Ashley Wheeler (00:01)

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Hormone Harmony podcast where we empower women to thrive through all stages of life. I'm your host Ashley Wheeler, Nurse Practitioner and hormone specialist here at Thrivelab. Today we're going to dive into the topic of mastering midlife and motherhood. And I'm thrilled to have a guest speaker today, Jennifer Chaney here with me. Jennifer is a passionate advocate for women navigating through midlife and the complexities of motherhood. She's known for her powerful insights on topics like emotional load, invisible labor and rediscovering your purpose beyond motherhood. Jennifer, thanks so much for joining us. Would you mind just taking a few moments to introduce yourself?

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Jennifer Chaney (00:36)

Absolutely, and I'm so glad to be here. We need to be talking about this stuff. It's so important. And I feel like midlife, especially for women, people just, they don't talk about like, you just got to survive it. You enter it and you're surprised by it and we can be ready for it. So I work with moms who are transitioning into an empty nest and they're dealing with midlife and they're dealing with all of these changes. There are more than 13 midlife milestones that we go through and we don't talk about them enough, so we're not prepared for them, and we get blindsided. And I don't want us to be doing that. I want us to be prepared. I want us to live very fulfilled, meaningful lives. And you can have a meaningful life and also be a mom, but it doesn't have to be your purpose or your meaning. Like we can have multiple purposes. And that's what I'm doing.

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Ashley Wheeler (01:30)

Yeah, I love that. That's honestly so empowering. I have three kids of my own and I'm going through all different types of stages with, you know, one going into VPK, one getting ready to go into high school. And it's like, you get pulled in every direction. And sometimes I think like you lose your sense of self a bit. And I think that's something that so many people can relate to, right?

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Jennifer Chaney (01:49)

It's really complex. I really think that they have oversimplified motherhood, specifically for women in your place where you have kids in these different developmental stages, you're having to adjust who you are and how you show up as a person and as a mom for each stage and having to do it all at once. Like, how are you still standing? Right?

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Ashley Wheeler (02:12)

I know, it's mind boggling, right? Because you're trying to meet the needs of a toddler while you're trying to meet the needs of this creature that's transforming from a little boy to a teenager preteen.

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Jennifer Chaney (02:22)

All while you're transforming and maybe perimenopause has hit and so the hormone, is, yeah, it's complex, it's a ride. When I had kids, I was absolutely blindsided. Like I said, you're sold this Hollywood version or this very tame version of motherhood. You get married, you go to school, you graduate. This is the general path. You get a job, you find a fella, you get married, you buy a house, you get a dog, you have kids. And then it stops. Then there's no more direction. There's no more anticipation or expectation from society from women. And that blindsided me because I literally did not know what to do after I had kids. I felt lost and I didn't feel like this was my path. I know a lot of women are like, I want to be a mom. I've wanted to be a mom since I was very, very little. And they have that motherhood purpose. I didn't have that. And I have talked to thousands of women and the majority of us really didn't have that. That real pull, like our purpose was motherhood. It was something we were interested in, something we wanted to do, something we felt a little bit of a drive to do, but it was not our purpose. And I think that was really heavy for me. So I started a photography business. I pulled on my old career as a photo editor and a photography studio manager. Started my own business and I started feeling better. And the thing that was the most amazing for me is that I had this realization that what I was feeling, I was also hearing and seeing from my clients. So I photographed families in their home and my whole pitch, everything that I was about was like, this is real life. It's like photo journalistic. So we're not posing you on a couch in a field. We're not, you can worry about the outfits if you want to, but I'd rather see a snot-nosed kid in a dirty shirt, having a good time in the sand and the dirt than a little boy posed with a bow tie on. My idea was for the photography is that we, these are our lives and they're not as pretty and as glossy as we'll see on social media or you'll get in the mail with your Christmas card. Most of us are living, most of us are trying to survive. It was this intersection between what I was feeling as a mom and what I was seeing and hearing from these other moms because I don't just walk in and just take pictures and leave. I interview the parents, I try to understand where the mom's coming from, what does she see, what does she love about her family? I felt validated in the discovery that a lot of women felt at least a little bit unfulfilled. And I also felt very sad about that. Because what are we going to do about this?

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And the more I spoke with them, the more I realized, oh we're supposed to wait. We're supposed to wait till the kids are gone and out of the house and then we can shift the focus back to ourselves. I wasn't okay with that. So I started trying to help these women find things for themselves, find something to do outside of motherhood. And I, between the conversations and watching and experimenting and studying, it all came down to time. We have to manage our time. We have to get really good at habits. We have to have goals. Moms don't necessarily have goals outside of, you know, not yelling at their kids, making sure that they have food, they don't miss the bus. We're so focused on where we are right now that we aren't thinking about the future. And then it hit me as my kids got older. Okay, it's more than just that.

