Let’s Talk Love Podcast Season 9 Episode 11 with Dr. Amanda Hanson | Transcript
12.06.25
This transcript is from the Let’s Talk Love Podcast, available in our Podcast Feed.
Robin Ducharme | Welcome to Let's Talk Love the podcast that brings you real talk, fresh ideas and expert insights. Every week, our guests are the most trusted voices in love and relationships, and they're here for you with tools, information and friendly advice to help you expand the ways you love, relate and communicate, we tackle the big questions, not shying away from the complex, the messy, the awkward and the joyful parts of relationships. I'm your host, Robin Ducharme, now Let's Talk Love. Welcome to this episode of Let's Talk Love. I'm so happy to be joined by the beautiful, intelligent and wise, you are our muse for today Dr Amanda Hanson. We're going to be talking about your your new book it's called Muse, The Magnetism of Women Who Stop Abandoning Themselves. Thank you for joining us. Amanda.
Amanda Hanson l Well thank you for having me. I love talking all things musings.
Robin Ducharme | So tell us about your tell us what the title of your book Muse and what that means.
Amanda Hanson l Yes I think that women are often young girls let's start with young girls into early womanhood are indoctrinated into this belief and this philosophy that they are to look outside of themselves, to have a sense of who they are, whether it's approval, love, worthiness, it's always this idea of, let me look outside to see if I'm getting the nods and the approval for my own life, and what I really would like women to start doing is learning how to become the muse of their own life and paying attention most to internally what is lighting you up, what is really feeling like it's coming from your internal guidance system, as opposed to strangers or people who have different plans and ideas for what they want you to do with their life. I really want women to learn to become that internal Muse as the guiding system for their entire lives.
Robin Ducharme | I really love
Amanda Hanson l Thank you
Robin | You say in the book that it's important that as girls, women, that we, and a lot of us don't have this, that we have a woman who shows up in her glory, in in her womanhood, in love with herself, really, and and I think that, you know, you do point this out, and I think it's true that's very rare, right,
Amanda l Very damaging to the generations that come. Yeah
Robin | It really is like, I think about, you know, the women my mom's age, for instance, and how I grew up in that culture of being that little girl that went to Weight Watchers with my mom. I watched her look in the mirror and hate her body and speak out loud that way, you know. And then that, of course, translated to me looking at my body in if my mom doesn't love her body, then that means, like when you know, and I am from my mom, like and I can see that my body, even as a little girl, is shaped like my mom's body, right? Because genetically, I'm half her, and I'm thinking, so that means something's wrong with me.
Amanda l Correct
Robin | And and so and that I think is just so prevalent. And
Amanda l Yes, it's an internalized message from this time this girl is so little that is already beginning to critiqueand search for what is wrong rather than what is right. It is a very devastating undercurrent that plays in the background of every woman's life.
Robin | And so, so you were, you were, you were working as a clinical psychologist for for 30, for 35 years. Is that correct?
Amanda l No. For 20
Robin | 25
Amanda l Yeah. 25, 27 now.Yeah.
Robin | Yes. And so what, what were you doing in your clinical practice for those 25 years? And then how did you end up where you're doing now, like you're, you're, it's all about women empowerment. You're an author, you're a speaker, and you're, you're helping women come into their own power. So can you tell us about your journey on
Amanda l Yes
Robin | Psychologist. And now where you're at
Amanda l Yeah previous to, so everything I'm doing is still as a psychologist, right. But previous to the past five years, I was doing traditional armchair therapy, where the woman comes into the room, sits in her chair, tells me about what's going on in her day or her week, the continual struggles, or, you know, what's still plaguing her from childhood. And we stay on the merry go round for quite some time, and I have a sneaking suspicion over the years that something's missing. Something is terribly flawed about the system that I was trained in and when I got my doctorate, and then what I really started to piece apart was, oh my gosh, of course, Amanda, just like religion, just. Like science, just like philosophy, everything's been written by men for men, so has psychology. So you're only actually able to get a woman so far, because the biggest piece of what women need is missing from traditional psychology. So as I started doing some breakout sessions and hosting like 10 week series with groups of 20,30, women at a time, I started to note really remarkable changes, because we were using a lot more somatics. We were tapping into a lot more rage, and also doing it collectively in a group. And when you come together in a group, what you're able to move through is a quantum experience, because you hear other women asking questions and then me responding to her. It might not have been a question you'd ever thought to ask because you hadn't fully formulated it yet, but you hear that woman ask it, you hear me respond to it, and light bulbs are just going off like crazy for you. So I don't really work one on one with clients anymore, because I think it's a faulty system. I don't think that there is. I believe there's a time and place for it, but I don't believe in the work that I'm doing, we're going to get there in a one to one. So I do cohorts of 30 women from around the world for a six month deep dive journey, and those are ongoing and constant and literally taking women's lives and completely turning them inside out and dissecting places and answering questions they've never, not only considered, but never even knew, was a question to explore and might have an answer connected to that little subtle suffering that lives in the background, kind of like the white noise that's playing in the background of your life, where something just feels a little bit off, but you can't put your finger on it, because when you look at your patriarchal checklist, you've got all the things checked off, but it was a list that was curated by men and the patriarchy, and so it's not going to feel satiating for a woman in her life.
