Hard Truths

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Summary

In this episode, Victoria shares her personal journey and the challenges she faced during perimenopause. She discusses the connection between physical symptoms and stress, as well as the feeling of being behind and lost in midlife. Victoria also reflects on her childhood dreams and the need to rediscover her authentic self. She opens up about the controversial side of her beliefs and the backlash she experienced. The conversation explores the impact of shutting down and the cognitive dissonance experienced in the healthcare field. Victoria discusses the physical symptoms that arise from suppressed emotions and the fear of rejection. She emphasizes the importance of embracing the woo and stepping into personal power. The episode concludes with an invitation to join her Facebook group.

Takeaways

• Physical symptoms can be directly related to stress and the suppression of emotions.

• Many women feel behind and lost in midlife, as they have sacrificed their own dreams and desires.

• It is important to rediscover and embrace childhood dreams and authentic self-expression.

• The fear of rejection can lead to shutting down and hiding one's true beliefs and passions.

• Embracing the woo and personal power can lead to healing and empowerment.

Sound Bites

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Chapters

00:00Introduction and Personal Journey

03:20The Connection Between Physical Symptoms and Stress

07:26Feeling Behind and Lost in Midlife

09:13Rediscovering Childhood Dreams

14:15The Controversial Side and Being Ostracized

27:41Cracking Under Pressure and Hiding Authenticity

29:02Physical Symptoms and Suppressed Emotions

31:14The Course and Fear of Rejection

35:32Embracing the Woo and Personal Power

38:26Invitation to Join the Facebook Group

39:22Conclusion and Call to Action

Transcript

Victoria (00:01.322)

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Victoria Elle, Women's Holistic Health Strategies. And I am here today because I actually am sharing something that's really near and dear to my heart that I've really been having a lot of moments of rumination around the last couple weeks. I've been sitting with this podcast idea for quite a while and I feel like it's time to talk about it. So,

buckle in, it's going to be a little controversial. It's gonna probably make some of you leave and it may make some of you come along for more of a ride. But either way, it is my completely authentic here and now honest truth and I want to share with it. Okay. So like I said, I have been pretty open and honest here on this podcast about how perimetapause really took a lot from me.

As a woman I have shared a lot about the weight gain the hormone range the fatigue and I have also shared a lot about how I have been working really hard over the last couple years to heal and to work through these symptoms and how Dedicated I have been to making my 20 -day strategy program and making it something that all women everywhere can use

and find tools from that can really help them during these times, right? I have been really working hard on creating that in a way that I felt would honor what we are going through at this time. So to say that this podcast kind of comes at the right time, I guess that's true, but.

I have been ruminating over sharing this side of things for a good couple of weeks now, because to be perfectly honest, I am not overly sure how it will actually be received. But I had a moment the other day where I really felt like in my own skin, like I cannot be this inauthentic anymore. And I need to just say things and do things the way that it...

Victoria (02:20.233)

it wants to come out instead of editing it, right? I wanted to share the other day on social media, I had this post all put together that was kind of witchy woo woo and was really digging into how, you know, how the spiritual side of things can affect our physical side of things. And it was quite woo and quite out there. But I was completely paralyzed by fear.

that the wrong person would see this post and it would be thrown back in my face and it would take me back to that time in 2020 what that was like the witching hunting the witch hunting all over again and so I didn't share it at this moment it is currently posted on my private women's health group but I am not I have not posted it publicly on my Instagram app it's still sitting in the traps there.

Now, here is why this is significant, okay? I have come to see over the last year or so, I guess you could say, I've come to see that many of the physical things I and others are working on and are experiencing are really actually directly related.

to the stress, overwhelm, the hiding who we are, what we really want to say or do, and the stepping back from our power as women. Many, many of us are having our physical symptoms that are related to stress and related to the stresses that we feel when we are surrounding ourselves.

with situations where we feel like we have to constantly monitor our words, our actions, we have to hide who we really are, what we really think, how we really feel. And I think that as we reach this midlife, right, they call it the fuck it 40s for a reason, I guess, many of us are really starting to feel the.

