472: Transform How You Handle Crisis in Midlife When Life Throws You Curveballs with Pardis Mahdavi

But my dad said something to me during that move. He said, you know, parties, people, they can take everything from you. They can take your belongings, they can take your home, they can even take your country. But the one thing no one can ever take from you is your mind and your education.

Welcome to Midlife Conversations. I'm your host, Natalie Jill, and I'm passionate about having amazing conversations that matter to us midlife women. On this podcast, I do what I do best. Taking complicated health topics and breaking them down simple, simply so that we can optimize aging together. I share actionable steps to help you thrive in what I believe are our best years to come. Join me as I interview the most inspiring people living their best midlife years and dive into essential topics like hormone changes, health optimization, weight management, blood sugar, emotional well being, relationships, beauty, and so much more. What do we do when life throws us multiple curve balls? Especially in midlife, where you've had one identity for a number of years and situations and circumstances throw you into another. Some of us navigate that change easily. We thrive in that. And others, we get really stuck in what was and what should have been. And it's very challenging to move on. Today I've got a guest that you're going to love learning from. Her name is Dr. Party Madhavi, and she is incredible with her journey. She has not had one curveball. She has had many curveballs, big curveballs, including being exiled from a country. This is intense. This is crazy. She is a master at overcoming obstacles like this, shifting and creating a new, thriving life from massive setbacks and curveballs. Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you so much, Natalie, for having me on the show. It's. It's such an honor and a pleasure to be here with you.

So when I was recently talking with you, we were at a dinner. We had our friend Joe polish his house for dinner, and you were chatting, and I kept doing this double take, like, you just said what you were, what you were. What do you mean? How, what how, how. And you just had so many interesting stories. And I thought, not only do you have these incredible interesting stories, but just how you've thrived and overcome and how you've been able to help so many others with this. Help me understand, like, who were you these years ago and what did you think was going to happen with your life?

That's such a good question. You know, and I love the way that you frame this, this sort of, what do you do when life throws you curveballs? Right? Because I feel like that Life has thrown me curve balls over and over again. And as you know, I'm an avid horse woman. And I feel like I learned more from falling, right, than from falling from my horse than I do from the successes from the jumps and all the, you know, conquering a mountain. So who was I? That's a great question. I describe myself today as a recovering academic, but I was, you know, growing up. I grew up hyphenated, Iranian, American. So always this sense of two countries, Iran and America in one body. But not just two countries. Two countries that were kind of at a silent war. So I grew up during, you know, the 80s. You had, like, the Iran Hostage Crisis. You had Iran Contra. And so I grew up in the United States seeing images of Iranians burning American flags, which was very disturbing. And then having America narrate Iran as this great threat, this great enem. Right. And having my two home countries throw words like Great Satan at each other. So what does that mean for me? Who was those two countries in one body? That kind of gave me this appetite, this curiosity for wanting to be a bridge. I wanted to be the bridge between cultures and all of that. So, you know, that led me to studying diplomacy. I worked at the United nations for a while, and then I became what I call the accidental anthropologist. I found anthropology, which was a discipline that allowed me to study the richness of cultures. I got my PhD in medical anthropology. And we'll come back to that, because that's actually. It's the training I got as a medical anthropologist that has saved me each time these curve balls have been thrown at me. So we'll come back to that. But I studied medical anthropology, and then within that, my focus, I was very interested in the youth movement in Iran. I had been going to Iran. After I turned 21, I started going back there, and I started meeting young people who were my age who were engaging in what they called a sexual revolution. And I was fascinated by this. And so I began to focus my dissertation work as an anthropologist on sex, sexuality, and how sexuality has all these imbued meanings and is shaped by culture and politics. And then I wrote a book, my first book. I've written nine, but that was my first book, which was called Passionate Uprisings, Iran Sexual Revol. And not surprisingly, that book did not land well with the mullahs in Iran. And so, you know, there I was talking about. About that book and about the sexual revolution. And so I knew it.

Okay, I want to back up a little bit. So did you. Did you grow up in Iran? Or did you grow up here?

I grew up in Iran. But you. But you.

