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The Debrief: What we learned from Dr Lucy Ryan
Episode 4Bonus Episode13th September 2024 • The Queenager with Eleanor Mills • Eleanor Mills
00:00:00 00:12:43

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In this companion episode to The Queenager Podcast episode with Dr Lucy Ryan (S1 E4), Eleanor Mills and Wendy Lloyd discuss the biggest takeaways from Lucy, coach, psychologist and author of Revolting Women: Why Midlife Women are Walking Out and What to Do About It.

The Sunday Times praised the coach and positive psychologist's searing analysis of the Queenager Braindrain.

You'll find the inspirational takeaways from Lucy that help you take action and make positive change in your life.

Eleanor Mills is the founder of NOON, the UK's leading network for midlife women. She's also author of the bestselling book Much More to Come.

Wendy Lloyd is a Women’s Centred transformational coach. To find out how Wendy can support you through your midlife reinvention, visit www.dramafreeyou.com and book a FREE 30 minute coaching call.

Transcripts

BONUS EP 4_DR LUCY RYAN

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Stay tuned for how details on how to secure a heavily discounted bottle of their gold standard skin solution. Hey, Wendy. Hi there. This time it's the turn of leadership coach and business book award winning author, Dr. Lucy Ryan. What was your first takeaway? What did we really learn from Lucy? Well,

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And she's talked about how, you They've been leaving quietly. The waters close over and I love that she really made the kind of call for us to leave noisily. It's time to [00:01:00] leave noisily and kind of like kick up a bit of a stink basically because it probably doesn't feel like how you want to do it. You feel unappreciated, you feel unseen.

And you kind of go, Oh my goodness, I'm being managed out and she talked about all of that. And so the desire is to kind of like slip away because that shame starts kicking in. But actually, what really, you know, and Lucy calls for is leave noisily, because even if it doesn't change your situation, even if you do still have to go out the door, this is how change happens.

So I think it's a really powerful message for us to really make it clear that this isn't okay. And things need to change. Even if, as I said, you have to go on and leave and then, you know, rethink and realign what you're going to do next.

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I've basically been making a big fuss about it ever since, because I do think that it's right that so many women are what we call the queen age of brain drain and leaving their jobs at [00:02:00] 50. Lots of them are being managed out, or what I call voluntold. Oh, I like that. They're going. Yeah. Um, and it is hugely shameful.

And actually really what I did in writing my book and in setting up Noon was busting that taboo. And everyone said to me, wow, I can't believe that you're talking about the shame of being made redundant. And it was really shameful. It was humiliating. It felt like a death, particularly if you've been doing a career for decades.

you know, two decades or working somewhere for 25 years and then you're suddenly bulleted. We don't talk about the kind of grief and the lack of identity and the kind of loss that comes with leaving the things that has defined you for so long and we need to.

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what I see is a bit of a sort of rabbit in the headlight sometimes. I'm kind of like, I really need to get back to [00:03:00] where I was. And, you know, obviously what I'm trying to do is always kind of expand their thinking at this time, because this is like, okay, this is painful, and maybe you will go into another job in a similar sphere or vein.

But this really needs to be an opportunity for you to expand and not to move quickly and for that shame to get bedded in, because you'll carry it with you. So it's a really important thing because it's for ourselves, to release that and say, I don't need to hide this. It's not shameful what's happened to me.

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So I think we talked about this in one of the other debriefs about getting ahead of the wave. So if you can feel that that's coming down the pipe, [00:04:00] there's some interesting research which shows if you make a call, so you start looking for a new job ahead of it ending, that is much better and you feel much more empowered.

And also I really agree with what you say about not necessarily jumping back on the same horse. Yeah. I really didn't want another. big job in media. I'd, I'd done it. I really had been there, done that, got the t shirt. And the point about being a Queenager is that we can pivot into something else. And that we don't have to be defined by what we've done between 25 and 50.

Many of us are pivoting into purpose. We want to do something which feels more meaningful. There's that really, and Lucy talks about this in her book, about that kind of drumbeat of, you know, the next thing. You don't know how much more time you've got left and you want to make it count. Um, and I think so to give yourself.

st you, it's everybody. It's [:

And the more vocal we can all be about what's happening to us, rather than feeling shameful and shut up or signing an NDA and not being able to talk about it, um, the quicker this will change. Because, you

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And it is an opportunity, and as we both know, usually at some point it kicks in as feeling an opportunity. It

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[00:05:27] Wendy Lloyd: the time, exactly, so it's getting to that next place.