Victoria (04:35.466)

completely exhausting effects of stepping into roles that we thought we were supposed to do in order to be successful within this current society, right? Many of us have quieted that inner knowing in a way that we have kind of shushed it so that we can just fit in, we can keep the job.

We can be a part of the cogs that turn the society's wheels, right? Many, many of us were completely destroyed in 2020 and 2021, honestly, in order to just put food on the table, keep that roof over our family's heads. And we are, you know, just now starting to emerge and see how suppressed and...

how quieted we had become. You know, feeling into the whether or not we are even safe to be ourselves. Are we safe within our own bodies? Are we safe within our circles? Can we actually talk about how we feel and what we think and express our own opinions, right? There was quite a time there where opinions and understanding or even people expressing their own experiences.

we were told that our experiences were incorrect, right? Our perspectives were incorrect. A lot of people on both sides, I'm not taking sides here, it was trash talk, a lot of trash talk on both sides for a long time. So many people really, especially women, just kind of went quiet, went inwards, you know, withdrew and put this massive amount of stress on their shoulders.

and they wanted a lot of us. We were just seeing how we could just do things to make other people happy because that's what people pleasing, right? There's so many of us that are just coming out from underneath that people pleasing and it's crazy. It is crazy. So as we as women and I speak as a woman and I speak on behalf of women that I have spoken to and that I've had conversations with.

Victoria (06:57.258)

I obviously can't speak as a man because I'm not a man, so I don't know how it felt. I would love to have a male perspective. Maybe I can convince the husband to come on and talk a couple times. But for now, I am speaking from my perspective as a woman midlife going through perimetropos, okay? So we start to emerge from this. We start to begin to feel into whether or not it is safe to be ourselves and seeing how...

even though we thought we were doing all the right things and doing the things that we were supposed to do. Honestly, many of us in the conversations I've had, we are like, we don't feel like we got any farther ahead in life. We don't feel like sacrificing who we are as women actually stepped us into anything better. In fact, many of us in this midlife stage are so.

far behind where we thought we were supposed to be like where we were conditioned as children to believe we would be that that burden alone is like heaping just massive amounts of stress onto our bodies causing our stress hormones to go whack even more so.

And it's so heavy that we feel many of us, like I can say, I felt like I was drowning when perimetopause fatigue and rage hit me and it was hitting me every single day. It was obnoxious. And I am in my forties, like I said, and none of the things that I thought that this stage of life would be what I saw as a young woman, as a, as a

as a girl growing up, as when I was kind of told what the 40s would be about, I am not seeing any of that stuff, right? I'm not feeling any of that stuff. And when I talked to my other girlfriends, I've talked to many other women about this, who are at this stage, they too are kind of saying the same thing. Like, you know, many of us grew up watching the Golden Girls, they weren't much older than I am right now.

Victoria (09:13.482)

It's a completely different ballgame, right? So last week, I had the opportunity to talk to my beautiful friend, Suki. If you guys have not heard that podcast, I really implore you to have a listen and to listen to Suki's story. She shared with us about how we as women often push off our big dreams for so long, right? We become part of the machine.

We do the things that we're supposed to do and not, and here's the thing, it's not that we don't enjoy being there for our partners, we don't enjoy being the wife, we don't enjoy having the children and doing all those things, but there's a big part of us that often get set aside so that we can do those things, right? And then we get here in this stage of life.

And we feel like, okay, now what the fuck am I supposed to do right now? What am I, you know, like, especially for people like Suki and I, whose kids are grown and we aren't needed as much. We aren't, we're still needed. That's the wrong way to say it. But we aren't involved in every aspect as much, right? Different pressures, but it is completely different, right?

Um, so then here we are and we're at this stage and it's like, now what? And I was so inspired. She shares with us in that podcast, how she takes a leap of faith and is stepping into something that she has dreamed about since she was just a little girl. She shares with us how when she was a little girl, she used to envision herself with, uh,

this briefcase and a business suit and like doing the business things and being this amazing powerhouse of a business woman. And I just, I loved that so much. And here she is finally at this stage now stepping up into doing that thing that that little girl inside of her has been dreaming about for like all that time. So it sparked a feeling in me of, you know, I want to dig into what I thought.

