Wise Women: The Untold Story of Menopause and Human Evolution

Welcome to the Wellness Sherpa podcast, where we engage with passionate leaders, holistic thinkers, and disruptors who courageously share their personal journey, mission, and wisdom with you. Together, we create a safe space to empower you to live your best, most vital life. Thanks for being here. Well, I am so thrilled to be here with the Dominique DeBroe, who I met, gosh, maybe in the last 6 months. We are definitely sisters from another mother. We think the same way. We are in the same genre of our evolution as women. And Dominique is a filmmaker. We're going to talk all about your amazing film called Wise Women. What's the second part to it?

Humanity's Untold Origins.

Humanity's— so Wise Women: Humanity's Untold Origins. And Dominique is also a nutritional chef, which is fascinating. But what you've been able to do is really bring to life the true story of menopause and what that means. So I'm so honored to have you here.

Thank you.

Thank you for saying yes.

Thank you, Jen. Uh, well, I love your product. Love you, and I love your product. So I'm thrilled to be here.

All right, well, let's jump on in. One of the things that you've done so brilliantly in the film is to really help people understand the story they've been told and then the reality of what's really going on. So let's start there. What led you into wanting to bring this film out? And what was going on in your life? And what did you notice? I know it's a lot of questions, but— Just how, how did this come to be?

Sure. Um, very simply, I went into mer— uh, perimenopause and then menopause very quickly and just hit with all sorts of symptoms. And this was about now coming near to 12 years ago. And if you remember, 12 years ago, we were not talking about menopause. The whole study that had kind of taken hormone therapy down was in full play. And I was not finding answers to my symptoms, how to get me through it. And the other part of it is I all of a sudden hit this ageism and felt like I was being told by society that now that my fertility was over, my relevance, importance, and visibility was also just falling off a cliff. So between those 2 things, I was hurting physically. I was emotionally unsteady, and I was feeling this dread. It so happened that my husband, who is a documentary filmmaker, had been hired by a marketing company to interview menopause doctors. At that time, it was called NAMS, North American Menopause Society. It's now just Menopause Society. So he was interviewing the doctors. So I was like, oh my God, please ask them questions.

This is called divine intervention.

Exactly.

Big time.

Kismet. Yeah.

Yes.

So I was like, please ask them questions. And really, I was just looking for therapeutic support, understanding, some therapeutic research. What came back, first of all, therapeutically, they really The science is behind, right? As a lot of, uh, women's health sciences. But also, we got the very clear idea that medicine thought that menopause is this modern sort of like, oops, that now because of better hygiene, uh, better food, uh, modern medicine, better technology, we just live longer. And that, as far as they're concerned, humans were meant to— human females were meant to be born, grow into fertile humans, reproduce, bring up their kids, and then die. Right? And that now we outlive. And that just did not feel right on the inside. It just didn't sound right to me. And neither did it sound right to Chris, my husband. So we just started researching, and the minute we talked to anthropologists, for instance, that premise was just totally like, nope. They have proof of very old skeletons way back, right? So it's not something modern. It's not over the past couple of hundred years, even maybe thousand years, that we've been outliving our fertility. So we just went deeper. And what we found is new science that's really just been there, but all the scientific groups aren't talking to each other, that our postmenopausal females, before we were even Homo sapiens, were— had the perfect kind of capabilities to organize societies, care for societies and architect societies. And when we found fire and stopped around fire, that was a big necessity, you know, because differently from a society that just moves around, once you stop around a fire, there's a lot of social stuff to figure out.

Right.

And the postmenopausal women didn't have that reproductive hormone, like, up and down, and also the thinking towards the reproduction. And so they had the capability already in the feminine, and then the kind of post-hormone steadiness to help organize and lead these societies. And in doing this, it kept the social complexity together rather than groups breaking apart. And that social complexity helped us grow our brains to become the Homo sapiens that we are.

And so how did the story evolve into what it's been, what the narrative has been, and who benefits from that? Because I know as a menopausal woman, woman, I haven't benefited from it.

