Breaking Self-Ageism: A Journey to Confidence in Midlife with Jo Blackwell

In this lively interview, Jo Blackwell shares her journey through menopause, overcoming self-ageism, and embracing aging with confidence. Discover practical insights on challenging societal narratives, nurturing connection, and thriving in midlife.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:45 Jo Blackwell's Personal Menopause Journey
01:54 Challenging Medical Advice and Toxic Positivity
02:49 Learning to Focus on What Can Be Done
04:04 Understanding Perimenopause and Emotional Impact
05:48 Writing as a Tool for Connection and Healing
07:40 Creating the Midlife Community and Support
09:01 Discovering Photography and Self-Expression
11:08 The Power of Seeing Through the Lens
12:49 Understanding Self-Ageism and Its Roots
16:28 Challenging Ageist Narratives and Media Influence
20:43 Normalizing Aging and Celebrating Older Faces
23:19 Body Image and Embracing Physical Changes
26:49 Jo Blackwell's New Book: Aging Wonderfully Well
28:15 The Science of Happiness and Brain Health in Aging
29:30 The Value of Experience and Intergenerational Learning
30:27 Challenging Self-Ageism and Societal Expectations
31:22 Living with Purpose and Embracing Growth
31:53 Final Words of Inspiration and Hope
33:30 Where to Find Jo Blackwell and Connect
34:13 Closing Remarks and Final Message

Find Jo here:

Website - https://www.joblackwell.co.uk/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/MidlifeandBeyondJoBlackwell

Transcript

Kim Benoy (00:01.262)
Hello everyone and welcome back to Midlife with Courage. I am Kim Benoy, your host. Thank you for being here. Today I have a lovely guest. Her name is Jo Blackwell. Welcome to the podcast, Jo.

Jo Blackwell (00:11.781)
Hi Kim, thanks for having me.

Kim Benoy (00:13.898)
I'm very excited to talk to you. I haven't talked to anyone on the other side of the ocean for a long time. So I'm happy to have you here today. For you for you just that reason, too. I was just thinking about that this morning. So we're going to talk about the lovely menopause years and you have a story about falling apart in your 40s, which I think is something all of our listeners can probably understand and


Kim Benoy (00:42.848)
relate to. So why don't you start if you want to start telling us about that what happened.

Jo Blackwell (00:48.497)
Sure. Well, I mean, what I would say is that I felt victim to believing what we're told about growing older. When I was about 48, my knees just weren't bending properly. And so I went to see an orthopedic surgeon and they took all the x-rays and so on. And when I went back into his office to see what was going on, he put his pen down, sat back and he went, not much we can do really.

I said, hang on a minute. He showed me the x-rays. Exactly. Showed me the x-rays and showed me that, you know, the closing of the gaps is osteoarthritis, basically. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, I'm paying to see you. I said, I want a solution. What do we do now? And he said, well, he said, you can come back to see me when you're 60 and your needs have reduced.

Kim Benoy (01:19.278)
Excuse me?

Kim Benoy (01:40.924)
no.

Jo Blackwell (01:41.957)
just let that sink in for a minute. And my mouth dropped open. And I said, what do you think I'm going to be doing when I'm 60? Am I going to be sitting on the sofa and watching daytime TV? I mean, are you mad? What the heck? And I went away and I phoned my sister and I said, he says, he says I'll be in a wheelchair by the time I'm 60. And he said, she immediately went to positivity, what I would call toxic positivity.

Kim Benoy (01:55.882)
my gosh.

Jo Blackwell (02:09.425)
I wanted her to say, well, that's a load of rubbish, isn't it? Oh, that's not awful, et cetera, et cetera. A commencement rate with me. And she said, oh, don't worry. We'll pimp your wheelchair and I'll take you out. I'm 65 this year. Let me tell you, I'm fitter now than I was at 48. No, my knees don't bend, nor not very far. If I'm in yoga and they say do the chair, I have to do the bar stool. But you know,

Kim Benoy (02:26.936)
Hooray.

E.

Jo Blackwell (02:37.604)
I learnt eventually to concentrate on what I can do and not what I can't. But in between that, of course, that was right in the middle of perimenopause. We weren't really talking about it 20 years ago. And I didn't know what was going on. I'd had palpitations, so they sent me to a heart specialist. My knees didn't bend. They sent me to an orthopaedic specialist, et cetera, et cetera. I was anxious. I lost all my confidence. I just didn't...