But your roots were there. So you're thinking, I'm connected. I need to. And so what did you learn to be true growing up here about thought of Iran, like, and how did that feel as a kid growing up here, knowing that controversy? And what did. Were you learning about sexuality versus what you knew to be the truth over there?

Such a good question, Natalie. Yeah, so what I was learning, you know, what people would say about Iran was it's this country that's, you know, very oppressive, that women are silenced, that, you know, that they're. That they wear these veils. And so that, you know, women were so much erased. And it was this notion that, you know, this culture was an aggressive culture. There was a lot of stereotypes, right. And people call it Islamophobia. There's a lot of stereotypes, right. And it was interesting because you had that narrative from non Iranians, and then the narrative from the Iranians in the diaspora, the Iranians in the community here, you know, in California was, well, you know, we're this rich culture, but, you know, good Iranian girls don't have sex. Good Iranian girls don't engage in relationships. Good. You know, this notion that, like, to be a true Iranian. And, you know, in some ways, we were clinging to that Iranian ness because it was so under attack from, you know, my. My adopted homeland, my ancestral homeland was under attack from my adopted homeland. So you want to cling to it. But then there was this narrative about Iranian culture as being, you know, very stoic and stayed and etc. And all of that turned out to be wrong. Like, I get to Iran and everybody. Everything I'd ever heard about Iran turned out to be wrong. Right?

So what do you mean by that? We say everything I heard turned out to be wrong.

Like, what.

What were you noticing? What was the differences?

So the first thing I noticed was, like, everybody was partying, like, oh, wow.

I was like, now what? You would think, yeah, okay.

You know, again, when you imagine Iran, you have this imagined, like, austerity. Women with their eyes cast down and. Sure, that was the public image, right? The public on the street, they would wear the headscarf and et cetera. But the underground scene was alive and well, and people were organizing and people were having conversations about how the body can, like, be political and speak back to the. You know, to this oppressive regime. And so, you know, I got there and I'm like, okay, first of all, Iran is not monolithic. It's not just one Thing. Thing. Which seems really obvious, but.

Right.

21.

But we do lump.

But we.

We still do it now. Like, we lump cultures into that. This one. Like this thing that we saw on TV or this thing that we heard about. Like, we. We especially people that have not traveled or explored, we tend to do that. We still do that today, I believe.

Right. Because we want to create division. Right. I mean, that's like. And that's the problem is we're constantly trying to carve the world into, like, us and them. Right. Constant desire to create division through criticism. It's all about critique rather than curiosity, which is like a theme that kind of has come back to me in my life. Right. And so, you know, I get there and I'm like, there's this, you know, there's this richness. The people are so warm and so welcoming. It's not this sort of, like, that tension that you. You sense over here, so. Which, of course, I kind of knew that from my parents, but I hadn't gotten to feel it. And. And there was this. You know, at the time, 70% of Iran's population was under the age of 28. Wow. A huge youth population. And the young people were very different from the authorities. And they were like, oh, yeah. You know, they were absolutely, like, you know, up on all of the cultural. The cultural and political, you know, theme. They were very much a part of the zeitgeist. And I was like, oh, my gosh. And then I. Of course, I also saw. I was going to parties, like, every night. Parties, raves, you know, is this, like, kind of like.

I'm just trying to picture this. So. So there's this image that you're thinking, everyone's walking around. Is it called Birkin? I don't even know if it's the hijab, the veil. Okay. They're covered with things. But, like, just like teens here, they're kind of doing things behind the scenes. Like. So. So you're saying at night they would go dress normal and not do that and go out and party and do. And, like, were parents aware of this or is it just kind of. They don't talk about it.

Parents. Some of the parents would help. They would, like, host the party. So I would. It's not so much that. It was more like. So here's a quote that sums it up. I had this one interviewee, and I wrote about her in my book, the book Passionate Uprisings. And she said, look, you know, in the United States, when you want to party, you go out.

Yeah.

You want to pray and be spiritual, you stay in. She said, in Iran, when we want to pray and be spiritual, we go out to the mosque, etc. But when we want to party, we stay in.

Wow.