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There are these stages of motherhood. And yes, how we manage our time matters, but you cannot manage your time the same way when your kids are 15 as you can when they are five. You don't have the time. You are pressed. You are trying to get things done. Again, you're surviving. So it was a fascinating epiphany that mothers go through a transition just like our kids do, there are the developmental stages our kids go through, while there are also this transition that mothers go through. And the easiest way for me to explain it is you have a full-time mom stage, and that is not full-time mom as in you're a stay-at-home mom, that's a full-time mom as in your energy is required full-time when you're there, you're parenting, even when you're not there, you're parenting, which connects to the invisible labor and the emotional load that we'll talk about in a second.

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But then you transition when your kids are about 10, 11 years old when they hit middle school, all the way through 18, that's a part-time mom stage because your kids are pulling away. That's the time where we get to start figuring out who we are outside of motherhood, who we are outside of them and too many moms, I did it, it's a struggle, I still work on this because I still have a teen at home. We white knuckle for control. And I don't know if that's because we feel like we're no longer needed and that's our identity, which is entirely possible. And especially when you're dealing with your youngest, getting to the point where they're about to leave the house. Is it because we are worried that we are no longer needed and we are no longer, you know, their mom? Or is it because we just want that control? Like we just need, we need to control this.

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Ashley Wheeler (08:02)

Yeah, and I think it might be a little bit of both, right? And it's also, I think it's like an attachment, right? That a mother has to kind of almost let go of a little bit of their child at that stage. I can just personally attest to that because I'm going through that right now. It's disheartening. It's like my baby is, my baby's like becoming a little man and he really needs his independence. He needs to figure things out. He wants to go places with his friends. I'm like, don't you want to hang out with me? I'm getting a lot of like one word responses. Yep. How was your day? Good. What'd you do? Nothing. I'm like, okay, deep breaths.

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Jennifer Chaney (08:54)

See, this is the other part that that's so hard. And people talk about it, but they almost like blame it on the teens. Well, teenagers are just blah, blah, blah, blah. And they are. Okay, they are. But their hormones and everything. And then when you hit perimenopause and you start going through that and you start acting that way.

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Ashley Wheeler (08:56)

Right. That's no, that's actually a really, really valid point. I didn't even like ever consider that, but it is. It's like shifting in both ways. And, know, another point that I just have to bring up that you mentioned, like when you first started, you know, explaining your background was how, you know, we have this anticipatory life cycle, right? Where we meet someone, we get married, we have a kid, we get a dog, we have a house, all of these things. That part has resonated with me so much throughout my life because that's something that I've always thought about. There's always something to look forward to, until there's not. That has been something that has almost intimidated me, scared me a little bit throughout this journey of life. Like, wow, here I am and I have all those things. Check, check, check. What do I do? And that's where me personally, I started focusing on my career more and that was fulfilling to me. You know, but everybody has a different story, a different time in their life. But then I'm thinking, well, when's my time to do the things that I need to do? When's my time, I like, to go to the gym? Well, now I'm finding I'm putting so much in my career and the little time left I have in my children and I'm like forcing time to go to the gym if I make it, but that's what's really important to me or going for a walk. Like that's refreshing to me. And everybody has their own, their own things that they need.

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Jennifer Chaney (10:31)

When our kids get older and they start shifting and pulling away, and then maybe we're pouring more energy either into trying to hold on to them or we're pouring it into our work and not necessarily thinking about what's coming next. That's where I found that the stage of motherhood that I call the on-call mom stage. So you've got that full-time mom when they're younger, the part-time mom when they are middle school, young teens, and then you have the on-call mom stage where you are basically removed. You have young adults. They sign their own documents. You no longer have the information from even their schools. High school seniors can sign themselves out of school and not even tell you. Like that is mind-blowing. It's like these are my babies. We are no longer their manager. We are a consultant. We are the on-call mom.

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When they are around 30, they start pulling away from you again, like really pulling away. And they might even like ghost you for a while because that's when they're really trying to figure out themselves as an adult, like a full adult.

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Ashley Wheeler (11:40)

I didn't even think about like the stages of motherhoodbut that really helps when you separate, you know, all of that out. Another thing, throughout all of these stages is that we have to take time for ourselves like we talked about and that looks different for everybody. Yoga, meditation, working out, going for a walk, maybe even spending time with friends.

