocked Botox anti aging. I put all these words into Instagram to block it, but I still get them even though I blocked it. I’m very quick to move past that stuff, but it does seem like I must be getting targeted because of my age. And it is like an influx that comes in.

Stacy: I feel so grateful that we met when you were starting your book journey because I got to learn from you before I was really even thinking about this in a, in a big and meaningful way. And so there’s so many things that you have taught me personally and you are teaching millions of women around the world. One of the things that I think you’re well known for is your mirror practice. That’s something that you have worked with women in your programs you do at your live event Magnetic. Can you talk a little bit about the mirror practice and what that is and how that impacts women?

Dr. Amanda: Yes. I think that we have been conditioned to be in front of the mirror looking for what is wrong, looking for what needs to be fixed, what we should be embarrassed about, what we should be covering up. And I had come across as I was on this journey right around this 40 year old time, maybe like in my, maybe 42. Similarly, all of this was like in my mind, I was so aware and conscious of it. And I found an old photo of my daughter who was nine and a half, 10 months old at the time. She’s now 22. I found this photo of her and I remember distinctly the moment I took it.

Dr. Amanda: I had taken her out of the bath and she was in our bathroom and I had taken her out of the bathtub and dried her off, put her little outfit on, and she crawled over to this big mirror that was in our bathroom, pulled herself up and was just standing, staring at herself in the mirror. And she was, like, in complete awe and wonder at what she saw. And it was her face, like, the joy. And I grabbed my camera and I captured a photo of it. That photo got developed and stuffed away. And then I saw it many years later. And it. Because I think I was in the journey that I was in with all of this messaging coming at me, that I was somehow supposed to be really embarrassed or ashamed for the wrinkles, the lines, the sunspots.

Dr. Amanda: I saw that, and it was such a counter experience. And it stopped me in my tracks. And I sat on the floor and I thought, when do we stop looking at ourselves with awe and wonder? What happens on a woman’s journey, a young girl’s journey, where she goes from wow to oh, my gosh, this is embarrassing. I need to fix this. And how much time and money and resources in a woman’s life are then spent on that missing the absolute miracle that is before her. So I thought, I wonder what would happen if I started putting myself in front of the mirror? Could I see the awe and wonder again? Could I? Could I develop that sense for myself? So I started it for. I started with 90 days for myself.

Dr. Amanda: And at first it was awkward, and then my mind instantly wanted to go to what was wrong or how tired I looked. And the more I did it, the more I showed up for myself. I started to have this profound, soulful experience where many mornings I would be standing there and there would just be tears because before, I was only looking at what needed to be covered up, fixed or decent enough to go out the door. And now I was having an experience of the miracle that I even exist. And that started to change my nervous system and my cells and the way I carried myself in the world. It’s such a powerful way to start the day because you feel completely protected from any campaign trying to tell you’re not worthy. It’s almost laughable when you start with this foundation.

Dr. Amanda: So I started taking this into my work with women at retreats and events and, oh, my gosh, Stacy, what would happen for these women in front of the mirror was so powerful. So it’s just been a really big part of what I teach is one of the many things that I teach, but it has profound effects. I just spoke with one of my clients who lives on another continent, and she’s now on, like, her fourth month of Daily Mirror. Practice. And what she reported this morning would pretty much level you. It’s just unbelievable what is possible. And this is something that’s free. But, but you have to be willing to change the narrative and to mine for the gold.

Stacy: It’s such a powerful shift from how we normally look in the mirror and look for, oh, I need to put some makeup here, I need to cover this thing up. But rather you’re actually searching for, you’re searching for the spiritual aspect of your face and really seeing yourself in a meaningful way. One thing I’ve been thinking about this week as I’ve been mentally preparing to have this conversation with you is my daughter who is 12 and I remember being 12. It’s such an interesting phase of life. And in fact, as you share in your book, we have data, there’s been data showing that this kind of change in our perception of self happens much younger than 12.

Stacy: But I think this kind of tween, these tween years for women are really hard and it’s a time when we start to become much more self critical. And I, what I would love to know from you because you know, raising a 12 year old, they don’t, they’re not always incredibly receptive to the strategies or suggestions that you have. Like if I went and said, honey, I’d like you to meet your eyes in the mirror for X minutes, I’m. I’m pretty sure I would get a absolutely not mom. Thanks for asking. You know, so how do you advise those of us who are in a position of influence of other young women? Whether it’s our daughters, our nieces, maybe we’re teachers. How do we show up in a way that can support a healthy mindset and a healthy approach to aging in younger women?