So what you would see is. And then I became like that too. You'd see in public, everybody's got the, you know, the hijab on, whatever. Now things have changed. Remember, this is the early thousands. But, you know, in public, everyone would have. And then you'd enter this warehouse or you'd enter this like forest where there's, you know, or you'd enter like a home. And then everybody would take everything off and you had like makeup and you know, wow. Well, hairstyles. Beautiful. I mean, you know, I remember the statistic saying Iran was like the nose job capital of the world. And I was like, wow. You know, and like, you know, no, was this con.

Is this considered dangerous? Like here you do, you sneak out and you're just. You get the wrath of your parents. Right. But there, I'm assuming it's very dangerous.

It was very dangerous. Yeah. You were risking, you know, but because it was. Because the stakes were so high, just where, you know, people called. There was a book called Lipstick Jihad. So just the act of wearing lipstick was revolutionary. Just the act of wearing nail polish. So I have this whole chapter in the book, I talk about Summer of the Cockroaches, where basically up until this one summer in 2004, the law was that if you came out wearing nail polish or toe polish, that the morality police, there's a whole arm of the police called the morality police. And they would, if you're wearing lipstick, they would slash your lip with a razor. If you're wearing nail polish or toe polish, they would dip your hands in cockroaches or put cockroaches on your feet. But one summer, I remember I was there 2004, everybody organized and they were like, look, if we all come out in open toed shoes with like painted nails, there's not enough cockroaches to set on all of us. I affectionately call it Summer of the Cockroaches. You know, so they just set them loose on every, you know, but they couldn't. And so after that, women could go out and open toe like. So every single thing that was happening, you know, they called it the millimeter revolution. The hijab was sliding back millimeter by millimeter. And now, now look, they've made great progress. Now in many parts of Iran, there's no veil whatsoever. Which just goes to show you that this organizing, when you're using the body to speak back, has an impact on governments such that they can make a change that U.S. or foreign diplomacy can't.

But if you think of the courage of the first women to do this, because it's scary. You're setting, you're stepping out, and you're, you're hoping that others are going to follow and do the same, but you're, like, putting your life at risk when you do that.

A hundred percent. Yeah.

Where did you kind of fit? Because you're, you're watching all this going on, and you decide you're gonna, like, really speak up.

Yeah.

And what happens?

So, so where, where did I fit is where I, I, I find I always fit, which is I'm the storyteller. Like, I'm, you know, as, as these things are happening, I feel so compelled to write the story because we need to know the story to own our narrative. Right, Right. If we ever want to own our narrative, if we ever want to be able to kind of flow with the curveballs, we need to understand the different pieces of the puzzle. So I'm like, somebody's got to write about this. So I start writing, and I write, you know, articles, and then eventually a book called Iran Sexual Revolution, and then pretty quick 2007, that gets me kicked out. So that, that puts me on a you. And I'm, you know, Persona non grata like many other writers who speak out. And before I know it, I am exiled from my home country, from my ancestral home, you know, and I've got family there. And, you know, as we're having this interview today, Natalie, my parents are there in Iran right now, you know.

Wow.

And so suddenly, here I was, kicked out of my ancestral home. But here I was an anthropologist without a field site. Right. So I had dedicated my career. I thought I was going to be an anthropologist of Iran. And so suddenly I was, like, completely disoriented. And to add insult to injury, I come back to the United States. I've written this book about sex in Iran, which is getting a lot of traction amongst, like, policy communities, because they're like, oh, my God. You know, I had this. I was like, could sex unseat the mullahs? Like, Iran is a country that, you know, people have struggled to understand the, the way to approach. So it was getting good traction there. But amongst the Iranians in the United States, I was like the black sheep. I was shunned by my home community for daring to speak about sex in our culture. So it's like I lost my home, I lost my field site, and then I lost my community.

Wow.

It was just loss upon loss upon loss.

And what happens to your identity when that's happening?