You know, I couldn't decide what to buy for dinner. I would stand in the supermarket and be going, I don't know what goes with what. I don't know what to do. And children were leaving home. I've got four children and they were all leaving. I'd taken the family business through a liquidation during the 2008 recession. Everything was just falling apart, including me. And it was easily the worst time in my life.

Kim Benoy (03:35.233)
Yeah, I think that's such a, it's a universal story for so many women. But the scary thing is that nobody, like they kept going, okay, here's your symptom, we're gonna go here, we're gonna do that. It wasn't like, why is this all happening? it's perimenopause. Like, why did it take so long for everyone to figure this out?

Jo Blackwell (04:01.329)
Well, it's because we've got this allopathic medical system where people are trained to specialize in bits of us and nobody ever looks at the whole person. don't look, nevermind looking at their mind, their emotions and their spiritual needs or whatever, all of these things come into play as we go through perimenopause. Because they talk about a midlife crisis. It's a crisis of identity. It's not what...

Kim Benoy (04:05.55)
Mm.

Kim Benoy (04:10.145)
Yes.

Right.

Jo Blackwell (04:29.435)
we think it is, you know, we kind of change, our identity is changing. You know, I was a full-time mother for years and years and years and suddenly I brought up four confident adults who obviously went off without backward glance. Cheerio! Sorry, that was very English of me, wasn't it? Cheerio!

Kim Benoy (04:31.106)
Right.

Kim Benoy (04:44.622)
See ya!

Kim Benoy (04:49.87)
I love it. See I said see ya, you said cheerio.

Jo Blackwell (04:54.129)
Not many young people would say that over here, that's an older person, an older generation word that comes from the war.

Kim Benoy (04:59.054)
gotcha. my gosh.

Jo Blackwell (05:04.761)
in the war. Yeah, so I had to change that. But what I did was I was really depressed. mean, you they gave me antidepressants and I'm thinking, well, okay, so they've given me antidepressants, which for my generation, that was a terribly shameful thing to admit that I wasn't coping. And honestly, you know, there wasn't much support for that at all.

Kim Benoy (05:18.338)
Mm-hmm.

Jo Blackwell (05:33.977)
And I suddenly realized that one of the things I was missing was connection, because I'd been used to living in this house with four children and their friends and all the bustle that you have when you're bringing up a family. I've never done the corporate thing. I was 20 when I got married, 22 when I had the first baby. You know, one of my children was ill, had chronic fatigue syndrome, so I ended up as full-time carer for her. And I never had the career. And what I did at

I was about 46 when this was happening, when I got prescribed the antidepressants. I started to write. I used to write for a living sort of 30 years ago. And I started to write a blog called Project 50, I called it, because I was coming up to my 50th birthday. No, so I was 48. I can't remember my own timeline. I'm sure people will be familiar with that thought. Yeah.

Kim Benoy (06:28.098)
That's okay.

definitely.

 So I started to write this blog, which I called Project 50. And it was it was kind of a howl in the dark, you know, talking about I don't want to be 50. I don't want to get older. You know, I'm washed up at 50 because all the physical problems that were going on and the lack, the loss of the confidence, the anxiety. Oh, my goodness. That feeling of waking up in the morning with that pit in your stomach of all that dread, you know.

Kim Benoy (07:38.754)
Yeah.

Jo Blackwell (07:39.237)
I hadn't, I've always been a worrier, but I've never been like that before. And so I started writing this blog and people started responding, which astonished me, you know, cause I was just sending it out into the ether. was like an online digital journal really. And people started coming back to me and said, I feel like that too. You know, I did this about it. I did that about it or whatever. And I suddenly realized what I was missing was connection.

Kim Benoy (07:56.984)
Sure, sure.

Jo Blackwell (08:09.189)
connection with other people, connection with people my own age, as much as anything else. And bearing in mind we were going through this awful recession at the time, so there was a lot of worry, a lot of stress. And I'd started to realize that knowing that you're not alone is really, powerful. So I started something that I called the Midlife Movement. And it was basically...

bringing together women that were feeling this way, just so we could all have a good old moan together online. And it gradually evolved from that. And I brought the book, the best of the blogs together in a book called, Oh Crap, I'm 50, a journey from fearful to fabulous sometimes. Yeah, I didn't realize that crap was regarded as a profanity, which caused a few problems on Facebook and things like that.