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be nice to yourself, have some self compassion, you know, and just let your wounds for a bit, pause, hang on,

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[00:05:46] Eleanor Mills: give you, and just give yourself a kind of magic permission pass to not have to jump into something else.

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And obviously, as Lucy talks in detail, the system isn't set up to actually provide that as a temporary structure. Um, but the thing is, is that, you know, it therefore comes down to, I think she really set the page, especially when she talked about her own life and looking after her, her mother and her parents.

And you know, about how, again, we have to kind of tap back into, well, what, what's really important for me right now? And if our parents are aging and we want to look after them and we want to prioritize them and, you know, work won't help us, then go with what matters if you can. And then it's, then we can then really kind of, you know, take stock again, because.

an make them, and this whole [:

[00:07:02] Eleanor Mills: Yeah, I think that's really important. And so one of the things that we're calling for, and we've called for at the Labour Party Conference and with policy makers, is that is for what we call life leave, Lucy and I, which is giving and making companies understand that when the midlife collision hits, and particularly if you've got a parent who's dying or say a teenager with an eating disorder or was suffering from an anxiety disorder, of course, those things are incredibly important for us to, to, to deal with as human beings.

It's really important that you're there as your parents are dying. It's really important. We're there for our kind of young people when they need us. And often those. Pinch points, and I talk a lot about the pinch points of midlife, are incredibly intense, but they don't last that long. So actually, a bit of life leave, maybe taking a six month sabbatical, could mean that the companies don't lose incredible experience and wisdom.

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And I thought it was a really important and interesting thing for us to, um, sort of, um, think about, because not only is it like, it's not specific ages, but it's also, we're not at, there's no fixed points that we're in, in there. And I think you talked about how you, you know, you got, you know, someone who's 54 years old with a five year old child.

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That's me. Yeah, exactly. But I think it's so important that we're [00:09:00] inclusive about that. And also that you just, you just don't know where somebody is, um, on that spectrum. I was chatting to someone the other day and, um, she's about to be a great grandmother and she was in her late 50s because everybody's done things at different, um, different points.

So it's very important not to think that there's a one size fits all. But having said that, there are definite phases. Um, and I think the emptiness bit, you know, if you've been a parent and your kids leave, that is a real moment. That's as big a moment as when you have a kid for the first time. And of course the existential bit of losing your parents.

I think that that, you know, these are, these are huge kind of life kind of traumas and growth points that we all go through. But I think understanding those a bit and understanding how that impacts us as working people as we all live longer in the hundred year life is going to be crucial to keeping a kind of aging workforce happy.

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It's like, if you've got a whole car crash of stuff going on. And as we're saying, it could be all manner of those things happening at once, or even just a couple of them can be an awful lot. So again, it's this whole idea of, um, yeah, tailoring your own expectations of. Where you ought to be and where you want to go and just to really, um, be kind to yourself and recognize that, you know, your journey will be different from other people who maybe you're very close to, but you know, you, you will find your way through it as long as you kind of like a true to yourself.

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funny Dudley, spinster, hags, crones, frumps, I mean, so many pejorative words. Um, I mean, that's why I coined the term Queen Aja, because if ever anyone was in need of a rebrand, it was women in midlife.

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[00:11:16] Eleanor Mills: so I just, I just want to kind of, you know, call that out. Anyway, if you haven't read Lucy Ryan's book, Revolting Women, I highly recommend it.

To work with Wendy and be supported through your midlife reinvention, visit her website at Drama free you.com and book a free 30 minute coaching call. That's it for the Queen Agent Debrief. For more resources, check out our website, noon.org.uk and sign up to my weekly Queen Agent newsletter. And there's my book, much more to come.

, glowing best, particularly [:

It's just 4. 99 for your first bottle when you use the special code QUEENAGERPOD at Begin. com It's usually 29. 99 a bottle, so don't miss this terrific deal. Next time, we'll discuss what we learned from broadcaster, political campaigner, and maths whiz, Carol Vorderman.

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Thanks for listening, and being a part of the QueenAger revolution.

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