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Jennifer Chaney (11:58)

I think that people confuse self-care with going to the spa and getting their nails done. But can you bring a friend so that you're constantly working on those relationships and holding those relationships? Because in the research that I've done, and there's multiple studies out there, but relationships and friendships and close connections are the thing that is going to elevate your happiness. So when you're older and your kids leave the house, you're in your empty nest, if you haven't been doing all that stuff that you're just talking about, doing the things that matter to you and keeping those connections and keeping those relationships tight with people, you really will struggle, at least in the first few years of an empty nest and potentially set yourself up for empty nest syndrome, which is a long extended period of either sadness or depression. How do we support ourselves? How can we support ourselves through all of these stages?

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Ashley Wheeler (12:57)

Right. Yeah, and that emptiness stage, that's one that terrifies me as I see the preteen, teen stage creeping up. I guess during that stage, and you talked about all of these goals that we look forward to and we hit them, I feel like maybe even that empty nest stage is like one of those things, like it's an anticipatory negative in our life, right?

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Jennifer Chaney (13:05)

It can be exciting. Going back to what we were talking about, having these like kind of are, we're mapped out until a certain point, like in general, these are the steps you take. If we looked at our empty nest stage at that phase of life as the first time since our 20s that we get to have more control or more say in how we spend our time, how our days unfold, what we do. And you can still be like, I need to work. Well, what about all those other hours that you're not working and you're not parenting anymore? How we fill that time.

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Ashley Wheeler (13:53)

The other thing is during those stages, like it gets to a point where sometimes you need like emotional support through that, with Thrivelab, we offer those tools for the the bioidentical replacement plans, you know, the nutrition counseling and life coaching, all those things. It may seem like a struggle, I think, for some people to actually go and take that first step. Recognize that maybe their mental health does need a little bit of work through that emptiness stage. Maybe their hormones are shifting and they're noticing symptoms that need addressed. Asking for help is one of the things that we need to keep in mind too.

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Jennifer Chaney (14:31)

Absolutely and all of those categories you talked about, we’re complex. We're complex and we're going through a complex time and we do need support and we cannot be expected to do it all we don't know where to start with a lot of this stuff hormones alone and learning that's the one thing that I tell every single person when you hit 35, ideally earlier, you start studying and researching hormones and how your perimenopause years all the way into postmenopause, how that's really going to affect your mental, your mental state, physical state, emotional state, your perimenopause and menopause specifically line up with empty nest. I actually got on HRT, two and a half years ago and it was life changing, absolutely life changing. I will say, I started out with the pellets. I am not a fan.

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Ashley Wheeler (15:32)

So I will tell you, and if any of my patients are listening to this right now, they've probably heard me say this a million times, pellets are either a wonderful or terrible thing in my opinion. If you get the perfect dose and you get those in easily and it's a soft, easy procedure, you're just smooth rolling for a few months and it's great. But most of the time, that's not the case and then you're stuck with that dosing consistently for however long it takes to wear out, which can be months.

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Jennifer Chaney (16:00)

Even if you get that right dose at the beginning, it still fades. And then so you're going to drop and then you're going to go back up.

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Ashley Wheeler (16:05)

Absolutely. Once you get them re-implanted, it's a cycle and it's not, there's no continuity to how you're feeling with your symptoms with that. And, you know, it's also, it's mildly invasive, right? You have to go in every couple of months. One of the things that I love about Thrivelab is like everything is so customizable. We have sublinguals, we have tablets, we have creams, we have injectables. There's so many options to like meet each patient’s individual needs and I found that everybody's different. Some people absorb topical better. Some people need injectable. Like it's kind of like this. I call it a jigsaw puzzle when we work with hormones. There's no one size fits all. And that's one of the things that I really value about Thrivelab is not only are we offering bioidentical hormones, which are exactly what our bodies are making naturally, but we're also offering different types. We can customize them so easily to help just meet everybody's needs. You said we're all very complex, everybody has different requirements. It's comparable to ibuprofen working for somebody for a headache, but Tylenol working for someone else. And all these analogies I use every day speaking with patients, but that's one of the things that I'm just, I'm absolutely in love with because if it's not working, we'll get it to work.

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Jennifer Chaney (17:23)

I do the topical compounded, bioidentical testosterone and estradiol patch and then progesterone at night, which is amazing because sleeping? No problem, my husband is so jealous. I do love that we have all these options now. But the pellets, I tell people, because you have to learn and research, I had them and then I researched. And I lost, like what got me to research was I lost so much hair that I'm still trying to get it back. My understanding is because the testosterone was really high and then it drops.