You start to really have this existential question of, like, okay, what does that mean? Right? What does that mean? And so it's so interesting. One of the things my father had said to me when I was young, when I was about 7 years old, so I initially was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, because that when my parents had to leave during the revolution, that's where we were. But when I was six or seven years old, I came home from school one day and there was this. There was a sign that said, you know, burn this house. Terrorists live here. And this was in Minneapolis. My parents were like, okay, maybe we need to move to California, you know, and because there's a big Iranian community in La Tehrangeles, let's move there. We end up moving to San Diego. But my dad said something to me during that move. He said, you know, pardee's people, they can take everything from you. They can take your belongings, they can take your home, they could even take your country. But the one thing no one can ever take from you is your mind and your education. And at that time, I was like, okay, he must have really meant education. And so I doubled down. So I was like, okay, I'm a professor. I'm going to double down on helping other people get that which can never be taken away from them, which would be a college degree, right? So people ask me all the time what was responsible for my turn from being just a professor, which is not just. It's a. Being a professor's just not adjust. It's an incredible honor. But I then moved very quickly to. Into administration, right? So I then, you know, and I shifted my field site, I shifted from Iran to Dubai and Dubai and Turkey and Afghanistan, because, as I've shared with you, I was following, you know, my grandmother on my father's side, she bred horses. And so I was following this lineage of these horses which, you know, just spoke so much to my soul. You know, these all female armies that, you know, my grandmother had had a sure role in building in places like Turkey and Afghanistan. So I. I switched my field site so I could still be an academic. And then I ended up putting a lot of energy into thinking about higher education and thinking about how we can make higher education more accessible. Right? How can we make more people able to get that which can never be taken away from them, which is their education?

Wow. There's so much you're saying here that I'm connecting dots on. But first, I want. I hope listeners are picking up on this, like, where I have, like, compassion, so much compassion for you is here you are, you're born and raised here, you're living in the United States, but you're feeling this, like, I don't know where I really belong because I'm not from here. And then you've got people's opinions very strong, especially during those years with what was happening with Iran. Then you go back there and you're being told you don't belong here. So it's like, well, who am I and where do I belong? So I could imagine that's a huge, huge thing to grapple with right there.

Yeah.

And then your dad dropping this, this amazing thought process that, hey, there's some things you can't control. Like, literally other people, which we never can control other people, but you can control your mind. And now you took that to mean education, which for everybody, that's something different. But there's a really powerful lesson in here, and that is true. Like, that is the only thing we can control at any time. And even though you had this very extreme thing that happened. Very extreme. I think there's a lot of women listening right now that are going through to them very extreme. You know, like, maybe you were raising kids at home and that was your whole identity. And now your kids, they're. They don't. It's hard to even get them on the phone. Right. Like, so it's like, who am I? Or maybe you put your career aside because of your spouses, and now you're trying. Like, there's so many different things. Or, or you had a career that is no longer the thing, the topic, because of AI or because of whatever. Like, this is something that I feel we all have to learn to navigate because we cannot control circumstances or people.

Right.

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So true. Yeah. Or maybe, you know, to your point, maybe you are, you know, you were a mom raising your kids and, you know, I'm, I'm a single mom. I have three kids. Your community is around your kids, right? Yeah. My boys had flag football on Saturday. Totally all they were in Arcadia. But a lot of women I meet, you know, then their kids go off to college and they've lost their community on top of it.

That's right.

That was a really hard.

But you're a whole nother level because like, literally, where you can't, like your whole, your ancestry, everything is like they're saying, no, no, you are, you know, you're challenging it, right?

Yeah. Yeah. You don't belong and you're not like, good enough. Yeah, you're not a good girl. Like, and I think women so often, right, it's like we have this, we're constantly in this back and forth of not being enough and being too much. And so I was getting that from both ends, right. I was being told I was not a good enough Iranian American. And then I was being told I was just too much in Iran. Like, you're just doing the most, like, you're. And I'm like, okay, am I not good enough? Am I too much? And women, I feel this track hits us really hard.