Dr. Amanda: I think that they are watching us live our lives so much more that having the impact in what we say to them. So if we are running around saying things like, oh my gosh, I look so terrible, I look so fat, I can’t believe how much weight I’ve gained, oh my gosh, my hair is a wreck and oh, my face looks so puffy, those kinds of things, I think the message then is, oh, I should do that too. Then I should search for all the things that are wrong with me and state them out loud as even a form of connection with my mom. But if she sees you, one of the things that I have found that I do very little of is talk about how I look. That was something I really chose to actively not focus On, Right.

Dr. Amanda: I talk more about how I feel in experiences so that my daughter didn’t have this constant narrative in the background of me talking about how I looked as my experience of being in this world. It was more about how I felt in situations so that it became, you know, not that we don’t want to take good care of ourselves. This has nothing to do with that whatsoever. But it was putting the focus more on your. Her heart and asking her questions about that and less focus and conversations about how we look or what the news trends are or any of that. So I think because she watched me focus so much on my joy and my work or our love and our lives and our conversations, I was never a mother fixated on what was wrong with me in the mirror.

Dr. Amanda: I think that she internalized that. And she’s 22 and she said, mom. Even with having a mom like you, it is still so hard because the messaging almost makes you feel like you’re making a bigger deal than it should be. Like, they start to influence you in such a way that it becomes pretty benign. It’s like, what’s the difference? Like, what a lipstick or some filler? Like, you get to this place where you’re so inundated with the messaging, it almost normalizes it for you. And she doesn’t have a single friend right now who’s not doing Botox. And often the mother has taken the daughter and it’s like a mother, daughter like thing to do now. And so I think when she has. I think when raising a daughter, having conversations more around, how do you feel? As opposed to how do you look?

Dr. Amanda: And talking about how you feel. Oh, I went to this thing and it. It made me like, question or wonder about xyz or I went to this thing and it made me so excited and so happy. Or I went to this thing and, gosh, I noticed I was really upset as opposed to. And I wore this outfit and then I did this, and then I got this, you know, when I went shopping. I think it’s talk about how you feel more than how you look.

Stacy: That’s a really great way to frame it. And I guess the next question that brought up for me is a lot of what women have to undo. And this goes along with the question of modeling as well. Is this negative internal talk that may be more verbally expressed in certain instances. Like, maybe you’ve been in a family where it’s very normalized to talk badly about your looks. It’s actually expected that you have this kind of shared commiseration about your appearance. How do you help women redirect that into not just what they’re saying, but what they actually believe about themselves?

Dr. Amanda: Yeah. It really is helping them unpack and think about the life that you are creating. Do you want to spend a life on this never ending carousel of chasing a looking more youthful, a trend, whatever that even means? The fact that women’s bodies even trend is so deeply disturbing. Right. It’s how we keep women enslaved financially. Okay. Thin eyebrows, thick eyebrows, small butt, big butt, big boobs, small boobs. It’s long hair, short hair. It’s we trend. Men’s bodies don’t trend. Women’s bodies trend every few months. It’s how we keep her constantly opening her pocketbook. Right. And spending, spending, so that she doesn’t have her own capital.

Dr. Amanda: It’s all like part of the plan is to be so fixated on self that you can never actually have any autonomy if you need to get out of a bad relationship or situation because you haven’t built anything other than the one thing that you think you have power around is your looks. So when I help women see it through that lens, they become indignant like, that will not happen to me. I’m like. It is a slippery slope though. If you buy into that your face or your body or the size of your waist is the most important thing about you. You will spend a life chasing a constant moving target. And at the end, when you are taking your final breath, is that actually the story you want to tell about how you spent your life? Is that the story you want to tell?

Dr. Amanda: And so helping them walk it out all the way to the end helps them then rewrite new beliefs. For now. And I know that the story I want to tell at the end is about the impact I made and how authentically I lived and how much I laughed and lived and didn’t worry about, as a matter of fact, welcomed in the stories. You know, I see people get tattoos, right, to tell stories of their life. And I feel like my tattoos are my wrinkles, my sunspots, my silver hairs, the dimples on my skin, the crepiness on my hands. Those are my tattoos of the life I’ve journeyed through. And I don’t want to hide them. They’re beautiful to me. So you get to change the meaning.

