Why Physical Activity is Important as We Age.

Rumblings Media 6/9/21 Rumblings Media 6/9/21

14 Ways to Find Joy in Your Diet

As we enter the prime time of our lives, it's time to focus on joy and re-design our lives to live fully and authentically. Instead of a new diet for flourishing after 50, loosen the reins and seek joy in the experience of eating well without strict food rules. Use these 14 tips to bring joy back to eating.

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In 2012, my husband and I (Rebecca) challenged ourselves to go 100% vegan for one month. To be honest, when I committed, I didn’t eat a lot of meat. Dave, on the other hand, enjoyed meat, eggs, and dairy foods. As you can imagine, his vegan eating pattern lasted less than two weeks. Mine lasted over seven years. However, I have to admit I was never comfortable calling myself vegan. I preferred to say I mainly ate plants, vegetarian with no dairy, or 90% vegan.

Why was I hesitant to self-identify as a vegan? I’ve always loved all aspects of food — growing, preparing, eating, and experiencing the taste, smell, and textures. I grew up traveling, and part of experiencing and appreciating other cultures always included the food. For example, when I traveled to Canada, I tried poutine, and when in Scotland, haggis. My family trips growing up included visits to local markets and joining local food tours. Now, I design and share similar adventures with my children, such as sampling various types of tacos and agua frescas from local vendors on the streets of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

For me, identifying and following one diet fad or way of eating such as vegan, paleo, Whole 30, Atkins, or gluten-free meant saying no to a valued experience. It also meant feeling like a fraud or diet imposter if I broke from the strict diet philosophy.

As I’ve moved throughout my career, I’ve seen diets come and go, and the diet feuds only get worse. Individuals with strong food identities constantly fight online about which ideology has more scientific merit, extends life, or best fends off disease. In reality, and rarely mentioned, these ways of eating have far more principles in common (more fruits, vegetables, and fiber and limited ultra-processed foods) than conflicting advice (meat and dairy types and quantity recommendations). As a result of the fighting, many people are confused, fed up, disconnected, and feel like failures because they haven’t been able to comply with one or more of these restrictive eating regimens.

I am not saying that following a specific dietary pattern won’t have personal benefits for individuals. I’ve seen people lose weight, improve blood pressure, reduce blood cholesterol levels, improve blood sugars, and feel better by modifying what and how much they eat. I firmly believe in the health benefits of food — especially fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. I also understand the medical necessity to limit foods for specific allergies or chronic diseases.

At the same time, I strongly believe in the mental and social benefits of coming around the table to share a meal with family, friends, colleagues, and strangers. Something magical happens when we eat together and fill our souls with nourishing foods. We may be restricting joy in our lives when we are so strongly attached to a certain dietary pattern, believe recommendations are rules that if broken equal failure, or refuse to see the value in other approaches to eating.

Are your food rules limiting your potential to experience joy from food or eating experiences?

Circle the statements below you practice.

I am open to trying new foods even if I am unfamiliar with the ingredients

I don’t feel guilty if I stray from my usual way of eating

I accept invitations to social events even if I know I won’t be able to find foods within my typical eating style

I don’t preach the benefits of the way I eat to others without them asking

I try foods from other cultures even if they don’t align with my preferred eating pattern

I eat and enjoy foods at holidays and family events that are considered family traditions even if they aren’t consistent with my diet rules

I prioritize eating foods that are high quality and nourishing over foods that strictly comply with a certain diet pattern

I understand that prescriptive eating patterns are merely a guide for choosing foods for good health, and understand that choosing foods outside of the recommendations will not derail an overall healthy diet

I look for ways to find commonalities in eating patterns instead of denouncing the value of the food choices other people make

I understand that eating for health and well-being includes enjoying food, experiencing culture, and celebrating with family traditions

I know that a single food or meal will not ruin or break any diet rules

I don’t avoid eating categories of macronutrients such as carbohydrates or fats

I realize a healthful eating pattern for me may differ from someone else

I understand that what and how much food my body needs may change as I age due to my activity level and body composition, and I am ok with that

Review the list. Did you leave statements uncircled? These may be areas of opportunity for you to modify and discover more joy in eating.

As I’ve aged, I have to say I am tired of the all-or-nothing approach to eating. I don’t want to restrict the enjoyment out of my life by following a rigid eating pattern. Although I follow a plant-based eating pattern most of the time, I want to be able to dine with friends, travel, and enjoy a good meal without feeling stressed that I am breaking diet rules, if I try something unusual. I don’t want to feel guilty or not a part of a particular tribe as a result of the food choices I make.

We live in a diet culture. We are experiencing a time of divisiveness where picking teams is more common than styling our lives in ways that bring us joy. As we enter the prime time of our lives, let’s focus on joy and re-design our lives to live fully and authentically.

Instead of challenging you with yet a new diet for flourishing after 50, I challenge you to loosen the reins and seek joy in the experience of eating well without strict food rules.

Rumble on!

Rumblings Media 5/26/21 Rumblings Media 5/26/21

The Key to Getting Fit After 50

What exactly is the difference between being physically active and exercising? Which is better for us for a sustainable lifestyle approach as we age?

Most of us have been told over the years that we need to participate in structured fitness programs - mainly cardiovascular or aerobic. For many, that means attending a class, getting on a cardio machine, running, or biking.

The truth is, physical activity and fitness aren’t all-or-nothing propositions. And doing one doesn’t negate the benefit of the other. The real trick is to find ways to incorporate physical activity throughout our day, every day, with or without a regular exercise routine.

“Fitness is a journey, not a destination. It must be continued for the rest of your life.” Kenneth Cooper, MD, started the aerobics movement with his book Aerobics in 1968.

As an exercise scientist with a background in health, conversations with family and friends often center around fitness and physical activity.

This year has been especially challenging as most of the women we speak with have been sharing they were more sedentary and exercised less than they had previously.

Combine this with the changes and effects of aging, and the body and fitness level changes have been dramatic.

As one family member shared, looking in the mirror is shocking enough to wonder, whose body is this?!

It’s tempting to jump on the bandwagon of quick-fix diets and exercise plans. But we’re over that! Right, friends?

Just as you may have started and failed a myriad of diets or eating fads, you may have an on-off-again relationship with exercise and physical activity. Any promise for a quick fix is exactly that - fast and unstainable. Thankfully that’s in the past!

And, unfortunately, the focus for exercising is commonly based on improving physical appearance, yet the more important benefits of exercising and being physically active come from the inside out. We need to have a long-term focus on living a healthy lifestyle.

But, what exactly is the difference between being physically active and exercising? Which is better for us for a sustainable lifestyle approach as we age?

Crushing it on the elliptical machine for 30 minutes, four times a week, only to spend the rest of your day sitting at a desk and moving to the sofa in the evening minimizes the health impact of your hard cardio workout.

We’ve found that many women—whether they exercise or not—are short on meeting recommendations for physical activity. Research shows that half of all women decrease regular exercise during middle age. At the same time, women lose lean muscle mass as they age.

A key to leading a more active life and being consistent in creating a sustainable movement-oriented lifestyle throughout our lives is having a foundational base of movement incorporated through everything we do.

The great news is it’s never too late to feel great, have more energy, and get significant health benefits from increasing both exercise and physical activity. It doesn’t take much to get results.

All activity is beneficial, and the health and well-being benefits are additive. It’s like getting extra credit for having fun!

Likewise, suppose you’ve been primarily sedentary. The good news is it’s never too late to begin being active. A great place to start is to incorporate more physical activity into your day. As you become a physically active person, you can add structured exercise activities that are higher in intensity and provide more cardiovascular fitness benefits.

Discover Eight Motivating Ideas to Help You to Move More and Sit Less During Midlife

As we age, we tend to get less and less physical activity and exercise. And, most of us know that exercising and being physically active has health benefits.

Research shows that adults who weren’t active until later in life - after 50 - have an almost equal reduction in risk for disease and early death than adults who were always active.

Continue your active lifestyle if you already have a routine, but remember it’s never too late to start being active or exercising. Making changes, no matter your age, can help add quality years to your life!

As we age, we tend to get less and less physical activity and exercise. And, most of us know that exercising and being physically active has health benefits.

Over the last year, with many exercise facilities closed and most of us working from home, it’s been even harder to live an active lifestyle. We’ve had to be more creative to find ways to engineer even the most basic activities into our days.

A recent survey conducted by 35 research organizations worldwide found that home confinement during COVID-19 negatively impacted physical activity intensity across all fitness levels. On average, the days of walking decreased by 2.45, and daily sitting time also increased from 5 hours a day to 8 hours daily. It is enough of a decrease in physical activity to cause an increase in disease and mortality rates.

As if this wasn’t enough bad news, we also know that about half of women decrease regular exercise during middle age. At the same time, women lose lean muscle mass as they age.

Having muscle helps us burn more calories, so losing muscle mass reduces our metabolic rate – the number of calories we burn during rest. The combined effects of decreasing activity and loss of lean body mass contribute significantly to weight gain during menopause. And, in this vicious cycle, the increased weight gain contributes to the risk of disease. Ugh!

The good news is it’s never too late to feel great, have more energy, and get significant health benefits from increasing exercise and physical activity, and it doesn’t take much to get results.

Research shows that adults who weren’t active until later in life - after 50 - have an almost equal reduction in risk for disease and early death as adults who were always active.

For cardiovascular exercise, also known as aerobic exercise, the recommended amount for optimal health is at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity or 60 minutes of vigorous activity per week. That translates to 30 minutes a day, either five days a week for moderate-intensity or 30 minutes of vigorous exercise 3 days per week.

Moderate-intensity activities include walking, biking, stair walking, or dancing. Vigorous-intensity activities include things like tennis, running, or jumping rope.

To help you quickly gauge your intensity level, you can use the talk test.

During moderate-intensity activity, you should be slightly out of breath but able to speak a few sentences at a time. Think of a brisk-paced walk with a friend.

During vigorous activity, you may find it more challenging to speak in complete sentences, but it still feels comfortable to continue.

There are other ways to monitor exercise amounts to ensure you’re meeting the minimum health and weight maintenance levels. You can use a heart rate monitor, smartwatch, or fitness tracker to measure your heart rate and target heart rate zone. You can also aim for burning 1000-2000 calories through physical activity per week.

Some people find calorie counting an easier way of tracking the amount of activity completed if they use exercise equipment or other calorie counters to monitor dietary intake.

To achieve higher fitness levels or additional weight loss, you can increase your minutes of exercise, set a goal for also doing 10,000 steps, or find ways to add extra activity into your day. Little things like gardening, parking in the far corners of the parking lot, taking the stairs, or taking ten-minute walking breaks throughout the day add up!

Both physical activity and cardiovascular (aerobic) activity are essential. Recent research emphasizes just how vital moving throughout the day is for longevity.

If you think this is all excellent information on what you need to do for exercise and physical activity, but believe it’s all easier said than done, you’re not alone!

Modern conveniences of living have engineered activity out of our days, so it’s harder to stay active year after year. Think about it; you don’t have to get out of your car to pick up food, dry-cleaning, money from the bank, medications, and even a bottle of wine. We have to work harder to design an active lifestyle.

You can do some simple practices to help build additional activity and exercise into your routine and stick with it.

Prioritize physical activity and exercise in your life. Make it essential by adding it to your calendar, and like any other important meeting, don’t schedule over it or work through it.

Be consistent. Things get in the way of developing habits, but going back, again and again, is part of what makes it stick. On the days you lack motivation, make a pact with yourself to do at least 10 minutes of some physical activity. Stretch, do yoga, or yard work to get moving. Committing to a minimum of 10 minutes of activity, you’ll get started to build consistency in your routine and will often end up doing more than 10 minutes.
Have a routine. Block your calendar, have a daily structured routine for activity. Are you a morning exerciser, or are you more consistent in scheduling your activity after work? Pick a time of day that works better for you. Make a plan for what you will do when things derail your best intentions.

Make exercise and physical activity a social outing with friends or family. Women often sacrifice their own needs to put others first. Make a date with other people to be active, and you’ll be more likely to prioritize the activity and help others get active too.

Find the right environment. Belonging to a gym or fitness center where you feel comfortable, feeling safe in your neighborhood if you walk after dark, and inclement climate and weather are all factors that impact the desire to be active. Trying to find alternatives to minimize these influences is important.

Focus on the health benefits of being active. Write how you feel after being active in a journal, on a post-it note, or in your calendar. It will help you focus on the benefits of being active and why you want to be more active.

Discover your internal motivation. Do you feel euphoric after exercising? Are you experiencing a sense of accomplishment from staying committed to your goals? Has your time spent being physically active or exercising become a time of mediation or stress reduction for you? Whatever your internal motivation is, write it down and revisit your reasons often. When you lack the motivation to be active, review your list of inspirations. Internal motivation will keep you going for the long term.

Delete what you don’t enjoy! If you’re doing an activity you don’t enjoy, pick a different activity. There are countless ways to exercise and be physically active. You won’t stick with something that makes you miserable. Want more ideas on ways to be active? Want to be inspired by other women? Join us this month as we get active together. Download our idea sheet. Follow us on social media as we post our ways to #moveinmay and #flourishafter50.

As we age and start to experience aches and pains, it’s natural to want to sit and rest. However, the key to living a long, healthy, and independent life with the ability to enjoy ourselves to the fullest is to sit less and move more!

In upcoming blog posts, we will cover simple ways to fit more activity into your days, the importance of caloric balance and weight training for optimal health, and weight management for women in their prime time. To learn more, sign-up today.

Rumble on!

Karyn and Rebecca

Rumblings Media 4/28/21 Rumblings Media 4/28/21

Live Inside Out: 8 Steps to Be Healthy, Move Beyond Anti-aging, and Age by Design

We can shape the future of societal norms surrounding aging, particularly in women. We can demonstrate by example that our worth as we age is not defined by unrealistic and unattainable superficial beauty standards any more than it should be for our younger daughters, granddaughters, and nieces.

We don’t have to accept aging trends focused on how we look, how we dress, our skincare, and our makeup routines. We can age by design, in our way, as we choose.

Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been. ~David Bowie

We’ve been thinking and talking about what it means to be ‘youthful’ recently. We believe that the key to being youthful is to have a long-term, sustained focus on being healthy. Live Inside Out is one of the Rumblings 4 Rocks (foundational principles) to Flourish After 50.

Go inward to live authentically outward
Look inside to determine what and how much you eat
Recognize the joy of the journey
Eat whole foods, mostly plants
Be grateful for your body’s capabilities
Enjoy what you eat and your daily movement without guilt or judgment
Honor tradition
Celebrate culture

Even with our focus on health, we have experienced body changes as we age, such as a slight thickening around the waist, difficulty maintaining our weight, more wrinkles, muscle aches, and symptoms of menopause, to name a few.