So I'm going to ask you a lot of questions about advice you have and how to help women shift out of that conversation. But your story did not stop with where you just shared. You then had a 20 year career. That. Which was another identity that had to change. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah. So, you know, then I really, I was like, okay, it's, it's about, you know, to your point, Natalie, there's things you can't control. You can't control yourself. Right. So I was like, it's about your mind and your education. And so I really doubled down on that and I became, you know, chair of my department and chair of another department and then institute director and then dean and then I was dean. You know, I was, I was, you know, I was, I rose the ranks at Pomona College, one of the top colleges in America. Then I was a dean at the University of Denver. Then I was a dean at, you know, dean of a bunch of schools at Arizona State. Then I was provost at the University of Montana. And then I was university president at the University of La Verne in Los Angeles. So I held all these, you know, roles and, and high ranking positions in academia. And honestly, the higher up I went, the, the more disconnected I felt to myself, right? I, I was like, wait a second, what is happening? I, you know, I felt that I couldn't help students as a professor in the classroom. I felt that I could be engaged with them, I could do more. When I rose up into administration, I, I initially I thought that I could, but then higher education was shifting so, so rapidly and you know, it was becoming more and more expensive and I was, you know, the higher up you go, the more you see, you get to that 30,000 foot view and you're exposed to the serious mental health crisis amongst students, faculty and staff on college campuses. You're exposed to those soaring cost of higher education. We had students living in their cars, Natalie. We had families taking out second mortgages on their homes so that their students could afford to go to college. Then the worst thing was that they would graduate and they wouldn't have a. And I'm like, oh my gosh, we are not doing right by them. And, and, and so, you know, I felt like I was suddenly very out of alignment. I felt that, you know, I was, I, I felt, you know, the sense of paralysis. I felt like I couldn't do right even though I kept trying all these different things. You know, I was like, well, yeah, try to make it accessible. Let's do micro credentialing. Let's partner with workforce, because that's what work. You know, we, you have this situation where workforce is like, hey, this is what we need. And students over here saying we need. And actually there's a lot of parallels there. But then you had higher education in the middle just not willing to change. And, and for me, somebody who's constantly adapting to change and just like you said, rolling with the punches and like catching those curveballs and looking at them like, yeah, able to pull them far enough away to say, okay, this is a curveball. What's the opportunity in this? What's the lesson in this that I can take to be better? I felt like I couldn't do that. And so, you know, about a year ago I stepped down, I ended a 20 year career, worked to get to, you know, in some ways the presidency. And, but, but the higher up I'd gone, the more I felt a sense of paralysis, the more I felt I couldn't do right. You know, and, and that was really about me because I hadn't figured out my path, I hadn't figured out my purpose. I hadn't figured out that really what I wanted to do was dedicate my, myself to a life of the mind, but through building community in consciousness. Right.

And you know, but you almost had to walk through it yourself first to. So I think that what you just said makes a lot of sense that I think the reason people don't see the lessons is because they're still in it. And when you're still in it, fighting for what is or what you knew it to be before, it's very hard to see the, the lesson from it. So you almost have to get out of it, you have to step away from it, you have to take a break from it to see that. Is that if I'm hearing you correctly.

Yeah. And that's exactly. And you know, in some ways, you know, I was sort of forced, like I had this wake up call because I was feeling more and more out of alignment. And you know, I went through a really tough divorce, you know, and became a single mom right. Back in 2021. And I was still kind of, you know, addicted to work, you know, workaholic. Like I'm going to achieve my way out of, out of, you know, some of the serious things I was experiencing that feeling of alignment. I hadn't processed through all the stuff of, you know, losing my home country. I just hadn't processed to your point. I was in it and I, you know, finally by about, you know, a year and a half. Well, it really was like a two year process where I think I started to feel after my divorce, 2022, 2023 is, was me kind of and really understanding it and starting to pull the mirror out here. And by 2024, even though I loved my job and I absolutely loved being university president and I love that university, the University of La Verne is a fantastic place.

Sure.

The mirror was far enough away that I could see, oh my gosh, this probably isn't my best way of contributing. And I could See that I was out of alignment. But to get there, I relied on my training as a medical anthropologist. I went back to what I had Learned, you know, 24 years ago as a grad student, you know, doing my PhD and what I learned about consciousness and what I.

What was that? What was that that you learned as a medical anthropologist in training about consciousness?