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, we also talk about in the film that about 10,000 to 8,000 years ago, there's, uh, the idea of reproductive consciousness, that we as humans are conscious of our death, and we're also conscious that sex makes babies. And the, the understanding in science is that that came about when we started animal husbandry. So, you know, domesticating animals. Because there, when you domesticate animals, you kind of see the act of sex with them, and then you see a difference in the female right away, and then ultimately a birth. So that came together. Oh, okay. The belief before was that sex kind of opened up the woman for the heavens to give her a baby. It was sort of like a gift from God. And reproductive consciousness changed that. Also, what happened is at the time, the only thing that seemed to happen that you could see was from the male, right? You couldn't see a female, a mammalian egg until the mid-1800s when a microscope was created that was strong enough. And so in that, the men sort of like, ooh, We're like, we have this paternity thing. We better get our stuff together. And they kind of— it was, you know, humans made the mistake to decide that they should take over and take control. In that way, that's where today's society, where it's very much more of a patriarchy and male-based and also very kind of structured and control-based came into being, where before it was much more of a female-led social organization, or at least from that communal space.

Right.

And so in that, I think anything to do with this post-reproductive doesn't work in this idea of women as fields to sow with the seed. You know, it's like, well, then what are women without that fertile field?

Right. So fascinating, because you and I talked about this before, that in 2012, you know, I did a study with the 13 Indigenous grandmothers. And in 2012, we ended the 10,000-year cycle of the patriarchy. And we are now in the matriarchy. We're now kind of coming back to our roots. And as you said, with the masculine, it's the ladder, it's achievement, it's what did you get done? It's the hierarchy, it's control, it's power over. For the feminine, it's power with. It's the circle, right? It's exactly what you're talking about. It's collaboration, not control. It's not achievement. It's how do we do this together? How do we rebuild together? And so, I mean, I think the timing of this information coming out, the truth coming out at a time where the world is energetically ready to receive it as well.

Yeah.

And I was just at a retreat a couple of weeks ago, and actually somebody in our group who was leading it talks about the village that women ran and heralded the villages. Right. That's what you're talking about. And so, you know, we've lost that village concept.

Yeah.

And, you know, and women didn't go through menopause by themselves. They had women with them supporting them. And so how do we, in modern-day times, recreate that sense of village? I mean, your, your film is getting out there, which is great. But what can people listening, women listening, men listening to this, What can they do to help bring this into fruition, into life?

Well, first of all, to have the science that gives your inner instinct receipts, right? Because all of us, as we head into menopause, we know internally that we're going through a very sacred transition that should be celebrated. Right? As much as puberty should be celebrated because we're now going into something, or pregnancy, if you choose to birth a baby, it's a celebratory time. So this time should be celebrated, first of all. And to have the science that goes, wow, that feeling inside and that feeling that I've got something to offer and that something is changing, it's shifting, It's more wisdom-based, it's more leadership-based, will help women find their voice and use their voice. And the second thing is coming together, as you said. We— it's clear, or to me anyway, it's clear that humans work better in tribes.

Yes.

And so you might say, well, you know, we organize around families. To me, that's too small of a tribe. Right?

You need the village.

Exactly. It takes a village. Because also, there are some women who choose not to have babies, but they have a huge amount of caring to give. So it's not that they're saying, I don't want to mother. I just don't want to reproduce and mother my own. Right? And we have said that so often that Children need a village. What we're really saying is our future needs a village. So come together, find your voice, come together and start strengthening that voice and using it. And that's how we can change the future.

That's fabulous. Something that you said triggered me. You know, if you look at indigenous tribes, when a child, when a woman starts to menstruate, That's actually considered the beginning of their spiritual awakening. So they are kind of taken away from the tribe and they are celebrated and honored and I think painted, right? All of the things. And we don't have that type of ritual or ceremony for a woman going through menopause, which, to your point, it's the doorway of our wisdom.

Yes.

It's the— not just the wisdom that we've held, but that our mothers have held, that our grandmothers have held, right? And so that's really interesting. It gives me food for thought of what can we do to celebrate other women going through this transition? Because I'm a little bit older, but I look at friends and it's like, oh my gosh, I'm miserable. I can't sleep. I have hot flashes. Right? So it's all the negative. And I try to impart a little bit of wisdom to say, but you're coming into your Crone phase. Like, what an honor. And Crone in the media is the Wicked Witch in Snow White. It's this old lady who's mean and haggard. And I'm like, hell no, no, it's, it's about us coming into our beauty and into our wisdom. And we have so much to offer the, the world at this point in our lives.