Dr. Amanda: You might have grown up in a family or been in a situation or a culture where that’s very normalized. You get to choose. Do I want to buy into that? Do I want to build my Life on that. I think it’s a very desperately sad and lonely way to live.

Stacy: I have chills in what you’re saying. It’s such a beautiful message. And I know in the many conversations we’ve had, one of the things that we’ve talked about is that you’re doing something that you can’t even see. So when you’re putting this effort and energy into being perceived a certain way, or stopping a natural process or whatever that is, you walk around the world, you can’t see your own face. You hardly ever look down at your own body. There’s actually this. All of this effort that’s being put into something that you actually don’t really benefit from at the end of the day. It’s created for an outside observer. And I think the other piece of it that really strikes me now, both. I know that you believe this, and I certainly believe this.

Stacy: It’s nice to feel good, and you can dress nice and get ready, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Right. You can be feminine. You can. Whatever that means to you can show up with all of that. But doing that in a way that really, truly is for yourself and for how you feel and the way that makes you feel good and anchored, and you do have that presence as a very polished, feminine, beautiful. And kind of there’s like a grace about you when you online and in person. I know that sometimes seems to be in juxtaposition with feminism. Right. Like, we have this idea as a feminist being somebody who doesn’t spend time on their appearance at all.

Stacy: And I’d love to hear from you on that because I know that this is a big part of how you think about your own version of womanhood.

Dr. Amanda: Yes, absolutely. I think there’s a differentiation between adorning what is and. And doing things that are taking away parts of you, let’s say, or are sculpting a certain look to avoid the reality or the facing what is happening in front of the mirror. Right. So I think there’s a big difference. So I am allowing this process to happen, and I’m simultaneously adorning what is. I stopped painting my nails many years ago when I learned about how toxic the polish was. And then it gets absorbed into the nail beds, into the bloodstream. Right. I had breast implants from when I was in my 20s. I had those removed. I obviously stopped coloring my hair seven years ago. So I am personally choosing to actively look at where can I release more of the beliefs that even I had bought into. Right.
Dr. Amanda: Of having my nails polished for so many years. It’s going to be different for everybody. I now wear organic eyeliner, mascara and lip gloss. That is it. I don’t even wear foundation. You know, I’m. I’m naturally a little bit darker in my skin. So I. I don’t feel like I need to put. I don’t. I’ve never owned a bottle of foundation in my life because it’s just. I feel like that clogs up your system. And I know about. There’s so many toxins. So for me, I love to choose a nice outfit, but to me, it is more about the adornment of what actually is, as opposed to trying to. Trying to mold myself into something and configure something that will be more acceptable. Like you said, so much of what women do is for others. Like, if you really think about it’s fascinating.

Dr. Amanda: It’s as if, like, I am this ornament and I have to look a certain way so that you approve of my existence. So you think I’m beautiful, so you think I’m worthy. Maybe you’ll pick me. Maybe you’ll love me. I know that at the base of this there’s so much fear. I know at the base of it is wanting to belong, wanting to be safe, wanting to be loved. Because we have convinced women and built a world upon which oftentimes women feel like that is their only power is to secure somebody next to them so that they can feel safe. A lot of women tell me that they don’t even feel worthy if they’re not in a relationship. They don’t even feel like they exist without a relationship. So I know why women are doing it.

Dr. Amanda: Look at the machine that is coming for us. I mean, you’re not even 40 yet. And even with blocking certain words, it still comes at you because they are convinced, like, we gotta get another one. We gotta get another one. Then we’ll have a customer for life. We gotta convince her that she’s supposed to be scared. Doesn’t she know she’s supposed to be terrified that she’s aging? Let’s keep reminding her. And eventually it’s like, you know what? What’s the big deal? I’m just gonna get a little bit. And that’s how it starts, you know? And I also think, Stacy, it’s worthy of mentioning the fact that women have such high rates of cancer. The women, 80% of women have an autoimmune disease, you know, And I know women firsthand who have had lymphatic problems since they started getting Botox or fillers.

Dr. Amanda: It’s not pretend that these also aren’t toxins that are affecting people’s health. I think, you know, the fact that women are willing to die to look more youthful is also really sad. It’s really sad that’s the storyline for so many.