Yeah. So what I learned was it's so much about your inner state. And so your entire experience of the world comes from your interstate, right? They have all those stories where it's like, okay, you see, you see something on the ground, and is it a rope or is it a snake? Well, much of that is kind of your perception, right? It's like, what, what, what's happening on the inside, right? And so I, I, I, you know, I learned, I went back to. And I kind of got reconnected with my teachers who talked about suffering and that inner state of suffering. And how can you learn to live in a peaceful and a beautiful state as opposed to a suffering state? How that inner state impacts everything that you experience? And I learned the founding hallmark of anthropology is curiosity, right? Margaret Mead's they all say make the strange familiar, and the familiar strange get curious, as opposed to be critical. So as opposed to criticizing or judging other people, which typically is you judging yourself and you creating distance. I judge myself. Well, I use it all the time. Instead of living in critique and judgment, can you live in curiosity and collaboration? Because curiosity and collaboration, those are the bridges to community, right? Because to elevate into this sort of realm of what I call the superconscious is not just an individual endeavor, it's a community endeavor, right? Because it's not enough for, like, let's say you go through all these things and you have this great experience. You know, you go to an ayahuasca retreat, you do a mushroom journey, but that's you. Then you come back and, you know, many of us are moms, we are daughters or, or we're, you know, I have horses. We're like animal parents, you know, like, we come back and it's like, how do we integrate what we just went through, right? But build a community, right? How do we connect with our kids? How do we connect with a community and elevate the consciousness of the whole.

You know, so you've been through some, some pretty extreme things. And I know there's some things we just can't even talk about on this show right now. For, for a lot of reasons. But, but, but y' all, trust me, when you hear that she's had some serious trauma from this too, that we're not even diving into right now. But I want to ask you at parties about some real time examples that some midlife women. I'm just pulling examples that I know from that. That space. If you could help us with how you would apply curiosity and collaboration to these things, that would. I think that would be really helpful. So let's take like a. Let's take a first one. Let's take, let's take becoming an empty nester. This is a very common thing for midlife life women and many of my listeners. So let's say that's. That was our identity. They were. Whether they worked or not, they raised kids. Their kids are grown or teens or whatever, and they are no longer in that role. And they are feeling like, in that, that what's my purpose. And like this was. And now. And now like I'm holding on to. I want to hang out with my kid, whatever it is. And it's the relationship, it's there. It's just different. How would you apply curiosity and collaboration to that?

So that's a great question. You know, I'm about to be, you know, my first. My first. My. I have a high schooler who is the eldest of my three. She's going to go to college. But one of the things, when I, I teach classes, I work with people, with women, particularly unconscious parenting. And so much of it is about getting curious. Okay, well, why do I need them to call me every day? They're not living with me. Why is that about that? Like, is that about me or is it about them? Right. So first getting curious about the impetus, like, why do I need to talk to them every day? Well, what's like, well, they need their mom. Do they? Is that about them or is that about you?

Yeah.

And so getting curious is like, all right, they know that you love them. You know that you love them. Do we need to keep performing? Right. And I think that was like, one of the things that I learned in my last, you know, is like, do I need to keep performing something in the hopes of getting love or can I just be content with performing for myself? Like, I don't need to perform anybody else.

Yeah, that's a good. I mean, I mean, I know some people are having aha. Moments with that. That's. That's pretty incredible. And, and I don't. I don't have the answer to that either. But, like, that's something for us all to think about. You're right. Is it for us or is it for them? Like, they know you're there if they need something. So that's about us. That we're like, oh, why don't they want to spend time? Why don't they want to hang? Like, that's about us. So separating that. And you could still hold that love and be there, but it's about us. If we say we need them to do something, right, like, that's wild.

Do we keep needing the validation of our children?

Yeah. Wow, that's an aha moment. Okay, let's take that example to. Let's take it to business. So this is a, this is a very common one right now. And it's going to get worse, I think, with AI. So people have had a career, like they, they know themselves and what they are doing is almost becoming obsolete. I'm bringing this up because this is real. This. We saw this happen with social media and Internet, and now we're seeing it happen with AI, Right? So that's another example. So we get stuck in. This is the way I've always done it. This is what I've known. How would you apply curiosity and collaboration to that?