Yeah.

And so one of my questions was, as you were going through the creation of this film, was there anything that surprised you? So you knew, kind of, you had the stirring inside of you, And you knew there was more truth and you started digging. Did anything shock you or surprise you where you went, oh my gosh, now that makes sense?

Yes and no. Um, what— it wasn't a surprise when we figured this out, but it was shocking to me how we hadn't been talking about it and how it just lived more in my instinct then. What started surprising me is how much of the societal gaslighting I was still holding on to. I've always been a speak-your-mind type of woman. You know, as a matter of fact, in my corporate days, I would have to at times really bite my tongue because I was usually the first to speak up on something, et cetera. And then I started seeing through the process of making this film how many things of the, you know, don't rock the boat, be nice, be quiet about things, I was still holding onto. And still now— so I'm now 61, and I'm well past— I'm 10 years into full menopause. So menopause means the day 12 months after you've had your last period, right?

Mm-hmm.

That's really all it means. It's just that one, uh, day of demarcation. So I've been post-menopause for 10 years, and I'm still like kind of unveiling stuff from myself. And that's really important for all of us to start looking at the things that we took on And how deeply some of those things are because we were fed a script from when we were born.

Right.

That our importance is a certain importance, that, that we decline after fertility. All those things have to be sloughed off because you, you spoke about native cultures. Native cultures revere the crone. The wise woman, right?

Absolutely.

And that is where the wisdom of the tribe, of the community is held. And that is who they go to for, where do we go forward? How do we go forward? So that's where we have to uncover our voice and uncover our wisdom and start using it.

So what would you say to a 20-something-year-old Who doesn't even have menopause on her radar, what would you say to her to help her prepare her now for what she will be coming into?

First of all, don't buy into it. Here's a really interesting thing that I realized about my fertile years. I felt a constant anxiety because of time. And I realized when I turned 50 and all of this started coming upon me that my anxiety was because I had that constant knowledge that once I hit my stop of fertility, I was being told that I was over, right? So since I cared to have a career, I wanted to create businesses, and I wanted to be a mother. All of it was this, oh my God, it all has to be in the same space.

It's the ticking time bomb, right? You're on a schedule.

Bingo. Exactly. And what's interesting is my daughter, who's a very strong woman, has decided to take a career path that is something that will work for her to become a mother by her late 20s because that's That's a huge desire for her. And when I hear her talk, it's because she doesn't have the same, oh my God, I can't do things after.

Right.

Because obviously, I, like, I kept from giving her that, right?

Yes. Right.

And so that's what I would say to 20-year-olds, that, you know what? First of all, we Gen X and late baby boomer, because I'm right on the cusp, women, are, are clearing out and changing this world. And so by the time you get into your 50s, you're not gonna be seen in the same way.

Right.

And if you guys believe it, that's the best. So if you want to be a mom and right now wanna just take it easier in the career so that you can concentrate on being a mom, do that. And then once your kids are more in school or they're leaving the home, you can then come back in And really give your attention to that. Or if you just choose to be mom, homemaker, phenomenal grandma, great. Or if you don't want any of that and the career's the way, come on in and know that you are vital, important, and relevant into your 90s, for goodness sakes.

Right. Yeah, I love it because our generation— and we're the same age— Our generation has not passed on— like, my mother passed on the same, you know, the same misinformation, if you will.

Yeah.

And we've— there's the wisdom that we've brought into our generation is we don't want to pass on that to our daughters, to our sons even, right, who will be potentially with a partner. And so, to me, that's huge because we are Stopping the misinformation in this maternal 10,000 years that we're in.

Yeah.

Of how do we empower? And you use that word, and I think that's an important word. How do we empower the future generations to have a different lens and to come back to the sacredness of this transition versus, oh my gosh, menopause is a negative thing, it's terrible, blah, blah, blah. How do we come back into honoring the sacredness of it.

