#32: Single? Married? The Importance of Independence with Dr. Aviva Romm

Michelle:
It's time to stop being the victim of your over-scheduled life and become the most powerful version of yourself. Welcome to she's got power. Hey, welcome back to the show today.

Michelle:
I want to introduce you to one of my personal mentors, dr. Aviva Romm Veeva is a Yale trained physician. She's a midwife, she's an herbalist, and she has 36 years of experience in women's health. I mean, come on. What I love about Aviva is that as a doctor, she brings evidence-based science and studies to everything that she does, but she also brings a world of holistic knowledge and a respect for both sides of the equation. Much of the work I do with clients is based on what I've learned from Aviva. And as you're going to hear about, she has been such an inspiration to me, both personally and professionally, have you been in, I started talking about today's topic. It must've been over a year and a half ago when she called to congratulate me on getting divorced, kidding, but like, not really. She was sharing stories of women whose bodies have actually changed for the better after getting divorced. And there's some kind of fundamental shift that happens in our body when we're happy and caring less stress. And she talks about that in today's episode. Now, Aviva herself she's been married forever. And the good news is you don't necessarily have to get divorced to feel the benefits of living an independent life. I'm so grateful for Viva for being on the show.

Michelle:
So let's get into it now. Welcome Aviva. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Aviva:
Thank you, Michelle. It's so good to be here.

Michelle:
I know what I'm so happy to see you. Everybody listening will be seeing us that we can see each other. And I don't know that I've actually had face to face. Well over a screen with you in a while.

Aviva:
It's been a while. And while we keep talking about this podcast for a while too, and then it's just seemed like one thing happened and another thing happened and another thing happens. And

Michelle:
So many that's 2020 though really

Aviva:
Has been 2020. And I actually feel like one of the big things I'm doing right now is stepping back and you know, maybe it's fall. Like for me, the well we're entering fall, at least where I live in the Berkshire's and that kind of like closet cleaning thing that I like to do. And I'm putting away my summer clothes and getting out like the early fall stuff. And I've kind of been doing that with my schedule. Like what's really important to me. What do I really want to do? What has been on the back burner that hasn't happened? And you have been patiently waiting and I'm so excited to chat.

Michelle:
So we should pick up where we had kind of left off. Last time we talked, we had this amazing conversation. I want you to share it with our listeners about, we were talking about getting divorced and you were sharing these amazing insights that you've had, um, working with women for what? 36, 36 years. You've watched a lot of women go through divorce. Let's just pick up there. Like, what do you notice happens first in their minds? Of course, emotionally, but in their bodies.

Aviva:
Yeah. So it's really, I've noticed quite a few things. One is that when someone comes up to me now and tells me they're getting divorced, usually what kind of pops out of my mouth and I'm not always sure it's the right thing. And I'll just say congratulations. And usually someone will say, yes, thank you. You know? Cause they're afraid they're going to like a lot of times leading up to divorce. I think even though it's so common, I think a lot of women internalize it as some kind of failure. They didn't try hard enough. They're going to mess up their kids. If they've got kids, there's the uncertainty, am I, you know, letting go, you know, what does that expression that devil, you know, is better than the devil you don't like, should I just all these things, but I can say this one thing with an absolute, absolute certainty over 36 years is that two years out after a divorce, even though it's really hard leading up to it and during it, and right after I have never, ever, ever, ever had a woman regret it or not say, Oh my God, that was the best thing I've ever done in my life.

Aviva:
And there's just like a freeing up that happens on the other side. But one story comes to my mind. That is really actually funny, which is actually one of my very dearest, old friends. Her best friend got divorced after like a 30 year marriage. She had grown kids. She was already going through menopause. She was already menopausal and her body had gone through a lot of light. Some of those typical menopausal changes her boobs. Weren't quite what they were before. She had put on a little weight and she fell in love with this guy. And it was like, boom, her body just went through this transformation. I remember my friend telling me her boobs got two sizes bigger. Like they just, she was like, you could, it was almost like somebody fluffed up her boobs. And like her shoulders were taller. She just was. Jucier not that everybody wants bigger, but it was.