Women discuss the impact of these changes and nostalgic memories of how we looked in our 20s, 30s, and 40s with friends. We share tips and tricks for looking as young as we can - or as good as possible for our age. Yet, there is one part of aging that we may not discuss as commonly—the abundance of messages that our aging bodies are abnormal and we should fix them.

Individuals and organizations are competing for our attention and our money by selling promises of happiness and youthfulness. Their message is, if we conform to the culture of ‘thinness’ to fit in, we will have value and be worthy. It’s as if somehow aging is unnatural or makes us imperfect, so we must succumb and prioritize anti-aging.

Media bombards us with images of unrealistic and unachievable ideals for a youthful appearance. It would be hypocritical to imply that things like facials, overpriced skincare, or even injectables and fillers are the enemy. Still, the emphasis that aging is somehow a personal shortcoming or character flaw diminishes our value to what is superficial and appearance-related.

Yes, our bodies are imperfect, and they sometimes let us down. As we age, our bodies may be less cooperative and cause us to struggle to stay thin and fit, or even simply healthy!

One of the most beautiful things about aging is the opportunity to shed those superficial expectations of society and the media and instead step into the person we know we have become.

We don’t need to fight against our bodies as they gracefully do what bodies do - age. Our bodies are not the enemy. The changes during midlife don’t make us diminished, less relevant, or even disgusting.

There are social movements focused on body inclusion, body positivity, realistic weight, and promoting physical strength for girls. It’s now time for a movement of accepting aging too.

We don’t have to accept aging trends focused on how we look, how we dress, our skincare, and our makeup routines. We can age by design, in our way, as we choose.

If we focus our efforts instead on the approach to Live Inside Out, we can not only be grateful for our body’s capabilities; we can take that next step and embrace the process of fully stepping into the person we were becoming all along.

Embrace all of the lumps, bumps, and wrinkles that represent a well-lived life. We have come by all of these ‘imperfections’ naturally - and they are perfect. We are creating and becoming a ‘well being’ - a healthy, inside and out human body, one that is more than our physical appearance.

Our main goal should be to be healthy in a whole-person way, not to stay looking young, but to live well. Life is good, and midlife is the middle, not the end. It’s a new season that we can design to thrive and flourish.

Living inside-out is a sustainable well-being approach and is the real pro-aging ‘secret’ for feeling youthful and thriving after 50!

To learn more about the Rumblings 4 Rocks (foundational principles) to flourish after 50 and receive tips, tools, and techniques to thrive, sign-up today.

Rumblings Media 4/14/21 Rumblings Media 4/14/21

Discover Why Doing Good Does You Good

Motivation for volunteering changes over time. Many women, after 50, start seeking a more fulfilling way to contribute and desire to have a true sense of purpose and meaning which volunteering can often fulfill.

April is National Volunteer Month. Helping others is worth celebrating. In honor of the month, I took a little time to reflect on my history of volunteerism.

My volunteer choices have evolved over my adult life, along with my career path.

When I first started my career, I chose what organizations and which volunteer positions I dedicated my time towards based on professional development (e.g., skill-building and networking) opportunities. In those days, I tended to volunteer or run for the board of director positions at professional organizations.

As my husband and I started having children, my volunteer activities transitioned to school (i.e., room parent, school carnival, and PTO positions) and community boards (e.g., sports organizations and city positions). Later, they focused on one-time activities our family could do together (e.g., serving a meal at homeless shelters, a day building a home, or delivering meals).

Now with just four years left with kids in our school district, I find myself contemplating which organizations and causes I want to support in the next phase of life. It turns out I am not alone.

It’s normal to re-evaluate how and where you want to spend your time as you get older. Many women, after 50, start seeking a more fulfilling way to contribute and desire to have a true sense of purpose and meaning which volunteering can often fulfill.

Volunteering has always been a part of my lifestyle. It turns out I am not alone. Approximately 25 to 30% of American adults volunteer their time in nonprofit organizations, and women, not surprisingly, volunteer more than men.

However, motivation for volunteering changes over time. Younger volunteers tend to be motivated by achieving interpersonal relationships, sharpening or stretching job skills, testing new careers, or building a resume. In contrast, older volunteers tend to be motivated to a greater extent by service or community obligation and concerns.

I have always enjoyed learning, contributing, and getting to know the other wonderful volunteers.

Like most people, I get more from volunteering than I feel like I give. To be honest, I’ve never been motivated to volunteer because of the health benefits. I do, however, find the science very intriguing, and I am excited to know that research supports positive benefits such as improvement in:

Mental and physical health
Life satisfaction
Self-esteem
Happiness
Depressive symptoms
Psychological distress
Mortality
Functional ability
Social connection
Coping ability

Volunteering is part of a healthy lifestyle.

No matter your motivation, think about spending some of your free time volunteering for a cause. Now is a great time to be courageous and find a cause that matters to you personally. Here are some ways to do that:

Choose a cause you're passionate about.
Find an opportunity that aligns your skills, interests, and schedule.
Volunteer for a position that gets you excited to contribute, not just an obligation to fulfill.
Check out websites like VolunteerMatch to help you sort through the options.
Discover volunteer activities you can do with others, either by bringing a few friends or as an opportunity to meet new people.

If you’re already involved in a cause, remember there are still barriers for others to get involved, such as lack of information about volunteer roles, not being asked to help, or fear of outdated skills.

Together we have a unique opportunity to improve health and well-being for all by promoting volunteerism and making participating more accessible for others, so reach out and:

Invite a neighbor, friend, colleague, or another woman to volunteer with you.
Tell others about the organization you’re involved in and why.
Describe opportunities to get involved.
Invite someone to an event.
Share the organization’s milestones via social media and invite friends to do the same.

Whether you’re already volunteering for a cause you’re passionate about or trying to find a new one to serve, doing good most definitely does you (and others) good.

Let’s continue to rumble, do good, and build a culture of volunteerism together!

Rumblings Media 3/31/21 Rumblings Media 3/31/21

More Than 25 Ideas for Living Well and Making This the Best Summer Ever

Spring is here! The days are growing warmer, longer, the birds are singing, and nature is awakening after a very long winter. Many women have been telling us they are emotionally exhausted - the fatigue comes from caring too much for too long. They’re feeling burned out after the heaviness and struggles of this past year. We feel it too. Let’s appreciate all we’ve been through and all we have learned about ourselves. It’s all helped us grow. Let’s look to the future and plan more fun and festive activities to do TOGETHER with friends and loved ones!

Spring is here! The days are growing warmer, longer, the birds are singing, and nature is awakening after a very long winter. The idea of renewal and awakening is meaningful after the extended hibernation of this past year. Spring typically brings a sense of hope and new beginnings, followed by an increased energy that is uplifting and positive.

Many women have been telling us they are emotionally exhausted - the fatigue comes from caring too much for too long. They’re feeling burned out after the heaviness and struggles of this past year. We feel it too.

We’ve dealt with many unknowns, changes, and disappointments, but we’ve also found new ways to laugh and be in the moment. We can embrace that and find joy in those new experiences and smaller everyday moments.

Some of us will sprint forward, anxious to get some semblance of our lives back after putting everything on pause. Others we speak with feel apprehensive and uncertain.

Whatever feelings we’re experiencing, we can still begin to move forward through this tunnel to the other side.

Let’s appreciate all we’ve been through and all we have learned about ourselves. It’s all helped us grow. Let’s look to the future and plan more fun and festive activities to do TOGETHER with friends and loved ones!

Here are some of the activities we’re planning and putting on our calendars for the next few months. Some are tried and true. Others are new interests we want to explore and experience, refining what is most important to us over the past year.

Join us as we jump into spring with a renewed mindset and mission to flourish, have fun, and live well.

Go outside and set an intention to notice the small things — Spring blossoms, tree buds, sunshine, or just the fresh breeze
Read a book while sitting in the woods, listen to the sound of the wind in the trees
Rethink your wardrobe as you start wearing non-athletic or leisurewear clothes again
Refresh your exercise routine: do more outdoor activities, maybe go back to the gym
Get picnic supplies and schedule a series of picnics with friends and family
Plan short or long road trips along scenic highways, with specific stops along the way
Re-evaluate your skincare and makeup routine to better fit with your new lifestyle
Plan a hiking and camping trip
Plant a flower, herb, or vegetable garden and share the bounty with others
Make a top 10 list of new things you’d like to try or places you’d like to visit
Become a tourist in your town or city, going to places you’ve never been
Visit a new beach, lake, or river
Do yoga, tai chi, or meditate outdoors, either by yourself or in a class
Schedule a guided nature hike at a regional or state park
Go berry picking at a local farm
Stargaze to see how many different constellations you can find, maybe with a telescope
Buy postcards wherever you visit and send them to people describing your adventures.
Play fun outdoor games like cornhole, badminton, tennis, or Pickleball
Take a lot of photos and create picture books and share to memorialize your fun
Split community-supported agriculture (CSA) share with a friend or neighbor
Check out a new neighborhood farmer’s market each week
Rent equipment to try a new outdoor activity (hiking, kayaking, canoeing)
Plan a campfire and outdoor hootenanny
Plan a weekend getaway, or road trip with some of your favorite people
Make reservations at local restaurants you haven’t tried yet and invite someone new to go with you
Plan celebrations around small milestones — 5 workouts in a week, finishing a big work project, speaking up when your instinct was to stay quiet, or a friend’s promotion, your son or daughter’s new apartment,
Make a pact with a friend to do something new or adventurous each week

We could go on and on - but even preparing this list got us excited to plan more fun activities. You get the idea, and we can’t wait to hear about your adventures! We’d love you to send us a note or connect with us on social media on your ideas or how you’re planning for this next phase. And, please send us pictures!

Rumble on!

Rumblings Media 3/17/21 Rumblings Media 3/17/21

Discover 5 New Techniques to Improve Your Mind-Body Connection to Live Well After 50

For many of us, reaching 50 was the moment we asked if there was more to life or wondered if we had a purpose beyond family and work. It's not that we don't love our children, careers, or our families. We have a rumbling that there might be more for us individually in the next half of life. We can use practical tips, tools, and techniques to rethink our rhythm for living well after 50 and managing messy, midlife transitions.

As we’ve aged, advertising and marketing messages told women we could have it all. Unfortunately, as a result, we felt we needed to do it all.

Instead of empowering women, our society normalized simultaneously working tirelessly, raising kids, taking care of parents, juggling family schedules, keeping up the home perfectly, and being superwoman 24/7.

For many of us, reaching 50 was the moment we asked if there was more to life, if we needed time for ourselves, or wondered if we had a purpose beyond family and work. It's not that we don't love our children, careers, or our families. We have a rumbling that there might be more for us individually in the next half of life.

However, as women have more power than ever, we have found ourselves powerless to manage some of the messy transitions that brought us to midlife.

Transitions are different for each of us. We can all relate to significant milestones at this stage in our lives - kids leaving home, aging parents, job transitions, or divorce. The reality is that messy midlife transitions are a part of all of our lives.

You’re not alone. We can use practical tips, tools, and techniques to rethink our rhythm for living well after 50 to understand better how to decouple our experiences, patterns, and beliefs from our approach to handling life stressors and tumultuous times.

A group of Rumblings women came together virtually with Shelly Melroe, MS, AS, LMFT, owner of Rhythm for Living Therapy & Counseling, to learn how to resync our mind-body connections. We discussed finding compassion for our unbreakable habits, negative self-talk, and limiting beliefs we bring into midlife that may be preventing a healthy mind-body connection and authentic journey into midlife.

We all have patterns and habits for reacting and dealing with difficult or uncomfortable situations. We may not realize that those patterns and habits stem from our beliefs about ourselves that we deeply imprinted from our life experiences. Some of these experiences can date back to when we were infants and impact how we assess a situation or interpersonal exchange and how safe we feel as adults.

Most often, these patterns come out as automatic physical responses when we encounter an uncomfortable situation. That body sensation could be a dry tight throat, heart palpitations, a voice that cracks or raises, cold hands, a need to fidget, or even flushing of the neck or face. These emotions or feelings may build-up for some women until they eventually spill over in a fight or flight response. Others may completely shut down in an attempt to remove themselves from the situation, and it may lead eventually to an outburst.

We've all experienced these body sensations, but what we may not know is we can recognize these body responses and use the energy differently, in a healthier way. Recognition will help us break the cycle and stop impulsively and unconsciously repeating the same patterns shaped by our beliefs and life experiences.

Our beliefs aren't something we consciously choose.

Beliefs evolve from our upbringing and how people interacted with us. They are part of human development. We learn through our interactions with others. Our beliefs shape how we perceive our relative importance compared to others. We realized what was safe and what was most honest in the world.

We rarely think of our beliefs, even when they impact our daily lives through negative self-talk. Talk that may include thoughts like, 'I can't go back to school.’ 'I'm not fit enough, or 'my skin isn't smooth enough. 'I don't deserve to go on that trip.’ 'I don't deserve that new sweater.’ These beliefs about who we are, especially those put on us by others, are insidious and subtle and the most damaging. They come out as second nature, with little thoughts creeping in the back of our minds as we go about our day – even when we believe ourselves to be very confident. And each time we repeat this pattern of negative self-talk, it further ingrains our beliefs and habits within us and adds layers on top of our emotions.

That voice inside our head seems to get louder and louder as we get older, along with a fear that we're admitting we need help or are not satisfied if we bring it up. Instead, we may need to recognize that perhaps we can't do it, don't have it all together, or are exhausted after all these years of appearing to juggle everything effortlessly. And, that’s ok. These are the fundamental and often real messy life experiences.

What can we do about the negative self-talk? Can we change it? Can we do something differently? Are we getting in our own way?

There are many approaches to working with and modifying our beliefs to align with how we want to react, learn, and grow during our life transitions, who we want to be in midlife, and what we want to accomplish in our prime time.

Once we recognize these limiting beliefs, we can name the emotions behind them and begin to tame and reframe them into a reaction that helps us achieve a more positive outcome. It requires going deep within ourselves to get in touch with the emotions we experience. Next, recognize what caused the emotion. By understanding where that emotion originated, we can try to reframe it.

It begins with hanging onto your thought and remembering, whatever you are experiencing or whatever your self-judgment, maybe it got there naturally and honestly from your life experiences. Thoughts can stem from wounds dating back to childhood. You may have developed protective mechanisms in situations to help you feel safe. You do have the ability to heal these old wounds. The desired outcome is to resync your emotions with your thinking and with your body and integrate them.

Resyncing emotions allows us to reframe our beliefs, patterns, and habits. We can find the space to be secure in managing messy transitions in a way that opens up possibilities to grow, learn, and take advantage of opportunities that come our way in our personal and professional lives. Midlife gives us a chance to reimagine and reignite who we are and what we want from this life. Each of us has a story, and it may shape us, but we can separate ourselves and our sense of who we are from it. Our stories and our history do not define us.