Victoria (11:33.802)

I would be when I grew up and what that little girl and me, what she always wanted to be. So truth be told, as a child, I thought I would grow up to be a super cool hippie grandma. This is literally what I thought I was growing up to be. Okay, so as a child,

I loved playing with mud pies. I would make these incredibly cool potions out of like everything I could find. We used to travel across the other side of town to pick crab apples and then get river water and we would make potions. And I remember at one point we actually made this juice out of the river water and crab apples. And I can remember my mom being like, I don't think that water is safe to drink.

I don't remember if we actually did end up drinking it and like sneaking it behind her back. But anyways, I literally thought when I was a little girl that I would be, I envisioned myself, I could see myself dressed in like boho style. I always pictured myself in like flowy boho clothes, long gray hair, and like one of those cool hippie people with like the.

the dreads and like the beads and stuff in their hair. I always pictured myself like that. And I always pictured myself being that kind of cool hippie lady, but having like the grandkids around. And I can remember I had a plan that when I turned 18, I would just adopt adult people that already had kids. And then I would just become a grandma.

So yes, I know this is super weird, but that literally was the vision that I saw for myself as a child. And it's so insane. But the biggest part of this whole dream was knowing that I would be some weird woo woo adult when I got older. I knew it in my being that that's what I was going to be. And a part of me, I guess,

Victoria (13:46.858)

I had actually kind of started to dig into that before 2020. I had just started to really start to share on social media about the plant medicines that I was learning about. I was sharing with everyone about essential oils and natural remedies. I was really digging into learning and studying my holistic nutrition. I did that course and I just really was really adamant about learning.

all the things about natural ways to care for myself. And I'm gonna get really honest here. And this is probably where it's gonna get controversial. And I know that there's gonna be some people that are gonna get a little butt hurt. And I know there's gonna be some people that probably like are like, I don't wanna participate in her bullshit, right? And that's fine. I also realized that...

by sharing this story though that there are experiences that may cause people to just kind of push away from me. And that's okay because I have really come to the space in the last little while where I know that I just can't keep pretending that the things that happened the last couple years weren't a huge

reason as to why I shut down and I shut off my woo woo. So I didn't say woo, not who. And I just need to acknowledge that. And I also know that there's many of you that are going to listen to this, that this is going to resonate with you, that you're going to say, holy shit, same here. I've been, I was experiencing that too. And I'm so glad that I can connect and have

somebody speak like I was feeling, right? So here it goes. In 2020, about four months into the two weeks to flatten the curve, I started to get this really deep intuitive knowing within me that something was not right with all this narrative that we were being told. It felt wrong. It felt like something was going wrong. I had had, you know, the thing that everyone was scared of. I'd had the cold.

Victoria (16:07.21)

And I had survived it no problem. The January before my entire family had it, we all recovered. It was fine. We were good. So I totally knew that it was survivable. I was not afraid of it. I was not afraid of it causing me to die. And I had, you know, before this, I had done, I have like 20 something years of education in the health and wellness field. I had studied immunology.

I had studied pathophysiology. I had studied how our bodies work in these situations. I had also taken in -depth courses on how to properly use PPE to make sure that if something should ever arise that was dangerous, I would know how to address it being in a field that is considered a registered healthcare field, right? And I just felt like none of the media messages that were

being pushed made any sense to me at all. I felt like there was this divide and conquer mentality that was being pushed and it didn't matter which side you were on. Nobody was listening to anybody else and the main idea was how can we destroy each other and that really bothered me.

And so I started to speak out about, you know, I'm trying to share with everyone the things that I had learned, the healing properties of the plants, of food, of nature, and how myself and my family, we had created health after having this ourselves and how we had boosted our immune systems. And I started to really dig in and share what was considered just woo -wee bullshit at the time. And I found that every time I shared,

I was being beaten down and my fellow friends who were like on side with me were afraid to speak out about it too because they were seeing about how I was being treated and it was really ridiculous. So I was trying really hard to help people. I remember I put out a blog and a newsletter.