Aviva:
But in this case it was like what her best friend saw was that almost like somebody had inflated her back to life and it was really profound and it's not so much that it was a relationship that did it for her, but it was getting happy after so long of living kind of a half life. And I think I see this with so many women. I mean, I'm in a long-term marriage. So I can only speak as someone who has watched other women go through divorce and being raised by a divorced, single a single mom. But I think that there's so many years leading up to a divorce often where a woman is internally split, right? Like there's the part of her that's living her life. And then there's the part of her. That's almost like her deeper that she can't fully integrate, which is like this isn't working for me.

Aviva:
Something's wrong. I've got to get out of here. And then when she's out of it, it's almost like those pieces come into alignment. And then all of the, like I can think of another woman who she was struggling to get her acupuncture career off the ground. She had a 10 year old child with the guy she was married to. And it was like, she was spending so much energy in what wasn't working in her marriage so much energy. She finally got the courage to get divorced and it was like, boom, her business just took off like her career and everything that was on a whole just had a polluted. And I mean, I can say as a woman in a long-term marriage, which is sometimes great. And sometimes isn't always easy often. Isn't always like what you see, like the ideal movie that like, I know that experience. I know that experience of like, when things are good, that energy is there, but when things are hard, it's like everything gets derailed and things don't move forward. It's, it's a really interesting,

Michelle:
I can relate to that 100%. I mean, obviously like where your energy is going changes and where your time is going, changes if you're not, you know, spending hours and hours arguing and fighting and all these terrible things, but like does something actually change in our bodies

Aviva:
Does. So, you know, it's really funny. Um, there are studies that look at women and cortisol. So for those who are listening and don't know what cortisol is, it's a hormone produced by the adrenal glands that is sort of the central hormone along with the chemical adrenaline in our fight or flight response. And when cortisol is produced in small amounts, as it's meant to be throughout the day, every day, it fights inflammation. It supports our cognitive function. It supports immunity. It does a zillion things in our body that are critical to life. So a lot of times people call it the stress hormone. I call it the survival hormone. But the problem is is that when we're in survival mode, when you have that constant life stress, that's going on about something really fundamental, like your economics, your living situation, your marriage, you know, your fundamental relationships and belonging, you can be producing too much cortisol all the time.

Aviva:
Now, cortisol is also paired with something called oxytocin, which is a hormone. That's all about connection. And it's really interesting. Women are way more wired for connection than men are, which is probably a fundamental part of a lot of relationships. Like I can talk to my husband and to say, I can say something and like, babe, did you hear me? Are you answering me like five minutes later? He'll like, Oh, I'm thinking if I, you know, it's just like, we're so we connect most men and most men really differently. So for women, when that disconnect is there, we really feel it deeply in our emotions. But also we know that those emotions and that hormone play out in our physical health. So they play out in our sleep. They play out in our sugar cravings in our carb cravings in our metabolism, in our immune system, in our very cognitive function.

Aviva:
So if you're in a stressful relationship of any kind, we all know, we can't think as clearly we're distracted. We may not feel as in control of what we're eating. Some people will stress eat. Some people will stress not eat, but more often than not most women will stress eat sugar or alcohol have stress, drink alcohol, things like that. We may stress shop. I mean, it may actually affect not just our body, but our bank account. And we're also not as in control if you, I don't like the word control, but we're not as able to manage our emotional responses. So if our stress and survival mode is triggered, we're also not responding as well to the other person as we might like to. So we, we ended up in a very negative dance. The studies have shown that, for example, these have only been heterosexual, like gender normative studies that have been done, but let's say you have a woman who's in a stressful relationship.

Aviva:
And a man who's in that same stressful relationship. He can hit the pillow and go to sleep. She can not hit the pillow and go to sleep. Why? Because her cortisol is jacked up and it's preventing her from settling and relaxing. She still feels like she's in survival mode, which is what a lot of us will want to process that. Well, like we'll want to keep going at it until it's resolved because we're not getting that resolutions men. They don't get that. I mean, this has been measured. It's been measured by functional MRI. It's been measured by cortisol levels. Another thing, another example of this, which I think is really profound, and this can be even in a healthy well-functioning relationship or anything going on in the relationship, husband comes home, or male partner comes home from work. He's had a crappy day. He dumps it or even just like communicates it to his female partner.