Robin | You you're talking about the collective. And I really you share these examples of how you, you know, you started out bringing women together in groups in your home, right? You would invite, you, invite women to come and to deep, to have these deeper conversations, right? Alcohol free, people are coming in, and you've got a box with paper and pen, and please put your questions in. Like, I just love this invitation, Amanda on, on bringing women together. Like, I am so fortunate in my life, where I have really amazing friendships, you know, I can honestly say, with different groups of women, you know, I grew up with nine best friends. We're still best friends the 10 of us. And in the city I live in now, which is not where I grew up, I've got groups of women, like profound, amazing, beautiful, intelligent, strong, successful women who are very attuned to themselves and on a mission to to love themselves and be the best version of ourselves. You know, we're not, we're not looking for the material. It's not, not like that. But I think that that's rare, as I say that out loud, I think that's rare.
Amanda l Extremely rare, nine best friends, I I've never even heard of that.
Robin | It is rare. But what I want to ask is like, you know, and you do talk about the importance of this surrounding ourselves with it's like leveling up the people that we are surrounding ourselves with and how important that is. So like you talk about in the book, but how like, If a woman wants to like, how important it is to have this collective consciousness around you. How do you form that? How did you go about having women come into your home and like, do these gatherings?
Amanda l Well that I just put a request out on Facebook, right, because that was something that I was longing for even more personally, because I realized that, possibly by default, where I was living, my best friend doesn't live, has never lived in the last 15 years in the state that I've lived in, there was a time where we lived in the same state, and how we met, and we were in the same industry, and we're still the best of friends and see each other multiple times a year, but I wanted proximity to more women like that. And I thought I can't be the only one. There have to be more women like that. So at the time, many years ago, I just went on to the Facebook, the moms Facebook group in my town, and said that I wanted to start having more conscious conversations with women alcohol free, and that I was going to be opening my home. And I was curious, who would be interested in something like this, if we set this up and did it for six months, and I would host all of them, and I had, like, 147 women say yes, and I had 60 some women come to the first one and half of them brought alcohol, and I asked them to leave their bottles of wine at the door, because I wanted to do this alcohol free. I wanted to create a culture of women who had beautiful conversations, not after they had a couple of sips of wine. I'm really tired of that as well. I'm tired of always having to have a glass women having to have a glass of wine in their hand to say anything vulnerable. So half the wine bottles were left at the door with the shoes, and only half the women came back. And I would say, 30 some women came for the remainder of the six months. And it was profound and incredible and amazing. And I think that if you want to curate more conscious relationships, more beautiful, intentional friendships, you have to lead that. We can't just sit there and wait for the world to drop right laps like we have to be that change in the world, like the quote says right that you want to see. And you also have to be willing to be lonely for a while, because oftentimes letting go of and gently releasing relationships that are more surface oriented, but make you feel like you have friends because it has your calendar busy and you have, you know, obligations. I don't want women to confuse a busy, full calendar and things to do with very deeply satisfying friendships or relationships. So sometimes there's that liminal space, as you've released what no longer serves you, but you're waiting to yet call in what it is you're desiring, being comfortable with that spaciousness within yourself, and which is also a really beautiful place to be.
Robin | It really is. You know, it's funny, because I remember when you're telling a story about how, you know, you had 120 people, 60 people show up, and then the second time, you know, for the for the long I was like half that group. I remember when I was pregnant and I joined this yoga mama's things. I'm like, I need to meet moms. Like, I'm first time mom here. I don't know what the heck I'm doing. And so during the I joined the moms yoga. I had never even had experience doing yoga, but I'm like, this is definitely in a place like I need, hopefully, somebody and and I put and I gave everybody back in the day, we didn't even have our phones all the time. Imagine that. But so I gave everybody, like, a piece of paper with my phone number and email and said, like, please contact me. Like, I want to host all of us. And so I had a group of, like, 25 women show up, bring cookies, whatever.