Yeah, I think I would get. I would, I would start to get curious and collaborative, but first I would get curious about, okay, well, what is it about what I do that has connective tissue to AI, Right? And so what's the anxiety? So a lot of professors have this anxiety. I remember, like when ChatGPT came out, they're like, well, with AI, like, what's the purpose of me? And I'm like, okay, remember when calculators were invented and math teachers were like, well, we don't need to teach math. I'm like, no, you learn how to teach with a calculator, right? And so get curious about how your particular business, your industry, uses AI. Like, get curious and then look across and see, well, who can I collaborate with? Like, you know, like Natalie, you and I met at a dinner, right? I'm like, oh, my gosh. You know, I look at everything that you're doing. I saw your books and I was like, okay, now maybe Natalie and I can communicate, like, and collaborate. Yeah, we can get curious, the two of us, just like this inter. Subjectivity, these totally interrelation. This is also, by the way, why you need community. Because, like, I can't have this conversation with myself, right? And, you know, this is why each other to be in community and rise. But how can I collaborate? Back to the AI example. Okay, who's really killing it on AI in my Particular industry, let's say, in real estate or whatever, how can I collaborate with them? And how can I, like, take my magic and mix it with theirs and find the right.

That's great. That's great advice. Now, with the first one, the parenting example, we talked about curiosity. What would have been the collaboration part with that one?

I think the collaboration part with that one would be actually creating, like, an infrastructure of support with your. With your kid. So this is what I do with my kids. It's like, what are the touch points? Right. What does it look like? Hey, what does it look like? What are some signaling? What are the things you want to do with me? And what are the things where you want space? And it's a constant collaborative touch point of. Okay, now you're like, you know, my daughter, it's like, now she's going to be driving. Okay. We're both kind of going to miss that time in the car for sure. What do we want to do in its stead? I'm not going to insist that I still drive you. I know some parents like, oh, you know, like, I'm still going to drive my daughter to soccer even though she has a driver's license. And I'm like, well, I'm not going to do that. Right. We're going to find a different way and we're going to have those collaborative conversations.

Good.

Opposed to being like, well, I'm the parent, you know, like, well, no, let's figure out what works, you know?

Yeah, that's good. Okay, I'm going to talk about it. Let me ask you about another big one for midlife women. Bodies and appearance changing.

Yeah.

So this is like every midlife woman.

Right.

So thing the gravity kicks in.

Hormone.

Like, everything's changing. And so how do you approach. Because that. That's an instant, like going back to younger years or comparison. So how would you do curiosity and collaborative collaboration with that one?

And that one's very similar to the first one. Okay. Getting curious about why do I need to look like, okay, I'm 46. Right. Okay, why do I. Why do I need to look like I looked when I was 26? I'm so glad that I don't feel like I did when I was 26 mentally, necessarily. I have the maturity to process things now that I didn't when I was 26. And I can celebrate that. Right?

That's right.

Why can't I celebrate the fact that my body is just different and, like, more mature? Right. Getting curious and. But why do I need to look like I think it's getting curious about what does it mean to look sexy at 46. Getting curious about that. Getting curious about, okay, like, what is the right way necessarily? How do we. How. What's the right way for us to talk to ourselves? Like, there's a great book, it's called Chatter, which basically talks about how we have something like, you know, 20,000 thoughts in a day, and, like, 8% are negative. How can I start to have the inner chatter be a little bit different so that we all have this in inner kind of committee. I call it we, you know, so we all call it the itty bitty shitty committee.

Oh, yeah. Very familiar with that.

Yeah. Start to, like, change that narrative and be like. Rather than being like, okay, my. You know, my body, I'm drooping. How can I be like, yeah, but look at. Like, I'm actually standing up, like, in a different way. Like, I've got a different, you know, what are the. What are the positive things? And how can we shift the narrative to being more about how we feel as opposed to how we look? Right. Because so much of it. You know what I love about your work, Natalie, too, And, like, it's like, you know, eat and do the things that make you feel good, and then when you feel good, that's back to, you know, we talked earlier in our conversation about that interstate. When you feel good, your perception of everything is different. So if you're a single mom, like me, and you're in your mid-40s, and you're back on the dating scene, and, gosh, that's really uncomfortable. Like, I noticed when I go on dates now, like, how I feel completely impacts how the date goes. And it's not even like I'm having a good day or bad hair day. Right, Totally. So how does that inner shift manifest in the extra. How do you get curious about that? And then the collaboration part of that is, how can I surround myself by people who are in that same phase of growth, that same evolution, as opposed to being surrounded by people who are like, like, oh, my gosh, we all look terrible. How can we get collaborative about, like, supporting each other? Like, how can we have, let's say, like, a food train where it's like, okay, I'm gonna make something really super healthy. So I have a great group of girlfriends here in Scottsdale, and, you know, a couple of them are great cooks. Like, we all bring different things to the table, and they'll make, like, something really big and, like, make a big, big, big pot of super healthy soup and Then they'll deliver it to each of us. Us.