Aviva:
His cortisol goes down. Her cortisol goes up because we're responding emotionally, which is like, for those of you listening, who have kids, you know that like your partner can be completely oblivious to the kids whining. And you're like, why are they not responding when it's like raising your shoulders up to your ears? Right? They just don't respond the same. Most of them don't respond the same way. Same story though. Woman comes home from work and she communicates her stressful stuff to her partner. Her cortisol may go down from communicating it, but his doesn't go up at all.

Aviva:
Just having a very different experience of relationship. Also numerous studies now show that women respond to stress more different just differently in that we have a much more heightened experience of when things are disharmonious in our lives or relationships. We, we internalize that. And probably it's because we're meant to be aware of relationship reading each other's facial expressions, because that's how our babies and children survive our ability to do that. Um, so we get more stressed by stress and studies also show that we have more physical symptoms as a result of stress than men do. So my chronic stuff, like the stuff that many people just think are of as normal or may, may related to stress, but may not. So chronic headaches, migraines, IBS digest, you know, just general, they just have symptoms, symptoms. Again, the things I mentioned, craving problems, sleep problems, and cortisol can make us pack on weight, especially around our mental. And it's not just the stress eating. It's just cortisol makes us store weight as part of this whole survival mode.

Michelle:
And you connect that also to increase rates of auto-immunity yes, auto immune disease,

Aviva:
Heart disease, cognitive decline. There's lots and lots of long-term. And it doesn't mean just because you've been in a challenging marriage or are in one that you're going to have these things happen. But if, but, but they can. And it's really important to take that seriously. Interestingly though, um, a study came out, I want to say in like, or maybe I read it in like 2019 may have came out around 28, 20th, 20, 2018, 2019. Um, showing that being in a difficult relationship in and of itself isn't necessarily the biggest trigger of health problems. It's not verbally expressing it. So when a matched cohort of women who were in a difficult relationship, but who didn't speak up and didn't verbalize, it was compared to a group of women who sucked it up, like just took it in didn't yell, didn't scream, didn't express, it didn't get help with it.

Aviva:
Didn't do anything either with their partner or with someone else, like, which is why like girlfriend, you know, just shooting the breeze about our partners is so important in our relationships is so important. Yes. Those women were more likely to have long-term health consequences, which I think is fascinating. And a lot of women don't speak up. Like, you know, I'm a fighter. So I tend to go in the fight direction of fight or flight, but a lot of people aren't flighters right. They, they shut down, they internalize it. They assume it's them. They have self-doubt, they don't express it. It's like, you know, that book by Bessel van der Kolk, the body keeps the score. It's like, are we it? Or are we discharging it? Whether that's through screaming, journaling, not actually screaming at someone, but like getting it out, going for a hard run if you run. Um, but doing something with that energy so that you do get that, um, sort of release part of the stress response as opposed to the chronic stress. Right?

Michelle:
Yeah. As opposed to just internalizing it and letting it eat you up from the inside.

Aviva:
Exactly. And you, you made a huge change. I mean, for some women, I think the only answer is to get out, but if you aren't going to get out, how can you be in it and really get what be well and be your vibrant, thriving self. And yeah, I'm always like learning and relearning and learning new levels.

Michelle:
I I'd love to talk about that because a lot of my clients who come to me, they come with the obvious stuff. They come with the weight, they come with the, I can't sleep, but you know, nine times out of 10, we end up talking about these chronic stressors in their life, whether it's their husband or it's their job or whatever it is. And just the act of verbalizing it, actually digging into it. So, so very helpful. But you can't always just up and leave, whether it is a relationship or a job. I have felt a huge sense of relief in my life. I feel 10 years younger than my divorce. And I, sometimes I'm not sure what to say to someone who's not ready to make that move.

Aviva:
I know it's really tough. I mean, I actually have prescribed that to patients before, like I don't put it in their note because I would never want a partner to see that both for their safety and my safety, but yeah. And for the hope of their relationship, but I've actually had situations where I'm like, I've seen it with jobs too. Like, there's just no way you're going to get well in this situation or be able to be your full self in this situation. And I think that, you know, it's on a spectrum of like overt abuse to just mismatch and unhappiness or, you know, it's interesting. There's um, there's a tribe called the Kung people. They're in, I want to say maybe like Swazi land, I forget now, or maybe South Africa. Okay. Um, but I remember reading about them a long ago when I was in my early twenties.