Amanda l Yeah
Robin | And, and I now I've got five, my five best friends that you know, they're yoga friends, with the yoga mamas. None of us do yoga anymore on a regular basis, but the 25 dwindled down to five, right. But it is about I just want to, before we go on talking more about your book, I just think the power of women in a group is so healing, and it is. It really, really is. It's like you, like you said you said, you can do all the talk therapy in the world, which I have a great therapist. I get it, but I think spending time with like minded women and just talking about, like, even being when you're being able to be so vulnerable and emotion emote, and just talk about, like, use your intelligence, and collectively, you're going to come out stronger and wiser, just
Amanda l Absolutely, and women ideally, who will call you higher, right? I mean that that's the sweet spot. Not women who are going to stay in the commiseration vibe and stay in that place of everyone commiserating about how awful things are, but the the women who are going to say there's a there's a different way we can do this, right. Let's reimagine this. What, what other story could we tell here? What, how could we see through a different lens on this, I am not interested at all in having relationships that pacify me. I only want to be in relationships that are pushing me to my edge, to go higher. And that's why I have one best friend, because it's a very unique woman who's who's willing to herself as well continue wanting to go higher and not just stay in that, in the comfortable misery,.
Robin | Oh my goodness staying in a comfortable misery. So something you teach in your book is about going from self loathing to self honor. How do we how do we do that? I mean, I'm programming my mind to love my to say loving things to myself, like on a regular basis. Now I catch myself. It's a very conscious, conscious process, but it's like old programming of the loathing, the self loathing.
Amanda l Well it makes sense. You watched your mom self loath, she took you right along for the ride, right? So your coding, your programming from a very impressionable age, was to loathe yourself, and you will have to work for a very long time. All of us will right, and this is this is important to say. I don't want women to think, if they're doing it for a short period of time, it's like, oh, it's not working. If you have spent 30 years loathing yourself, we don't say a few positive things for a couple of weeks. And imagine that it's all going to turn around. You'll have to say positive things for the rest of your life, because you're trying to override a system that had early indoctrination that is coded inside of your cells, in your blood and in your bones. And so for me, the work that I do, and I teach this at magnetic, which is my live event every year for hundreds of women, and is a part of my personal lifestyle, is I do a mirror practice, a three minute mirror practice every single morning before I turn on my phone, before I brush my teeth, before I do anything whatsoever I revere and honor my self in the mirror. This isn't from a place of wow, Amanda, you look so tired or wow, you've got a lot more silver hair coming in. It's from a place of the awe and the miracle and the reverence. Because I think that we spend so much time in the mirror looking at what's wrong, and so even that, even the process of getting ready. Like, if we're really, like, my work, really breaks stuff down. So I, you know, I'm not going to go too far into it, because it can, it can be a bit much, but when you really start to break stuff down, like, who are we getting ready for? Is your face is your body an object for other people's approval? Are you an ornament for the world, or are you an instrument for your one and only life? And you can't meet the reverence if you're applying and covering up to go and perform. You meet it when you stand there and you have that spaciousness with yourself. And so the mirror practice is something that I've been doing for several years now and has literally I can feel the configuration inside of my body is different. I walk differently, I speak differently, I fuck differently. I sign contracts differently. I call in money differently. I serve differently. I love differently. I parent differently, because I am now different, not from anything on the outside, but because I took that time every morning and my most tender moments that three minutes after waking up and I held that space for my humanity, and doing that has allowed me to come to know an internal part of me that I would not have had access to if I was viewing myself in the mirror from toxic beauty culture.
Robin | So Amanda, what are you saying to yourself in those three minutes?
Amanda l It's different every single day, there's no mantras.
Robin | No, okay
Amanda l I don't, I don't repeat mantras because I don't feel like they're real. I don't believe in affirmations, and I'm not saying that other people won't find them helpful. I want to hear what's inside of me. I want to hear what's going to come up, right? So if I'm, if I'm slathering on some words that I read somewhere that that's not organic to me, so it's very different what comes up for me every single day, but I'm willing to just stand there and be right. And some mornings it's very silent. Some mornings the tears stream down my face. Some mornings I'm so in awe that I can't even believe that this is actually real, that this is actually happening, that I am blessed to be having this experience and lead I feel that time is my opening and my connection to the divine. So I'm just allowing whatever is meant to be, that morning to be and I'm not judging the experience.
Robin | Wow. What a beautiful way to startthe day.