Kim Benoy (08:43.337)
Hahaha.

Kim Benoy (08:51.916)
Nice.

I love that.

Kim Benoy (09:07.884)
Really? Yeah, there's so many worse words than that, but okay.

Jo Blackwell (09:08.005)
There you go. Really? Yeah. Of all the things I could say. Exactly. Still. But yeah, so I kind of found my tribe and I realized I actually, when I was doing this blog, I decided that I do to interrupt if I'm talking too much. I've kind of gone on a roll. I decided I would.

Kim Benoy (09:30.633)
no, this is good. I love it.

Jo Blackwell (09:37.133)
interview people over 50 as I was approaching my 50th birthday to prove to myself that there was still life left. So I put a call out on local radio, look, I'm looking for people who are willing to talk to me, willing to have their photographs taken. And I got so many people sort of saying, I want to be on it, I want to be on it. And I thought I'd better go on a course and learn how to take photographs then if I'm going to take photographs. So I borrow. Yeah, jump in.

Kim Benoy (09:41.166)
Sure.

Kim Benoy (10:00.466)
I love that. You put this out there before you even knew it's like jumping until without the net. And then just you just knowing the net's gonna appear there when you do that.

Jo Blackwell (10:06.937)
Yes, exactly!

Well, I borrowed my husband's camera, which I'd never used. I didn't know how to turn it on. I mean, you I worked it out. But when I got on this course, it was like a three day course up in the Lake District, beautiful place. And I looked around and I thought, these people have got these great long lenses. And I booked myself in a course for professional photographers.

Kim Benoy (10:33.389)
no.

Jo Blackwell (10:34.577)
Oh my goodness, what shall I do? Shall I slink away all embarrassed? But no, I thought, no, I need to learn. And the instructor, lovely, lovely guy, I sidled up to him and said, could you show me how to use this camera? And he sort of gave me a bit of a grin, you know, and said, on, I'll show you. But they had lots of different models and so on there. And they had one woman who was similar age to me. And we each

Kim Benoy (10:38.993)
my goodness.

Jo Blackwell (11:01.329)
sort of took, I was watching what the other photographers were doing and the ones that were working as photographers, mostly male I have to say, those ones, would just step in front of her, pick the camera up and click, never spoke to her. She was really nervous and I stood in front of her and I thought, I can't do that, so I started chatting to her. Of course she relaxed, picked up the camera, looked through the camera and it took my breath away.

Kim Benoy (11:16.451)
Wow.

Jo Blackwell (11:29.489)
with the camera, through the lens, I could see her. I could see what she looked like when she was 16. I could see what she would look like at 80. I could see who she was. It was beautiful. Just, it just filled me up. Well, of course I came home and I'm like, you know, jattering away to my husband and he said, oh, don't tell me you're going to be a professional photographer now too. And I went, no, of course I'm not. Bloomin' am.

Jo Blackwell (12:00.517)
And that was the beginning of a 14 year career in photography. Quite by accident.

Kim Benoy (12:04.152)
my God, that's amazing. You had the courage to do that first of all, and then I got goosebumps when you were talking about seeing her through the lens and how you saw her at the different stages. there again, that's that connection you connected with her first. And that's amazing.

Jo Blackwell (12:14.161)
Hmm.

Jo Blackwell (12:21.359)
Yeah, yeah. And I did that all the way through, even when I went into a corporate environment and just had to do headshots, I would say to the young girl in front of me, or what, you know, where do see yourself going in this company? I always remember one young girl saying to me, I want to be the CEO. And I went, right, let's pose you like a CEO then. And we got some really good, powerful photographs of her, whereas before she'd kind of, you know, come in with her shoulders round and...

Kim Benoy (12:29.294)
Mm-hmm.

Jo Blackwell (12:50.225)
It's just lovely. It was just lovely. And I got a reputation for getting the best out of people. So it was fun. Unfortunately, I've had to stop that now. But because the arthritis is in lots of other places and my fingers get stuck, which isn't good when you're trying to take a photo. Hold the pose, hold the pose. Ow. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Kim Benoy (12:50.968)
Yeah.

Kim Benoy (12:57.208)
Sure.