Aviva:
So like 30 something years ago and they have different marriages for different phases of their life. So they would actually expect to have like five different marriages, right. They would have their, their childbearing marriage cause they were having kids at 14, 15, 60, and then they would have their next life marriage. And because the women outlive the men, they would have their next life and their next life marriage. And so, you know, there's this expectation, there's so much complexity, like the expectations of monogamy, of lifelong marriages, of the fact that we do live longer, um, that we change throughout our lives. I mean the average adult in the U S is going to is expected to have probably three different careers. How do we expect to stay the same throughout those different phases of ourselves? Or if we're not allowing ourselves to grow because we're in a fixed relationship, what are we missing out on?

Michelle:
Oh, I love all of these questions. I've thought about myself. I feel like I've had this conversation recently where yes, we have to get married and have our children at a certain time of life because of our biology. But I feel like there, there should be an expiration at the end of that. And you can either re up or you can renegotiate the contract.

Aviva:
Totally. I agree with you. I mean, I'm such a different, I mean, I'm the same person I was when I was 17. When I met my partner, we actually met when I was 15. We got together when I was 18 and there's so much, not that I wouldn't pick the same person, but I would come into the relationship different. Now, if I were starting the relationship, now I would come into it different now than I came into it when I was 18. And yet you carry so much baggage with you too, right? Like when we get into a fight now, Oh boy, we can say the meanest stuff. Like I know exactly what stuff to say. Like, I can just jump right there. You know what I mean? Or you know what? It's like, I talked to my adult kids about this too. It's like, when you've been raised in a household and then you, you move away to college and then you go have your own life, but then you come home to your parents' house.

Aviva:
Sometimes you fall back into old patterns with each other. Like we as adult children, can't always let our parents have grown. We suck them into behaviors that they may not want to have anymore. And they suck us into behaviors that we might not want to have anymore. But the same thing is happening every day in marriages, right? Like we are kind of recreating these same patterns that if we weren't in them, like if we restarted or something, we wouldn't have them. One of the couples I know, um, they're both passed away now, but they were together for 60 years and they passed away each respectively, one in their eighties, one in their nineties, they lived apart for months of the year. He was a diplomat and she stayed at home and they said that was the most amazing way to have a healthy marriage was to have time apart, which for people right now in COVID, it's just, it's not,

Michelle:
I feel like I've really hit this at the right time because everyone has been stuck with their kids at home and their partner. And everyone's climbing the walls together. It's been, um, difficult in a way to be single with my two young boys. But on the other hand, they leave, they go with their dad and I think that's been great for them. It's certainly been great for me. And to just like have that space when I know everyone's kind of been stuck together. Yeah.

Aviva:
This is an interesting thing. You bring up too, you know, my parents divorced, but they did not divorce. Well, my parents divorced when I was four that was in 1970. Um, it was very stigmatized back then. I mean, for my mom to be a single mom in 19, it's shocking how stigmatizing it was and what, like the neighborhood kids called my mom or like the other neighbor, like she was like, she may have worn a Scarlet a or something like that. And , my dad was the one, like having extra marital relationships, but like she was home with me at four and my brother who was an eight week old when she kicked him out. But it was a very turbulent, very violent divorce. And I think that we have this idea as adults who are of a certain age, that that's how divorce is because that's how it was so much in the seventies into the eighties.

Aviva:
I think people do divorce better now because it is more common and a little bit less stigmatized. But the families that I know where the relationships were really difficult, who did separate often the kids got two happy homes instead of one unhappy home. And they, yeah. And they saw people who were able to make a bold step for their own self health and preservation. And also I used to jokingly say, I had this one friend who was divorced and um, she got every other weekend to herself. I was like, dude, this is so not fair. Thank you. I need that part of this situation.

Michelle:
Well, yeah. And so that's what I have really come to see. Like there are these great perks of being on my own now. And there's things that I'm doing differently, ways that I'm thinking differently, I'm acting differently. I'm trying different things. I went out dancing to a club like till 4:00 AM in New York city. And I thought, Oh my God, I I'm 40. You know, the last time I did this, I was probably 19 years old. But look what I can do now. And I didn't have to get divorced to do that, but somehow it's pushed me into a mode where I'm open to more things and I feel so much more alive. And do you ever prescribe things like that for your,

Aviva:
You know, it's just for my patients, but for myself, you know, it's funny because so Tracy and I had been together for 36 years and I'm 54. So that's a long freaking time of my life. The first half of our marriage together, I was out midwifing babies. I was raising the kids, he worked out of the house. Then I went to med school residency and yeah, I mean, like I would go out to births in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, I would, you know, like just be, I was very independent even within the context of our marriage. And then we made a switch where he worked with me, worked home from home full time. And so I've actually watched little co-dependent behaviors creep in over the years that have actually made me become less confident. Just an example would be, like I said, I spent all those years going out to births, driving myself here.