Amanda l Holy practice. Yeah
Robin | Important, yes, it is. It sounds very holy. It's one of my, you know, you one of the, one of the greatest realizations that I got from your book, there was, there was a lot, so thank you, was around just thinking about even just our media, okay. And we, I know, I know this, but actually, you broke it down even further on, how everything that we are consuming, watching movies, TV, you know, you think about like all of that is produced, created by a man, right. So the film industry, if you were to break it down, is like, you know, I don't know what the percentage was
Amanda l 78%
Robin | 78% of movies are directed and created and written by men. And you're thinking, wow. Like, I know that to be true, but it's like when you actually think about that, right, and all the messaging, it's like all the scripts, it was written by a man. And so you think, and this is what we are watching and listening to and like, and so that's not serving
Amanda l Women feel crazy, reflecting back that this is what women want. And we're like, no, but that's not what I want. I know that's what you're showing in the movies, but that's not what I want in this relationship, I want more. Oh, well, you're too much, then you're never, you're never going to be happy, because the whole world is swirling in this really limited storyline that is profoundly insulting to the average woman.
Robin | It really is, right. Yeah, like, you give example of, like, The Real Housewives, all that show, all those shows, and it's like the drama like that's directed by a man, written by a man, and all the acting, right. It's like, and you, I've heard this like that, The Real Housewives, the minute the the cameras turn off, they're friends, right? But the drama is like, there has to be conflict between these women, because sisterhood is not, it's not real, right. Like women are supposed to be catty. They're supposed to be against each other, pitted against each other, fighting over men, all of this garbage. Right.
Amanda l Yeah, it's pitiful
Robin | Yeah so you've talked about rage in the beginning. Can you talk about, talk about the importance of rage, and really, what is, you know, there's a difference between being angry and and the emotion of rage. The actions of rage that can you break that down for us and why that's important for women?
Amanda l Yeah, I think that any woman who would claim she doesn't have rage, I'm deeply concerned for her, because if you just look at the world right now, just just take an average brush stroke across the world and what women are going through right now, if a woman doesn't feel rage in her bodily system, then she's asleep, she's unconscious. If she doesn't feel rage for what her ancestors have been through the woman who've walked before her, the fact that they were silenced and raped, and all of the things you know women as the very first slaves, if we you know, don't feel some rage about a system that continues to profit off of women and take from women and frack from us. I think that those women I believe are unconscious, and I don't think the collective is ever going to shift until women come into consciousness around that so I teach a rage release practice that I learned, the original art form of it from Mama Gena Thomashauer, I've kind of made it my own, and I teach it at my lab event Magnetic as well as in my six month journey. Rage release is an essential part in the same way that I brush and floss my teeth every day, I would not go through my week ever without my rage release practice. It's my emotional hygiene number one, because if you're living in the world, we are taking so much on hearing little things coming in from the news, something happening in your own personal life that has you know, whether it is a trauma from childhood, something that you saw your grandfather beat your grandmother, or you heard the stories of it, whatever it is, right? We are carrying all of that inside of us. It's not like we're just born into the world, and we're just this clean slate. You absorbed everything when you were in your mother's womb that she was going through. And so this gets passed down by, you know, several generations into our bodies and our nervous systems, and so, well, none of that was my responsibility what is my responsibility is to be hygienically squeaky clean. If I'm not squeaky clean, I contaminate my husband, I contaminate my children, I contaminate this interview, I contaminate my clients, I contaminate people who didn't actually cut me right? So it is my job to make sure I'm always communing with my rage and releasing it out of my body so that it doesn't come into the beautiful parts of my life and make me say no when I want to say yes, or vice versa. So I take my emotional hygiene practice as serious as I take brushing and flossing my teeth, because if you don't, you're swallowing all that bacteria. It's the same with the world. You can't move through the world and not offload that rage, because you'll just keep in, you know, swallowing it and taking it into your being, and that's why we have 80% of women in the world have autoimmune diseases. Autoimmune diseases are caused by inflammation. Inflammation is often when we're taking in all this emotional stress. We're not processing it. The body has to do something with it, so the cells absorb it and start to mutate and do whatever they're doing, right? And we also know that the risks of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and uterine cancer are so high for women again, absorbing so much rage, so much unprocessed emotion, so it is a life saving practice as well.
Robin | I put down page number 171, when you talk about the gratitude trap, I was like, wow, when I, when I read this, because I, you know, you know, I love, I love the fact that we are constantly like I am on this my life's journey is all about learning and growing. And if I stop learning and growing, I'm probably gonna die, maybe my last breath, but I'm still going to, still going to be learning after I leave this body, so there you go. But you know, I It's all about the you say there's something called the gratitude trap. We become very good at being able to write our gratitude lists, which is a great thing. But you point out that when you ask rooms of women to write down their gratitude people can list all the millions of things. I mean, I do gratitude throughout my day, every morning, every night, and as I'm living my life through the world, it's easy for me to like think through gratitude. But what you say, which I think is so powerful, is like when you ask women to list their desires, they have a very hard time doing that. Wow, isn't that interesting? And just like, just my, my mind was blown. I'm like, I could see that. So where do you where do you think that comes from Amanda? I mean, you had your clinical your clinical practice work like, I think it's because I think men, it's so easy for them to come up with their desires, right?