Below are some of the skills that we can work on to help us navigate a new way of harnessing the power of a healthy mind/body connection. Start with small changes to find an untapped spaciousness to open our emotional circuits and walk into the authentic power within each of us.

Recognize your emotions: Learn how to reconnect with your body and accept your current habits and beliefs by examining your emotions. Be aware of the feeling. What are the physical clues you have happening in your body and your sensations? What are you aware of or thinking? What state are you in during the moment? When you begin to recognize these emotions, you can start to engage with yourself. You can also begin to connect with others very naturally. Become more open. You can start this by journaling your emotions and patterned responses and the energy you noticed as you became aware of that pattern.
Name your emotions: Get up close and personal with your current rhythm - learn how to go into an empowered and healthy emotional state more naturally. Learn to name the emotions you're feeling. Try to connect to the emotional side of yourself. Begin to name those emotions as you're experiencing them or when you're holding them back. Be graceful with yourself and acknowledge that there is no benefit to judgment. You're experiencing that emotional state because it's something important to you.
Experience your emotions: Feel the rhythm with your emotions. Bring awareness to your emotions and thoughts so that you can change the limiting beliefs and habits that may be holding you back. Learn to tame the emotions by allowing yourself to experience them. Begin to understand if you tend to go into a hyperarousal state or if you tend to shut down in uncomfortable situations. What are the thoughts (beliefs), movements (habits), body sensations, and emotions you feel? Do you take a position of blaming others, or do you feel sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, disappointment, frustration, or vulnerability?
Eventually, you'll be able to harness that energy more positively if you can avoid the natural fight or flight tendency (e.g., avoiding what you’re feeling). Start with a PAUSE where you allow yourself to sit with or even step into the emotions. Doing this is difficult, but it gives you space to move away from autopilot so you can change your existing beliefs and habits by integrating the information you're receiving into your thinking and decision-making.

Reframe your response aligned with your values. By sitting with your emotions, you’ll experience an inner fire on the other side. By learning to tap into this empowered state, you’ll experience courage, compassion, and clarity with your emotions as your energy source. New energy allows you to reframe your response because you created space for yourself. When you are predominantly in your empowerment state, courage, compassion, and clarity will come naturally. Your emotions become the guide for your passions, desires, and values. You can begin to tap into this empowered state with a meditation or mindfulness practice that includes a body and emotion scan. It means we don't fight, flee, or shut down but show up to the experience in different ways. We can be more curious if that reflects who we are or if we get pulled into it because of our story. It becomes a place to start connecting emotionally to examine the type of energy that occurs when you recognize you could feel safe in the rhythm of the situation.

Enjoy a new rhythm for living. By having an integrated daily rhythm, you create a complete integration with your mind and body. You have a new daily rhythm for living that is more aware, with different behaviors, positive thoughts, and more integrated. You begin to accept current habits and beliefs and even start to use them to tap into an empowered state of courage, compassion, and clarity with your emotions as your energy source. When you’re intentional with your feelings, rather than acting out of impulse, you create a more natural, healthy, and connected state for yourself. You can have harmony in your differences with others and even use those differences for growth.

Coming into midlife is our chance to learn and consciously decide where we want to go next in our lives, how we want to grow, and how we show up for ourselves and those who matter most to us. Midlife is an opportunity to embrace our inner selves, become more integrated, and live well.

Let’s take advantage of our capacity to move through messy midlife transitions, let go of old ways of being, and reignite our journey to flourish after 50.

Rumblings Media 2/23/21 Rumblings Media 2/23/21

Discover How to Successfully Make Work and Life Transitions After 50

Many women after 50 feel burnt out, stressed, tired of the external pressures, and ready to make a change. But, they’re uncertain how to make work and life transitions at this age. Successful transitions are possible. Reset your mindset, to view them for what they are - exciting. You’re never too old to dream big and take the steps necessary to achieve your goals.

“Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.”

Mary Oliver

Life is full of transitions — kids going off to college, parents needing care and support, relationships ending, or careers evolving — especially after 50.

Many women after 50 feel burnt out, stressed, tired of the external pressures, and ready to make a change. But instead of retiring, they are exploring opportunities for an encore career. An encore career is work in the second half of life that combines engagement, steady income, greater personal meaning, and social impact. Other women are building portfolio careers — combining multiple paid and unpaid roles. It's a great way to indulge the various interests that you have.

How do you successfully make these transitions?

After witnessing people in the workforce who were in unfulfilling jobs or careers and who weren’t happy, Nancy Burke and Marg Penn, Ph.D., started their business, Future After 50, to help people make life transitions fun, more rewarding, and fulfilling. They began their business in their 60s, after years in corporate America. As a result, they have helped many men and women navigate life transitions successfully and feel more inspired than ever.

On February 11, Nancy and Marg spoke to a group of Rumblings’ women and offered the following advice and wisdom for managing life transitions successfully to flourish after 50.

Identify Your Skills and Experiences

Change is inevitable. Transitions require you to recognize your current skills and experiences. Understanding how to package and align your background with the skills needed for what you want to do will help you be successful.

Nancy and Marg told a story and encouraged us to think of this process as “following the breadcrumbs.” They recommended approaching transitions with a learning mindset and talking to many different people about jobs, careers, volunteer opportunities, board positions, etc., that interest you. You don’t have to know what you’re looking for in the beginning. Just do the work and learn along the way — picking up bread crumbs. They’ve seen when women go out and explore, they find answers for themselves at the end of the breadcrumb trail.

For most women, career and life satisfaction after 50 is not about the money, it's about having a sense of purpose and meaning, or in some cases finding something to be passionate about.

Women over 50 have a wealth of life experience, whether it's work, family, volunteering, civic engagement, personal friendships, experiences with other women, etc. And, with this experience comes wisdom. However, midlife women often don't share their wisdom unsolicited; they need an invitation. Don’t wait for the invitation.

Midlife women bring a more comprehensive skill set than people who are a lot younger. We also have so many more resources than a 20-year-old. Younger people don't have a robust network. For example, they haven't developed all the skills and perspectives that we have at our stage of life.

It’s essential to recognize the expertise and experience you bring to the table. However, it’s also important to realize that younger people may be better in many skill areas, so enter this process with humility and a learning mindset.

Adopt a Learning Mindset

Ensure you’re up to speed on the technology and terminology of the fields you’re interested in pursuing. Technology and terminology continually change. It’s critical to stay on top of the changes. Take classes and learn about different industries if you’ve been out of the workforce for a while. Research to understand what is happening in the field(s) you may want to pursue.

You also need to prepare yourself to describe your skills in language that resonates with a potential employer. Each industry has its vocabulary. For example, skills are transferable, but the nonprofit world doesn't talk about some skills the same way the corporate world does, so learning the terminology is essential for selling yourself. Suppose you haven't been in the workforce for a while. You must start to pull together some of the skills you used during the time you've been out. That means if you've done significant volunteer work, pull out the competencies from those experiences. Women often minimize those experiences, particularly if it's been volunteer work. Finally, package your experience in the vocabulary used in the field you plan to pursue.

Employers are not bothered by women who have been home if they can see relevant experience. An employer wants to know that you can solve their problems and provide the kinds of skills that will help them accomplish the organization’s objectives.

It is possible to get into the trap of thinking too narrowly, and it is tough to get out of it. For example, you may think you’ve held a certain role for so long you believe you don't have the skills to do anything else. Or you may be limiting what you bring to the table because that’s the way you’ve always done things.

It's hard to think that way. If you recognize this in yourself, you may need to take a step back and reinvent yourself. Start almost as a beginner, which means learning from people who are maybe as young as your children or more youthful. Reset your mindset to think you have as much to learn from them as they can learn from your experience.

Adopting a learning mindset can open up your thinking and help you navigate transitions.

Create Clarity

If you don't know where you're going, it's going to be hard to get there. Start by doing personal assessment work. There are tools available to help you review your career history, lifetime achievements, and skills. This type of assessment process aims to review the skills you have from your work and volunteer experiences that you can take into a new opportunity. Often, transitions require us to package our expertise in different ways. Resumes need revisions so that a new employer can see how your skills transfer to a new opportunity.

Clarity doesn't come in a day or a week; it takes a little bit of time. Even when you're clear about where you want to go, it's not always easy to take action. Sometimes you need help to figure out what's holding you back from taking action and getting closer to what you want to do. It could be loyalty to your boss or your employer, fear of stepping out into the unknown, not wanting to take a pay cut even when it’s financially doable, or a job title that’s holding you back.

Get clarity for yourself and understand what's keeping you from pursuing your dream. Talk to friends, family, colleagues, employers, mentors, or a coach to help you work through the process. You need to get a feel for what you're good at and what you love. It’s extremely difficult to do this from reading a book.

Be Courageous

Unfortunately, the work world that we have been in was not well designed for women over 50, and as a result, we’ve had to put up with a lot in our careers. Around the time we turn 50, women often realize it’s not worth it anymore, and we start seeking a more fulfilling way to contribute. It’s similar for women who haven't been working outside the home. We know we have more to contribute now that our children are launched.

It takes courage to navigate transitions. After 50, you’ve got to embrace change and become good at making transitions. Now is the time to be courageous and step into your desires.

Be Confident

Unfortunately, women often lack the confidence to jump into something new. Nancy and Marg don’t see it as jumping. It’s waiting patiently, learning, and realigning.

The goal is to figure out some of the roles you could pursue, the organizations where those roles might exist, and which organizations are appealing enough to check out. Then do research. You can do a lot of that research on the Internet. There's so much information available, but often the most valuable insight is gained by talking with people, which involves setting up conversations. Networking requires confidence. Many people don't want to bother the person to have a conversation. First of all, most people are willing to chat and share information. That's what a networking meeting is all about. How can I learn? How can I find out about what kinds of organizations are out there? What's the culture like with this organization? Understand you’ve got things to offer. Usually, it takes about 20 conversations, maybe more, to see an opportunity emerge that you'd be interested in pursuing. Confidence is a critical ingredient for successful transitions.

Making a change is not a leap from one thing to something entirely different. If you've been out of the work world for a while, you may wonder if you can compete or if you have skills that anybody wants. Jumping into a transition is often a two-step or more process, so it may mean that you are working in one thing and you do a side gig off in another and then make that develop into something that will pay the bills. Or you may take a job that's a transition job to give you the experience you need or time in a company to get to the ultimate role you want.

Job cycles —hiring booms and valleys — can create fear and uncertainty about job security after 50. The pandemic and impact on the economy have resulted in people in their 50s and 60s losing their jobs which has amplified that fear. The reality is the economy’s ups and downs will always be there, and it is a macroeconomic issue. Don’t look at these statistics. You don’t have control over them. The statistics create unnecessary fear that there are no jobs in a down cycle or I am a loser if I don’t have a job in an upcycle.

The reality is that you can get a job at any time. Remember that getting a job is a microeconomic issue for you and one employer. You have control over your skills and your mindset. For example, during the pandemic, there are many healthcare startups, and they're looking for people who have deep experience because they want to scale. People with deep expertise are in their 50s and 60s. Organizations need an infusion of people with extensive experience, as well those new in their career.

There is age bias in the workplace. It's a small part of what people over 50 face. However, it could feel insurmountable if you start thinking that age bias is a big issue for you. Approximately 20% of age bias in the marketplace is reality, and about 80% is imagined. Most other people are not focused on your age. For everybody who has a bias against somebody over 50, there's somebody who has a bias against millennials or Generation Z. So, if you hold age as a barrier in your mind, it will get in your way. But if you can start focusing on the skills and value you bring to employers and forget your limiting beliefs around age, you will find it becomes much less of an issue.

It’s easy to get pigeonholed by your past experiences. If you want to make a change, it's sometimes difficult to see beyond our personal experiences. Be confident.

Lift Up Other Women

On your way to mastering your transition, think about how you can lift up other women as well. One way to do that is by amplifying their skills, expertise, and contributions in a conversation, at a meeting, in an email, or through social media.

Acknowledging the contributions of women around you — younger or older — goes a long way. Not only do you highlight their contributions to more people, but they’ll also appreciate what you’re doing and be more willing to listen to you.

Successful transitions are possible. Reset your mindset, to view them for what they are - exciting. The message is you’re never too old to dream big and take the steps necessary to achieve your goals. Identify your skills and experience. Adopt a learning mindset. Seek clarity. Be courageous. Be confident. And lift up other women along the way. Together we Rumble and flourish!

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream another dream.”

C.S. Lewis

Rumblings Media 2/17/21 Rumblings Media 2/17/21

How to Use Your Brain to Age Well and Stay Young

We all have the capacity to be fluid or fixed in our mindset. The growth path is to adapt to certain situations - to allow ourselves to be moved or changed due to our environment, experiences, and creative process. A fluid mindset creates new brain pathways leading to success, improves creativity, and helps growth, which will enable us to deal with the uncertainty ahead. At Rumblings, we believe our prime time and our best accomplishments are still ahead of us. To achieve our goals and make our dreams a reality, abundance, growth, and infinite mindsets are critical.

We all have the capacity to be fluid or fixed in our mindset. The growth path is to be adaptable to certain situations - to allow ourselves to be moved and changed due to our environment, experiences, and creative process. A fluid mindset creates new brain pathways leading to success, improves creativity, and helps growth, which will enable us to deal with the uncertainty ahead.

This past year has been a rollercoaster, full of highs and lows co-existing in a new definition of our human experience none of us were expecting. It’s lasted longer than most of us ever imagined.

None of us has a crystal ball to know what the future holds, but it seems more unclear now than ever. Not knowing what’s coming next, nor how to plan for it and predict even the near future in any reasonable way, can be frightening and frustrating at the same time.

It may feel as if time is standing still, but change is happening around us. In some aspects, change is accelerating. Without realizing it, this past year, we’ve also been gaining the skills and tools we need to reframe our plans for the future and redefine what that will look like, no matter how uncertain that future may be.

In our last blog post, we shared how to become aware of unconscious cognitive biases that impact what we perceive, how we think, and what actions we take.

As we begin to understand our unconscious biases and start reshaping our perspectives, decisions, and behaviors, our mindset begins to shift. Becoming aware of our preferences and shifting our mindset allows growth to occur, which will enable us to deal with the uncertainty ahead. We will have the fortitude to persevere in the face of the fear that comes with the unknown.

Below are just a few of the mindset reset types emerging from a growing body of research into the social science and neuroscience of how our brains work. Becoming familiar with them can help change our thinking and identify behaviors we’d like to modify.

Abundance vs. Scarcity - An abundance mindset focuses on the possibilities of what could be, resulting in feeling hopeful, grateful, and fulfilled. It begins with believing that we are enough. With that sense of being enough, we can embrace our worthiness, create boundaries, and be more fully engaged. It opens us up to be willing to be more present, allowing us to show up more fully and authentically. It requires vulnerability.