Aviva:
They're all over. Like, it could be a two hour birth away from where I lived in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. And yet, uh, it's funny when we drive, he tends to be like, if I'm driving, he tends to be like a micromanager he's trying not to. So it got to a point where he would micromanage and it would make me like hit the brakes or like whatever, not safe driving. So finally I was like, F this, when we're going out together, you're driving. So now whenever we go out together, he drives. And so I realized like when I go out and drive by myself, it's such a basic thing. I'm like, Oh right. I know how to drive. Or, um, yeah,

Michelle:
It'd Viva, you are such a strong, you are like right up with women. I admire for their strength and independence. And for you to say and PS, this is exactly the same in my marriage. He always drives because I'm, you know, not a good driver or whatever. That's shocking.

Aviva:
I mean, another example is just having to really hold to what I know to be true. So, I mean, you did the professional integrated medicine, women training program with me, right. I mean, you know, that program when I first decided to create that program because Tracy and I worked together, I was like, you know, I'd like to do this next. It's going to take you helping make this happen because you do the tech. And, and like, he just gives me the whole list of why it's not a good idea because I have very different personalities. I'm an adventure, like take on a challenge, visionary, think big out there in the world kind of person. And he's not, he's much more reclusive, much more timid about taking risks and not, he's not, he's, he's a maintainer, but not a creative that way. And I'm a creative that way.

Aviva:
And together we really get a lot done. But when he'll say something like that, I'll have to then battle my own inner like, Oh, well maybe it's not a good idea. Or maybe I shouldn't do it. And then I'm like, wait, no, like take your negative. That's you, that's not me, but it's extra work to get there. Right. Or I remember a few years, not a few, many years ago saying I want to have an income of this a year. And him saying to me, well, that seems like a big leap. Like that's a stretch. And I think we should have it by this. Like, this is realistic. And then I was like, going through like my own internal, we were actually taking a shower together. We were taking, I love it. It was my big dream. This was like around, I remember where we were living.

Aviva:
I was like around 2000 and him saying, yeah, that's like, why would you think that big? And then me like putting an upper limit on myself, going okay. Or maybe he's right. And I'm like, no, like that's your limit. I mean, it's as dumb as this. Like, well, I'll say let's go not right now, but like, let's go out to dinner in the city if we're going down to, because I live in the country and we'll go down to New York and there'll be like Friday night at six o'clock and we're heading into the city. He's like, we're never going to get a spot. I'm like, why are you even saying that out loud? We're going to get a spot right out front. And we joke. He's like, no, he's like, okay, can you just ask your parking angels to find the manifest as a parking spot?

Aviva:
And so for me, it's that, um, you know, it's like knowing the personality of the person that you're with and respecting and honoring it without internalizing it and getting held back by it. And then that can be a real, a real challenge. And it may be the opposite for some women. I mean, for some, or for some people, it may be like, you know, you work hard, you have issues around spending money on things you can't afford, and you want to live by a budget and you share a bank account and your partner's like, no, we should do this. We should do this. And that may make you feel vulnerable in a different way. So it's, you know, finding the honest truth about the relationship you're in. I think deciding whether it can work for you or not. And then, you know, and this is where we started talking, you know, I think, uh, we started having this conversation about a year and a half ago.

Aviva:
Like I was joking and saying, if I could write any book and any book that I would sort of be the living, uh, what is it like study journalism for would be how to be married, how to be single in a relationship. You know, like I tell my daughters, cause when I went into the relationship with my partner, we just joint bank account, everything, we joint own everything. And there's a beauty in that, but there's also actually a disempowerment that can happen in that too. Um, so like for my daughters, I've said, you know, when you get into a relationship, you can have a joint bank account where you pull things for shared expenses, but keep your own bank account too. There's actually something that feels really independent and strong. I think about doing that. The other thing I think is as we're in relationship and I'm guessing that one of the things that you're experiencing now that you're in, I like it, you know, that you're Indy, you're independent.