Amanda l Well, I think again, we've raised women on this idea of like, well, he's a good enough husband. Just be grateful you have a roof over your head. Be grateful someone married you you know now that you're divorced with three children, be grateful that you even have a job. So what they're not paying you the same as men. Just be grateful. Keep your head down. Keep going, right? Oh, well, sometimes men are going to make. Comments about your skirt or your body or your legs. I mean, just be grateful you have a job and keep the peace, right? We are raised to be grateful for what we have, not to yearn for more, not to dream bigger, right? And so I am a woman who's been forever ravenous, openly ravenous for life. And no matter how much I have, I always want more. It doesn't negate the things I have gratitude for, I am overflowing in gratitude. But what I want for this life is big, if not bigger. And when you ask a woman what she wants for her life and what she desires, when you really help her get down to it, because sometimes I have women just weeping. They're like, I don't know, it's been so long since I've checked in. If we keep a woman paying attention to her desires, is she may rock the boat, she may throw the system off, right? We want her to just be grateful for what she has so she keeps serving her people. That's her number one job, and one extra moment in the day maybe she can read a chapter in a book and be inspired, but only if that's like at midnight, right and she has one minute left before she passes out from exhaustion. But when I do sit with women and we talk about, what is it that you desire? Oh my gosh, women desire the most beautiful things in the whole world. Everything that a woman desires is just so heart centered and is expanding for the collective and for other people. The things that women desire, I really believe in every ounce of my fiber, the things that women desire is what will change the world.
Robin | Yes
Amanda l Every time a woman desires something and she creates a business from it, she not only pays herself well so she can help her family, she employs other women, pays them well and teaches them new things and new skills. If this desire for my business to go global hadn't been my desire, and I was just grateful for my small private practice, I wouldn't have reached over 400 million women in three years around the world, right. I have women writing to me from across the world every single day saying that this work has saved something for them. Turned on a light made them leave an abusive marriage, because my desire helped light up the world, just like yours does, just like every other woman. So I am a huge fan of, let's fan the flames of women who have big desire. That's why, in my friendships, we talk about, what do you want? Take it 10 times bigger. She takes it 10 times bigger. How do we 1000 times this? Yes, we're grateful for what happened. How do we make it bigger? Because
Robin | How can I help you, right? Because we want to help each other. I love it when my friend like, when we sit around and we talk about, okay, what are you working on next? Okay, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna call this friend. I'm gonna post that for you. We're gonna because we are community, heart led people, that's what women, that's who we are. And we're all about lifting each other up so
Amanda l So if we can stay, if we can hold that to be true, and dismantle this idea, this patriarchal structure that women are meant to compete with one another, be jealous of one another, we have to deconstruct that. And then we do what happens we deconstruct this, then we have this collective heart centered, you know, powerful force of women around the world. Imagine what happens. It's like, whoa. When I bring my 30 cohorts of women together. I just held a retreat, the closing ceremony for them this weekend here in my home, and they sat in this huge circle in my living room, and it was so emotional and overwhelming as they looked around the room and saw how much power was in that one place, and what was possible if every woman stopped doubting herself, stopped wondering if she was good enough, and all rose into their power, which now, after the six month journey they're all doing, but had they not done this work, there were some blind spots, right? Because my work is very confronting in the most epic way. It helps you literally move through shit that you've been struggling with for decades, because it's I play no bullshit if you can't tell, like we get right to the heart of it, because I'm not interested in wasting a woman's time on her self development journey or my own time, like, let's actually get through all of this, because I do think the traditional psychology keeps us kind of talking about the same things year after year after year, and these women, the potential of what they could have created in that time is amazing and often a missed opportunity.
Robin | Yeah, I agree.
Amanda l My goal is like, how do we do this work so potent and so efficiently with such a huge arsenal of tools to help her for the rest of her life, if she wobbles, so that she can go out and just light up the sky. We need all the women out there
Robin | Right
Amanda l Lighting sky
Robin | We really do. So you teach, you teach a relationship course as well, don't you Amanda? So can you, can you tell us about that? Because, I mean, this is all about relationships, right? Let's Talk Love this we talk about all the all day long we've got, every year, I host a summit in Vancouver where we bring in psychologists like yourself to teach us how to level up our relationships, from, you know, our familial relationships, our friendships, and, of course, our partnerships. So you yourself, renewed your your own marriage, right, you've been with your husband for for very long time, but there was a period of time where you, you're you share that your marriage was, you know, you thought this might have to end, but you, you you managed to renew, you know, create another relationship, which I think is very it's fantastic like you, if you're, if you're with somebody for a very, very long time, you've probably had three or four or five different relationships within that one relationship.