That's amazing.

Kim Benoy (13:08.403)
sure. No, that's not a good thing.

Yes, give me a minute to move my finger. my gosh. my goodness. Yeah. And I don't want to be like, but, but you have, you still have evidence of how wonderful your photography career was and the things that you did and brought out in people.

Jo Blackwell (13:18.565)
You know, so that was sad. I had to give that up last year.

Jo Blackwell (13:32.269)
Yeah, yeah, it gave me so much more confidence and that's not to say I won't, I haven't picked my camera up since I stopped shooting professionally.

One one term that comes up when I was looking through your website and the information that you gave me before we recorded this is the term self ageism. Let's talk about what that is and what it means. And we'll go from there.

Jo Blackwell (14:16.817)
Mm.

Jo Blackwell (14:23.957)
Yeah, self-ageism is everything. It's everything that holds us back. And we live in a society that tells us that we are old after 50. You've only got to, I mean, right from the very start, my young grandchildren, I went to the park not long ago with a three year old and I reached up for something and I'd misjudged how high it was.

And I said, grandma can't reach that. And she said, well, maybe it's because you're old. And I said, no, it's because I'm not tall enough. But these messages go in, you know, I mean, if you've ever watched Bluey, which is a fantastic children's program in so many ways, but they've got this thing, here come the grannies. And they're there with their sticks and you know, Janice, you know.

Kim Benoy (15:02.03)
Nip that in the bud.

Jo Blackwell (15:21.649)
So it starts very, very young. have this, it's what they call an egregore, something in society that we just accept as true, which isn't an absolute truth. Bit like patriarchy. It's something that none of us really think about. We just live within that system. We live within a system where to age is to decline. And if we buy into that, I mean, who hasn't said, just had a senior moment.

you know, or blamed something on our age that actually, you know, I broke my ankle a couple of years ago and I said, honestly, I just, and I blamed my age and my son said, I could have broken my ankle if I'd spun around like you did. Why are you saying it's because of your age? And it pulled me up short. The thing is, if we think of ourselves as old, if we let that old woman in, we're going to be old.

And there's nothing wrong with being old, we need a new word for it really. But you've only got to look at the lengths we go to, make sure our hair isn't grey. Make sure, I mean I stopped dying my hair a couple of years ago now, I think during Covid and I just don't dye anymore and it's so liberating not to have to sit there for hours on end and spend all that money. You know, we go to all these things like, you know, the little lines. I don't like the little lines above my lips.

Kim Benoy (16:20.429)
Yes.

Jo Blackwell (16:45.937)
I'm not saying I'm not vain anymore, I'm just as vain as I've ever been, but I don't see why I should inject something into myself to look acceptable in society. There's this thing at the moment, I was on LinkedIn the other day and somebody was saying that recruitment firms are telling older people, not just women, anyone over 50, take some of your experience off so that you don't look as old.

Kim Benoy (16:53.912)
Yeah.

Yes.

Jo Blackwell (17:12.281)
Now, it's not okay at all. Yes, let's just start a job by telling a lie. It's crazy. But you imagine if you're unemployed and you need work, you're going to do what it takes. And then you're going to go in there, you're going to deny any menopause symptoms, because menopause, is, know, men don't have this rite of passage that says, now I am older. But we have this rite of passage that says we are no longer fertile. Therefore, in this

Kim Benoy (17:12.878)
That's not okay.

Kim Benoy (17:18.754)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kim Benoy (17:35.522)
Right.

Jo Blackwell (17:39.717)
Patriarchal society, we are no longer of any use.

this all goes in and affects the way we feel about ourselves. And that in a nutshell is what self-ageism is. It's an outdated narrative, an egregore that we all live within that we need to be aware of. And once we're aware of it, we need to challenge it in our own minds.

Kim Benoy (18:04.482)
Right, right. How do we do that? Because it is such a, I mean, I have ideas and I have things that I talk about with women, the little things that we do that sometimes we'll just say it's just me. I use the word just as a four letter word, you you minimize yourself. So that's kind of one thing that I do, but what are some things that we can do to, to maybe reverse that in our own minds?

Jo Blackwell (18:20.108)
Yeah.

Jo Blackwell (18:30.787)
It's difficult, isn't it? It's something that I've been working on now. I keep telling this story. If ever my daughter listens to a podcast I'm on, it's unlikely, but she'll go, why do you keep talking about me?