Victoria (18:22.858)

where I shared with everyone my wellness tea. So I make a really awesome tea in the winter. I've shared it numerous times. It's on the blog. It has white pine in it. And the problem was, is I was sharing this at a time when other naturopaths and...

natural medicine and functional medicine doctors were speaking about the amazing properties of white pine against spike proteins in the cold that was causing people to become really sick. And so because I shared this, I was ostracized by other people and it was really a tough time, right?

I was also very open about my stance on body autonomy. I have believed from a very young age when the choice of what happened to my body was taken away from me that I would never ever, ever, ever, ever in my life force anyone to do anything with their bodies that they did not feel comfortable with.

I believe in pure body autonomy and I believe that I am responsible for my body and no one else is. So that was something that was greeted with not the best reception, if I'm honest. And the fact that I never demanded anyone

to do anything to their body, whether it was cover their body, uncover their body, take something, don't take something, I never ever stated that I felt that people should do something with their body to make me feel safer in my body. I never understood that. I was very vocal about that. And I was very vocal against the people that were standing up for my body, my choice, and then at the same time,

Victoria (20:33.962)

completely trash talking people like me who said, yeah, my body, my choice applies to every single aspect. You cannot choose what parts of people's bodies have choice and what parts don't. So this stance landed me on the outside of the community of like -minded woo -woo people in my area actually caused many of them to come after me and...

to try to destroy me and my business and it was really, really horrible. And like honestly, that alone could be a whole episode right there, just sharing with you some of the insanity that happened as part of that. And so when I was working, here I am, I'm working as someone in the registered healthcare and I had to completely stop.

sharing my thoughts, my ideas around body autonomy, I had to completely shut down and shut off that part of me that really wanted to scream and say, you know, it's people have the right to choose whatever the fuck they want to do with their body. You can't tell me that this this is OK, but that's not OK. And again, super ironic, considering that in my field of work.

We have extremely strict rules around consent to treatment, consent to touch. And yet I am being told by my governing body that I have to demand people do things with their body that they're not comfortable with, right? And I just, I could not understand it. So I had to shift away from who I knew I was in my being.

what was important, so important to me to stand up for this and to be vocal about this, I had to stop because I knew that if I didn't, I was not gonna be able to work and put food on the table, pay the bills. I knew that if I continued to stand up for people, like one case I had a veteran reach out to me who had

Victoria (23:00.49)

being severely injured in Afghanistan. And this veteran said to me that, you know, they had been trying really hard, they needed therapy so badly and they'd been trying really hard to find somebody, but nobody would treat them because when they put the mask on their face, they went into complete PTSD and hyperventilated and went into like full blown replay of

of whatever that moment was that caused them to be extremely injured, but they were in extreme pain and needed help. And they had heard that I was not demanding people to do things that they couldn't do. And this person reached out to me, actually came to see me and sat, most of the first session, we sat and I just listened to them talk and cry and...

say that they did not understand how people could treat them the way they did because they literally had all the doctor's letters, everything saying like, this person cannot do this to their body. And it was heartbreaking. But here I am in this situation where now in order for me to put food on my table and to pay my bills, I had to completely shut down that part of who I was.

that person who was compassionate and understanding and just knew that body autonomy does not get to pick and choose. It is what it is, right? And so I would be in session with people that didn't know because I had to shut down that part of who I was that didn't know that I felt this way, that didn't know that I was like breaking on the inside.

wanting to tell them that they have a choice what to do with their body. They are responsible for their own body. Like you get to do what you want with your own body. It's your fucking body. Nobody else is. And even though, you know, they didn't know, they didn't know that this is where my stance was because I had to shut it off. I had to listen to these people talk about people like me.

Victoria (25:22.09)

in ways that would crush your heart. And I was living in this void of this huge cognitive dissonance, being one person so that I could pay bills and then this other person that I had to completely shut off with inside me. So these couple of years, they piled so much stress onto my body, my mind and my spirit.

that you know I was just I was completely shut down my woo had to completely turn off and completely go away so that I could just cope so I could just get through and it was so tough because I honestly love what I do so much I love my job I love my clients I have deep deep gratitude and so much compassion for the people that I get to work with I really really do.

