A menopause identity crisis often arrives when the children leave, a marriage ends and a woman asks who she is now. Yvonne Posada, a yoga therapist and shaman, tells Jeremy Van Wert how she moved from "I'm not good enough" toward self-love, and what she says women over 50 can do: take care of themselves.
ᛉKey takeaways
- Yvonne describes women over 50 as giving and giving until the children leave or a marriage ends and they no longer know who they are.
- She believes cycles carry messages from the body that society teaches women to ignore.
- Yvonne says everyone holds both masculine and feminine energy, and that balance between them is what brings beauty into a person.
- She credits ceremony, ritual and a despacho, which she calls a tangible prayer, with helping her let go of old pain.
- She says her low self-worth came from expectations of how life would go, and that living in those expectations kept her out of the present.
- Her message to women over 50 is that it is time to take care of you.
ᛃ Moments in this one
ᚠWhat is a menopause identity crisis?
Jeremy describes what he sees in his counseling work: women whose children are leaving or have left, caught in an identity crisis that can come out as irritability or rage. She asks what it was all worth and who she is now that her identity was so tied to raising children.
Yvonne Posada says she sees the same thing. She turned 64 recently and leads retreats for women over 50 with Pachamama Sacred Paths, a church Jeremy describes as based in Mexico. In her words, women give and give, and then when the kids leave or a divorce comes, they feel lost in the universe and need something to bring them back into themselves.
Yvonne was a lactation consultant for more than 25 years and a doula, so she has watched these changes up close. If you are in that place, Jeremy offers individual therapy and coaching.
ᚢCycles as messages from the body
Yvonne believes each cycle carries a message about what is happening in a woman's life, and that society teaches women to bury those messages. In her view, when menopause comes, the messages surface together, which is where the anger comes from.
When Jeremy asks what she means by demeaned, she says people dismiss a woman as just having PMS. Yvonne says she sees PMS as a sign of not listening to ourselves, and that instead of covering it up, a woman can ask what she is ignoring. These are her views, and she does not present them as medical advice.
ᚦMasculine and feminine energy in balance
Yvonne says she did not understand this until she began working with Pachamama Sacred Paths. Her view is that everyone has both masculine and feminine energy, and that what brings beauty into a person is balance between them.
Looking back at her years as a mother, she says she once thought she was both mother and father to her children. Now she believes she was using her masculine and feminine energy for them.
ᚨYvonne's story: pain, divorce and starting over
Yvonne tells a hard story. She describes being diagnosed with a painful nerve condition in 2022 that limited her arm movement, then going through a non-amicable divorce and becoming estranged from her children. Family told her she had mental problems, though she had seen a therapist for years.
She had also been telling herself she was not good enough. Yvonne says plant medicine helped her see that her family had been dysfunctional, and that she had been living out expectations: marry, have children and live happily ever after. In her view, expectations keep you in the future, and when things fall apart, you blame yourself.
Her daughter found Pachamama Sacred Paths, and Yvonne signed up for a retreat on her own. She says it changed her life. She also mentions painful experiences in her marriage; this post leaves out the details.
ᚱLetting go of her children in ceremony
At that first retreat, Yvonne says, she began to release the idea that she would remain a wife and a mother in the old sense. She saw a man walk away, and it became her husband walking away. A young man became each of her sons in turn, smiling as if to say, mom, we are going to be okay.
Later she walked up a hill to three trees that stood for her three children. She hugged each and said, I love you and I release you. Yvonne says the point is that she will always be their mother, and her door will always be open, but she gave birth to them and does not own them.
In a women's retreat, she says, the medicine told her she was strong and good enough and would manage her life on her own two feet. Jeremy calls this healing from the inside out, in contrast to symptom management, and Yvonne agrees.
ᚲChoosing a shamanic initiation at 62
Yvonne says she asked how she would support herself at 62 or 63, with a divorce under way and limited use of her arm. She was an expert in myofascial release, a hands-on therapy, and had created yoga myofascial release therapy in 2007. Plant medicine, she says, had helped her regain courage, so she tried the shamanic initiation training.
The training included rituals such as cutting threads while naming old pain, like the thought that she is not good enough, and making a despacho. Yvonne describes a despacho as a package of what you want to release and what your heart wants, given to the earth, the ocean or a fire as a tangible prayer.
She also describes letting go of the scientific, religious and political paradigms so she could come into the center of who she is. Her definition of a shaman is someone who loves. People who want to explore this kind of change in a legal clinical setting can learn about Jeremy's three-day psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy retreat, Light in the Mountains.
ᚷWhat Yvonne says to women over 50
Asked to speak woman to woman, Yvonne calls this stage exquisitely painful, even the most painful of her life, and also a realization that she is a woman. She encourages women to honor the end of their cycle as they honored its beginning, because now they can give themselves the care they gave to others.
She says to love yourself, because this is not your fault or his fault, and to remember that women are there to support you. For ongoing conversation with people on a similar path, Thriving Spirits, the Mindful Mutiny community, offers live Fireside Chats and a course library.
Jeremy ends by praising her humility and courage. If you are unsure whether this kind of work is right for you, he offers a straight read on whether therapy and retreat work suits you.
Plant medicine and ceremony are discussed as the guest's personal experience and are not a substitute for medical or mental health care. The episode also touches on difficult family experiences. If you are struggling, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional or your local emergency services. Psychedelics and plant medicines may be illegal where you live and aren't right for everyone. Nothing here is a recommendation to use any substance.
ᚨ Questions people ask
Why can menopause trigger an identity crisis?
Jeremy and Yvonne both point to a time when children leave, roles change and a woman's identity has been tied up in caregiving. Yvonne says women often give so much that they lose track of who they are.
What does Yvonne mean by cycles carrying messages?
Yvonne believes the body sends messages through a woman's cycle that society teaches her to ignore. She says that when menopause arrives, ignored messages can surface as anger. This is her personal view, not medical advice.
What are masculine and feminine energy?
Yvonne says everyone carries both, and that balance between them brings beauty into a person. She does not offer a strict definition, only that understanding both has helped her.
What is a despacho?
Yvonne describes it as a wrapped package holding what you want to release and what you hope for, such as abundance. She then gives it to the earth, the ocean or a fire as a tangible prayer.
What is Yvonne's advice for women over 50?
She says it is time to take care of yourself, to honor the end of your cycle and to love yourself. She adds that women are there to support one another.