This first episode of Putting the Men Into Menopause addresses the issues of modern day men and women living together. How can we live with each other in harmony rather than it feeling like a battle of who is the most tired/stressed out and full of resentment. This episode is just 40 minutes, please listen or read the transcription and let me know what value you got from it. I'd also love to know what else you would like help with during this mid life stage. Join the conversation over on Instagram @puttingthemeninmenopause and register to be the first to hear about new content and my upcoming workshops https://www.superchargedclub.co.uk/puttingthemenintomenopause Show Transcript: Emma Fullwood (00:03): Welcome to putting men in menopause. A really interesting thing is I have been delaying this because I wanted an all singing, all dancing. You know, I am Emma Fullwood and this is what I do with music playing in the BA background, et cetera. And this perfectionism and I decided this morning as I finished my morning workout and actually was reduced to tears over something, which I'm gonna share with you, which will hopefully, or will really resonate. And I thought, you know what, this is what I need to share. You know, I don't need this fancy music and I don't need all these notes and it to be really perfect. What I need to share today is raw it's in my mind. And it's what I see. Men and women struggling with all the time as a coach that supports women. Emma Fullwood (00:58): Mainly I've started working with a few men recently. It's the same thing that keeps coming up time and time again. And today I was reduced to tears because I was actually thinking about my own childhood and actually thinking about my parents and their happiness and how their kind of arguments affected me. Now they weren't arguing all the time and maybe my mom is watching this. She'll be shouting at us. You had a great childhood. Yes, mom. Yes, dad. I had an amazing, amazing childhood. And I, you know, had, well, it was amazing. I had great parents, so I didn't have a bad upbringing at all. And you may be thinking, what the hell has this got to do with menopause? I've tuned in to understand what para menopause is. And for me, para menopause is a midlife awakening. Yes, we can have symptoms and I'm gonna come into that into the other podcast. Emma Fullwood (02:03): I wanna start this very, very different to maybe what normal podcasts talk about menopause and because it's a midlife awakening, I really believe it can be AWI life awakening for men as well. Okay. We've all heard of he's having a midlife crisis. Well, maybe you are, maybe you are at the same time as your partner is in per menopause or menopause. And at the same time as your daughters are going through their periods on that note, I also do period coaching for parents to support their young girls and also help their young sons understand what a girl goes through when she's just 10 to 14 years old, normally like, wow. These changes in our body happen so young. I've got a 10 year old boy and my sister started her periods at 10. I can't imagine my 10 year old boy deep having to deal with that. Emma Fullwood (03:00): Right? So maybe you are a man listening to this and you can go back to when you were 10 years old and what you were doing. And just imagine for a moment, if all of a sudden you bled for quite heavily, for seven days every month and the swimming that you loved, or the dancing that you loved, you know, everything ha everything changed all of a sudden. So just go back to that and just honor that every single girl in the world between normally 10 and 16 years old goes through this, can you imagine that? So on that note, I'm gonna welcome all men to this podcast. Maybe you are a man interested in women's health. Hello. I love you. I love you for being here and spending this time. Maybe you are a woman that is interested in what I'm saying to men about menopause. Emma Fullwood (03:55): I love you. Thank you for being here. I am Emma Fullwood Instagram at the underscore, Emma Fullwood. If you wanna follow me on follow me on social media, as well as at putting men in menopause. So I think this is a time, a brilliant time in the world where we are the chosen ones to actually change how we support women's bodies. And as you are listening to this you have been chosen because you are here to actually change how the next generation live. Okay? So how our sons and daughters, if you have them or nieces and nephews actually start living together as a man and woman. So this podcast is going to be life changing. It's so much deeper than the symptoms of para menopause, menopause. What are the symptoms? You can Google that everybody's talking about, that I actually on this PA podcast, podcast, podcast, wanna give you ideas, wanna give you support. Emma Fullwood (05:03): And I want to first off say this podcast came about from my partner and my friend's partners actually really