Aviva:
They don't like the term single so much to me, a single sounds like lonely. You earned diminishment of like the fact that we're supposed to be in a couple as opposed to like indie, right? Like you're indie woman. I love that. Um, yeah. I learned that from, um, Amanda, who used to be my nurse practitioner who wasn't indie mama and then she called herself, um, is asking permission, right? When we're in a coupled relationship, we tend to ask permission for things that we can spend. I see this all the time because I run these online courses. I will literally have women write to me and say, I'm planning to sign up for your program. I just have to ask my husband if it's okay or ask my husband what he thinks and I get it. Like if you're sharing a bank account. Yes. I mean, it's respectful to not just withdraw money, but it's the asking permission. Um, and I hear this all the time. Let me ask my husband if it's okay. If I go out on Friday night, I'm not, I'm going to tell my husband. And if he can't watch the kids, I'll find someone to watch the kids.

Michelle:
I think that's the difference right there because you're right. It's not like you can just do whatever you want whenever you want. When you're sharing a home and a family with somebody that would be different.

Aviva:
My experience, it's very rare to hear men use the language and, and, you know, even though my practice and my work now is all with women and children, it wasn't always, but also just even going through medical residency with adult women and men who also sometimes were coupled up and had children or working in a medical practice with other male doctors versus other female doctors, I never heard the men say, let me ask my wife if she'll watch the kids Friday night so I can go to the team gathering or let me ask my kid, my wife, if she'll watch the kids so I can take on this extra medical shift. Right. We, we do that.

Michelle:
That's a huge thing. I have really loved the idea that I can just get up and like take my kids to the beach for the weekend or go on a trip or whatever that I want to do without having to run it by ask permission, feel guilty about it. But, you know, I had not belonged to a yoga studio in like eight or nine years and I've been practicing yoga for about 16, but I wouldn't do it because I felt like I had to ask if I could spend the money. And, uh, and it just so fundamental to who I am. Yeah. How was I not doing that for so long?

Aviva:
We do a lot of that. I mean, we have kids, we put a lot of ourselves on hold at times and you know, honestly, my kids are grown, so they're 26 to 34. And in retrospect I would do more things when they were young that I put on hold because I was very much and I still am very much an attachment mama attachment parenting mom. I homeschool the home boroughs week. Family bed slept and like the whole nine yards. But I think that I felt guilty or like I should be there all the time. And in retrospect, I think that as I'm raising children, if I were to do it again, I would think more about how am I setting an example of being a healthy adult rather than what am I giving to my children right now? Because I think as a healthy adult, if we think of ourselves, like what does a healthy adult look like and live by that in our relationship and in our parenting, we'll have healthier partners, happier partners will be happy, happier, and healthier, and we'll be better examples of our kids.

Aviva:
I always think to myself, well, and I'll say this to my patients, you know, I'll have a mom who is, you know, she's got one or two or three kids and she's working a job and she feels guilty going to the yoga class after work. She feels like she'd just go home and make dinner whether or not she has a partner who can do it. And I'll ask, you know, specifically if she has daughters, but also I'll say if you have a son, you know, would you want your daughters to be adults who felt like they couldn't go to yoga class? Or would you want your son to be the kind of partner who doesn't want his wife to go to a yoga class because she's coming home to make dinner. And they'll always say, no, I would actually want my daughters to have some freedom.

Aviva:
And it's like, we're talking about yoga class every night. And, and if she has teenagers who can pop in, you know, some whatever, Amy's, pre-made something, something, and still eat healthy. You know what I mean? We have to be those living examples. I really feel, and I'm sharing all this stuff. I don't, you know, I can't say, I mean, I have to remind myself, I have to take my own doses of medicine as much as I give them out. There are things that I'm aware of, but just like anyone else in relationship, I fall into these patterns. And then I catch myself and I mean, I do live at a pretty high level of confidence and independence and, and you know what I can partially say that's because I was raised by a single mom.