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Ashley Wheeler (18:07)

Absolutely. So and one thing that I'll say about that specific scenario is I see that a lot with my patients who come to me from Thrivelab. They've tried something else not, not educated fully and they go into it and they're very timid and scared to even try something else. They're almost like maybe I don't want anything because of the poor experiences they had from misinformation or under education on their parts. And that's really difficult because I don't ever want to, I always approach it as it's a team approach. Let me hear how you're feeling. Let me hear your thoughts and opinions. Let me hear what method of administration you like. And we're going to work together to build this plan, right? It's not just a me decision. I'm going to keep you safe and I'm going to make recommendations for you, but let's do this as a team. And sometimes, you know, I have patients that are reluctant to even start because of their poor experiences in the past. And that's tricky because I don't want to push.

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It's tough because in the medical field as a whole, and you could probably attest to this just like anybody else could, even with like a primary care provider or a cardiologist, if you have an opinion, you're like, hmm, I'm not sure. You go get a second opinion, you realize that medicine is practice. That's why they call it medical practice. There's times, you know, I work in interventional pain as well. There's times when I don't know the answer and we're referring to neurosurgery or somewhere else. Nobody can know one provider is going to know everything. And it almost takes that combination of care to balance out everything. And that's kind of where I think with the Thrivelab, it comes into when we're looking at hormones and overall health and well-being, we're looking into life coaching and we're looking into nutrition counseling and all of these different aspects kind of come together and just tie the knots and everything and just make this so beautifully well-rounded plan that just get patients to just feel so much better.

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Jennifer Chaney (19:45)

That's our village. That is our new village. It's no longer a village to raise your kids. It's a village to raise yourself in a way.

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Ashley Wheeler (19:55)

Right, raise yourself while you're raising your kids, I guess. It's almost like a two for one. And you're right, we're adjusting as they're adjusting. And it's just focusing on our self-care, focusing on us, but also being mindful that they're going through adjustments in their life as well, that we have to offer guidance through and we have to support them through without losing our minds in the interim.

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Jennifer Chaney (20:23)

The idea of educating ourselves and as we grow through life, our circumstances change and we learn more and we figure out solutions. At least that's the way my brain works. It's always like, there's a problem, let me figure out a solution. We've got the internet, we've got experts, what can we do? And we spoke briefly earlier about the emotional load and the invisible labor. That is such, that is the one thing, like yes, I was not prepared for how complex and difficult motherhood could be. I was 100% unaware of the invisible labor that women do. And it is predominantly women. It is moms that are running the household. Or even if you don't have kids and you're in a partnered relationship, it is typically the woman that winds up doing the invisible labor. But then to learn that there is, and this is how I am breaking it out because some people refer to invisible labor as a big umbrella. Invisible labor is all the stuff that you do that nobody else can see. I think that there is also mental management, all of the planning. And then you have emotional load, where you are managing the emotions of everybody under your roof. And sometimes not even, sometimes you are the emotional manager of your family, like between your siblings, between your mom, and even your neighbor. You're so concerned with making sure everything's okay. Nobody should be upset. And then you have the invisible labor.

Again, this is my breakdown of it because it helps me to see them in three different buckets. The invisible labor being the things that you do all the time. It's like also busy work, putting the dishes away, doing the laundry, making, doing the shopping, doing the cooking, all of those physical tasks. That's how I just refer to invisible labor as.

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Yes, emotional load is also invisible because people don't see that. You don't even realize, it's invisible to us. Most of the time it's been visible to us. We don't realize that, oh, our husband's upset about something and instead of letting our husband just be upset, you figure it out. We're like, hey babe, what's going on? Can we talk? And you help pull it out of him. Or like in my case, and I see this a lot and I hear about this a lot, is that maybe one of your children, teenager usually, and your spouse is having a little bit of confrontation. There's something, there's some tension in there. And instead of letting them sort it out, we pull them apart and we try to emotionally manage them instead of letting them grow up. So the physical labor that people don't see, that's hard, And then also, though, the mental management. Who has to get there, go to the dentist? Who's got to get to soccer? Signing up for summer camps?

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Ashley Wheeler (23:38)

As you're speaking about this, I'm thinking about how I woke up at 5 a.m. to take my dog to get spayed before I took all three of my kids to school. And I started like little checklists and task lists and all these different ways of trying to sort it out, but. I mean, it is, it's overwhelming. And you're trying to be everything for everyone but yourself.

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Jennifer Chaney (23:58)

Because it's a priority thing. When I look at those three buckets, the emotional load to me is the most, like if I could fix one of those, it would be the emotional load. Because it's so silent, but it's heavy.