Amanda l As my husband says. We've been married, it'll be 29 years in August, we've been together 30 years. And he says he's had about 18 wives, which I find amazing, and I think is very true, because there is nothing in nature that is still and static 30 years later. I've never seen a tree that's the same 30 years later, right? And so like Mother Nature, because I am a part of that. I am forever moving and changing and evolving. And when we got married, I was I met him when I was 21 we got married when I was 22 I was a princess still, like all girls that age now
Robin | Yes
Amanda l That there, you're a you're a maiden, right? And then we life happened, and career started. We moved around the country multiple times for jobs. We started our own family. We had children, and through this journey, I am forever evolving and changing as is he. I'm forever evolving and changing as a woman. There's no way that what we said yes to 29 years ago is still fundamentally the same, that that thread that connected us then is different now. Because I've I have died and been reborn so many times on that journey. And so we had to renegotiate the terms of our relationship. I'm like, you married a princess who said yes that sounds like a good idea. Yes, let's do that. Yes. Okay, great, yes, okay, because I had no father figure. I had no man in my life, right? And so I was like, yes, whatever you say, sounds wonderful. Yes, yes, yes. I'm not a yes girl anymore, because I'm a woman now of 52 years who's traveled a lot of different paths, and I've arrived at this unbelievable place of knowing myself that I didn't know when I was 21 and I met him, I didn't know myself. I was an infant, right, and so we what I decided, through the journey in the years, what I wanted from this marriage, and in this marriage was very different than what I said yes to. And there was a moment of like, I don't know it mark 18, if we were going to make it or not, and I filed for divorce because it was feeling more and more clear to me that what I wanted was not going to be possible, at least not possible with him. And then, you know, we were at our very last mediation appointment, about to sign the paperwork, and he said, I will quit my job. I will do absolutely anything to save this marriage, to save this family. What do you want from me? And it was the first moment that I felt like he woke up. And so I the mediator said, I'll give you six months. Why don't you go and figure this out, and if you come back before six months, we'll reopen the case, sign the papers. After six months, we'd have to begin again. And I said, okay, let's give this a try. And the biggest thing that happened, I thought it was going to be this list of expectations from him, but the biggest thing that happened, actually, on that drive home, is I started to have this moment of, I'll never forget this. The biggest thing that landed in that moment for me, he's there, this open vessel, willing to walk away from his entire career, which was what was really driving a wedge for us, because he was gone around the world Monday through Friday, I realized, okay, maybe it's not him actually quitting his job, Amanda, maybe it's you actually not thinking what it is you want and saying something different. What if the thing you think is vulnerable and hard as it's going to be to say? What if you actually say that? What if you say the really, really vulnerable things that have been in there forever, but you've never actually said you've just been too angry, right? So I was going about it like, if things don't change, this marriage isn't going to work out, and I'm not going to live like this anymore. I'm tired of raising the kids by myself and trying to balance my career with it. So I was angry, but what I really wanted to say was, I miss you.
Robin | I knew you're going to say that, yeah, what's underneath it? What is underneath like the most tender true that your heart, what does your heart want to say?
Amanda l But I was not ready to go there, right? Because the thing that he loved so much was how strong I was, and so in the back of my mind, it was like, for so many years, don't show him, because I interpreted the fact that I wanted him around more as being weak, that I couldn't hold my career and him without feeling exhausted, or the kids without feeling exhausted all the time. But the beauty was like, no, I just I don't want it to be this kind of a struggle. I want on Thursday night for us to walk to soccer practice together with the kids. I don't always want it to be me folding laundry until 11:30 at night and barely getting any sleep, because I have to get up and lunches before the day starts yet again, I'm tired, I'm lonely, I'm really lonely, right? Like, I didn't say any of those things. So I decided, what if, on that drive home, I thought, what if you actually try the most vulnerable version of yourself for the next six months and see what happens? And well, here we are 20 almost ready to celebrate 29 years of marriage, and a lot has changed in our marriage. A lot of renegotiation has happened, because that was not the life I signed up for. And you know, interestingly, my daughter, who's 22 now in a three year relationship, she says, I never, ever want to do what my mom and dad did. My mom raised us by herself. My dad was gone. I never want to be in a marriage like that. So him, even picking his career was really important to my daughter, right? Like watching us and learning from that, and saying, like, how do we craft something different because I don't want to do it alone, like my mom did.