Kim Benoy (18:32.268)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Benoy (18:42.818)
You're in trouble.

Jo Blackwell (18:47.505)
She lives in New Zealand. I went over to see her and family and we had quite a few heated debates because there is this narrative going around at the moment about older people hoarding wealth, keeping it away from younger people, stopping them from getting on the housing ladder. We're hoarding housing, we're hoarding wealth. And it is this narrative that is being pushed on us to distract us, I think, from where the wealth really is and where the blocks are.

Kim Benoy (18:49.453)
Okay.

Jo Blackwell (19:16.237)
not to get too political about it, but it's about awareness isn't it and about thinking about this and she kept talking about this and I kept pushing back and saying look hang on a minute you know if older people have their houses and own their houses they've worked blooming hard they surely they deserve to have their houses.


Jo Blackwell (20:13.273)
Anyway, we got a few moments to go out for brunch together and I thought, lovely. She'd just gone back to work after maternity leave. So we hadn't seen much of her. So we went out for brunch. She sat me down and she went, have you and dad thought about looking at retirement villages?

Kim Benoy (20:33.176)
Wow.

Jo Blackwell (20:35.117)
After the air cleared, got through the blue air.

Kim Benoy (20:37.495)
You

Jo Blackwell (20:42.149)
What are you talking about? And she said, well, she said, you're nearly 65, Mum, Dad's 68. You know, I think maybe you should be thinking about this now because, you're not getting any younger. You're not. And I said, I'm not ready to go into a retirement village. What are you talking about? And it was this idea that that we should be fading now. We should be slowing down now. I've got two views on this.

Number one, think if we want to carry on working, carry on creating businesses, etc, etc, until we're 89, 95, whatever, you know, if we can do it, we should be encouraged to do it.

Kim Benoy (21:22.467)
Right.

Jo Blackwell (21:26.821)
But your energy changes in your 60s. And I've definitely found I can no longer multitask. I have to concentrate on one thing at a time. And my mental health is so much better for that. I can no longer work through the night and expect a function the next day. You know, that used to be a go-to for me. I'll just work through the night for five nights in a row. It'll be fine.

you you learn to protect your energy a lot more so you operate in a different way some people want to slow down i've i've worked for 50 years i i just want to tend my garden just i just use the work that four-letter word sorry about that can you

Kim Benoy (21:53.582)
Nope.

Kim Benoy (22:08.374)
You did. It's okay in that instance.

Jo Blackwell (22:14.703)
don't want to be out in the world anymore. I want to close my world a little bit. And that's fine too. The point is it's about choice, isn't it? An agency. So ways to combat it. Awareness is the first thing. As soon as you start noticing what you and your friends think and say about older people. So you might look at the Oscars or what have you and you go, look, she's let herself go, hasn't she? Gwyneth Paltrow, she's not had any, no, not Gwyneth Paltrow. What's her name from Friends? Phoebe from Friends.

Kim Benoy (23:35.274)
Lisa Kudrow.

Jo Blackwell (23:35.473)
Lisa Kudrow, she's not had any Botox, has she? look at the state of her, she should. Brilliant, brilliant. Lisa Kudrow, I love you if you're listening to this. Because in my opinion, we need to see more older faces. We need to see what 65 looks like, 64, whatever. We need to normalise seeing older faces. But...

Kim Benoy (23:43.598)
you

Yes, yes.

Kim Benoy (23:55.201)
Right.

Kim Benoy (23:59.886)
Right.

Jo Blackwell (24:02.531)
There was all this hoo-ha about Nicole Kidman recently on the red carpet. She's 60 years old and she's just actually, you can't be that thin and be healthy. know, apparently the poor girl, has to wear wigs because your hair falls out when you're constantly dieting. You know, I mean, what are we doing to ourselves? We need to...

Kim Benoy (24:07.694)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Benoy (24:16.887)
Right.

Kim Benoy (24:23.374)
no. Yeah. Yeah.

Jo Blackwell (24:31.009)
Old shouldn't be a dirty word. We need to get to this stage where we're not ashamed. So whenever you find yourself making excuses, you know, before COVID, I used to speak quite a lot locally. And I really had problems with it. I felt that I was too old, too fat. Nobody's going to be interested in what I was going to say.