Stacy: Well, it’s the toxins of the products. But I, I also feel strongly that the anxiety, worry and fear that women are trained to live in really impacts your immune system, contributes to cancer. I mean, there’s all, there’s good research around this. And if your nervous system is constantly dysregulated, if you grow up in a society that teaches you to be afraid of your own body, right, you’re afraid of this one vessel that is actually the only thing that you truly own in your life. And then of course, we have a history of violence against women in all shapes and forms. Certainly that’s also contributing to the health crisis that women. And then we’re under researched in so many ways using antiquated medical equipment, as you highlight in your book.

Stacy: And there’s just so much to this that is contributing, I think, to women continuing to be less than subjugated and kind of relegated to, you know, to the corner to look pretty.

Dr. Amanda: Absolutely, yeah. I could not agree with you more.
Stacy: One of the things I would love to dive into is this idea of magnetism. And I have to tell you, I don’t think I’ve ever told you this before. When I met you in person, when we were in New York, I was surprised at how tall you are. And you probably get that a lot because you’re relatively short, but you have such a big presence. And so I kind of expected when I met you that you were going to be like 5:11. I just, in my mind, you were 5:11. And when I met you and you weren’t, it took me a second, like, okay, wait a second. And then as I got to spend time with you in person. And of course, it’s very different when you’re online working with somebody versus being together in person.

Stacy: I observed that the way that you show up on your social platforms and on these conversations online is exactly how you show up in the real world. And you carry yourself with not an arrogance of any shape or form. It’s a confidence. And it’s like you’re, it’s like your body’s almost like levitating as you walk. You have this lightness about you. And I think that along with your messaging. I think that this is also why so many women are attracted to your messaging and it’s something that you are working to also teach women to be able to hold that presence in their own lives. And I’d love to hear a bit from you on your philosophy of magnetism. I know that’s a, a big topic in your live event Magnetic and also a big topic in your forthcoming book.

Stacy: So can you share a little bit about this concept and how you think about this for women?
Dr. Amanda: Absolutely. I think when you are rooted in self love, you show up into spaces and places and conversations excited for being alive, excited for the moment, excited for what’s going to happen fully present. I live my life with a ton of presence. I’m not when I’m with somebody in the, even in this conversation, I’m not in what happened this morning or what’s going to happen later this afternoon. I’m right here right now. So I think that is also part of the energy that you are feeling. And part of that magnetic energy is we know the difference when we’re with someone and they’re really present with us. They’re really present to the environment we are sharing or the space we are keeping together. That is so electric.

Dr. Amanda: It’s so satisfying and nourishing to be in someone else’s presence and know that they are fully giving their presence to you. So I think there’s a piece of that living very present. But I also believe I have such profound love for myself. This is another huge element of what I teach women is how I craft a whole journey on how to get there. And I have a program, a self study program on how to build the foundation, the depths of self love. And I think the reason that it’s so unusual is not many of us have had mothers or grandmothers or aunts who have had this really profound sense of self love to teach us how to do it. So when we see it, we’re like, whoa, what is that? That feels different because I’m walking into the room.

Dr. Amanda: There’s no apology for my presence. There’s no apology for the lines on my face. There’s no apology for my opinion. There’s no apology for my joy. Like I live pretty out loud. So what I’m feeling, I’m letting people know in real time. And when you love yourself so much, you’re not in your head thinking, oh, I wonder if I should say this. I wonder how they’re going to receive this. I also have so much Self trust that I know that my most authentic version, everything I’m thinking and feeling, I’m sharing it in real time, in my experiences with people and the authenticity. I think one of the biggest feedbacks I get even about my live event is the authenticity that radiated from the stage was nothing I’ve ever seen before. I felt like I’d known you my whole life.

Dr. Amanda: You made me laugh, you made me cry. Felt so comfortable with you. And I think that’s also a piece of it, right? When you love yourself, you don’t have to perform. You just show up so authentically, and that’s magnetizing. Authenticity is so magnetic. But we have so many people performing, and we can feel it when people aren’t present and they’re performing how they think they’re supposed to show up. That feels very different to be around.

Stacy: It’s so true. And yet I think for a lot of women listening to this, that probably feels really out of reach to be able to get to that place themselves. They can look to somebody like you, who’s been on this journey, who’s a trained psychologist, who seems extraordinary in this process, and maybe think, yeah, but that’s her. I could never reach that. So what do you say to them?