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Ashley Wheeler (24:10)

I'm actually really glad that we came on here to do this today because I'm a single mom and it's rough over here, you know, but we live a happy life from the outside, but it's stressful sometimes, you know? We see Instagram posts and Facebook posts and, filtered out pictures and it's like, that's not really what's going on behind the scenes and it's so easy to get caught up in that when all of what we see is filtered that way, you know.

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Jennifer Chaney (24:42)

I don't want to feed the machine of the glorious, glamorous pictures on social media and make somebody else feel like they're missing out, make somebody else feel bad about their life. So I don't post anything. Because to me, it's not like, I know we fought on Thanksgiving. I know that there was a blow up. And I'm not going to post this really pretty picture of all of us sitting on the table like it's all great because I just, I want somebody else to feel like if I could post about the argument, I would because it's so real.

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Ashley Wheeler (25:04)

But I love that and I'm seeing more and more like influencers actually post their real life. I don't know if you've seen any of that and it's very humbling. When we're going through these changes with midlife, with our own bodies and motherhood, with our children. And we're trying to be the organizer of all when we're trying to take on all of these tasks. It's just, it's a lot and I just think that that's, you know, in one simple way ThriveLab could play a great part in this. Like there's so many options that can just take a step back a little bit and just focus on you. And I think it's just, you know, it's one little step that gets us in the right direction.

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Jennifer Chaney (25:58)

But when you have that support, because those are all the key areas that we need support with, our nutrition, our fitness, our mental health, when you have that support, then you get to spend your energy figuring out who you are and who you're going to be on the other side of motherhood. And when we spend so much time trying to figure out all these other pieces, I mean, outsource it. Outsource everything if you can.

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Ashley Wheeler (26:15)

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Right, right. Yeah, as much as you can really because it's just, it's just tolling. There's so much going on and I just think any little bit that you can get that support on and even through friendships and through relationships and things like that, all of these things are important, but it's kind of like narrowing it down to what's most important for you and honestly the way that I look at it is when you're feeling good, your body, your spirit, your well-being is feeling good, you're more emotionally there, you're more physically there, you're more able to take on these tasks. So I feel like starting at that core of fixing what's internally, you know, different for you or off balance for you, it just sets this awesome foundation for now kind of working on the other things. Does that make sense?

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Jennifer Chaney (27:12)

Oh my gosh, 100%. And here's the thing that people always forget about. We're modeling how to grow up and how to take care of ourselves to our kids. Because I think about our kids, especially if you've got a daughter, but the men too, the boys too. I can't imagine watching my daughter grow up and not take care of herself. And put everybody else's needs before hers. It would crush me.

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Ashley Wheeler (27:44)

Yeah, that gives me the chills just saying sometimes we just aren't tuned in enough to how much what we're doing our kids are seeing and taking that in. And it's odd to me that sometimes I don't think about that because I think about every action that I do in my life and I compare it back to my childhood. So it's like, wake up call. Like I do this consistently. I did this because my mom did this. This is a tradition because my father did this. But then when we're thinking about our kids and their ties to their future life and what we're exposing them to now, it'll hit you all at once. And you're like, I need to be more careful. And then you kind of get back into the flow.

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Jennifer Chaney (28:18)

Yeah. See, it's complex. We were sold a different story, people.

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Ashley Wheeler (28:23)

Yep. Yep. Everybody has a different story. And just so interesting and fascinating talking to you today, Jennifer. I really appreciate you sharing your story and your insights with us. I think, honestly, a lot of our listeners will be super pleased as they walk away just getting ready to take charge of their life, midlife, motherhood journey, all of it. We have more control than we think. And we just don't realize it. And it's just getting to our full potential.

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For anyone listening, if you guys are ready to start thriving in midlife, whether it's hormone therapy, life coaching, nutrition counseling, a personalized plan, please feel free to reach out to Thrivelab. Jennifer, where can we give our listeners some information on some more of your content? I would love to personally see some more of it.

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Jennifer Chaney (29:09)

So you can find everything on my website, which is Jenniferchaney.com. I do have a SubStack called the other side of motherhood and I am on socials. I'm trying to transition more over to SubWtack because It's a I think that's kind the way social media might be heading at least for my mental health. It is a great space to be but yeah, so my websites the perfect place to start.

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Ashley Wheeler (29:28)

Perfect, that's really great information. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure hearing your insight, your stories. If you're listening, don't forget to subscribe to the Hormone Harmony podcast so you never miss an episode. And until next time, take care and keep thriving.

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Jennifer Chaney (29:52)

Thank you.