And I will say that, you know, the a lot of these people that were were coming to me were coming to me during this time because they really, really needed it. And all I wanted to do was hold space and love and compassion for them. But it was so difficult because I knew that the perception of what I was supposed to what I was supposed to think and what I actually thought were two totally different things. So.

I think one day I'll actually sit down and write like this is a whole novel all to itself. Honestly, there's so much here that I could totally unpack. I could probably spend like six hours unpacking all this stuff. I've had many of these conversations with so many other people in my field and in the healthcare that are very aligned with how difficult it really was to be in that field. Well.

while trying to understand and have compassion at the same time and the hate and the divide and the divide and conquer that was the media, right? It was really, really difficult. So during that time, many of us just shut down, right? We just had to shut down. We had to become robots. We just had to function to pay the bills. So I hid away all of my witchy woo woo stuff.

Victoria (27:41.93)

I really pushed it aside, I pushed it down and I tried to make sure that I wasn't really broadcasting too much of it. I didn't want to scare people away. So however, as I started to face perimetapause, I started to feel like I was this inauthentic being. And when I would stand in front of the mirror, I felt like I didn't know who I was.

And that is on so many different levels with perimetopause. There's like the hormone level that causes that. There's this emotional level. There's this disconnect. But I really, I was really having a hard time with it, right? Because I had gained all this weight too. So that was another element to it. But I'm standing in the mirror and I'm looking at myself and I'm like, who am I? What am I doing? Why?

Am I so beyond stressed and overcome with extreme fatigue, with rage, with all this weight on my shoulders, like both physically and emotional weight, guys, like it was both. So I started to feel like I was just cracking under this pressure of all of this stuff. And I started to see that many of the physical things I was experiencing were actually directly related to what I had just spent the last couple years.

shoving down and shutting off, right? I started to see that my marriage and my relationships as they were like falling apart right in front of my eyes, I started to see all these things just falling apart. It was happening because I had completely shut off myself. I'd shut myself off. I had shut off feeling and allowing connection.

And I had done this as a protective mechanism so that I could do the things I knew I needed to do to put food on the table, but at the same time, it didn't, it continued outside of that building, right? And I've spoken before about how this midlife shift,

Victoria (29:53.834)

It brings up so many emotions, like, oh my God, so many emotions. We've talked about like, re -parenting ourselves and all the craziness. And it brings up these spaces asking to be held. And I went into this deep hermit mode before starting to speak out about all this stuff. I really went hermit. I had to hide, I had to heal. I couldn't deal with anybody, anything, even...

people that I love dearly, I just had to cocoon and I had to deal. There was trauma in our family that was overwhelming, all of this. Like it was like, I've spoken, there's a whole podcast I shared about like my pile of shit that it just, I was like, I need to hermit.

And I did. And I know that a lot of people were very upset with me for doing that. And I do apologize, but it's what I needed to do to heal. It is how I needed to heal. But that aha moment that happened, that moment of trying to post and not being able to, it happened for me. And it came. And I realized that not a single person...

Hear me out, not a single person signed up for my course, right? So that this aha post was going to go along with my post or my course that I made, the 28 day course. And it was, it is now posted, but it was more about the woo side of the course than it was the logical side, right? Because nobody had signed up for this course and I had worked so hard at this course. I really worked.

incredibly hard to build for women just like me, a course that I felt would just bring so much clarity on so many levels. But you know why nobody showed up? Because I wasn't sharing it fully authentic. I wasn't sharing that the course was more than just workouts, meal plans, journal prompts, right? I was still afraid to throw out to the world that the course was kind of woo.

Victoria (32:13.738)

And I didn't, I don't share, you know, I didn't share that I was really, I was really about to deep dive into finding the harmony in the hormones. I didn't share that ladies, if you join me on this course, we are gonna, we're gonna find harmony, like energetic harmony that aligns our hormones. We are gonna step up and conquer our own chaos.

We are going to fully nourish our mind, body and soul in alignment with who we are as women and how we flow with our cycle. Stop fighting your cycle and go with it, right? I was afraid to fully share that woo side of this journey that I had been bringing healing and deep loving connection.

to my own physical body with in perimenopause. I was afraid because I didn't think at the time when I was putting this together, I didn't think I was strong enough to endure yet another wall of hatred. I didn't think I was ready for the name calling. And I knew that I'm like, I just can't pretend to be something I'm not, right? I can't do it.