Dr. Amanda: Everyone can reach it. And I am watching in real time women from around the world, every walk of life, every socioeconomic status, every race, every religion, every age group. I am watching it unfold and happen. And I will say there is a journey that I have crafted so artfully that lands at that arrival. For some women, it might only be 1 or 2% more. For some women, it might be 30, some, 80, some 112% more self love. But I’ve not yet worked with a woman who has not found her way on that path because the outside world, the reason it feels out of reach is because the outside world offers the opposite message of why we shouldn’t love ourselves.

Dr. Amanda: And so until you are rooted in a community and regular conversations and given tools and shown how to fall madly in love with yourself from a very rooted, like an old oak tree, a very rooted energy, you don’t believe it exists. Stacy we don’t have a lot of role models of women. We have role models of women who perform acts of like, look at me. I’m so amazing. I’m so fabulous. There’s a big difference between that and a really grounded and integrated love and trust and respect and honor for oneself, self. So we don’t believe it exists because we don’t have a lot of role models. For it, but it’s for every woman.

Stacy: And it’s maybe not somebody that’s accessible to you. They’re not close enough to you to reach out and go, I can grasp that. I can achieve that in my own life. Which I think is why your work is so important. Because you do it in a way that feels very connected to your point. I, I, I wasn’t at your first magnetic event. I know you have another one coming up in Barcelona soon in May, but I imagine that every woman in that room felt that you were looking right at them and speaking right to them. So I’m so grateful for the work that you’re doing out there in the world. I’d love to talk about your book because a book is such a powerful way to light ignite a movement. It’s a way that it gets handed from woman to woman, sister to sister.

Stacy: It gets annotated, it gets referenced. And you have crafted this beautiful book that is just about to make its way into the world. Can you tell us a little bit about this book and how you see this book fitting into this bigger movement that you’ve already started?

Dr. Amanda: I think it’s a door opener. I think it’s the beginning of the journey. Right. If you’re curious at all into what I’m talking about, I think a book is pretty accessible for most people around the world to begin to even understand my premise for what I see possible for women. I have really tangible tools and things you can do at home every day to begin that journey of self love and self trust. I, you know, when some of the boxes, I had quite a few boxes shipped here to my home, they arrived two weeks ago because I’m going to be taking them on tour and I’m going to be using them for some of my own purposes. And as I open them, I was, it’s interesting.

Dr. Amanda: One of the very first thoughts I had when I opened it was as I held it in my hands, I thought, someday I hope and pray that these books are in the hands of little girls who won’t even be born for another 30 years. I hope these books will go on to live generationally that a mother who buys it now passes it down or it sits on a bookshelf or it’s found in a box well after she’s passed away and maybe her granddaughter finds it. Because I feel like this message is timeless and it’s one that is going to be fairly new for the world. And I hope that it goes on to make Impact well, after I have left this earth, that is my intention that women just know there actually is a more beautiful way for us.

Stacy: Can you talk a little bit about the process of distilling your life’s work into a book? Because that is not an easy task. It requires. You know, I think a lot of people maybe imagine that one day you kind of felt this spark and you sat down and just typed everything out and it all flowed perfectly. But the truth is that a great book comes from wrestling and deep thought and reconsidering and actually humility too, to be able to look at the way that you think about something and maybe consider a different angle for the reader or a different way of thinking about things. Talk a little bit about your process and what that journey was like for you as you pulled this life’s work together into this book.

Dr. Amanda: Well, as you know, Stacey, I had no intentions for ever writing a book. I’ve never considered myself an author and it was never on the list of accomplishments, future accomplishments or dreams that I had. I was approached at the time by an agent and I thought, wow, gosh, this is so out of my wheelhouse, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I fortunately got connected to you and you have this most unbelievable, magical process that makes what I felt was going to be impossible come to life from whether it was the beginning with the post it note sessions to help me break down the ideas and what I wanted to share and then how to construct chapters and how to linguistically move the reader through the process and get out of my own way sometimes. And overcomplicating things.
Dr. Amanda: You’re like really helping me stay on track with my message and so that it was also able to be received by a person who’s never even had a conversation like this. Right? Like, how do we distill this information that doesn’t take away from the truth of my work, but also do it in a way that feels really accessible and digestible for anyone on their self development journey. So it’s not like I just sat down and was like, you know what? I’m going to write a book. That was not my experience at all. So for anyone listening, if you have a passion and a desire, Stacy knows how to put you on a path that feels, it feels so accessible to become an author in the world. It feels so real and it was actually really fun and enjoyable. I was terrified. I was terrified.