A scarcity mindset is a notion that there is never enough, or worse, that we are not enough. This scarcity mindset can ultimately lead to internalizing our worthiness compared to others. Brene’ Brown describes scarcity as being the opposite of enough. Before we even get out of bed in the morning, our self-talk focuses on assessing and comparing ourselves to others - “I didn’t get enough sleep.” “I’m not _____ enough.” “Remember when?”.

We all struggle with being open and vulnerable and wrestle with the self-doubt that comes from wanting to shield ourselves and fall back into a scarcity mindset. It takes awareness and continual practice to cultivate an abundance mindset.

Growth vs. Fixed - The belief that mental abilities decline during aging is evolving. It turns out, peak mental age is later than believed, especially if we view our prime time years as an opportunity to reinvent and develop new interests. Creative capacity exponentially increases by pushing boundaries and learning new things by creating new neural pathways and causing our brains to change, no matter our age. Our brains also have excellent muscle memory from past experiences and knowledge that can help us master new challenges more quickly. When we continue to experiment, learn, and experience new things, our creativity compounds, especially in our later years.

The challenge is the brain tries to be as efficient as possible and has a natural tendency to take the path of least resistance in our thinking processes. It has a preference for sticking with what is most comfortable. When we allow ourselves to give in to those tendencies to give up easily, avoid risks, and stop trying during the challenging parts of learning new skills, is where we succumb to a fixed mindset — we’re too old to change, or it’s not worth trying because it won’t matter.

Infinite vs. Finite - A limitless mindset calls for continual growth and improvement. There is no end. The fulfillment comes from the journey and challenging yourself to become better. An infinite mindset applies to learning, leading, being healthy, and those things where it’s vital to strive constantly to stay in the game or participate in the journey. It’s about advancing something bigger than ourselves - we will never get there, but even so, we continue striving forward. We can have a finite goal to know we are making progress - such as a weight-loss or fitness goal, but striving for good health and well-being is an infinite mindset. We don’t reach an end and stop; health is a journey.

When we get caught up in a limiting or finite mindset, we can get stuck in repeating negative self-talk or thinking through the worst scenarios and outcomes. But those ‘what if’ statements that we play in our minds can go both ways. More recent science suggests that our brains are not only malleable and can change but have the ability to develop new pathways.

Accepting change can be challenging, mainly because it requires action and growth. Resisting change almost always comes out of a transition from something happy and pleasant, or at least comfortable. Change may be uncomfortable and unpredictable. Given that change is inevitable, it is time to embrace change, see it as an opportunity for growth, and understand that the process is essential for brain health.

There are steps to can take to reframe how we experience change. These actions may help our head and heart surrender to embrace the natural discomfort that results:

Remember the reality that change is constant and inevitable. We go through change on average every 12-18 months. It’s a natural process.
Run through future scenarios and work them out in our head, using the negative ‘what ifs’ as an opportunity to make mistakes in your head so we can avoid them in real life. Then pivot and also play out ‘what if’ scenarios that may result in a positive outcome.
Reflect on the benefit of age and experiences. Think about times you’ve embraced change and how you grew as a result. Remember, over time, we tend to gloss over the more painful struggles and hurt and remember the good memories and the growth we gained from change. You have survived change 100 percent of the time.

By reflecting on our past experiences, it is almost always the more challenging times and events that lead to more meaningful progress in life. The past year’s challenges can be a tremendous opportunity to transition and have the potential to bring a new way of being in this world if we’re open to it.

At Rumblings, we believe our prime years and our best accomplishments are still ahead of us. We also believe that to achieve our goals and make our dreams a reality, abundance, growth, and infinite mindsets are critical.

Yes, change is accelerating, but perhaps one of the learnings from this pandemic is that it gave us the tools that we desperately needed - time for stillness and going inside ourselves so that we can have a fresh look at the world around us. The deeper insights we gain, combined with our wisdom, allow us to more carefully curate the change and the dreams we have for our lives.

The fortitude to persevere is the cousin to confidence - it is what comes from creating new brain pathways that lead to consistent success at achieving goals. We have the wisdom of our life experiences from which to pull. There is power in that knowledge gained from our experiences, especially when we realize we’re not yet fully formed. We can only open ourselves to this potential if we consistently choose the more open mindsets and build confidence in our capacity for change.

We will all have doubts. It’s a constant reframing practice, pulling ourselves away from the negative ‘what ifs,’ self-talk, catching ourselves sooner, and gaining strength in our abilities. That is part of creating new pathways in our brains and developing new patterns of thinking and behaviors.

Brain malleability is learning from doing and developing new muscle memory. You can pull from that to form mastery gained from your previous muscle memory and experiences. Building from previous experiences to create even more pathways is the key to a long, fulfilling, and prosperous life quality in your later years.

Do the work. You’re growing and learning. More than ever, now is your time to shine and share your unique gifts.

Together we Rumble!

Karyn and Rebecca

Rumblings Media 2/2/21 Rumblings Media 2/2/21

5 Ways to Uncover and Challenge Unconscious Biases Today

By uncovering your unconscious biases, you can reshape your perspectives, decisions, and behaviors. Adopting a learning mindset toward yourself and your personal biases is a start to making more conscious decisions, altering your thought patterns, and resetting your mindset for flourishing after 50.

Several years ago I chaperoned my son’s soccer team at a college showcase tournament. Since this was a high-level team, we traveled to the out-of-town tournament by air. The team was made up of 18 young men from Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs, all within the same 12-month age span, and all with a passion for the game of soccer.

On our trip home, we successfully received our boarding passes, and the 18 players and two mom chaperones headed to security. When we arrived, we realized that some of us had been assigned to skip the long security line and go through the TSA PreCheck line.

One by one we looked at our ticket and chose which line to go to — left regular or right PreCheck. Suddenly I heard my son scream, “MOM!” And, with horror in his eyes, he yelled, “Look at how they segmented us.” Slowly, I looked up and saw the players of color on the left side of the rope and the white players, and two white moms on the right. I too was horrified. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My heart started racing, as I shared my surprise and frustration with the other mom.

The PreCheck line was shorter, so I maneuvered in front of the few white players from the team and leaped towards the security checkpoint. I found myself standing in front of a young black woman and I said, “Please take a look behind me. I am chaperoning those young men. They are from the same community and are on the same team, but yet have been segmented by race for security. This is inexcusable!”

She looked at me and repeated, what I assume she was trained to say, and most likely said often, “Our computers randomly assigned the lines.” Shaking in frustration I said, “What’s random about what you’re witnessing behind me?” She handed me my ticket and gestured to me to move on.

I think about that experience often. In my mind, I see the boys standing on the left side of the rope with their heads hanging low and eyes facing the floor, while the boys standing on the right side of the rope quickly recognizing and verbalizing the bias they were witnessing before their eyes, but of course not fully understanding the gravity of what their peers were going through.

The situation opened up a great conversation between the boys while the moms listened in. I, however, felt as the adult representing all of the boys, more should have been done. They deserved better. I should have used the power I had to vocalize the injustice that required more explanation.

Whether or not the assertion was accurate and the process was random, I will never know. Did the person issuing the tickets have a conscious or unconscious bias that was reflected in a few of us receiving the PreCheck status based on race? If the process truly was randomly assigned by the system, the airline had a problem with bias in their algorithms.

I can’t change the way I reacted that day, but I can commit to doing better next time. This experience was a reminder that biases exist and biases have the potential to have a very negative impact on individuals.

Unconscious Biases

Almost every day in the news, there is at least one story about racism, sexism, or ageism. For many of us, we may think, “That’s not me.” The reality is that even amongst the most well-intended and open-minded people, unconscious biases exist. Most of us are unaware of our own biases and how they impact our decision making.

Cognitive biases, or errors in thinking processes, result from our brains naturally wanting to take a shortcut in order to reason or make a judgment. Our brains are wired to do this. Biases drive what we perceive, how we think, and what actions we take.

Over the last few months, we’ve been talking a lot about mindset and the importance of resetting our mindset to flourish after 50. Our mindsets influence our biases (and vice versa), so it’s important to pay attention, recognize our personal biases, and do everything we can to reframe them for our personal well-being and the well-being of others.

Common Biases to Be Aware Of

Although this isn’t a comprehensive list, here are some common biases to be aware of.

Self Serving Bias — attributing positive outcomes to skill and negative outcomes to luck

Implicit Bias — having innate preferences for people who look like us and suspicion for people who don’t

Confirmation Bias — seeking information and data that confirms pre-existing ideas and ignore data that contradict what we initially believed

Herd Mentality Bias — copying and following what others are doing (influenced by our emotions versus by an independent analysis of the facts)

Overconfidence Bias — having a false sense of skills, talents, knowledge, or ability greater than it is

Optimism or Pessimism Bias — overestimating the likelihood of positive or negative outcomes based on emotion.

Declining Bias — favoring the past (resisting change) over and above how things are going today

False Consensus Effect — overestimating how much other people agree with our own beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and values

Recognize and Challenge Personal Biases

There are ways to begin recognizing your own biases.

Start here.

Increase awareness. Start by noticing your decisions, reactions, judgments, and responses throughout the day.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Why am I making this decision, having a reaction, or responding this way?
- Is my decision, reaction, judgment, or response based on fact or emotion?
- Is this one of my biases?
- Who and what is making me uncomfortable? Why?
- What is my role in my actions?
Reflect back on the different cognitive biases. Are you making a decision, reacting, judging, or responding to the situation in a biased way? If you’re uncertain, ask a trusted friend or family member.
Practice responding differently based on your new awareness and knowledge.
Do things to shift your perception of the world and other people. Follow people who think differently than you. Explore new and diverse experiences to help see past what may be blind spots in your beliefs.

By uncovering your unconscious biases you can reshape your perspectives, decisions, and behaviors. Adopting a learning mindset toward yourself and your personal biases is a start to making more conscious decisions, altering your thought patterns, and resetting your mindset for flourishing after 50.

Together we RUMBLE.

Rumblings Media 1/20/21 Rumblings Media 1/20/21

Live Well as You Age with These 4 Tips to Reset Your Mindset

We now have evidence that the brain is malleable. What this means is by learning new skills, changing current behaviors, and modifying lifelong habits for better health, you can halt cognitive decline as you age — even into your later years.

Live Well As You Age with These 4 Tips to Reset Your Mindset

You’ve done it before - picked up a new hobby, learned a new skill for work, or started a new morning routine. It’s not always easy to learn something new or change an existing behavior, especially as you get older. All humans are actually hardwired to resist change, but the younger generations generally find it easier to change than those of us in our prime time.

The reality is that getting out of your comfort zone, learning something, and adopting a new behavior (or two) is actually good for your brain health and has been shown to increase happiness. There is evidence that the brain is malleable. What this means is by learning new skills, changing current behaviors, and modifying lifelong habits for better health, you can halt cognitive decline as you age - even into your later years.

The story of decline in aging you’ve been told isn’t true. Successful aging requires a
change-is-good mindset, the desire to learn, and a progress, not perfection attitude.

Get Started with these four mindset reset tips listed below.

Create a Gratitude Mindset

A gratitude journal is a wonderful way to reset your mindset. By focusing on what you are grateful for, you'll open yourself up to experiencing an abundance of emotional, social, professional, and health benefits.

If you’re already in the practice of writing down what you’re grateful for, try taking your journaling a step further. Make one of your points of gratitude everyday descriptive about someone else and what they've done for you, so that not only are you grateful for your own life, but you also recognize the people in your life and how they contribute to your success and wellbeing. Then challenge yourself to spread gratitude to improve someone else's day.

Send the person you recognized in your journal a note to let them know how grateful you are for them and the impact they have had on your life. Think of the lives you can impact by committing to sending just one message a day!

Adopt a Fun Mindset

Rebecca’s high school boys had their high school finals coming up in one week. She realized that her freshman would be experiencing high school finals for the first time and might be feeling added pressure.

When she asked him how he was feeling about finals’ week, he replied, “I am so excited; preparing for finals is fun.”

Fun and finals weren’t the two words she expected to hear in the same sentence, but she was glad to hear he wasn’t stressed and overwhelmed.

Fun was his mindset which was making the process of preparing enjoyable and exciting.

What if you took this approach and reset your mindset when you had something stressful coming up in your life? What if, instead of an automatic response of being overwhelmed, you looked at a stressful event as something fun to be excited about? What if you focused on the process of learning being fun and took the pressure of the results off yourself?

Give it a try. A reset mindset towards fun can help change your perspective quickly and your life may even feel more fun!

Build an Intentional Mindset to Change for Good

Like many of you, we started 2021 by setting intentions and a word as our guide for what we want to give attention to over the next 12 months.Transitioning our desired behaviors into lifelong habits is part art, part awareness, daily work, and a whole lot of science.

A place to start is with proven strategies or ‘how tos’ on changing behavior for good.

We all have patterns of behaviors that we fall back on when we're feeling vulnerable, helpless, angry, stressed or alone. These can be choices that feel more comfortable than sitting still with our emotions. In reality, the only thing that behaviors done mindlessly do is cast a shadow inhibiting our ability to live wholeheartedly. These mindless behaviors give us a false and fleeting sense of soothing and comfort.

One reason we advocate for sitting still and going inward is the process helps you be mindful about the intentions behind your behavior choices. There are no checklists to identify mindless and comfort behaviors, but self reflection allows you to identify them for yourself.

Here is one question you can ask yourself that may help.

Do my choices comfort and nourish my spirit and contribute to my ability to live inside out and flourish, or are they a temporary respite from life?

Be intentional and identifying red flag personal behavior patterns to help you stay mindful on the path to reaching your goals. For example, if you automatically reach for the sweets after dinner, try going for a short walk instead.

Being intentional is a mindset. Intention can create awareness around habitual behaviors and help you create change for good.

Seek a Joyful Mindset

Aging well and flourishing after 50 doesn't require a lengthy to do list or lofty goals.

Focus on the joy in the journey!

Do things that nourish you from the inside out.

Here is where we have found joy the last few months:

Participate in gentle movement like yoga or meditation
Walk, ski, or snowshoe in nature
Have a conversation with a friend
Enjoy a wholesome meal with family or friends
Read a thought-provoking book
Listen to an intriguing podcast
Have a conversation with someone who holds a differing view-point, listen, and seek to understand
Plan a staycation
Enjoy the extra time at home to do a puzzle or play a game

By resetting your mindset to focus on the pleasure found in the moment versus what you’re not able to do right now, you’ll discover the joy in so many new experiences in your life. Plus, it can help you positively navigate your life during these stressful times. It’s certainly helped us.

Discover a YOU-First Mindset

Does the recommendation of putting yourself first make you cringe just a little bit? For many of us it certainly does — especially for women.

Stay with us here. As we’ve aged, we’ve grown tired of trying to live up to someone else’s expectation of who we should be, how we should act, and what we should look like as we age. For many of us, these external expectations create stress in our lives and have become an unrealistic burden that we’re trying unsuccessfully to live up to.

