5. What is mine to do?

In this episode we explore  - What is mine to do?

As older women, there comes a moment when we ask, what now? Maybe you’ve raised children, built careers or brought life or other creations into the world. But now, at this stage of life the question arises - what is mine to do?

In this conversation, we explore how wisdom quietly nudges us. It doesn’t come with a fanfare, but instead we feel it in our bones. How can we learn to trust that gentle pull that’s leading us on the path back home – back to  what is uniquely ours to do?

About this podcast

We believe the voice of the older woman is medicine for the world.

Elizabeth Lovius and Liz Scott are two women post-55 with a combined century of living, loving and learning. Although opposites in personality, pace and lifestyle, we share a deep passion for inside-out transformation. Our individual career journeys have led us to inspire, coach and teach people to reconnect to their own inner wisdom in business and community settings.

In The Wild, Wise Feminine, we share our unfiltered conversations about what it really means to come into your own, be seen and hold the line for love.

Whether you're navigating the territory beyond menopause yourself, or simply curious about the wild wisdom that emerges when women start trusting what they know - we'd love you to pull up a chair.

If you want to get in touch - contact us at:  lizscottcoaching@me.com

For more about and how to work with Elizabeth Lovius www.elizabethlovius.com 

For more about and how to work with Liz Scott www.lizscott.co.uk

Transcript

Liz Scott 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Wild, Wise Feminine.

Elizabeth Lovius 0:09

We believe the voice of the feminine elder is medicine for the world. We are Elizabeth Lobius and Liz Scott. Two women with a combined century of living, loving and learning.

Liz Scott 0:26

In the Wild Wise Feminine, we share our unfiltered conversations about what it really means to come into your own, be seen, and hold the line for love.

Elizabeth Lovius 0:39

We'd love you to pull up a chair.

Liz Scott 0:49

In this episode, we explore what is mine to do. As older women, there comes a moment when we ask, what now? Maybe you've raised children, built careers, or brought life or other creations into the world. But now, at this stage of life, the question arises, what is mine to do? In this conversation, we explore how wisdom quietly nudges us. It doesn't come with a fanfare, but instead we feel it in our bones. How can we learn to trust that gentle pull that's leading us on the path back home? Back to what is uniquely ours to do Welcome Liz.

Elizabeth Lovius 1:48

Good to see you again. Hi Elizabeth, how are you getting on? Yeah, not bad. I've just washed my hair. It looks a bit like a duckling's. I think it looks glamorous. Well, thank you. We women can get very obsessed with uh our appearance sometimes. But thank you so much for saying I appreciate that, Liz. Today we were um thinking about what is mine to do. As an older woman, we've talked before about feeling like the lampshade factor, you know, putting putting hiding our light. And society does it, and then we do it a little bit to ourselves and we wonder what is my role now. So this podcast is definitely an inquiry into uh, I want to say somebody post-menopause, but I've decided that it's also really relevant for women in their 40s as well. I don't know about you, Liz, but I'm having all sorts of different people listening. And I think wherever you are on your journey as an older woman, it sort of starts mid-40s, and then you start looking ahead and you start noticing change and you start wondering what is my life looking like now beyond the kids, beyond you know, this stage of my life. And then in your 50s, it's a different inquiry, and then again in your 60s, but it's all the same. It's what is for me now. Yeah, it's mine to do, especially when I look out in a world that looks like it's struggling. You know, can I change the world? Can I save the world? Maybe when we were younger, you to you mentioned um that was an orientation, I me too. But at this stage, we know we know not to do that. We know something else is for us. And how do we know and what is that is gonna be unique for every woman? So I'd just love you to say, Liz, what what you've noticed about what is the answer to the question, what is mine to do?