Kim Benoy (24:33.677)
right?

Kim Benoy (24:50.03)
Mm-hmm.

Jo Blackwell (24:59.119)
And it wasn't until I thought to myself, hang on a minute, I'm getting in the way of the message I want to put out. My message is more important than what I look like. And when I forget my words on the stage, I'm normally talking to a room full of women. I would just go, I'm really sorry, but that thought just walked over there as I was saying it. I forgot the end of my sentence. And you could see them all relax. she's one of us. And support other women.

Kim Benoy (25:07.8)
Yes.

Kim Benoy (25:18.102)
You

Yeah. Yep. Cause they've been there too.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jo Blackwell (25:29.093)
You know, why are we sort of buying into this? We have a newspaper over here, I don't know if you've heard of it, called The Daily Mail. It's the most toxic, vile rag that you could hope to read. And they specialize in pulling people down, particularly women. And it's just vile. one of the female journalists the other day was saying,

Kim Benoy (25:36.47)
Mm-hmm. I've heard of it.

Jo Blackwell (25:55.793)
remember which celebrity it was but somebody needs to say tell her the truth about this and it was because she was showing her aging face. Look at Pamela Anderson all the blowback she's got because she's appearing on the red carpet looking her age you know yeah yeah this is what you look like we shouldn't be ashamed of it we should say so I'm 65 so I'm 70 so I'm 70 and

Kim Benoy (26:05.083)
my gosh.

Kim Benoy (26:11.744)
Yeah, no makeup. Like, good for you, you know? Yeah. Yeah. No.

Jo Blackwell (26:24.305)
And this is why everywhere I go, I always manage to put my age in there somewhere. Because I just, I've got to walk my talk. You know, I'm not immune to all these pressures and so on. And I do find myself, you know, like I've got a photo with my grandchild and I go, ooh, and I go, ooh, I have to pull myself back because I'm giving that child, that girl, this impression that how you look is so important, you know.

Kim Benoy (26:29.794)
Yeah.

Kim Benoy (26:34.701)
Right.

Jo Blackwell (26:51.045)
Yeah, grandma does have a red face in photos, you know, that's just the way it is. Yeah.

Kim Benoy (26:55.229)
That's how it is. Yeah. I've been I've kind of been going through that too with I've got you know, you I've got this belly all of sudden, like probably wasn't all of a sudden, but this menopause belly and I had my picture taken with it for a work thing last week and I looked at the photo and I'm Oh, no, we have to take that over because I look pregnant, basically. So I made him take it over. But that's not me saying

Jo Blackwell (27:04.387)
Mmm. Yeah.

Jo Blackwell (27:17.499)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kim Benoy (27:23.116)
The outside world is going to see me like that. It's me saying, okay, I don't like what's going on here and I need to change it. So that's kind of my journey right now is okay, how can I be healthier? So I'm not. So

Jo Blackwell (27:27.621)
But yeah. Yeah.

Jo Blackwell (27:37.073)
It's like that cortisol sort of belly, isn't it? You know, yeah. Don't worry. I have one of those too. I call it my smile because when you look at yourself in the mirror and you've got that slight overhang, you know, it goes up at the edges, doesn't it? It's a smile. Yeah. I look at my lumps and my bumps and everything. And I think to myself, this belly.

Kim Benoy (27:40.064)
Yes, yes it is. Yes. Smile.

Kim Benoy (27:50.286)
Okay, I like that. I'm going to change that thought.

Kim Benoy (28:02.998)
Yeah.

Jo Blackwell (28:05.999)
has carried four children and birthed four children into the world. It's eaten loads of cakes and really enjoyed them. It had pizza last night as a takeaway. And it's just like that. I don't know if you've ever heard of the romantic novelist Barbara Cartland. Yes, she was always in pink and she used to write these romance novels.

Kim Benoy (28:07.842)
Yes, yeah. Right. Mm-hmm.

Kim Benoy (28:26.636)
Yes. Yes.

Kim Benoy (28:32.696)
Sure.

Jo Blackwell (28:32.729)
She famously said that a woman gets to a certain age and you have to make a choice. You either choose your body or your face. So if you're going to choose your body, you're going to have to diet and your face is going to get older because it's going to get thinner and you're going to be able to see the wrinkles. Or you can eat what you want and you can sit down a lot and nobody can see your body.