The reality is you get to decide and write your personal story. And, in doing so you will soften your mind, have greater clarity, and calmness as you evolve closer to your truer and more authentic self.

This is hard work. Society will tell you the goal is to be ageless, instead focus on loving yourself as you are and live age free.

How to begin? Go inward daily. Set your intentions. Do frequent check-ins to catch yourself if you get off track. Live. Love. Flourish.

At Rumblings, our philosophy is this...we must reset our mindset in order to live the life of our dreams.

By focusing on gratitude, intention, joy, and YOU, you can reset your mindset to flourish as you age!

Rumble On!

Rebecca and Karyn

Rumblings Media 1/6/21 Rumblings Media 1/6/21

The Ultimate Revelation of Cultivating a Reset Mindset

Each of us gets to decide and write our personal story. In doing so we will soften our mind, have greater clarity, and calmness as we evolve closer to our truer and more authentic selves. The result is a life full of wholeheartedness.

Each of us gets to decide and write our personal story. And, in doing so we will soften our mind, have greater clarity, and calmness as we evolve closer to our truer and more authentic selves. The result is a life full of wholeheartedness.

By this time in our lives, we have all been through a lot of challenges and triumphs. We’ve experienced despair, disappointment, and grief in addition to many moments of joy.

People say ‘things that don’t kill you make you stronger.’

Yet, hearing that and feeling like we have to be strong implies that we have to live up to someone else’s expectation. That then becomes our burden and we carry it around with us forever.

“I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am”

~ Thomas Cooley

It’s time to give ourselves permission to shed those external expectations that do not serve a true purpose in our lives. All those burdens and expectations we carry around only hold us back, and weigh us down. They may even start to feel comfortable and safe.

As we go through life, we take on others’ expectations. For example, we often play roles at work representing who we think we should be. In our personal lives, it may be smaller things that diminish our confidence or belief in our value.

We’ve become so accustomed to them we don’t even realize we’re receiving those messages. Just think of all of the messages women our age receive focused on our external appearance - how to look younger, stay thin, and have flawless hair and makeup. We likely even have built-up feelings of shame/guilt due to not feeling like we can live up to these ideals we've taken on over time. Even worse, some of us still carry the burden of having suffered abuse and trauma.

We don these beliefs like we’re dressing for a northern winter day outdoors when we don’t know the weather forecast - adding layer upon layer of gear until we can barely move. The problem is, when we never fully take the layers off, they weigh us down until we no longer remember what it feels like to be free from it all.

Having a goal, making a resolution, setting an intention are all worthy endeavors. Yet, what is going to really make a difference and help us make changes in our lives is cultivating a reset mindset.

Instead of adding one more layer to our already layered up stuff we’re carrying around, we have to shed some layers to get closer to discovering what is underneath it all. We need to rid ourselves of all the layers that have either served their purpose, are no longer adding value, or we never wanted in the first place.

We’ve learned many things from our life experiences. It’s time to begin to shed those layers of burdens, expectations, undesired roles, and past microtraumas.

The place to start is for each of us to spend time with ourselves in stillness, whether in nature, walking, yoga, or meditation to let our inner awareness reveal the things that are no longer serving us.

As we begin to shed those things that no longer serve us or have purpose, it helps to reveal the core of what is inside - and our truth. We need to tell that truth and live it, even when others may not always like it.

It’s our life, no one else’s, and letting those layers of ‘stuff’ go leaves space for the things that do serve us. This process is an evolution. We need to find time to periodically ask ourselves who we are becoming and how that changes what is important to us.

That is what it means to cultivate a reset mindset. As we learn and experience life we are constantly shedding the layers of things that no longer serve us to make space for the new things that do. We are not required to keep stuff that no longer - or maybe never did - suit us. We also don’t have to put that layer on in the first place if it doesn’t add value. Each of us gets to decide and write our personal story. And, in doing so we will soften our mind, have greater clarity, and calmness as we evolve closer to our truer and more authentic selves. The result is a life full of wholeheartedness.

Over the next few months, our email newsletter will focus on teaching the tips, tools, and techniques for living with a reset mindset. If you haven’t signed up for our email newsletter, you can do so here.

Rumble On!

Rebecca and Karyn

Rumblings Media 12/23/20 Rumblings Media 12/23/20

Use the One to Three Word Practice As Your Guide to Live Well in the New Year

The one to three word(s) practice helps you be intentional about the upcoming year and can also help you break the cycle of unfulfilled New Year’s resolutions. Over 80 percent of us fail to achieve our annual resolutions. By choosing words for the year, you become more intentional about how you want to live your life, which in turn helps you be more successful in reaching your goals.

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” — Carl Jung

Since 2011, I have identified three to four words to guide me throughout the year every year. The “my three words” practice was inspired by best-selling author Chris Brogan, President of Chris Brogan Media. These three words are my compass for how I want to live that year. My three words evolve year after year depending on what I want to accomplish, what I feel is holding me back from reaching my goals, and how I want to feel during the year.

When I reflect on my words over the years, one word has remained consistent - connect. Usually, one word (such as leap, adventure, or dare) on my list has reflected my personal goal to take more risks throughout the year and not let fear hold me back. Frequently, another word (e.g., aligned, present, or centered) has reflected my desire to be more mindful and intentional about how I live my life.

Karyn and I have never discussed setting words as intentions for the upcoming year until discussing this blog post. She has a similar practice of choosing one word or a short phrase as her intention for the year. This provides clarity and narrows her intention to a specific topic of focus.

In 2019, a nonprofit organization I worked for took all the employees through an exercise and identified one word —reimagine— as the word for the year. As we spoke about projects throughout the year, we always returned to our word - reimagine - for how to design, deliver, or measure results. It was a great word to push creativity and change throughout the organization that year.

The word(s) practice helps you be intentional about the upcoming year. It can also help you break the cycle — picking a behavior to change, going all in, vowing to be successful by the end of the year, and slipping up after a week or two — of unfulfilled New Year’s resolutions. Unfortunately, over 80 percent of us fail to achieve our annual resolutions. By setting words, you become more intentional about how you want to live your life, which in turn, helps you be more successful in reaching your goals.

My 2020 words were— listen, connect, inspire, and leap. When I reflect on my accomplishments this year, I see my words reflected. I leaped and left my full-time job of eight years to go back into consulting and start Rumblings. The foundation of the work I do every day is about listening to people, looking for ways to connect deeply with them, and inspiring them to live well. My words also guide me in how I want to parent. I want to be present, listen to each of my children, understand their individual needs, connect deeply with each of them, guide them, and inspire them to live to their full potential.

Whether you pick one word or three, here are a few tips that we’ve found helpful:

Your words do not have to mean anything to anyone else — they’re your words!
Keep the same word(s) all year.
Put your word(s) somewhere — on a calendar, in a journal, as a screensaver, or on a Post-It note attached to your mirror — where you can see it/them every day.
The more you review and reflect on your word(s), the better.
Use your word(s) as your mantra.

How do you choose your word(s):

Reflect on the past year.
Visualize how you want to feel, what you want to accomplish, and how you want to live. Creating a small vision board may give you ideas if this is a struggle.
Make a list of every word you can think of that reflects what you visualized.
Review the list and narrow it down to your top one or three words.
Give yourself a few days, continue to reflect on your words, and refine your list until you feel confident you’ve nailed them!

Another reflective activity to prepare for the new year is to renew your vision. Walk through these steps to envision your future.

Rumblings Media 12/9/20 Rumblings Media 12/9/20

Go Inward: Find Calm in Chaos

Meditation benefits aren’t just a theory. The benefits manifest in practice. Invite the healing prana, that healing breath, into every cell of your being while you practice. Your mantra is the sound of the breath going in and out through the nose. Our practice isn’t done, the more you begin to be still with yourself and move, you will intuitively begin to trust yourself.

The benefits of meditation manifest through practice.

We have all heard about the benefits of meditation. Quieting your mind and going inward can improve stress, anxiety, sleep, attention, self awareness, age-related memory loss, mood, and compassion. However, for many women sitting still with themselves isn’t easy. We are too busy or cannot quiet our minds.

We invited Sydney Holly, owner of Kula Yoga in Minneapolis, to share tips and techniques for going inward during a Rumblings community virtual event. She didn’t disappoint. During the session, we learned the value of daily practice for cultivating self acceptance and calmness as we moved through meditation together.

If you weren’t able to attend in person, or did attend and want to be reminded of her wisdom, we summarized and condensed Sydney’s advice for finding calm in the midst of chaos into the key takeaways below.

There is value in coming together in community.

For those of you who don't know, the word Kula actually means community. When Sydney first had the opportunity to take over yoga space from a previous owner, she hesitated because she wasn’t a business person and owning a studio didn’t appeal to her. However, what did appeal to her was the idea of community. She wanted to maintain the existing community and to teach so she eventually said yes to the offer, but decided the studio name had to be different. Because she felt like she was in this together with her students, the name became Kula.

“I feel like that's exactly what Karyn and Rebecca are putting together (with Rumblings)— ways for people to find community.”

Sydney Holly, owner Kula Yoga

Community has been important since human beings have been in existence. We create our own sisterhood and that sisterhood gives us much needed buoyancy.

The benefits of meditation manifest through practice.

For Sydney, there is no separation between the meditative and physical practices of yoga. As we move, we work through some of the more esoteric kinds of yoga philosophies so that we can really be in ourselves. When you watch babies and children play they don't stop to contemplate or think, right? They don't wait for everything to slow down. Instead, they're finding joy being in their routine and in their movement.

If you don't have a yoga mat, that's fine. If you don’t have yoga clothes, it doesn’t matter. Take the pressure off yourself. Often, something that comes along with meditation is the pressure to be “good at it”. There is a similar pressure with yoga. The truth is, there's no such thing as being good at meditating or good at yoga. Just being is the important part.

Remember that the meditation benefits aren’t just a theory. The benefits manifest in practice. Invite the healing prana, that healing breath, into every cell of your being while you practice. Your mantra is the sound of the breath going in and out through the nose.

“Do your practice and all is coming.”

Sri K. Pattabi Jois, Founder of Ashtanga Yoga

As women we question ourselves, right? And, we spend time really wondering and wondering and wondering. The more time you spend on your mat— in yoga, in Asana, in meditation—the more the answers are revealed because you already have them all inside of you.

As human beings, we tend to get stuck in our heads. Yogis call this the Vritti or the chatter of the mind. As human beings, we want to live in our soul. Our Ātman is our inner self, spirit, or soul. The idea is to get to our inner essence and to tap into the subtle form of radiance, health, immunity, and longevity within ourselves.

Wholehearted living means total, complete, and radical self compassion and self love.

With each yoga practice, it is important to set an intention. We call it Sankalpa, which translates to seed of intent or a positive thought that we want to manifest in the world, a promise we make to ourselves. That sounds really nice, doesn't it? You plant a seed. You have an intention. You water it every day. You give it some sunshine. You love it. Then it flourishes and you're living the life of your dreams.

If it were only that easy. Along with our Sankalpa—our seed of intent— is all of the work it takes to nurse that state of intent. The tricky part is that in conjunction with the light there's the darkness—Vikalpa, the shadow side of your intention. In yoga we're not working with good, or bad, but instead yin and yang. The union of opposites yields wholeness.

“Wholehearted living is about engaging with our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion and connection to wake up in the morning and think, ‘No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.’ It’s going to bed at night thinking, ‘Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.”

Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Wholeheartedness means total, complete, and radical self compassion and self love. You can't just say to yourself you are ok if you are at 90% right now in your self compassion and self love. It must be 100% - accepting that the Vikalpa goes along with the Sankalpa in the way that we actually get to manifest more intentional living. The Vikalpa might show up as a distraction, dreaming, an excuse, negative self talk, or as really punishing behavior —as in who do I think I am that I know how to meditate or how selfish I am to practice. Total complete radical 100% self acceptance and self love is what invites us to then say to ourselves, that this is just part of the process. This is the way it goes.

“We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.”

Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön is a wonderful Buddhist monk. She talks a lot about the middle way. The middle way is the yoga path. The yogi practices the middle way because extremes - the highs and lows or the likes and dislikes - only feed your ego. Then your ego starts to become a limiting factor for your freedom.

Your freedom is where the joy happens—that's where the manifestation of the life you really want happens, because you're able to not only remember who you are, but you're able to remember that your journey is what makes you who you are. The journey is part of your whole hearted existence - it is100% radical, complete self love and self acceptance.

“Have you ever wondered why it's so hard to change? It's probably because you're missing one key ingredient—self compassion. Usually we try to make change in our lives by pushing ourselves, judging ourselves, and then beating ourselves up when we don't succeed. But science shows that shame shuts down the learning centers of the brain. What this means is that every time we judge ourselves, we are robbing ourselves of the very resources we need to change and live a happier life. The surprising solution is self compassion. When you treat yourself with kindness, you turn on the learning centers of the brain and give yourself the resources you need to change. This is what leads us to greater calm, clarity and joy.”

Shauna Shapiro, PhD

Yoga is a tool that can lead us on a different path.

That's why even a really brief, gentle breathing, and movement can shift you. It can bring up feelings of frustration and maybe a little uncertainty. But, it definitely pulled you into the moment.

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”

Viktor Frankl

Think about your yoga or meditation practice as a pause. Our world is beyond uncertain right now. Our trust levels are super low. The middle way is to be able to say I know who I am authentically. The gritty chatter of my mind does not define me.

Make a commitment to start practicing.

Just start. Choose something that fits into the routine you already have. Everyone wakes up and goes to bed. Take two minutes before you get out of bed, pull your knees to your chest, take three deep breaths, and say good morning. I am here. I am grateful. I am worthy. I am evolving. I am compassionate.

If you don't feel like meditation is for you or you feel inauthentic doing it, keep practicing. It's ok not to feel connected with the practice right away. It doesn't mean you'll continue to feel that way. The more you practice. The more important your yoga becomes in your life and yet the less seriously you take it. Just show up.

On December 6, a group of women showed up and let our practice work its magic on us. We practiced radical, complete, and whole hearted self love and self acceptance. As we did that, we affirmed who we are, where we are, and what's important to us.

Our practice isn’t done, the more you begin to be still with yourself and move, you will intuitively begin to trust yourself.

Rumblings Media 11/25/20 Rumblings Media 11/25/20

You know that feeling you can't shake? It's grief.

You know that feeling you can’t shake? It’s grief. Every single one of us has lost something, and each of us will be forever changed by 2020. How we experience that grief is personal, and it’s easy to fall into a trap of ranking our suffering compared to someone else’s. We have to allow ourselves to feel it, so we can heal it.