Robin | I really love that example. Amanda, you know that you shared about your daughter too, but about your relationship, because I think if we are in relationships where we are, I mean, the title of your book is the Magnetism of Women Who Stop Abandoning Themselves, and it's like we know too much not to like if you want to have a full, rich life, you can't be in unhappy relationships. It's it's going to cost you. You're going to be abandoning yourself over and over and over again.
Amanda l I abandoned myself over and over because in my family, on both sides of the family, nobody had ever not been divorced, and so my family had so much pressure on me that I was my wedding, my love story. It was a fairy tale, how we met, everything everyone was watching, and there was so much pressure to hold it together, because I was going to be the one, at least the story that everyone told us, I was going to be the one who finally had the dream come true. So I felt like I was also doing it not to disappoint the rest of my family and my people and my children. And so I was living a life that wasn't happy for me, but I was doing it to make everybody else happy, meanwhile completely abandoning myself the whole entire time.
Right, and so you were, you were able to transform your marriage. And I think that that's
Progress, like it's
Robin | Of course it is, of course it is, yeah, but you're now in your you know, I feel the same way about myself. I'm 47 years old, and I started out as a princess. And you talk a lot about that in your book, around changing ourselves from this princess energy and our actions and our thoughts to becoming the queens that we are. Can you give us a few examples of like, what a princess represents versus a queen?
Amanda l Yes, I think that a princess is pleading to be heard and a queen is leading and is heard.
Robin | Oh, I like that
Amanda l Right, I think a princess is begging for approval and love, and the queen is self approving and self loving. You know I think that the princess is uncertain of her opinion, so she quietly starts to say something, and she looks around to see if anyone's nodding, before she goes on. And the Queen states, so, you know, and the queen, the princess, is waiting for someone to come and rescue her and help her in her life. And the queen is the one who rescues herself and and is the one who helps herself. So I think it's a lot of the princess is constantly seeking. Think of anything right seeking outside of herself. And the queen is becoming the thing that she's seeking.
Robin | Yes, wow. So you, you have a framework for rooting into yourself, into oneself, and there's 11 things, and there's no way we've got time to go through them all. But you know, I really I love your book and the fact that it gives you practical ways to do each of these things. For instance, I know in the book you talk about the rage, the rage practice. I haven't done it yet, but I would tend to do it because, I mean, if you're doing this every week, like and I love this idea about keeping your hygiene, your emotional hygiene, your yourself clean. Like that is like that is a powerful like, I can see it in my head and in like, my whole being. I've got to keep my hygiene, my emotional hygiene, clean. So I gotta do my rage, my rage process, and I will do it, but you but part of this is cleaning up and detoxing what you absorb. Yeah, so this is about paying attention to, like, we've talked about, who you're spending time with, what you're watching, what you are absorbing, like just in your every like, the relationships you keep, what you're reading. Like, what other things would you would you say are included in that, and cleaning up and detoxing?
Amanda l Yeah, the playlist on my phone, right who I'm following, Instagram, it's unless it fills me in a way that feels beautiful and soulful, if it's degrading, if it is toxic, beauty culture, any of that, it has no business anywhere in my realm, because if I'm sitting to me the way, like I raised my daughter to think about this as well. If I am sitting eating a bag of Doritos every single night, you know, somewhat unconsciously, I'm just sitting there eating them, eating them, and I wonder why, night after night I feel so bad and I have these stomach aches. It's like when I want to think about what I'm eating. It's the same with social media, whatever you images you are seeing and taking in. So as a woman at 52 who is consciously not coloring my hair or doing any kind of Botox. If I fill my social media feed with all these women who are filled with Botox or med spas, you can imagine unconsciously, the effect that's going to have on me. So I keep my space just like my home. I keep my home squeaky clean. Every single object that comes into my home has a meaning that serves me and my life and my family, as does every social media following that I feed. Follow every song my playlists are so curated for that reason, there's a link actually, when you buy my book, there's a link to some of my playlists, just a handful of them, but my my music is curated, right. Like everything that I do has a purpose. There's no haphazardness to my life. I watch almost no TV at all because I find it to be such a waste of it's a waste of my life to watch other people live their life or some fantasy life takes away from me actually living my own life. So I'm very, very much curated this gorgeous place inside of my life and and conversations, right. Like I am really meticulous about the kinds of conversations that come into my world. Like we don't my kids will tell you, there is no small talk. We don't. We don't even talk about items, you know, our conversation since the time they were very little, are big and deep and profound, and that's just, I'm intense. I'm a very intense person, and I think that, if I'm lucky, and this all goes well, I've got, like, 100 years, and I'm not going to waste five seconds of it. I've wasted enough time being sad and angry, and I'm not wasting another minute.