Kim Benoy (28:44.014)
Mmm.

Kim Benoy (28:47.902)
Mm-hmm.

That's true.

Jo Blackwell (29:00.401)
I'm not advocating that people, I'm just saying. No, but whenever I'm thinner, I look older because the wrinkles aren't puffed out with my little pockets of fat.

Kim Benoy (29:05.368)
do that.

He. Yeah. Yeah, I do remember someone. I was a nurse for a long time and one of our ward secretaries was, you know, a little plumper and she says, my skin looks so good and my face doesn't look wrinkly because I have a little extra fat there. So like, it's okay to be a little chubby.

Jo Blackwell (29:26.48)
Yeah. Yeah, I draw the line when my eyes disappear. So, you know, when they're like currents because you, you know, you give a big smile and suddenly you've got no eyes. Yeah. And then I think, oh, okay, maybe I've taken it a bit too far. Cut back on the pizza.

Kim Benoy (29:32.715)
Yes, yes. Yes. There's the eyes are gone. Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, we kind of got off on a little bit of a tangent there, but that's okay. Just a little maybe we'll see. I don't know. It's been so nice though. So, so again, we're talking about the self ageism and what we can do about it and how it affects us.

Jo Blackwell (29:45.691)
We did that, didn't we? You might need to edit that out.

Hahaha

Jo Blackwell (29:58.449)
Mm.

Kim Benoy (30:00.961)
And I know you, you, you are writer, you've got books, and I understand you have a new one coming or it's been coming. us about that. Okay.

Jo Blackwell (30:07.973)
It's just launched, it's called Aging Wonderfully Well, The Good News About Midlife and Growing Older. Because there is some. And I found that a lot of women were saying to me, because I have a YouTube channel where I put out a video every week and talk about all the different aspects of getting older and midlife. I talk less now about menopause because I've gone past that stage and I'm now interested in what comes next. And a lot of women say, well, it's all very well, but what happens in post-menopause?

Kim Benoy (30:14.626)
love it. Yes.

Kim Benoy (30:22.68)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Benoy (30:30.829)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Benoy (30:37.261)
Yeah.

Jo Blackwell (30:37.967)
What I didn't realize, because we're taught, aren't we, that after menopause, that's it, everything, you just go downhill and you get sadder and you get weaker and more frail and eventually you're going to die. Great. You know, I mean, is it any wonder we're a bit miserable about getting older? Actually, what happens is we get happier. The science tells us that. If you've probably heard of the happiness, the U curve of happiness.

There's like, if you imagine a you, we're really happy when we're children, we get to the bottom in our 40s and 50s. But then it starts climbing back up again. And we're back to our childlike happiness levels by the time we're 80. So as far as I'm concerned, it's all to come. The other thing I didn't expect was that my brain would get better. It's more clear. It's more...

The new brain science, if you check out Lisa Moscone's book, Dr. Lisa Moscone, The Menopause Brain, women's brains weren't studied. We're always lumped in with men, with medical trials and so on and so forth. But we're not small men, we're different. We've got different hormones, our brains are different.

She discovered that the brain fog that so many of us experience during perimenopause can be seen on brain scans and it's due to the less energy going through the brain at that time, due to the, I think the ups and downs. I'm not a scientist, that's the way I understand it. But the interesting thing is that as we come out of perimenopause, it changes again. So our brains are not declining, they're just re-

Kim Benoy (32:17.803)
Jo Blackwell (32:29.113)
rejigging the circuitry if you like. So our brains are just as good as they've ever been. Our recall might not be as good, but I think of it like this, you know, if you've got a Rolodex of all your experiences, our Rolodex is a four. So we can recall things, but it takes longer. But our pattern recognition is better. So we can see, we are better at seeing patterns and things.

Kim Benoy (32:36.205)
Yeah.

Great.

Kim Benoy (32:45.857)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Jo Blackwell (32:57.733)
And that's something that develops with age. And it must have something to do with experience as well. And this is why it's so ridiculous that older people are being pushed out of the workforce, because we have those skills. Younger people have the energy and the push, the push, push, push. We might not have so much of the, we don't want to push so much now. Maybe we want to just sit back and look at the overview. Companies need both. We need to be working together.

Kim Benoy (33:07.512)
Yes.