The human experience includes pain and suffering, but we know that it’s not the full story. There is love, resilience, beauty and grace within that as well. If you don’t tell both pieces of that story, then you’re not telling the full story. ~Elizab… — The human experience includes pain and suffering, but we know that it’s not the full story. There is love, resilience, beauty and grace within that as well. If you don’t tell both pieces of that story, then you’re not telling the full story.
*~Elizabeth Gilbert, excerpted from a TED interview.*

Almost everyone we speak with these days is feeling something really uncomfortable. And, for those not able to express themselves, those feelings come out in ways that give people close to them pause, knowing that they’re not acting like themselves.

We all feel it. The sense that this is not normal, it’s gone on too long, and the things that keep us steady, grounded and tethered, just aren’t there any more. The heaviness, the agitation, anger, sadness, annoyance - any emotion you can think of - people are feeling. It’s time to be vulnerable and name this collective ‘thing’ we’re all feeling. It’s grief. We’re all at different places in processing it, but we’re all grieving on some level.

Every single one of us has lost something. Let that sink in for a moment. No one has been spared, and as time has crawled on, it is dawning on us that the world we used to live in is gone forever. The world has forever changed, and because we live in it, we can’t help but be changed by it too. On top of the grief, it’s common for some of us to feel betrayal. Betrayal by our government for not protecting us or over protecting us, our fellow citizens for not caring more or doing something differently, our senior care facilities for not protecting our most vulnerable. Betrayal for having any level of certainty of our futures taken from us. The feelings are real and it doesn’t help that people judge others’ grief, compare their losses to others, or try to deny that we are feeling them.

Grief expert, David Kessler defines grief as the death of something in his new book, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. We’ve all lost something - loved ones, a job, a marriage, a friendship - at some point in our lives. We can’t fall into a trap of ranking our suffering. The worst loss is always your loss, and during this time the loss is more persistent and widespread. It could be time with friends, the closing of the gym, virtual schools and work, or a favorite restaurant. For others it’s a hug, family celebrations, knowing our elderly parents are struggling and not being able to help. And, yes, it could be the illness or death of a loved one.

We have to feel the grief. It’s sad and painful on so many levels - yet, ranking our grief against others’ grief diminishes our feelings. At the very least we have lost our collective health and vitality, and that is no small thing. This experience and our grief will be done with us eventually, but resisting it, denying it, and pretending it isn’t there can make the suffering greater.

We must acknowledge that how we experience grief is personal. Experts talk about grief being a full body experience, meaning that there are more than just feelings, there are physical symptoms too, and not talking about what we’re experiencing gives it agency over us. There is a perspective that we can lend to one another when we share a collective suffering. We can bear witness to each other’s grief, even when it’s messy. We can be our sister’s keeper. We can begin that process by recognizing it, talking about it, and being willing to name it. Naming it and talking about what we’re feeling is one way to keep grief moving and not postpone what is happening until it begins to affect us from the inside out.

If we won’t let ourselves feel it, we can’t heal it. The work right now is to go inward to acknowledge those emotions, and then with deep gentleness and grace for ourselves, accept them. The work of tending our grief is very heavy. Accepting what we’re feeling and experiencing as a part of us can help ease that heaviness. Acceptance does not happen all at once, but we can work towards it by expressing it and sharing it with our sisters who are also going through these unprecedented times. As we begin to move through this idea of acceptance, we can create enough space to find a seed that will lead us to new ways to do the things that sustain us and give us vitality.

We can rationalize that nothing is exactly like what we’re going through now. That grief is inevitable, and most of us have survived grief before. We have experienced grief enough to know that being a companion to grief and the feelings it brings takes courage and a willingness to be vulnerable in sitting with feelings that don’t feel great. There is nothing pleasant about numbness, anger, agitation, sadness or the physical symptoms like appetite changes, insomnia, fatigue, nightmares, anxiety, or depression. But, if we aren’t willing to sit with those feelings, we will risk blocking the harmony of our body, mind, and spirit - the place from where we can learn, gain wisdom, and evolve into the fullest and most brave version of ourselves.

What we do after acceptance is within us. Kessler talks about gratitude not being in the loss, it is in life. We’re normally all so busy chasing extraordinary moments. Maybe, we’ll find ourselves valuing the ordinary moments going forward. Those ordinary moments will be the ones that hold true meaning. We’ll have the wisdom of experience to know we need not wait to create those meaningful moments. We should be creating them right now, and maybe they will give us enough light that we will acknowledge that even while we’re still grieving, we can experience joy, and it’s ‘normal’ to feel that too.

We also have great capacity to hold emotions like grief and sorrow and hope and joy, all at the same time. The future is uncertain, and we will be forever changed in ways that are still unknown. But, here’s what we do know. We will be here for each other, we will bear witness to each other’s journeys, and we will share and let go of our burdens together because we belong to one another. That is what connectedness and community bring to us. Even though we’re not as close together as we’d like physically, no one can take that belonging away from us.

If you or a loved one are struggling with feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or helpless during these times where it is impacting you more significantly than what we share here, please know that you are not alone. We encourage you to access many resources and support groups available online. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration are just two of the many wonderful resources for anyone significantly struggling to cope during these difficult times.

Rumblings Media 11/11/20 Rumblings Media 11/11/20

Being Feminine and Formidable in Today's World: A Conversation with Sasha Shillcutt, MD

Can we be both feminine and formidable in today’s world? Can we find that unique balance between grit and grace? We spoke to Sasha K. Shillcutt, MD, author of Between Grit and Grace: The Art of Being Feminine and Formidable. Read about why spending time along is critical and discover the two critical things that must happen for women to have an equal seat at the table.

Is it possible to be both feminine and formidable in today’s world? Author Dr. Sasha Shillcutt tells us how in a conversation with the Rumblings community of women over 50.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~Anais Nin

The unrealistic expectations and labels that women are forced to carry can cause so much stress, pressure, and anxiety to succeed we can lose touch with the essence of who we really are and what we really want. However, showing up in this world in a way that is authentic can enliven us rather than leave us feeling drained. Like a shopaholic, women often fill space with busyness by taking on more, working harder, taking better care of others while we completely neglect ourselves, and act in ways that hide the very nature of who we are. We keep piling on more and maybe we won’t realize we’re collapsing under the figurative weight of it all.

Then a moment may come in our lives which acts as a switch. It could be a divorce, kids going off on their own, a retirement, or maybe just the little light inside that lets us know that enough is enough. The point where we know that it’s time to be our authentic selves, no matter the consequences. The point when we realize that we will be criticized, face backlash, or pay the price whether we have tried to make ourselves more invisible or lived a life that is bold, outspoken, driven and assertive. Where we finally have courage to live authentically; being ok with the likelihood of being criticized, disappointing people, and perceived as not ‘likeable’.

Can we be both feminine and formidable in today’s world? Can we find that unique balance between grit and grace? Those were the questions we discussed during a heartfelt conversation at the first Rumblings live, virtual book club with Sasha K. Shillcutt, MD, MS, author of “Between Grit and Grace: The Art of Being Feminine and Formidable”.

A group of women courageous enough to be vulnerable with one another came together to share difficult experiences with gender bias, backlash, and the challenge of finding our way to a place where we are able to live authentically. Together we reaffirmed that resetting our mindset, living authentically, connecting with others, and lifting each other up are critical components to flourishing after 50.

Dr. Shillcutt describes how she came to write this book and start her company Brave Enough:

I was on a set and clear path like most of us in medicine, which led me to burnout in 2013. I was a very busy mom with a [high-level] position and I realized that what I really had achieved [for] myself was becoming someone that I didn't recognize. As a 16 year old, I was going to be this doctor and it was going to be wonderful. And then I realized wow this is not what I thought it was going to be. I was burned out and trying to think of how I was going to make 25 more years in health care. It scared me that I was so low. I thought of leaving medicine after all the years and time dedicated to learning the practice. I recognized a couple things that I needed to change in my life over the course of a year. When I got to the end of that year, I started spending time with myself and becoming more like my authentic self, as uncomfortable as that was for several people that I worked with and even people that I lived with.

I recognized at the end of that year that I was incredibly lonely. At the time of my life where I felt I needed the most support from other women, I really had none. So I started a group which grew to what it is now - Brave Enough, my company. And throughout those five years, I recognized that what I experienced in the middle of my life and career was probably very similar to what many women experience.

We get put in these two silos of either being a really strong woman who is extroverted, ambitious, and authoritative, or collaborators who are more behind the scenes and maybe a little introverted. We get labeled too. Either we’re described as the woman people want to invite for coffee, but nobody thinks they can lead, even though they're very capable and make great leaders. Or we’re labeled as women who are competent but isolated, and often described with unfriendly words. Sometimes as a woman you find yourself being both of those things at different times.

A favorite part of the discussion was on maneuvering the balancing act between grit and grace while on the receiving end of unfavorable comments —I’m glad I’m not your husband or your kids or you’re too soft or too meek— and being able to embrace our feminine side while being the only female on an executive team. Dr. Shillcutt shared the following:

I've been told so many times the same things.. It's such a bizarre comment that men say. I never know how to respond to that. I'm a very feminine woman. I like very feminine things. I like high heels. I like getting my nails done. I used to hide that. My partners would say things like —I’m going golfing and they would be cheered on. I could say I'm going to get a manicure and somehow I'm not taken seriously in my job. I'm not a serious doctor. I'm not a serious leader. Sadly, it's a double standard.

It hasn't gotten easier for me. I'm just being honest. I was going to reach this pivotal professorship and everybody was going to accept me as myself. I think it's actually the opposite. The more you excel as a leader, the more expectations people have of you to not get your nails done, wear pink, not wear red shoes, and not care about your grandkids or your kids, or whatever.

It's crazy that people expect men, as they age, to get more compassionate and more into their families. But people expect women to care less about those things. I came to the conclusion that I can be my authentic self and not be liked or I can not be my authentic self and not be liked. So, why wouldn't I just be who I am?

You will regret not being who you are. What you should focus on is being you. Live true to your values and sleep better at night.

Dr. Shillcutt recommends prioritizing spending time with yourself as being key to tapping into your authenticity:

Everybody says the same thing when they first spend time with themselves - I don't even know what my priorities are. I don't even know where I would start. I don't have a hobby. I don't even know what I like. I haven't done anything for myself in so many years. They start to get uncomfortable feelings. They feel an overwhelming anxiety being alone.

As women, we're always somewhere on the path of burnout. We're either stressed and approaching burnout; or we are burned out and getting better; or we're kind of walking along the stress path but moving towards thriving. We just go. We don't want to spend time with ourselves because we don't even want to think about the mess that we are. So we just watch Netflix. Maybe we're scrolling through social media for 30 minutes because we don't want to think about what our priorities are or ask how we're doing internally.

When I ask women a simple question- when was the last time you had the perfect day? - they often tear up because they start thinking back to when they took a day for themselves. It’s revealing.

You have to get over that hump of spending time with yourself even when it's uncomfortable and not fun because you realize it's like taking your pulse. You likely haven't taken your pulse in a long, long time and you’re afraid to realize [you’re drowning] and you need to turn some things around. You have to do it. I really encourage people to do it.

She described how to find ways to balance being authentic while helping friends who are feeling beaten down without succumbing to their negativity:

Especially in 2020 women are being asked to do more than ever, to feel more than ever, and to take on the burden of others. Whenever your own mental health is suffering from interacting with another individual, it's not a healthy relationship no matter how long you've been in it, or how much you love the person. You have to put up some boundaries, otherwise you will get sucked into not wanting to be around the person.

This is very real in 2020. For example, if you go on social media for 10 minutes, you leave, and then you feel either ashamed, angry, criticized or bad. Then you grieve. I think you have to be really careful right now with your relationships, even those on social media. There's a very fine line between protecting yourself and helping others. If you get to the point where helping others is causing you a lot of anxiety and stress, you're not not protecting yourself. It’s OK to set boundaries and distance yourself from people.

The books and podcasts that Dr. Shillcutt finds inspiring:

I love to read. I read Scripture. I find it to be really inspirational in the morning. I also like The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. It’s important to laugh and sometimes I just read books to laugh. We have to continue to find joy and laughter.

I love podcasts as well. How I Built This with Guy Raz is an entrepreneur podcast. I listen to that almost every week. I also listen to Unlocking Us with Brene Brown, The Alli Worthington Show with Alli Worthington, and Lead to Win with Michael Hyatt.

I am also very careful on who I follow on social media. I don't follow people who are really negative, even if they’re close friends of mine.

What will it take for women to rise to a level where we no longer have to deal with the backlash? Dr. Shillcutt explains:

I think two things have to happen. First, women need to be wherever decisions are made. If decisions are being made in any workforce or in any community and women are not at the table, nothing will change. The second thing that has to happen is we have to accept one another for who we are. If a woman is getting passionate about something, she's probably an expert in it. She's getting passionate because she knows about it. I will make it my goal to amplify another woman, even if I don't necessarily like her. I want to empower the voices of women in the room.

Women have to be where decisions are being made, and quite frankly, if you look at healthcare, we're only in 8% of decision makers. And why do you think we're in the mess that we're in, right? We know from the Gallup studies that when women are at the table, women tend to think of other people not in the room. Men don't do that, bless their hearts. We need women at the table to be thinking of the downstream effects of these decisions. And, I am really passionate about that.

We have to have women in leadership, and that means we as women need to support women leaders. Even if we don't know them, just support them in general because it's hard to be a woman in leadership. It really is.

In summary, we need to collectively recognize that we have the right to take up space wherever we happen to be. Each time we make ourselves smaller or more invisible, we portray a false notion of what women are supposed to be and do. If we can find our internal voice and be our authentic selves as a collective, we can shift cultures and change norms.

There is strength in numbers. Hopefully a freeness emerges when recognizing we are not alone after finally beginning to share our experiences with others. We’ve all experienced the repercussions for being authentic to the point where it either forces us to make ourselves smaller or emboldens us - of which neither may be authentic. Here are a few highlights that hit home for us:

Confidence is contagious
Amplify other women - it’s courageous to show up every day and emotionally dealing with potential bullying and retaliation for being your authentic self
Encourage yourself - be your inner fangirl, and be the fangirl for others
Gift yourself grace - give yourself margin to fail, or to be less than perfect
You are enough - you have worthiness just as you are
Have a growth mindset - our resilience and our ability to bounce back stronger is what leads to success.
You are not alone - others have had the similar experiences

If you haven’t already, follow us on social media - Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Let’s amplify our messages so more women can benefit from this collective community. Be sure to join our email list to be the first to hear about upcoming events.

We can’t wait to spend more time with you and want to hear your ideas on content and the discussions we need to have with one another. Reach out and send us a note!

Rumble On!

Karyn and Rebecca

Rumblings Media 11/4/20 Rumblings Media 11/4/20

How to Care for Your Heart After 50

Once women reach menopause their risk for cardiovascular disease is equal to the risk for men. Women need to take action now to care for their hearts as they age to feel their best and reduce risk.