Robin | Yeah so the number 11 on your list is living the story you want to tell at the end of your life. I think that's just, it's something that we that I'm writing a book right now, and one of the chapters that I haven't written yet, but it's going to be, is around legacy, and that's exactly what it is. It's like living, you know you're living will? You know, what is your what if, if you were to die tomorrow, even today, what would people stand in the room at the in the top of the room saying about you? And it's like, hopefully, it's all the beautiful ways that you showed up for them and showed up for your own life and for yourself in such like, in the in the best way possible, and that you made such a big impact, a positive impact, in other people's lives, and, and, and you're if you're not, if that it that doesn't resonate. It's like, how can you live your best life now? Like, what are you waiting for? Right?
Amanda l Right. Yeah, absolutely. And for me, it's about living a very brave and very bold life, doing the thing, saying the thing that isn't necessarily mainstream, that isn't always the most popular, but will go on long after you are gone, and people will say she was onto something she knew, just like Martin Luther King, he didn't really become popular until after he was dead, his liking, his likability scores were very low when he was alive, you know, by black people and white people. And it was like, after he was dead, everyone puts his quotes everywhere, because only then after he's gone, everyone was like, wow. He was really onto something. How are we even thinking anything differently, right? And I think we're going to think that about womanhood in many ways, because I think some of the things I say are uncomfortable and revolutionary, and I'm very okay with that. I'm very okay with not being always liked, because I know what I'm speaking is is potent and powerful, and actually not always being liked is how I know I'm on the right track.
Robin | Oh my goodness, yeah, I think as I get older, I think I'm caring less about what people think, because I know that I'm living from a very good, good, true, honorable place. I know that, and I think that that in itself, it's like, when I can have this this much, like I love myself more than I ever have and it's because I'm living in integrity with who I like, I know in places I wasn't living in integrity, and I've changed. I'm doing everything I can to change that so that I can be so proud of myself whether everybody or nobody's looking right.
Amanda l I don't even care if anybody's looking like even right, like we create the work and put it out in the world. It's not my business what the world does or how many likes or interactions it gets. It's like I create the work and put it out there, and I'm turning and I'm serving clients and creating the next piece of work. And I think that's how people come become very successful, is when you start living a very embodied so everything that I teach, I don't teach anything unless I'm already living it or doing it. I'm profoundly embodied in my message, and I think that that is why clients come and stay in my world for so long, is because they have tried many other places and have not felt that level of integrity, that level of grounding and that level of truth telling, in a lot of leaders. So I think that's what, yeah, I don't care. I know who I am, right? Like I don't have to convince anybody of who I am.
Robin | No definitely not well. Thank you so much, Dr Amanda Hanson, for being with me today. I think it's been such a like, an important conversation for women to hear, and I've got two daughters, so I hope they listen and get something from it. So tell us where you can help you said you lead the magnetism. Tell us about the work you do so people can follow or partake in learning from you.
Amanda l I think the best way would just be to you can follow me on Instagram or Tiktok at Midlife Muse and obviously on my website. amandahanson.com you can sign up for my newsletter. But I do Magnetic, which is a live event every year. It's going to be in December in Phoenix. Tickets don't go on sale until July. We just came back from Barcelona. We did one in Europe, and the very first one was last year in Phoenix. So it's remarkable. Women from all over the world come it's a two day extraordinary I would say it's where a concert meets a dance party meets a theatrical performance, meets an embodied session. So it's, it's pretty much everything in my book, in real life, with me leading from the stage this whole experience for two days and being with extraordinary women from around the world. So that's Magnetic. And, yeah, I have an online community. If you just go to my website, you'll find everything.
Robin | Wonderful, we'll add it to the show notes. So thank you so much for being with us, and we'll see you on Instagram. Thank you so much for being here with us. Let's talk Love is brought to you by Real Love Ready and hosted by Robin Ducharme. If you'd like to keep learning with us, visit realloveready.com for more resources and tools to boost your relational skills and get better at love. If this podcast has resonated with you, it would mean the world to us if you could take just 30 seconds to do these three things, follow or subscribe. Never miss an episode by hitting the follow or subscribe button wherever you listen to your podcasts, whether it's Apple podcasts Spotify or your favorite app, this makes sure new episodes show up automatically for you, and it helps us get more visibility so more people can find our show. Leave a rating and review. Your feedback means everything to us. By leaving a five star rating and a thoughtful review, you're not only showing your support, but also helping others discover the podcast, share an episode that really spoke to you with someone in your life, whether it's a friend, partner or family member, your recommendation could just be what they need to hear. We at Real Love Ready acknowledge and express gratitude for the Co Salish people, the stewards of the land on which we work and play, and encourage you to take a moment to acknowledge and express gratitude for those that have stewarded and continue to steward the land that you live on as well many blessings and much love.