Kim Benoy (33:16.504)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Benoy (33:23.308)
Right.

Exactly.

Jo Blackwell (33:27.523)
and this intergenerational cooperation that I feel that we are being discouraged by, by the narrative that is being pushed now, is what we need to thrive as a society. And it benefits all of us. And so going back to combating self-ageism, what I would say, awareness is first, challenging it is second.

Kim Benoy (33:36.002)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Benoy (33:44.801)
Yes.

Jo Blackwell (33:57.313)
Living the change is third. So find those intergenerational spaces where you can mix with younger people, not just family. I'm trying to do this myself now because I'm finding that my world has shrunk and I'm going to join a working group. I'm not going to join a working group, a walking group. You know, so that I can get some exercise, but also I can meet women of all ages.

Kim Benoy (34:20.238)
yes, yes.

Kim Benoy (34:26.657)
Yeah.

Jo Blackwell (34:26.885)
you know, and talk and so on. And just remember that we can be mentored by younger people in the same ways we can mentor them. It's a circular thing. Stay interested in life, stay curious. And the final thing I would say on that is learn to let go. Let go of youth. It's great while it lasts, but there are good things for you now at this stage in your life.

Kim Benoy (34:37.058)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jo Blackwell (34:56.079)
Let go of holding on to your children. Let go of that identity you might have had when you were at work, if you're planning to retire. By letting go, we open the door then to growing. We continue to grow till the day we die. And I was talking to somebody the other day and she said, I am declining, my body is declining. But isn't it interesting that growth and decline can live in the same person? In the same space?

Kim Benoy (35:22.2)
Yes, yeah, we just are growing in different ways than what we've done before. I love that. Yeah.

Jo Blackwell (35:27.345)
Yeah. So if anybody's listening to this in their forties and going through perimenopause, I want you to know there's so much ahead of you. Postmenopause is great. You know, if you, know some people have challenges, some people have, you know, health or financial, all those challenges, which we do at any stage of life. I'm at 65 nearly. I'm happier than I've ever been.

I know who I am. My confidence has come back, not in the same way as it was before, but in a much steadier, more grounded way. Life is good post-menopause. So just navigate through the transition, which there was one section in there in my book about navigating the transition. And then you come out of the other side and there's so much there for you.

Kim Benoy (36:23.938)
Such a hopeful message and it gives me it makes me feel better about what I'm currently going through. And I know the listeners out there will appreciate that as well. Jo, where can they find you if they'd like to listen to your podcast or learn more about you join your sub stack? Tell us about where they can find you.

Jo Blackwell (36:28.305)
good.

Yeah.

Jo Blackwell (36:43.537)
Well, if you go to my website, which is www.joblackwell.co.uk, everything is on there. There are links to everything, the podcast, the YouTube channel, where you can buy my book and so on. That's on Amazon. We're aging wonderfully well by Jo Blackwell. Yeah, I think that's probably the best hub for people to go to.

Kim Benoy (37:06.966)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. We'll put that in the show notes so people can just go to that and find everything they need to know about you.

Jo Blackwell (37:11.171)
Yeah. Yeah, come and join me, Midlife and Beyond with Jo Blackwell on YouTube. Love to see you there.

Kim Benoy (37:17.014)
Yes, and I have listened to a couple of your episodes of your podcast too. Very nice, very great messages. And yeah, wonderful. So wonderful. I hate to say goodbye to you. Because this has been so lovely. But is there any one last message you want to give the listeners as we say goodbye?

Jo Blackwell (37:22.129)
good.

Jo Blackwell (37:29.881)
Hahaha

Jo Blackwell (37:39.461)
Just, you know, like Mary Oliver said, you know, this one life that you have, she didn't say that. She didn't say it like that. my gosh. I can't remember what she said. But you know the quote, that famous quote, what are you going to do with your one wonderful life? You know, it doesn't end at 50. Menopause is just a transition. And you've got so much more to live and so much more to look forward to. Look for the upsides of it.

Kim Benoy (37:55.892)
Yes, yes.

Jo Blackwell (38:08.068)
Look for what you can do, not what you can't.

Kim Benoy (38:12.354)
We will take that to heart. Thank you so much, Jo. I would love to talk to you again sometime soon.

Jo Blackwell (38:17.679)
Yes, definitely.