This is part two of a two part series of a conversation with Courtney Jordan Baechler MD, MS, a preventive cardiologist and a Medical Director at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation. Part one can be found here. Edited and condensed for readability.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this post is intended to diagnose or be a substitute for medical treatment. Always consult with your healthcare provider before taking any supplements, particularly if you have any medical conditions or take prescription medications.

As part of the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation’s (MHIF) women’s health event called Hope, Health and Humor: At-Home Edition, we had Courtney Jordan Baechler MD, MS join us for a small outdoor gathering of women and a conversation about women’s heart health. This conversation is critical for women over 50 because many women think that heart and vascular disease only impact men at this age. However, once women reach menopause the level of risk, number of events, severity of heart disease, and even death rates are the same. Yet, our symptoms may be different, are often not taken seriously, and we’re not researched as much as men.

Karyn: Social connection is one of the foundational principles at Rumblings, and there is more and more research showing social isolation, loneliness and the impacts on health being as great as smoking, obesity and other health risks. Are you starting to see this impact in your practice as well?

The Inner Heart Trial was a study across 52 countries and 6 continents. It looked at causes of blockages in the arteries and also if there was anything else that we did not yet know. It found that one-third of all blockages in coronary arteries result from poor mental health: from social isolation, anger, depression, anxiety, and anything in the mental wellbeing category. As strong as abdominal obesity, smoking, and high blood pressure. It’s a really big deal. There are many non-pharmaceutical or non-medicine based things you can do. At Minneapolis Heart Institute, we talk about Tai Chi, social connection, sleep, nutrition, music therapy, and acupuncture for example. It’s fascinating that across all generations we have a world that is quite lonely. Even if you’re on social media all the time, people don’t feel connected in an intimate sense with their friends. We have a tremendous interest in ways to be well other than just seeing a doctor and getting drugs.

Karyn: Are there certain lab tests, heart tests or calcium scores that we should be asking for as we get older?

It really depends on what you will do once you have the information. The analogy that I use are genetic tests you may get when you are pregnant, especially if you are considered at ‘advanced maternal age’. Are the results of the test going to change your behavior or will they just worry you? I have pretty strong beliefs about doing the tests that we do for the right reasons. For example, a calcium score is determined by what is basically an x-ray of your heart to look at calcium production. A calcium score is not usually covered by insurance. It is the first sign of build-up in the arteries, and it will compare you against women of the same age. A calcium score of 0 - meaning no buildup in your arteries - is rare. Everything else in our mind is considered heart disease, even if it’s the beginning of heart disease with a buildup of 10 percent. Then the recommendation of the guidelines is to prescribe a statin drug. From a cardiologist perspective, once that happens, we do not pass go without being on a statin medication. The recommendation is to repeat the calcium test in 5 years to see if it has changed. There is not a lot of data to suggest whether or not a repeat test should be done or if the score changes for many people.

I have some patients that tell me their calcium score is single-handedly the most impactful things that caused them to change their behaviors on what they eat, when they exercise, how they sleep and moderate their stress. If that is going to happen and it will drive you to do the things that we need to do for health, then it’s super helpful. But, 85% of coronary artery disease or blockage in the arteries are lifestyle based and preventable. Even if you get lucky and get that ‘0’ [score], it doesn’t change the need to do those things. It’s definitely very trendy right now, but it depends how your brain works and what kind of information is helpful to you.

There are other things we do that are more commonly covered by insurance. A high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) is a blood marker for inflammation. There has been an association between higher CRP levels and heart disease. When I am risk-stratifying someone and they have a very low high-sensitivity CRP level, it indicates that their body’s sensation of inflammation is low. My prediction is that in 20 years, heart disease will be much more about inflammation. Inflammation in the body leads to high blood sugar, which leads to more diabetes. Inflammation leads to high cholesterol, which itself is an inflammatory marker. Inflammation also leads to high blood pressure and the list goes on. This is one of the few ways to test for inflammation and most preventive cardiologists will do that as this blood marker can be lowered with statins.

Some other markers I usually get are Lipoprotein A (Lipo A) and Apolipoprotein B (Apo B), which are ways to look at the cholesterol breakdown to look at size and stickiness of the cholesterol. These things are a little more genetic in nature. We do not have any drugs as of yet, that can change those numbers. It can be helpful to reassure someone who has a strong family history or is nervous about their levels.

There are more advanced [tests] to gather even more information about the cholesterol breakdown, many of them are not super helpful beyond the 3 that I get on most of my patients.

Most of the studies that we have are on [the effect of] drugs, not lifestyle. We are hoping to change that. Today, the way that we use statins in our society is that everyone should be on them, and most physician’s intent is that you should be on them until you die. I try to tell patients they get to choose what they want to take, as nothing we put in our bodies is perfect. If a patient tells me they want to do everything possible to decrease their risk of having a heart attack or stroke, and they want to do everything by the book; for most people that will mean a statin, and they’re doing ok.

Other patients may say they want to do everything else but that, and there is a lot that can be done on the behavioral side. I have many patients that have a pristine diet, they move a lot, they really moderate stress and how they manage it. They sleep well, social connection is a huge part of their life - they have a purpose. They choose not to be on statins and they’re doing ok. It’s about tradeoffs and thinking through what will work best for you long-term. I have people who do both and they’re doing pretty well.

Karyn: What about supplements? Are there supplements that we should be taking?

I am definitely a fan of supplements for a specific reason and not just taking them because your friend does and they work for her. CoQ10 and Vitamin D are two that I use routinely.

For instance, if I have someone on statins, I always put people on 100mg of CoQ10 twice per day. In Europe, this is standard of care. Statins deplete mitochondria, which are the energy producers of our cells and CoQ10 helps to replete them. For some patients, I have found they are much less likely to get muscle and joint aches. There have been trials that have found it doesn’t matter, but for some it seems to help. Trials have shown that CoQ10 lowers blood pressure. I have people looking for natural ways to lower blood pressure to try it first, and it’s great for energy.

It is important to ask your primary care provider about checking your Vitamin D levels. Vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat soluble, so you can get too much, but 85% of Minnesotans are low. In the Winter, 5000 IU per day is recommended. The sweet spot for Vitamin D levels is in the 50-70 ng/mL range. I will see people come in as low as 10 ng/mL. We call Vitamin D the ‘happy vitamin’ because people feel off without it if they are low, but too much can be toxic.

For [high] triglycerides I use fish oil. There are studies on lowering triglycerides with 1000mg, 3 times per day. It’s a big dose, and it has to be the right type of fish oil - Nordic Naturals is a good one. Fish oil is also good for mental health. I use red yeast rice for lowering cholesterol. I have found that most people’s cholesterol will go down with a 2400 mg supplement, but there are no studies to show if it reduces risk for heart attacks or strokes.

I have many supplements that I may recommend for individuals with anxiety, stress, or problems sleeping. For palpitations, stress, or help falling asleep I use L-theanine. I will use melatonin to help people stay asleep. Depending on the time and reason for a patient visit, I will sometimes recommend Ashwagandha during menopause as women’s bodies adjust to the new normal.

Everything is connected in our bodies. Sometimes our heart feels off because our gut flora is off. I may put people on probiotics for a month to see if we can refresh their natural flora. I always try to introduce them one at a time so that you don’t have too many different things at once to try to figure out if it is working.
Karyn: I’m pleasantly surprised to hear you say that there are supplements you recommend. I’ve always been hesitant to tell my healthcare providers about the supplements I take, but now I definitely will. I have always felt that supplements have helped me to feel my best.

Karyn: Let’s talk about how the gap in women’s cardiovascular health research impacts recommendations for women. What can we do to advocate for getting more research on women’s heart health?

We’re 35 years behind in research on cardiovascular disease compared to men. Women weren’t even allowed to participate in studies due to regulations set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a long time*. There is less research funding for women in all areas—whether it’s how women respond to valve surgery, bypass surgery, stent placements, if we’re more or less likely to have a procedure after a heart attack, or are we more likely to die. I firmly believe that closing this gap will be a woman-led solution. Currently, 12% of cardiologists are women. As that number grows, we’ll have more women physicians and researchers leading the efforts. Women being engaged participants in designing where and how they want to receive care, what that care looks like, and what the wellness efforts and how they want to be treated will also be critical components too.

Not only are we not small men, but the way that care was designed was predominantly for well insured white men with a wife to take care of them. Men tend to enroll in studies immediately, while women are more likely to take time to consider participating. Boston Scientific has done great research on how to get women to participate in more research studies by designing brochures to resonate with women and taking an extra step to continue to reach out to them. Once women have a chance to ask questions and speak with their trusted network of friends, they are more likely to participate. This approach is considered ‘soft’ academics, and is not how it’s often done, but it will be a big part of the solution to get more participants.

Women’s heart disease rates started to go up in the 1950s, correlating with women entering the workforce, and slowly their rates began to equal that of men. We don’t want women working to change, but the idea that we [as women] can do everything all the time for everyone with the idea that we’ll take care of ourselves last is a cultural value that has to change before we can actually thrive. We have a lot of work to do on that.

Karyn: We do have a lot of work to do. But, I think we can do it. I believe marketers are realizing women in our age group have tremendous buying power and by hiring millennials that focus on marketing to other millennials, they’re missing out on a huge marketing opportunity. I also hope with more women who are reaching midlife and increasing numbers in professions that were traditionally male dominated, we’ll see rapid change.

I graduated from medical school in 2004 and ours was the first class with 51% women. These changes are recent.

Karyn: Is there a difference between a standard cardiologist and a preventive cardiologist and how do you get to see a preventive cardiologist?

Preventive cardiologists usually do extra training and it takes more years [in school]. They would usually have extra training on lipid and cholesterol profiles and in areas of nutrition, exercise, stress. A focus on the different types of lifestyle contributors to give a more holistic view of health. At the Minneapolis Heart Institute, we are planning to start a prevention fellowship within our cardiology fellowship. As of now, it is mostly a certificate, but what you can expect is someone who is focusing on prevention. It doesn’t have to be primary prevention, it can be about preventing a second event after someone has had a heart attack or stroke.

*In 1977, the FDA issued a guideline banning most women of ‘childbearing potential’ from participating in clinical research studies. In 1993, the FDA issued a new guideline and formally rescinded the 1977 policy that banned most women from participating in studies. The Congress made this policy law in 1993. Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office on Women’s Health.

Rumblings Media 10/28/20 Rumblings Media 10/28/20

5 Actions to Improve Women’s Heart Disease Risk After 50

Heart disease is still the leading cause of death in women. We don't talk as much as we should about how women's heart health research is 35 years behind that of men. Or, how our symptoms are often not taken seriously. We want to help change the narrative around women and heart disease. It all starts here with a conversation with Courtney Jordan Baechler MD, MS.

*This is part one of a two part series of a conversation with Courtney Jordan Baechler MD, MS, a preventive cardiologist and a Medical Director at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation.*

Women know that preventing breast cancer is a big health issue. While that is very important, and much has been done to shed a light on the value of early detection and treatment, it remains true that heart disease is still the leading cause of death in women. We don’t talk enough about how research on women’s heart health is decades behind that of men, how our symptoms are often not taken seriously, what we can do to prevent heart disease and cardiovascular events, and how we should treat it. We want to help change the narrative around women and heart disease. It all starts with having more conversations about this topic.

As part of the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation’s (MHIF) women’s health event called Hope, Health, and Humor: At-Home Edition, we had Courtney Jordan Baechler MD, MS join us for a small outdoor gathering of women and a conversation about women’s heart health. This conversation is critical for women over 50 because many women think that heart and vascular disease only impact men at this age. However, once women reach menopause the level of risk, number of events, the severity of heart disease, and even death rates are the same. Yet, our symptoms may be different, are often not taken seriously, and we’re not researched as much as men.

This gathering took place a few days after Rebecca’s husband had a stroke. Because of how healthy and young he was, it drove home that we need to start having conversations about heart health, cardiovascular events, and doing everything we can to take care of ourselves as we age.

Karyn: Dr. Baechler, tell us about yourself.

I’m a preventive cardiologist. I did the National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientist track, and added extra time onto my fellowship in cardiology to study the primary and secondary prevention of heart disease. I hit a wall during my intern year and thought the [healthcare] system was totally broken. How was I going to practice for the rest of my life in a sick-based system? There was no focus on nutrition, stress, exercise, ability to fill your prescriptions - nothing. It led me to pursue my interest in preventive medicine. I obtained a Master’s degree in Epidemiology and Public Policy to learn more about population health. I spent years running the Penny George Institute for Health and Healing. I’m a huge believer in the mind, body, spirit approach of Eastern medicine meets Western medicine. I currently run the Women’s Science Center at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation and I see patients part-time through the Minneapolis Heart Institute.

Karyn: What are the age-related changes that women go through that begin to increase our risk for heart disease?

Until menopause, women have a much lower risk of developing heart disease. After menopause, our risk increases to be the equivalent to the risk men experience for having a heart attack or stroke.

I’m sure many women have heard of the Women’s Health Initiative and the research on hormone replacement therapy. There was an idea that if we put women on hormones so that menopause wouldn’t happen, that would fix things. It turns out the risk of having a heart attack and the risk of having a stroke was higher. It was back in 2004 when we first started getting this information.

Here are some of the reasons our risk increases after menopause:

When we age, our blood vessels start to stiffen and we can develop high blood pressure. Our metabolism starts to slow and we tend to develop more central obesity and fat in our bellies. These things happen as we age, and there are things that we can do to counteract them. From a perspective of our metabolism slowing down, we can also be at higher risk for developing Type 2 diabetes because of the way our body responds to insulin and sugar in general.

Our sleep changes. Sleep is the cornerstone of everything, and it helps to clear our brains. There is lots of data on the importance of sleep and our overall immune system and helping us to be well.

Most of these things appear to be true for men too, there just is a protective effect for women prior to menopause. We’re 35 years behind in doing research on women. We don’t know why that is, but can speculate that society has cared about keeping women healthy while we’re reproducing and then we have less perceived ‘value’ after we’re done with being able to reproduce.

Karyn: You know, it’s really interesting that even Rebecca and I have found that there is so much information out there for women who are in childbearing years and for fertility. When you look for resources on health for women who are over 50 there is nothing. Everything that you Google is almost entirely about how to dress, how to be more attractive, or is about anti-aging. It’s fascinating, and not in a good way. We have work to do to change that!

Karyn: What symptoms should women be aware of, and when should they seek immediate care? What symptoms are different for women than for men?

Women are much more likely to have atypical symptoms. They are more likely to get jaw pain, arm numbness, nausea, vomiting, and also depression. They do get shortness of breath, and chest pain is still the most common symptom in women. However, women are much more likely to have all of the symptoms compared to men. I always tell women that you know your body best. Hands down, patient-wise, women are more in tune with their bodies. If you are experiencing something that is different and is not going away, you should get it checked out. Physicians should be grateful that you are proactive and focused on prevention. If everything turns out fine, then that is great!