Yeah. And, and I better fit in all my life before I get—

Right. Before I get to that. Heck no. No. I feel like I'm in the best time of my life.

Yes, me too.

Right.

And I just did a screening and a couple of women, you know, talked about the fact that this is the best sex they've ever had. Right. So on every level, women are finding just the best of Yeah.

And I think we stopped caring about what people think about, right? All of that stuff that holds us back when we're younger, we're now stepping into our full power, our full wisdom, our intuition into the circle, which I think is incredible. Yeah.

Yeah.

I love it. I love it. I love it. So what would the world look like if you were building a new world? With this information, what would day-to-day life look like?

Well, primarily women would be supported to listen to their inner voice and voice it. And to me, what that does, that kind of confidence, and then women coming together over this, that kind of Communal support and safety gets us out of our trauma.

Talk a little bit more about the trauma, because I think this is important.

Yeah. So one of the things that we do in the film is we interview Dian Rosenfeld, who wrote The Bonobo Sisterhood. She's a lawyer, a professor at Harvard Law School. And she has spent a good deal of her life doing pro bono work for women who have had— who've been assaulted or who have fought against their assaulter, and then they're on trial, etc. And the sad reality, and this is from, you know, it's the major data. It's not just from me, but in the US, 1 in 4 women are sexually or physically assaulted sometime in their life. And that's just the women who speak up. Right?

I was going to say, I have a practice. I think it's way more than that.

Yes, exactly.

Go on record.

Exactly. That's just the women who actually show up at a police station or somewhere and say, this has happened. Right? And in the world, it's even worse where it's 1 in 3. And again, that's just the ones who speak up about it. And one thing that I realized in reading her book is that I basically put a shell on every time I leave the house, more or less depending where I'm going, right? Because if I'm just going to the grocery store, it's a level of shell. If I'm going into the city and I know I'm going to be there in the evening, it's like a thicker shell. What does that do to my ability to speak my mind and care for people and care for the society when I'm sort of in a combative mode?

Yeah.

Right? And that's coming from trauma. If we commune together and there's safety in that, and that's where Bonobo Sisterhood, great book to read, that's where Dian wrote about the bonobos because they have evolutionarily Done away with male sexual coercion, and the way that they do that is if any female is feeling in danger, she lets out a cry, e e e, and any other female in her that hears it, whether they know the female or related, it doesn't matter. Just come. Wow! And the male is pushed off. If the male decides to learn the lesson, comes back in, he's then forgiven, brought back in. But if that keeps happening, or if it's awful enough, toes have been bitten off, et cetera, and males have been basically not let back in. And through that, males have learned, and it just doesn't happen as much.

Right.

Or if it happens, it's dealt with, right? So imagine not having that fear, not having that trauma. What kind of future are we going to have when we don't pass on that trauma to our children, where we don't react out of that trauma?

Right.

I think a much better future when we're able to think our full thoughts, have our full wisdom, because we don't have that kind of cloud of—

Yeah, of protection of trauma. Yeah, it's fascinating because I went to dinner with my daughter last night, and she's 28, and she was— Talking about that, she said, yeah, when— because she's a runner. And she said, when I run, I'm just, you know, constantly aware of my surroundings. So it's that hypervigilance, right, of what could happen, what could go wrong. I got to make sure that I'm aware of everything around me.

Yeah.

And it, like, stunned me a little bit. I was like, wow. Like, on one hand, I said, well, that's smart because there have been rapes and things like that on the trail. So I understand that. But on the other hand, how sad. That she's focused on her surroundings versus just being present in her run and enjoying her run.

And how much more energy she could put towards her fitness.

Right.

That she's not expending somewhere else. Right.

Wow. That's incredible. Um, and Diane's last name, Dr. Diane, what was her last name?

Rosenfeld.

Rosenfeld. Okay. I'm gonna read that book. It sounds fascinating.

Yeah.

So any final words of wisdom that you'd like to depart?