Liz Scott 3:43

Yeah, I mean, we'll we'll kind of but I want to kind of get your input too here on what I'm gonna say. So because when you were speaking there, I mean, I I've had a different life journey than you. I wasn't able to have children. And I remember we went through, my husband and I went through IVF treatment, and I remember each time it failed, and we went through seven lots of different types of treatment. Each time there was the hope, I projected into a future of children. I started thinking about where might I send them to school, and you know, would I change my name, put my husband's name, and that would be great because they'll have cousins. And each time it failed, all of those dreams fell away. And one of the things that I realized as I was going through that process is that one of the reasons I wanted children was not just to have a family, but also when I, if I was to have a child, it felt like I would have a purpose. It was like that would be my purpose, would be to raise a child in the world. And so not only was I losing a dream of what I may or may not have as a family, I was losing that that sense of stability, that sense of what is mine to do if I had a child. Well, I would always have my children as a reference point as to what I felt was right for me to do. And it felt a little bit wide open, the world. Uh, it's a bit like, you know, if you're driving and you go into a car park and there are no no cars in it, it's sometimes a bit bewildering about where to park your car because there's too much space. And it felt a bit like that in my world. Yeah. So uh it just occurred to me as you were speaking that sometimes there in in my life that it that it's easy to see what is mine to do. When my when my husband went through some major surgery and he was in recovery for two weeks, it was almost the easiest time of my life because I knew I was there to make sure he got well, to cook good food, and to to keep him on the journey of recovery. And those two weeks were simple. I knew exactly what was mine to do each and every day. I knew what was my priority, and that's what I did. So I guess my reflection is, and I'd love your thoughts on this really, is as we get older, and and maybe if you've had children and had a family where they are now being independent, does it feel like there's a shift and transition and a sense of feeling a bit lost because what you were doing, maybe as a parent, is is no longer being asked of you in the same way. Your children are independent. Does that question, what is mine to do, feel different? I'd be ever so curious what what stands for you there.

Elizabeth Lovius 6:43

Oh, that's so juicy, and there are so many threads. Um so I'm just gonna backtrack a second as you were talking. Something really strongly came to me. So I'll start there and then I'll if I forget to answer your question, ask it again. Okay. Because women talking, you know, we go all sorts of places. Yeah. The first thing I want to say is my understanding I've come to see about the nature of the feminine energy, is it is its nature is to create. And sometimes that's children, and sometimes it's projects and something else that is birthed through that woman, a book, uh something else. There's an inf art, you know, there's infinite ways, and I have quite a high significant number of my close friends did not have children, some chosen, some not chosen. And that is, I would say more than half of the women of my peers did not end up having children. So I'm very familiar with um their journeys, and I think it is very different. That's what I will first thing I will say. I think if you have children, there's a trajectory and a narrative and a whole focus purpose that's built in. And I and I'm just gonna say this about it. I'm a better person for becoming a mother. There's no doubt about it. Uh, I I know I became less self-centered. I know there was something I would live for and die for. And that has made me, has grown me. So I wouldn't, you know, I that for me was a very purposeful and meaningful journey. And especially when I look at the women around me who didn't have children, what I see is their huge productivity in terms of creativity, that they've all brought something beautiful into the world, anyway. So there's a time for that, you know, when we're mothering something, when we're nurturing something, it can be children, but I also see it not children as well. I see it as some other thing. And as an older woman, we look back on our creations, our children, or whatever else we've been focusing our producing energy on, our creative energy on. And there comes a time when we go, are we done? And I I remember I mean you're never done with your children, but there was a point where they're good. They're good now, they're stabilized, they're young men, they want to make their way in the world. I'm always their mother, I'm always their landing place. My role, my purpose of giving them roots and wings. I did that. And there was, I I'm really in that celebration phase right now. I'm really feeling the celebration of fulfilling something meaningful. And it threw me, age 60, a couple of years ago, into exactly what you just said: a lostness, a turmoil, a confusion, a version of what now? What is mind to do now? And I'd also built business and ideas and all sorts of product that that you know had come from my creative self-expression. Is that mind to do now? And not all of it had life in it. The one thing that's got life in it for me for sure, that's like a thread that continues from my mothering is grandmothering. I know that has life in it. And so some of what I think now is about creating stability for my grandchildren and my family as a unit, as a clan, as the sons and the kids and the girls and the boys, and all of it as a and making a landing pad for that. That feels like a new vision that's got life in it, and a vision of um my life with my husband without children. We had such a clear vision for our family life, and it's fulfilled. So we've been in the last two years. What does life look like for us now? And really the central question has been for me, what is mine to do? And I'm not gonna lie, it's taken me since my 60th birthday till this beginning of this year to get an answer that was definitely clear. I got little breadcrumbs along the way, I got moments, I knew that my mothering time and focus was over. I knew that I wasn't gonna do my work in the same way anymore, but what was gonna be birthed now? A book, a book was birthed, a now podcast, and as a result of these little breadcrumbs, I'm now super clear on what's mine to do. So, so I guess really what I want to ask say is the sort of short answer to your question is it's a journey and it doesn't clarify itself immediately. You have to walk and find out, which is a good place for me to hand back to you.