So I created an entire course in a way that I could market, that I felt was gonna be accepted and acceptable on media, right? That I wasn't gonna get shadow banned for speaking out about the wrong thing or whatever you wanna call it nowadays. But I realized as I'm sitting there going over the course, looking at what I wanted to post and not being able to post about it.

looking at how I really wanted to tell ladies like we're gonna get wooey here we are gonna woo together we are gonna dig in to the emotion we are gonna do all that fucked up shit that we should have been doing right I'm not willing to to just pretend like that isn't happening that that's not who I am the course is woo there's a there's some woo shit in there yeah I talk about

Victoria (34:32.809)

I wrote a whole gratitude journal that goes with the three month gratitude journal, that goes with the course, that digs into the woo. I give you prompts that align with the energetic shit that goes on in each part of your cycle, but it's also logical. I also talk about the hormones. I also talk about how our food, our food literally affects our hormones. I talk about all this stuff. I share with you guys the science behind it.

There is the nerdy stuff too. There's all that stuff. And it's all the stuff that I have personally been working with for the last two years. It has been this huge learning curve of, you know, coming back to myself, discovering who I am, discovering what parts of me I still need to deepen into and explore. The thing I am really learning is that this phase of life,

is a time when you can do all these things, right? You can. I know you can, because you've been through a shit load of shit, and you have awareness of yourself and you have more strength than you're aware of. And in this phase of life, you get to step up and you get to care for yourself, right? You get to step up into your passions. You get to be like Suki.

and remember that little girl with her briefcase and her business suit and you get to become her. You know, you get to step back into that woo side of yourself. You get to be like my friend Rhonda and you get to learn how to reparent yourself and you get to learn how to care for that little, that little being inside of you in a way that allows you to step into some magic power that you are so magic, right? And,

you get to stand up and you get to say, I do believe my body is magic. I believe in empowerment in my body. You get to journey into your body and do things like my friend Vanessa does where she literally leads you into your body and you'd connect on such a deep, amazing level, right? And I am here as a testament to tell you that the woo things work, right?

Victoria (36:57.834)

I know that plants can heal the body. I know they can. I have seen it happen. I've done it myself. I 100 % see how we can create our own reality. And I have a huge, a huge evidence of the fuck yes, the manifestations happen. And you better understand that your mindset is a massive reason.

for who you are right now. And no shit, I am stepping out of my limiting conditioning. I am owning my power and I am taking responsibility for my health, my wealth, and my wellbeing on every single level. I 100 % know that stepping back into the witchy woo stuff that I absolutely love and feel so deeply connected to, my stance on body autonomy that is

It is a non -negotiable for me. I don't care if I get canceled for saying it. I don't care. I have, this is my stance on body autonomy. My passion for true health will push people away. I know that. But I also know that there are so many of you that are listening to this that are feeling connected to these words, that are feeling like, fuck yes. I...

I feel that way too. I want to connect. I need more of this. I need more of this fuck yes energy. Right? So if you're ready, if this is something that you're like, fuck yes, I need more of this, then I'm gonna put the Facebook group link here. It's a free Facebook group ladies. Go and join it. I am going to be digging in and getting wooed.

I am going to be getting nerdy and sciency and nutrition -y and we're gonna do movement, we're gonna do meditation, we're gonna do meal plans, we're gonna do woo, we're gonna do journal, we're gonna do all of the freaking things all together. Because they all compliment each other. They're all part of it. It's all amazing. So, if you're still here, thank you so much for coming along.

Victoria (39:22.794)

on my authentic journey here today. This, honestly, I am so passionate about this and I am just in this space. I need to step up and I know that there's so many of you out there that feel the same way. So I'm gonna give you the link to join below. Make sure you sign up, make sure you join and ladies.

step up for you. It's time. It's time to step up and care for you. Now that is all for me. That is a way longer podcast than I normally record. Thank you so much for being here to the very end, sending you all so much love, compassion, kindness, and understanding. Until next time, thank you.