Well, yes, I, I would like to bring this back to health, um, and what you do, um, also because I've tried your products now for about a month and a half and game changers in a lot of ways. The, the important thing here, this information, the fact that menopause is an evolutionary adaptation and that it helped make us human. So it is this transition that nature has baked in, and it's an important transition, and that we're transitioning into the leadership and wisdom phase. You might think, well, yeah, what does that do for my hot flashes? What does that do for my sleep or my body aches? I could not take hormone therapy at the beginning. I was told I couldn't because of my cancer background, and I also have a minor blood clotting Uh, genetic. But then as the studies went forward, about 4 years ago, my doctor said, actually, you could try it. And I did. And for other reasons, it just doesn't work for me. So what I did instead is I took a look at my symptoms and started listening to them.

So as messengers. So looking at these—

As messengers. Exactly. What are you telling me?

Right.

My hot flashes would come when I was holding back emotions or words, right? Or when they came, I was realizing that. And when I started just letting emotions and words fly, they would go away faster, and they came back less, right? Things like that. But then also, the muscle pain, the joint pain. How am I meant to move? The sleep. Okay, what are the right therapies? And for me, I needed to go natural ways. And the therapies that I found in nature provides give me other things. So the sour cherry that I take to help me sleep also takes away inflammation. It also calms my brain. There's all these things that working along with nature gives me. So I'm not saying if hormone therapy works for you, go for it. Great. The thing about it is it's not going to be the be-all and end-all. And there's other things.

Right.

The minute that you know that what you're going through is not your decline, it's not your oops, I'm meant to be dead, or I'm towards dying, but it's actually a transition to this amazing celebratory part of your life. You've got the motivation to Okay, how am I gonna live this life the best possible? And then you will find the right therapies for yourself. For me, it's how I move, how I eat, your products, different supplements. For other people, it might, might be hormone therapy along with other things. Whatever it is, you're at least motivated and like these symptoms aren't gonna take you down because, ah, fuck, I'm supposed to be dead anyway.

Sorry. It's okay.

But you know what I mean?

Now, and I would just want to add to this. I mean, I think part of our awakening and our evolution is that, you know, our— we became disconnected from our bodies. You know, I grew up and you grew up probably in an era I was taught no pain, no gain. Don't cry or I'll give you something to cry about. Right? Basically, don't be female. And I was damn good at my banking job because I could hold the masculine. But I also had this innate, natural piece of me that I was shutting down. And to me, part of going through menopause was, wow, my body is not doing something negative to me. My body is talking to me, and now it's my turn to listen. And to me, I love what you shared that you tried something, it didn't work, but you started noticing and paying attention to what did work.

Yeah.

And to me, it's our bodies are constantly communicating to us and coming into this wisdom. And, you know, I've been teaching my daughter at a younger age, like, listen to your body. It's just, it's just information. And then you get to choose what you do with that information. I don't believe our bodies are ever at war with us, fighting against us. Menopause is a beautiful, celebratory, sacred transition where many new gifts open up. Many new gifts. I mean, again, I feel like the best I have ever felt as far as who I am, how I'm showing up in my life and in the world and having an impact. And I think that's what we're here to do.

Yes.

And I love it. So where can people find your documentary? I'm going to give the name again, Wise Women: Humanity's Untold Origins. Where can people watch it? And where can people find more information about you and other— you were just written up And an article. Can you share more about how people can find you?

Sure, absolutely. So the movie is available to rent on Bingeable. And I believe that you're going to have a link for everybody in the description. Correct. This way, it's a link that's actually specific to you guys. So we'd love to see, you know, how many of your listeners rent the film. And you can also find more information about the film on wisewomenmovie.com. And so there you can see the trailer and more info on, you know, the team and everything. And as far as you can find out more about me, but as a nutritional chef, you can go to my YouTube, which is Food Lady Dominique, and I've got a great deal of great information and recipes there. And, uh, yes, the article that you're talking about is on Women's E! News.

Okay.

And it's all about the importance of the message of the film for us as women and going forward.

Well, I'm blessed that this information continues to Shape the world and where we are. You are gorgeous, beautiful, and amazing. You are radiant. I love your energy. Thank you for what you're doing to bring purpose and insight into a beautiful transition for women, and to reframe how we've been looking at it. So thank you for your work, your purpose, and for. getting this out.

Amazing.

Thank you, Jen.

Thank you for having me. Yeah.

All right.