Liz Scott 11:48

Yeah, well, I guess what I'm hearing in what you're saying is this evolution of what is yours to do, and it's it's shifted. And I don't think I heard you specifically say what is yours to do. You said you're really clear on it. So is that something you're gonna share in a minute, or is that something you'd like to share now?

Elizabeth Lovius 12:10

Well, I'd love to share now if I've got a little more. Yeah, please to go. I I suppose it sort of left a cliffhanger there. You did. I didn't mean to, only I only because I just wanted to see if there was something you wanted to um, but you just uh really helped me realize that was missing. So what I really want to say is I know what's mine to do. It's kind of got layers, but it all centers on the thing single theme. And the irony of ironies is I came up with this, these three words five years ago. And I've it's like the T. S. Eliot quote: I've come back to them, but with new understanding, and almost everything else has fallen away, but it was there all the time, right in front of my eyes, which is what I think a clue to what is mine to do. It's kind of always been there. It's so obvious you don't see it, kind of feeling around it, I I think, potentially. There's a part of you that's always been doing that, I think is what I want to say. So my three words let wisdom lead. And behind those three words is a cornucopia of delight and understanding and misunderstanding and all the things it is to be human. But for me, first and foremost, what is my wisdom for me and how do I let it lead as a daily orientation, and what helps me do that? And we've got lots to talk about on that, you and I, as teachers of this understanding of uh that could that that we all have the capacity for this thing called wisdom. And then how can I help leaders have it? Because they're my people, they're my tribe. I work with very senior leaders, entrepreneurs, and people who are helping others to um grow and change, change makers. So I work with those kind of people all the time, and it astounds me how many of us live in what I call a world of should. What I what I think I should be doing, who I think I should be to be a good person, a version of ourselves that we expect from ourselves, or a version of others we expect from others, but our expectations, which another word for that is shoulds, what we should have do be. And uh how often leaders are looking outside of themselves for the answers, for the data, for the what someone else thinks, for the expert knowledge, and it kind of ignoring their own gut just reminds me of somebody who was getting very stressed as a leader around their organization chart. How what to do, what to do, and how to keep this person happy. Can you imagine reorganizing or how many people there are to keep happy? And if you've got a keep everyone happy thing, that's like your worst possible scenario. So she was getting very stressed about her org chart. And I just said, take three deep breaths, just get present, and what do you know to do? And she said, I know exactly what to do. And that's what I'm talking about. This this noise that we can get caught up in, which is all these ideas of what is right and wrong, good and bad, or slowing down, centering and hearing this inner voice that's got our back. And so I've devoted my life to listening to my own and helping other people listen to theirs. And that seems like a very clear wherever I am, I'm gonna do that with leaders, with women in the village, on our podcast, you know, wherever I am, that's what I that's what's mine to do. So that's the long answer.

Liz Scott 15:48

Yeah, well, let wisdom lead. I think that's a a brilliant synopsis which resonates very much with me too. And we've often said that we we inhabit different worlds, you you in the world of business. I've work with some people in business, I work, I have worked in education, I worked in the community, I work with individuals, I work with women. And I think for me, over particularly the last maybe three to five years, that that gentle whisper of let wisdom lead, which I think is a really wonderful way of kind of encapsulating my journey, has become louder and louder within me. And it's it's somewhere I go to a lot, which is as you describe it, it's that kind of for me, it's a settling, it's uh bringing my awareness back within. It's a it's a it's a feeling that groundedness, rootedness within me. And often I hear wisdom, or maybe it's better to say I feel wisdom as a nudge. It it sort of nudges me in a direction, and often it makes no logical sense at all. I I don't even try and work out why. I'll give you a really simple example. Uh, I'm about to engage on a 10-day walk. You know, obviously I love walking. Uh, in my local county of Devon, there's a lovely trail that's been uh a hundred-mile trail that's just been created, and I'm gonna walk that with my sister and a friend, and we're gonna take 10 days to walk it. Recently, my aunt died, and my aunt lives in East Anglia, so it's the opposite end of the country from Devon, which is where I live. Um, my brother said, Look, I'm gonna go and represent our family. I mean, she's an elderly auntie, it's not unexpected. As it was, the funeral was right in the middle of the time I'd already planned with my friend and my sister, and I thought, okay. And then I just felt this feeling, which is you need to go to the funeral. And I was like, No, no, no. My brother's got that sorted, it's a long way. My friend's traveling, she you know, she comes from Hong Kong, she's it's a long way for her to travel, she's looking forward to this. No, I'm not um that's I sort of tried to bat it away, and it was like it came up again. Go to the funeral. So and then I started to look at train times, and it was bank holidays, and you know, all these the worst times travel, and um I was like, Oh, really? Do I really want to do that? But it just kind of kept pulling, and I absolutely knew it wasn't me battling with my mind, is it right or wrong? It was a knowing. It's like it is for me to go to this funeral, and it is for me to take a day out of our walk to make it happen, and I know it in my bones. So and the difference for me when I um let wisdom lead, or when I I kind of know what is mine to do, is that there isn't a story attached to it. I could attach one if if it makes, you know, somebody says, Well, why are you going? I could say, Well, you know, it was it when my dad died, it was really lovely to have relatives at the funeral, so I want to to do that, or you know, it was my dad's sister, so I want to honour her. Or, but the truth is those are after the fact of wisdom nudging me, calling me, and that word you you use and and I use that yearning, that sort of it's almost like got that that draw, that poll is that it's mine to do to go to the funeral. So and and that's that's what's gonna happen. But that for me is just a really good, almost everyday example of feeling it and hearing it, and and then kind of you know getting a sense of what's mine to do, and then the intellect is a wonderful machine mechanism to book up trains and plan out how it's all gonna work out and all of travel arrangements, but it doesn't start up here with my head, it starts down here with something else coming through. So that's a recent example. Does that resonate for you?