Dr. Amanda: So if I know if I can do this, anybody can do this with really good guidance and having someone like you at the helm, I felt so held and so cared for and so. And the way that you so deeply care about the author and what they’re putting into the world, I think is what is a completely different experience than I would imagine it would be with most people, working with most people. So it was really such an incredible collaborative effort. So I cannot say enough about your guidance on this journey. I’m. I’m pretty certain there would not be a finished book right now if I hadn’t met you.

Stacy: Well, I, from the second I met you, I felt so connected with your message and just you as a person as well, and really believed immediately in the work that you’re doing. And I have to say, first of all, thank you for all the generous words. I feel very undeserving, but I’m grateful. Two things that you brought to this process. One is you really had anchored sense of, I’m not going to just create this formulaic step, follow, start here, and by the end of the book, you’ll be exactly here. You really stayed true to your teachings and made sure that actually the book structure, which we spent a lot of time on, the structure of the book, the structure has meaning, actually. So maybe the reader won’t understand that, but they will feel it. They won’t.

Stacy: They won’t know the intent behind it, but they will feel it. And you were so thoughtful about that and really like in an. You had like an investigative approach to this, of, okay, what. What will this do for my reader? How will this, where will this get her? And where do I want her to be at the end? But also, it’s not a cut and dry path. The other thing that you brought that I think is so you. Now that I know you better. You know, in the beginning I was like, who is this woman? She is on fire. But you are intense. You work intensity. And your best work came from these sessions where we would meet and then we would usually meet every couple weeks. And you had just flown, you know, from the last.

Stacy: And it was often in a session or a couple sessions that you were in this just deep flow state which has been really cool to witness. I would love to know about that side of you. And I mean, how does that show up for you in your other work? Because I imagine it’s not just in the book writing process.

Dr. Amanda: It’s true. I am, I think because I’m living so authentically and so present. I am, I am really intense. I’m really intense in my relationships. I’m even thinking About. We went out to dinner last night, my husband and I, and, you know, I’m certain that the waiter at times walked by and was like, I wonder if everything’s okay. I mean, there were so many tears, beautiful tears of gratitude, actually, in the conversation were having. But so many tears, so much emotion. And this is, you know, 28 years of being married, and we’ve had some very hard times. But the connection I have with my people, whether it is working with you, with my. My adult children, with my husband, with my mother, with my best girlfriends, with my clients, I am really alive and very present.

Dr. Amanda: And again, it goes back to when you’re so present in life. There is an aliveness that is happening. So I’m not. I’m not feeling this, like, super subdued kind of. I don’t know, this. This energy that is under the surface. I am living in real time, you know, and were talking yesterday. I have these. These cohorts, these 30 women from around the world, cohorts of this mastermind that we’re doing. We’re talking about grief yesterday, right? Helping them access their grief and the importance of that. And one of the stories I highlighted was about a dog that had passed away, you know, three years ago. And in telling the story, I’m. I’m crying, I’m in tears, right? Because I. I don’t lead from a place of. I am here, and I’m going to teach you everything I know. I lead from a place of.

Dr. Amanda: We’re all on this equal playing field. We’re all on the floor here together. And I’m going to open up this topic with a personal anecdote and experience so you can hear what grief sounds like. You can feel the articulation of grief. And I can. I’ll tell you what color it has and what it sounds like, what it looks like, what it smells like in my life, you know, And. And I do that because it helps guide them to be brave enough to get in touch with their grief that way. So when you have a grounded leader leading with her own experiences in life, it can feel intense. I mean, the feedback is phenomenal. And most women stay for a second round of the mastermind because they’re like, I’ve never had an experience like this before.

Dr. Amanda: And so, yes, I am an intense person in all ways. But, Stacy, my gosh, there is one life I don’t want to miss. An ounce of the beauty, an ounce of the heartbreak, an ounce of the rage and the anger. And I don’t want to miss any of It. I’m here for all of it, and I’m. I’m living it in real time.