Michelle:
I mean,

Aviva:
And I will tell you too, the women I know who have raised children as independent moms, those kids often have a level of loyalty and relationship with their parent that, um, with each of their parents independently, but often with their mom, that is very unique. And I see this all the time, like just a fierce loyalty and deep connection, um, to that mom who made that bold step. So it's a really interesting thing. Now, as we said earlier, not all women can do it, right. I mean, getting divorced can be really difficult. We know that in a lot of divorces, women can lose up to 60% of their income. And a lot, if, if you're dependent on that partner, because you've been the stay at home parent, I mean, you were fortunate to have a career that you could really grow out. I'm, you know, the kind of like front end breadwinner, if you will, in the family, but not everybody's in that situation.

Aviva:
So sometimes we choose to stay because there's love, we choose to stay because there's a bond we choose to stay sometimes out of necessity and have to be your fear is huge. Right? And, and also if you're in a domestic violence relationship, you know, I just want to say loud and clear for women in that situation, which I hope no listeners are, but statistically someone's going to be, um, leaving can be the time when you're most physically vulnerable, your life can be most threatened. So it's really important to know in that situation, how to leave and to get professional guidance or to have a really, you know, strong situation for yourself that's safe to go into.

Michelle:
But I think the point that you're making overall here is, and this should not come as news to anybody, but putting yourself first, even just hearing your own truth and your own dreams and your own income goals and your own, whatever it is, and not letting those be diminished by someone else. Like that's a way of, of standing in your power as is even to go so far as to plan your escape, which it is for some women. Um, if that, if that's where you need to be, it's all about staying true to yourself and in your independent spirit, whether you are partnered or not. Yeah.

Aviva:
Yes. And you know, it's funny the word escape, really, when you said that word escape, it really resonated with me. And I think about the escape button, like on a computer or whatever, it's like that getting out of a program loop, being able to shut things down. And as part of that fight or flight response that we all naturally have, um, when we're in that moment, at least for me, this is how it shows up. And I think this is partly, there's a term in psychology called interjects and interjects are thought forms or word phrases that tend to be the ones that pop up for ourselves when we're in a very, um, fight or flight situation. And they're often thought forms or words that we may have heard somewhere else growing up. So for me growing up until I was four, and even after my mom and my dad negotiating their relationship, you know, my mom's catchphrase was something to the effect of, I gotta get out of here.

Aviva:
Like it was literally an escape thought. And so when I'm in stress, my default thought is often I gotta get outta here. I can't do this anymore. Like, that's my escape thought. And what's really important to realize is that that may be true for you, right? If you're listening and you just know you're at the end of it, it's over, it's done. And you do need to get out. That escape thought is really important to listen to, but it's also important to realize that the escape thought is a symptom that we are being triggered into our survival mode. And so I can't take this anymore. I've got to get out of here for some people. It's like, I can't live with this anymore. For some people it's actually like, I don't want to live anymore. It doesn't mean that you're going to kill yourself. It's just like, I mean, obviously if you're having that thought recurrently, that means get help.

Aviva:
But there are these weird ways that these that are verbal thought forms tell us that we're in that mode. And when you get those thought forms, it does mean you need a little bit of an escape. It doesn't mean you need necessarily to escape permanently or be out of your marriage or whatever it may. But it may mean that that's a symptom that it's like, okay, I am not in alignment with who I want to be and what I need to do. And so it may mean you need to get out for a few hours. And even in, COVID find somewhere to go, it may mean that you just need to like sleep in separate rooms. If you have slept separate rooms in your house for that night. And it's not a failure take space, but we, we often don't take space when we need to. We don't find our own way back to our own self. You know, how do we remember who we were before we were in the relationship? And sometimes it's tapping into who you were, even as a kid, like remembering who you were when you felt free in that moment,

Michelle:
What do you bring? Some of those things, what did you love? What have you always loved? What have you,

Aviva:
I keep a jump rope in my bedroom. I have a jump rope and actual jump rope. And, um, it's funny. I pulled it back out recently when I went to med school, one of my old friends said, what was one of the things that you used to love to do as a little girl that really made you laugh or just gave you, like put you in the zone? And I said, hula hooping. And so she called up my husband and said, can you put your $10? Like, can you go get a VMO loop? And I still have my Hulu and my granddaughter, my grandchild calls it a hoopy hoop. But, um, it's just like getting out the whole hoop. It's so goofy, but

Michelle:
Yes, I have a friend who recently like, started playing the guitar again. That's something she hasn't done since she was in her early twenties. I know for myself, I've been dancing again.