Elizabeth Lovius 20:28

Oh my god, I love that so much, and I love the everydayness of it, like the the gentle pulling, the the intellect has got its opinions, but it doesn't limit our this deeper wisdom to to kind of whisper and say, hey, what about this this direction? It doesn't have a whole, I always say it doesn't have a business case attached.

unknown 20:54

Yes.

Elizabeth Lovius 20:56

Except that if later on you can see the business case, later on, you can see the wisdom of the nudge, but you don't you have to have faith. It's it requires a certain level of faith to trust it, and that is the gift of the older woman. She's tried and tested in ignoring her wisdom and listening to it. We've got experience, we've got data, our own body. And if we if we pay attention to this distinction, this feeling, it will never see us strong. And I'd I'd love to finish this off with a little story that happened literally yesterday. So so the theme of my life is where am I gonna live? What am I gonna do? Right for the last two years, and I got a bit quite a bit clearer in January, February this year, fire ready for the fire horse. Fire horse great, boom. And then yesterday, two days ago, we worked for a drive into the campo, and we've I've been having this idea maybe we should live to get some land. And we've got this really nice, convenient little life here with a one bedroom apartment. Overlooking the sea, can walk into town, it's right near the tennis club. But I noticed that when the possibility to buy the place next door came up, my heart sank. I didn't understand that, but I knew it did. And I noticed that when we went on this drive and we looked at the green, my heart lifted. And yesterday I realized that my life would be completely different in the campo. I don't even know how it would be, and it would be like a lot of inconvenience for me. But then I had then my husband said, Look, it's a head versus heart decision. He said, and he faced it up and he said, My heart. And I'm like, Yeah, my heart too. And I've just been reading Braiding Sweetgrass, which is all about reciprocity and the land. I'm sure you know that book well. And then I've just been listening to Plant Consciousness in the telepathy taste. And something is pulling me to the land, my my own land. Now it doesn't make sense, but I know that the heart sinking and the heart lifting I have to pay attention to. Absolutely. So maybe that's what we what we're up to is listening to that.

Liz Scott 23:20

Yeah.

Elizabeth Lovius 23:21

At this stage of life.

Liz Scott 23:23

And what you were saying there about the land, my experience as I've got older, is I I feel and connection and hear, I hear the land, yeah, which is which feels different. Um, I feel like I I am more connected, which makes no sense whatsoever. But just you saying that reminded me of that to do, which is all linked to wisdom, which is ultimately I haven't got a little, you know, bag of wisdom, and you haven't got a little bag of wisdom, and the land hasn't got a little bag of wisdom. We are all connected to the same wisdom, and that is why we are all sharing with that same intuitive, intelligent, wise energy. It's just seems to me as we get older, as a woman, I've noticed I have I'm able to hear it more clearly, and that for me is where the real nourishment is.

Elizabeth Lovius 24:27

I love that, Liz. Thank you so much. Gorgeous, gorgeous place to end.

Liz Scott 24:34

You've been listening to the Wild Wise Feminine Podcast with Liz Scott and Elizabeth Lovius.

Elizabeth Lovius 24:42

And if you want to get in touch, take a look at the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.