Stacy: Rage. You brought up rage. And that the idea of rage is maybe one of, you know, along with the mirror practice and some other aspects of your work, rage has stuck with me in our many conversations. And, you know, rage, grief, they’re so interconnected in so many ways. One of the things that you teach is rage practices. What I found really interesting in getting to work with you on this book and learn more about your philosophy on this is that we’re raised often with a patriarchal lens on processing emotion. And that’s typically to calm down, to center and to be and kind of accept this emotion. And we aren’t taught to release our anger and let go, like, process rage. Right. This is not something that we are. We are taught as women.

Stacy: Can you talk about this approach to rage in the work that you do and how that has helped women really access these completely new parts of themselves?

Dr. Amanda: Yeah, I think that all of us as women are carrying thousands of years of subjugation of women and abuse. Right. It’s not just ours. It’s not like we just come into the world and we’re not energetically carrying what we received in our mother’s wombs and down the line. Right. That is all the energy that comes into our cells and our nervous systems. And so we have something happen to us in life. And we are told as women to, you know, well, we all have had struggles. And that’s just. That’s part of being a woman. And the message is, be pleasing, don’t have angry face. Nobody likes an upset woman. You’ll be called hysterical. They’ll think you’re crazy, unhinged, all of these things. So we’ve terrified women of their rage. Women can access grief when they lose somebody or there’s like some heartbreak.

Dr. Amanda: They can access some sadness, but it’s so hard to go into the rage. Well, I work with women from all around the world who have experienced. Experienced all forms of abuse. Many who’ve not, but even the ones who have not are living in a world where abuse is happening to women, and there is a palpable rage. To tell a woman to sit and be still with that and to breathe into that doesn’t actually move the needle. What that woman needs to do is actually be able to scream and rage and release a lot of that. And there’s a whole process that I guide them on because to not do so. Stacy, all that rage, all of that unprocessed emotion contaminates you, causes autoimmune diseases, causes cancer, right? Because that energy when pushed down and we have to actively work to keep it really suppressed.

Dr. Amanda: Alcohol, shopping, binging, television, whatever people are doing to not feel the feeling, as soon as it starts to rise, they have to keep it suppressed, keep numbing it, pushing it back down. Ultimately, energetically, cells start dividing and disease starts taking over the body. So for us, I teach a practice to take those contaminants, those fossil fuels, feel them, turn them into renewable energy. Because when you move through rage and you actually allow yourself to feel it in the end, from the ashes, there’s always fertile ground. And from there you have clarity. From there you can make a decision. From there you can begin again. But continuing to put band AIDS over rage and be like, it’s okay, pick yourself up by your bootstraps, you’ll better without them. You’re going to be okay.

Dr. Amanda: I know that abuse was awful, but at least it’s in the past. Move on. Look at all you have to be grateful for now. Unprocessed rage comes back to haunt women through disease, through hardened hearts, through depression. So I am here to say I have the capacity to teach women how to feel it all and not fear feeling it all. And as a matter of fact, stepping right into it, knowing that’s the actual access to their power.

Stacy: It’s such a powerful practice and I love that in your book Muse, you detail, you actually give a step by step rage practice, which is such a gift to readers because it’s something they can take and they can actually use in their real life. You know, just through this book. Amanda, I loved working with you. I celebrate everything that you’re doing in the world and I feel overjoyed as I, you know, ready for the release of this book and to celebrate you and all of the impact that you’re already making. And I just know that this is going to further amplify the efforts that you, this effort to uplift women and really help women redefine what womanhood means to them. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Stacy: I would love to know just for our listeners who maybe aren’t following you yet, where can they follow along with you and pre order your book?

Dr. Amanda: Yes, Dr. Amanda Hansen or Midlife Museum? I go by on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, I have Dr. Amanda Hansen, Midlife Muse. Any of those you will be able to find me and my website is amandahanson.com where and on Amazon of course, go to Amazon and you can pre order my book, which will be out March 4th.

Stacy: Yay. So excited for you. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Amanda: Thank you.

Stacy: And thank you to you, our listener, for joining us for this conversation. I hope it inspired you to start to think about your own aging differently. Maybe take Amanda’s advice and spend some time with the mirror today. Thank you to Rita Domingues for her production of this fine podcast. I’m telling you, this would not exist without her. She makes it possible every single week to get this out to you and I am grateful. And if you have just 30 seconds to rate and review this podcast, I would be immensely grateful. It makes a huge difference in being able to reach listeners with the message of living a life that is not just better, but beyond better. And I will be back with you before you know it.