That's amazing.

And then we have these training.

How do I become part of this food group? And, like, I like that group. I want to be part. That's amazing. I love that. No, this is really good. I love this whole perspective. I hope you guys are picking up on this, like, this whole curiosity. And I don't. I don't even know if that was, like, your method, but you said it, and it really just resonated with me. Curiosity and collaborative. Because I think that is in most of our gap as far as when we're walking through a circumstance. So when I, you know, heard some of your stories before, it's making sense. Thinking, rewinding into our conversation is that's how you navigated those hard times, is. You were like, okay, this is happening. I cannot control it. This is what's happening. I've got to step into curiosity. Like, what am I going to learn from this? Like, what's. What is this about? Like, why is this. Why am I uncomfortable? Like, all of that, and then now, how do I take this and be collaborative? Which is what you did. So you took that. But I think what happens is we, too many times, me included, are guilty of. We're in an uncomfortable situation. Instead of being in the curiosity space, we quickly want to get to the collaboration. Collaboration space. Like, how do I fix it? How do I. And that's. It's almost too early. You almost have to, if I'm hearing you correctly, to stay uncomfortable and. And go, why is this coming up? Like, why do I feel uncomfortable and be very curious about it?

Yeah, I think we've been, you know, and I think. I think you're exactly. You're exactly right about the fact that so many times we want to jump the step. Yeah, I think there's that first part. Like, I told you, like, you know, the. The mirror is so, so close. You have to, like, pull it totally six inches. And I think so many people miss that step. And they go to us doing instead of, like, it's like, you got to be a human being. Totally go to a human doing.

I'm like, you know, I have a daughter who's almost 18 at the time of us recording this. And I'm like. And I'm really thinking about what you said here because, you know, when they're almost 18, they are a full adult. Like, they are. They. They don't want to hang out with us.

Like.

Like, when they want to, they want to, but it's. It's I can see me doing to her what my mom did to me. And like. Like, I see it like. Like, it's almost like that. The guilt. Like, what. But. But it. You're right. It's about us. It's not about them. It's about us.

Yeah.

So I'm gonna work on that.

And.

And we.

And to your point, we tend to mirror the. Relate. Like I. My mom and I had a certain. Like, this is how relationships are. Right. Is. We tend to do mirroring and that is not always helpful. Right.

Right.

Intergenerational. You know, not. Not necessarily. Like in. In your case. Yes. When I studied intergenerational trauma. That's how it happens is people mirror the same.

Wow. Oh, my gosh. I have like, so many more. I'm do a part two with you at some point because there's. There's so much more. But this is brilliant. What you. So where do people tell us about. I know you've got a lot of books out there and you're working on a new one. Tell us, like, what do you. Where do you recommend people start and where do they find you?

So you can find me on, you know, install the social. But my website's probably the best way. It's www.pardismedavi.com.

Okay. And we'll link that below.

Yep. That's all my books are on there.

Yeah.

I had a book come out about, you know, six weeks ago, as of the time of this recording, called Writing, which is about how. Which is actually a meditation on failure on my writing impacts my writing and my writing impacts my writing. But it was really about. The book is about actually how I learned more from falling than success.

Good. But we do, I think every part of life. We do. Yeah. Like, that's where you learn.

Yeah. And that's why I apply. I. I extrapolate. I like, talk about my falls. Extrapolate like. Like, okay, I had that fall that day. But really what that was about was something in my career or my divorce or what have you. Right. And so, you know, that's that book. But then I've got my first fiction coming out soon, which is really about the. You know, it's got three characters and they're exploring this trippy world of, you know, the intersection of sex, psychedelics, and the superconscious.

Okay. So I got a whole bunch of stuff I needed. Now I got more questions, but there'll be a whole nother interview. Because there's a lot.

Exactly.

Thank you so much. Parties. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me on the show. Natalie, this has been great.

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Sam.