struggling to know what to do to support their women and support women that they were are working with during this time. Okay. It was like all of a sudden, wow, what is this? What what's going on? What's everybody talking about? So I'm gonna retract. I'm gonna retract back to why I cried after my exercise session today, I do 15 minutes exercise every morning. And women enjoy me on Facebook. Actually, sometimes they join with their kids, their dogs, and often they join with their partners as well. Nobody can see you exercise. Everyone can just see me and it's 15 minutes every single day. And it is, it is beautiful way to exercise where we are. Not all or nothing. Emma Fullwood (06:01): We're not starting stopping. We're not doing hardcore exercise for one day a week, and then not going back, cuz we've injured ourselves for two or three weeks. So 15 minutes every single day. And after this 15 minute session, I started to talk about I always do a mindset at the end and this one came about my, my dad who's actually ill at the moment. And I said, he's ill because you know, people are asking what's wrong with him. And I don't really wanna go into that, but it's basically old age and lack of self care. Okay. Lack of self care. He has drank and smoked pretty much all his life. He's worked really, really hard, ran a very successful business. He has paid for our holidays, our ski trips, our school ski trips. He has, you know, we've got four bedroom detached house with a, you know, a garage and a car. Emma Fullwood (06:54): We go on holidays. We had a dog, you know, on the outside we had absolutely everything, but on the inside, my dad worked, okay. My dad worked now you may be a woman listening to this and say, well, yeah, I work as well. I work to support the house. Great, fantastic. That's brilliant. And I celebrate you. Maybe you are a man resonating with this. Maybe you don't have a four bedroom detached house. I know I live in Brighton in the UK and there's no way that we would have a four bedroom detached house with a garage in Brighton. we maybe have a a, what you call it a beach chat. We all be living in a beach chat, but you know, he did really, really well. And he, he worked really, really hard and he worked hard, so hard that he was so stressed by working hard and he loved his job running his own carpet business which is still successful today. Emma Fullwood (07:55): But the way that he he let go of his stress was drinking and smoking. And on a weekend it was more, it was like that party, that party life, where you work all week you come home, you know, you have beer to distress. And then on a weekend you know, they would, they would take us down the quarry bank, labor club and drink some more. So I can't, you know, they couldn't afford to drink as, as much as we can actually afford to drink now. And the shops weren't open all the time. Like they are now to get the alcohol. So it wasn't 24 hours 24 hour petrol stations, you know, where you can actually buy alcohol. I mean, what the hell is that about? But anyway, you know, and there weren't cafes that you could buy alcohol in and there weren't, I've got a shop over the road from me, which you know, is open practically all day where I can buy alcohol from. Emma Fullwood (08:53): So I know in the recent lockdown, a lot of people have been drinking more. The stress levels have led us to drink and maybe smoke more or maybe eat more. Okay. Maybe it's food for you. Maybe it's big bags of ke bell chips or big boxes of chocolates on a night, whatever share bags, you're eating, share bags of M and Ms when they should be a share bag for the family. So basically whatever it is, he didn't look after himself. He yet he supported for the family. Okay. Financially supported for the family. And he did amazing my mom. Okay. They lived together a marriage. My mom also supported the family. Okay. She worked part-time she worked for my dad when I was little, she worked part-time. And the rest of the time she was cooking, cleaning, sew in sequence, on my dance costume, sorting our social calendar out. Emma Fullwood (09:49): You know, she did everything else. everything. Okay. Absolutely. Everything. My dad went to work. He did that bit brought in the money. My mom did everything else. Now we could have the argument of, you know my dad brought in more money than my mom's part-time job. My mom's part-time job was actually to keep to give her kind of pocket money and to actually make sure that me and my sister could do the dancing, the horse riding, you know, whatever the hobbies were. That's her money went on that. Right? So we've got two people here working extremely hard. Got it. Maybe while listening to this, as I said, as a man working hard and as a woman working hard, maybe you are the man doing the job of what I've described as my mom does. And maybe you are the woman doing the job that, you know, the, the more full time work that I've just described that my dad does.