Aviva:
I think for me and I have like my Joan Jett cat, you know, like that. I have like my playlist.

Michelle:
I love that everything we've talked about today plays into that chronic stress and burnout that so many women are suffering with. Obviously addressing these issues is huge, but I know you have a free book about, um, herbs adaptogens that can help tell us about that.

Aviva:
So adaptogens are a really ancient class of herbs. I don't mean that in like a woo ancient way. They really are. They're they've been used for thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine and other systems. And so there are things like most of you have heard of by now ashwagandha, Holy basil, Rhodiola ginseng, and what they do, why they're called adaptogens is they literally do help us adapt to stress. But what they're doing is they're helping to regulate those cortisol and adrenaline, particularly the cortisol responses that we talked about. So they can help you to withstand and have more resilience when you are going through stress, they can help us sleep. But some of the dysregulation that happens when we're in that chronic fight flight freeze sort of mode, and, you know, Michelle, I really want to mention this. We talk about the fight or flight response, but there are actually other parts of that response that are important that have more recently been defined.

Aviva:
So fight or flight we all know about, but it's actually fight flight or freeze. And some animals will freeze like the deer in the headlight phenomenon. And they do this as a way to evade predators. I won't go into the whole why, but if you've ever seen like, you know, a catch a rabbit and the rabbit goes limp, that's the freeze mode. And then the lion drops it in the rabbit gets away. So sometimes if you're in a really difficult relationship, you can actually feel frozen in it. You can feel paralyzed. You can feel like I don't, I can't do anything for myself or I can't get out of it, but I, but you just can't do anything for yourself. Another phenomenon is called Fon. So it's fight flight freeze and fawn has now been identified. So fond is where you're always trying to please the other person in order to kind of like keep safe and yeah.

Aviva:
And so that can be a really disempowering mode that we can get into as women. So adaptogens don't fix that stuff, but they help you with sort of the physiologic imbalances that can happen when you're trying to cope. They can also help when you're in a major transition, because that's a time when we need to be able to adapt. Um, so yeah, over on my website, just a Viva rom.com. If you go to scroll down just to like this carousel, you'll see that something like it says more for you or something like that. There's one that says adaptogens webinar. And so it's a free webinar. And then once you sign up for that webinar, then you'll get an email with an ebook all about adaptogens. Or you can also just look on my website, search for adaptogens and stress or anxiety or sleep, and all roads will point to various resources that I have for you.

Michelle:
Yeah. You're a wealth of resources for women going through any of these types of problems. I know you've been a great resource for me. And before we go, I just want to say that in terms of standing in your truth, being independent, truly joining your course. Now that I think about it, that was a time that I had to say, Hey, I'm going to spend this money right now and stand up for myself in that way. And, um, and I remember driving up to your house going, I'm going to go drive up to a Viva's house this weekend by, and it was like one of the first times that I really did that kind of sparked a series of I'm going to go now, I'm going to go now and realizing, Oh, I'm actually, I'm going to go now. So thank you. Thank you for being there, like sort of through this journey and, and always, always so much to offer and ways to take care of ourselves through those transitions.

Aviva:
Thank you, Michelle. And I hope it's appropriate to say officially, congratulations. I've watched you. I mean, you've been incredible since I've known you, but I have really watched you physically change your light in your face. You're almost like this fluid, sexy, like vibrant, creative energy has come to a whole new level. It's really beautiful. It's really

Michelle:
Thank you so much for joining us today.

Michelle:
Thank you for having me, you know, what it is to live life on your own terms. And I am just smitten

Michelle:
With this idea that happiness can affect our bodies on a physiological level that our hormones can shift. And we can heal not just with vitamins and herbs and a healthy diet, but with the right circumstances and making the right decisions for us. Like it is a very empowering thought. We are not beholden to just medications and protocols. Our whole life impacts the state of our health. It's like mind blown, right? If you want to learn more about Aviva and check out her work, she's at Aviva romm.com. As she mentioned, she has a free ebook available on adaptogens. She's also got great info on her site about hormones, stress, also pregnancy and childbirth topics and immune support like a real wealth of information. So you definitely want to check that out. We will link to her site in the show notes and check in

Michelle:
With how you're living and how you're feeling even right now. How are you feeling? Maybe you can bring some more of that fierce, independent energy that we talked about in today's episode into your life. It is really good for your health.