Karyn: When we see our doctors, our primary care providers, what kinds of things should we ask them about to make certain we’re paying close attention to our heart health as we get older?

One of the things that is critical for women to be aware of when seeing your physician is that you should have information about anything being done. As a patient, you should be told what your blood pressure is. You should be told what your heart rate is. And, you should understand what your medical providers are doing. Are they listening to your respiratory rate? Are they taking your temperature? All of those things are critical pieces of information that you want to be personally tracking.

Blood pressure and heart rate are things that change over time. For example, if you’ve always had a heart rate in the 60s and now your rate is consistently in the 80s or 90s, you need to know about it. And, they should tell you that it’s better to be a little bit lower consistently.

Body Mass Index (BMI), which is one way to look at weight, is another indicator that doesn’t get talked about much with your physician. Is your weight or BMI contributing to your level of risk and what is a healthy BMI? How do you compare to your peers? Physicians will usually tell you if there is something wrong, but they should also tell what they are looking for and why.

You should definitely get your cholesterol checked. There are advanced cholesterol profiles that we can do to tell whether the cholesterol is ‘sticky’ which can increase your risk. A cardiologist would also look at inflammation and other things. Most importantly, have a conversation with your primary care doctor about your family history and your lifestyle. Ask them about your risk of having a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years.

These are basic things that let you know where you fall in terms of risk and then based on these measures, does your doctor recommend that you see a cardiologist to do further testing and why or why not? Ask them what other specific things you could be doing to optimize your health. These are the conversations you want to have with the person taking care of you.

Karyn: It is so important to have a relationship with a care provider that knows you and is willing to be a partner in your care.

It is unfortunate but very common to be put on medication without ever being evaluated for all of these other things. It is important in those situations to ask why you are being prescribed something so you can be informed.

Part two of the conversation with Courtney Baechler MD, MS discusses how to take care of your heart.

Rumblings Media 10/14/20 Rumblings Media 10/14/20

The What and How to Eat After Menopause for Feeling Great, Reducing Risk, and Aging Well

The reality is that to flourish after 50 healthful eating matters. In this post, we review the book, The Menopause Diet Plan written by Registered Dietitian Nutritionists Hillary Wright and Elizabeth Ward, which outlines a pattern of eating to help you manage your weight, feel better, and reduce disease risk as you age.

Let’s face it, sometimes aging is hard to accept. I have to admit that I was initially in denial when my waistbands slowly started getting tighter and the numbers on the scale crept up ever so slightly year over year until one day when I looked in the mirror and I saw my mom. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mom, but it frightened me to see her physique staring back at me. Now, ladies, I am not going to lie and say I just reset my mindset and it’s been an easy journey since that day. It hasn’t.

It’s taken time to realize what and how I ate had to change as I aged to ensure I stayed well. Although I’ve always valued healthful eating and physical activity, what I was doing wasn’t enough to ensure my ongoing health and well-being. I had to adjust, and I am not alone.

When women think about aging and menopause, they describe their biggest fears as being body appearance changes, weight gain, and loss of mental acuity. Unfortunately, women in our society don’t talk openly about menopause, and as a result, we often suffer in silence wondering if what we are feeling and experiencing is “normal”.

Karyn and I started Rumblings out of a deep desire to stop the suffering in silence and start having conversations openly with other women our age. Our goal is to provide you with science-based resources to help you flourish after 50. Along the way, we also want to share stories of what’s worked for us and other women our age. The one thing we know for sure is that aging requires action to ensure we continue to thrive into the future.

One of our foundational principles (or Rocks) at Rumblings is to “live inside out”. And, what we eat is a key component of this Rock. Our food philosophy at Rumblings is based on science and what nourishes our souls. We focus on:

Looking inside to understand what and how much to eat
Feeding ourselves well with whole foods, mostly plants
Honoring tradition
Celebrating culture
Loving every damn morsel of food, we consume

We’re done with diets, guilt, and restriction! We prefer to focus on patterns of eating, intuitive eating, and enjoyment. Certainly, individual nutrition needs vary from person to person, but science tells us that this eating pattern promotes health and longevity.

A new book, The Menopause Diet Plan written by two Registered Dietitian Nutritionists, Hillary Wright and Elizabeth Ward, was released in September. The book excellently outlines the science behind how food choices impact aging well and tackles health concerns that result from the transition to menopause, including the following: weight gain, hot flashes, sleep difficulties, mood swings, fatigue, changes in digestion, muscle loss, memory changes, osteoporosis, and disease risk.

If you’re struggling with eating healthfully, physical changes, or chronic symptoms, this new book could be a nice reference for you as you age.

Weight Gain and Belly Fat Changes

Unfortunately, there is science to suggest that on average women gain about 1.5 pounds per year in their 40s and 50s — roughly 30 pounds. And, for many women who do not see the weight gain, they may experience a thickening around the belly. Declining estrogen levels and muscle mass are likely contributors, as well as, low levels of physical activity, unhealthful eating behaviors, lack of sleep, stress, and genetics.

The reality is that to flourish after 50 healthful eating matters. The Menopause Diet Plan outlines a pattern of eating that can help you manage your weight, feel better, and reduce disease risk as you age. Although the authors refer to this as a “diet” in the book title, they don’t promote dieting throughout the book, but rather focus on developing healthier habits for the rest of your life.

An Eating Pattern for Aging Well

The authors emphasize (and we agree!) that there is no one size fits all when it comes to food. However, there are eating patterns that are starting to emerge as healthful for most people. What we’re learning is that individual foods don’t make or break a healthful eating pattern and healthful eating doesn’t require perfection, instead it requires consistency.

However, women are different from men and during the transition from perimenopause to menopause our bodies change, and these changes are real and often very frustrating. Thankfully, there are now studies looking into these differences and exploring women-specific recommendations for confronting these challenges.

Eating healthfully as you age is about modifying your pattern of eating (habits) —not dieting. Making small but different choices regarding what you eat and how much you eat will help you to feel great and age well. Feeling great and living well are the goals more than just making temporary unsustainable changes in order to lose a few pounds.

The authors outline many specific details for patterns of healthful eating in the book, but two important ones to highlight for aging women include:

Eat fewer calories. To maintain weight, you likely need to eat less due to loss of muscle mass and possibly due to getting less physical activity than you did when you were younger. This obviously is disappointing but calls attention to the importance of being more mindful of how much you regularly eat. We’re going to highlight the importance of physical activity in a later blog post, but we want to call attention to the fact that physical activity, in any amount, helps counter the effects of aging and of course the need to reduce calorie intake as much.
When you eat matters. Don’t over restrict food during the day, as that typically results in eating more later in the day and evening. Research also suggests that metabolism functions differently based on the time of day — women better metabolize and store nutrients more optimally during daylight. Eat earlier in the day with a goal of winding down as early in the evening as possible and don’t skip meals.

We encourage you to read The Menopause Diet Plan, as the authors also do an excellent job walking through the science behind how specific foods influence your risk for heart disease, diabetes, cognitive decline, cancer, and osteoporosis as you age. Those chapters will also provide the rationale for the summary of food for aging recommendations outlined below:

Eat plants. Load half your plate with fruits and vegetables at every meal and choose a variety to ensure good health. Fruits and vegetables are also lower in calories and higher in fiber which will help you stay full longer after a meal.
Watch your protein intake. Aim for approximately 20 grams of protein at each meal and protein-rich snacks to keep you feeling fuller for longer while nourishing your muscles and bones. Midlife and menopausal women need more protein than recommended amounts.
Be mindful of carbohydrates. Choose three servings of whole grains each day. The Menopause Diet Plan limits carbohydrates to less than 50% of calories. This may be less than you’re currently consuming and something that you may want to explore.
Choose healthful fats. Use olive oil or canola oil. Other healthy fats with no trans fat and no more than 2 grams of saturated fat per tablespoon are also suggested.
Limit sugar and alcohol. They supply extra and unnecessary calories, so indulge on occasion and enjoy them when you do.

What about supplements? Perimenopause, menopause, and aging influence your vitamin and mineral needs. In The Menopause Diet Plan, the authors outline micronutrient needs and common challenges in getting recommendations. In reality, it’s hard to give a blanket statement for recommendations without fully understanding your current diet, risk factors, symptoms, and nutrition goals. Working with a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist is your best bet for customizing personal recommendations to supplement your current eating pattern.

If you’re looking for more prescriptive food recommendations, The Menopause Diet Plan offers three approaches to healthful eating —overall healthful eating advice (good if you’re looking for tips you can adopt to improve what and how you eat), a balanced plate approach (good if you prefer a more visual plate tool to guide your choices at meal times), and a calorie-oriented approach (great for those who like more structure).

At Rumblings, we promote eating nutrient-rich whole-foods, mostly plants (animal products as a treat or garnish), enjoying your food, eating when you’re hungry, and stopping when you’re full to ensure you thrive as you age. A healthful eating pattern nourishes your body and soul. The Menopause Diet Plan recommendations align with our food philosophy while providing you with more details about the why and how of healthful eating during the prime of your life.

As you experiment with these suggestions, let us know what is working for you. Gone are the days when we suffer alone. We need to share our struggles and successes so that we can learn from one another and flourish together!

Live inside out through healthful eating.

Together we Rumble!

Rumblings Media 9/30/20 Rumblings Media 9/30/20

4 Critical Lessons Learned while Navigating a Family Health Crisis

At Rumblings, we worked hard to ensure our Four Rocks to Flourish After 50 foundational principles followed the latest science, as well as, aligned with what we were hearing from other women. During a recent family health crisis, the Rocks were put to a test and found to be key in helping to navigate a challenging time.

“We worked hard to ensure the Rumblings Four Rocks to Flourish After 50 foundational principles followed the latest science, as well as, aligned with what we were hearing from other women. At the time I never thought, so soon after we launched Rumbl… — “We worked hard to ensure the *Rumblings Four Rocks to Flourish After 50* foundational principles followed the latest science, as well as, aligned with what we were hearing from other women. At the time I never thought, so soon after we launched Rumblings, that I would have to personally put the Rocks to a test during a family health crisis. I quickly realized that these prinicples were key to helping me successfully navigate this challenging time.” — Rebecca Lindberg, Rumblings Co-founder

Over the last year, Karyn and I worked hard at polishing our Four Rocks for Flourishing After 50. We wanted to ensure our recommendations followed all the latest science, as well as aligned with what we were hearing from other women.

On August 19, my healthy 54-year-old husband had a severe stroke. It came out of the blue with absolutely no warning which bewildered even his physicians. On the morning of the 19th, he wasn’t feeling well and came home early from work to rest. An hour later, our 17-year-old son found him on the floor unable to move his right side or speak. Within 24 hours, he spiked a fever, was intubated, admitted to ICU, and diagnosed with endocarditis (an infection of the inner lining of his heart chambers and heart valves) which doctors assume caused the stroke. Fast forward 6-weeks, I am happy to report he is making huge strides in his recovery (thanks to his good health pre-event, quick medical care, and amazing providers).

Having a loved one experience a major health event, unfortunately, is something we all go through at different times in our lives. In fact, both Karyn and I have been going through it at the same time with the death of her mother this month and my husband’s current health issues. It sucks! It really does. At times, I am the “we-got this” warrior and at other times, I am overwhelmed with grief. But what has helped me rally from my lows, has been falling back on the Four Rocks.

Reset Mindset:

Over the last six weeks, I’ve had to completely reset my mindset. I quickly learned that thinking about the future after a stroke was an emotional path to nowhere. As a planner, who loves setting visionary goals and steps to achieve them, I’ve had to pause that instinct and commit to staying focused on one day at a time. You see, every doctor and every therapist has said that recovery is personal and looks different for everyone. They can’t say today what three months or six months will look like, only that the progress to date is good. That gives us hope, but the reality is with a stroke, you cannot control the future, only the work we do today. So we get up every day with the goal to make it an exceptional one from the food we eat, the activity we do, who we connect with, to how we frame-up what we think and say. Those are the things we can control. And, day by day we see positive progress and that keeps us inspired for tomorrow.

Live Inside Out:

You’ve heard it a thousand times, you need to take care of yourself before you can take care of others. This is harder said than done at times in our lives. I found that to be the case at the onset of our saga. After days of not sleeping, eating poorly, not exercising, and drinking way too much wine, I had to do a reality check with myself. I was getting moody, tearful, and negative which definitely wasn’t serving me or my family. I have four children who needed me to show up for them during this difficult time, a husband who needed support, a business that needed tending to, and a medical situation that needed managing. I wasn’t going to be able to do this if I continued down the path I was on.

I started with committing to 30-minutes of exercise most days. The minute I got off the bike or treadmill my spirit lifted and I felt ready to conquer another day. I got back to nourishing my body with food that gave me energy and reducing food and beverages that made me feel better in the short term but impacted my sleep and long term energy level.

Historically, I’ve been that person who puts a wall up and shares “just enough” with others. I tend to hold back from sincerely being my true authentic self — most likely out of fear and/or insecurity. Over the last six weeks, I let the wall down. I’ve told our story and shared the ups and downs of the journey. I’ve opened up our home (messy or neat). I’ve watched my husband rally, get outside, and attempt to chat (finding the right words is still very challenging) with everyone who stops to check-in. We’ve been vulnerable and the love has poured in. And, that love has nourished my soul and kept us both optimistic throughout this journey.

Listen. Learn. Connect.

The power of community and social connection is amazing. We have felt this first hand over the last couple of weeks. You see my husband, unlike me, is an extrovert. He is the guy who remembers your kids’ names and birthdays. He is the person who remembers the fine details of conversations long after they’ve been had. As a result, he has built a strong amazing community of friends and colleagues over the years and this community has rallied for our family.

Our home has been filled with cards, flowers, and beautiful plants as daily reminders of their love. Meals have been delivered to our home three times a week. Families of our kids’ friends and neighbors have provided gift cards to local restaurants that have been lifesavers after long days at the hospital and multiple medical appointments. His assistant and a good friend have completely supported his business operations and clients’ needs. And, the amazing Karyn took over Rumblings’ operations while I took a pause to support my husband, even when she was going through a challenging time of her own. And, most importantly the power of prayer and positive thoughts from these friends, neighbors, colleagues, and acquaintances have surely accelerated his progress and prognosis.

Advocate. Inspire.

Lastly, during this time I’ve learned so much that I hope to share with you, our Rumblings’ community, over the next few months. We felt like we planned and prepared for times like these, but there are things we could have done differently to be better equipped. I sincerely hope you never find yourself on this path, but if you do, I hope by sharing our experience your experience is a little easier.

These last weeks have been challenging, but leaning into Rumblings’ Four Rocks has helped me navigate these times more successfully.

Wishing you good health and well-being.

Together we RUMBLE,

Rebecca

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