AGE OF INTENTION
At 51 Petra Bagust is excited for the future and embracing everything this season has to o er.
Since launching her podcast Grey Areas, broadcaster Petra Bagust has helped lift the taboo on talking about perimenopause and menopause, and its high ratings have proved that it is more than a sporadic hot flush.
Its sizzling success politely gives the finger to a male exec naysayer of the project because “who’s going to listen to that?!”.
Now in its fourth season with a fifth in the planning, Grey Areas is a place where women are free to express themselves and talk openly about navigating menopause – the pros and the cons.
At age 51, Bagust is excited for the future and “this season” as she likes to put it, and she’s not referring to her podcast, Christmas or the summer break – though it’s a favourite time of year.
She’s speaking about menopause and her decision to “age intentionally”.
“I feel excited, challenged, curious and positive about it,” she says.
Her decision comes after pondering whether she was willing to embrace the benefits of ageing as well as the challenges. Let go of the benefits of being young and embrace the newness and opportunities ageing o ers. And with that, came a sense of freedom.
Letting her hair go naturally grey has been part of that and while she maintains a skincare routine, she is not worried about erasing wrinkles.
“I don’t want to pursue something that’s not part of the season. Am I a purist?” she asks. “No, I’m just embracing as much as I can and who I am is more important than how I look. Who I am, how I am in the world and how I behave and treat others is a reflection of how I treat myself and is more important than if I look 35 or 40. I had my turn when I was 25, 42 – if I’m putting all my energy into that, I’m fighting a losing battle.”
Bagust admits she did try Botox once with a beauty therapist friend out of intrigue, but it just didn’t feel good. “It gave me a headache but more than that, it’s just not me,” she says. “My forehead moves. I’ve got lines on my forehead. No, I don’t always like how they look but if I look at the whole of my face, I think, ‘oh yeah, that’s me’.”
Paris lter
On social media, when she’s about to post a reel promoting the podcast, she’ll often experiment with swiping the Paris filter over her video and then take it o , swipe again, take it o , observing how the filter softens all those lines and makes everything lighter and brighter.
She admits it’s tempting to want to swipe Paris but prefers to put herself out there as she really is.
“People might look at me and go, ‘oh my, look at her now, she’s really aged’ and that’s fine. What about all the women who are ageing alongside me, who go, ‘ yeah, I’ve got lines too’. We need to see each other and ourselves as perfectly good as we are. So, I’m not saying I’ve never used the Paris filter or tried Botox. I haven’t tried anything else and I don’t think I will.”
She’s also choosing to work with her body rather than fight it. “Why do we use oppositional language with our bodies in our biology,” Bagust muses. “What if we were able to align ourselves
Who I am, how I am in the world and how I behave and treat others is a reflection of how I treat myself and is more important than if I look 35 or 40.”
with our bodies, see them as our very dear friends, our closest good friend, our friend we literally can’t live without.”
Mind, body, spirit
The mind, body, spirit connection is what she is referring to, and how we tend to separate them.
“More and more we understand that they’re intertwined. Psychological issues will show up physically and physical issues will show up psychologically if you’re treating the symptom rather than the cause,” she explains.
Bagust is a big fan of Dr Hilary McBride’s book The Wisdom of Your
Body. “She’ll say things like, ‘coming home to your body’, and that’s a phrase I love. My body is with me and for me, and I’m with it and for it. But as a society we’ve separated them out, and the language we use is a clue to our orientiation towards our bodies and how we treat them.”
Not separating ourselves from menopause – a natural biological transition – is part of that.
Through her podcast platform Bagust talks openly about her own journey from when she launched the podcast age 49 to present day – brain fog, tiredness, overheating episodes, feeling achy, weight gain and experiencing rage briefly intersected with anxiety for the first time in her life.
Around the time of launching Grey
Areas she was “in the throes of a hormonal storm” and had questions about that. Up until that point she’d only heard negative rhetoric around menopause. “I remember thinking that can’t be the whole story.”
She was curious and admits having what she describes as a mild rant on Instagram when the exec feedback about her idea for the podcast got back to her.
“Why doubt and disbelieve and expect the least? Why discount women in this season? Why discount this kind of conversation?”
Creating a number one ranking podcast and sustaining the momentum has come down to a number of factors, including her broadcast partner MediaWorks who she says have helped the podcast succeed.
“If we had just released it and nobody had heard anything about it, they wouldn’t be listening, but it was right place, right time. And it was the right conversation to be having because it was real for me – it is real for me.”
Finding freedom
Bagust is grateful she has her mum, Judi, to chat to. “Some women su er terribly, some don’t notice it, and most like me su er some symptoms – though I don’t like calling them symptoms because it medicalises this transition and ends up leaning towards an illness which it is not. It’s a biological transition that happens to all women with uteruses and who reach a certain age,” she explains. “It’s a rewiring of the brain, it’s a hormone transition that’s incredibly powerful and has significant impact before, during and after. And anyone who’s had a complex relationship with their hormones knows that better than most.”
She also believes her body wants the best for her and to help her. “I’m really seeking to listen, align myself with, understand and work with my body because I believe my body is seeking the same.”
When she su ered from brain fog, she joked with husband Hamish about potentially getting a stutter because she’d start a word over and over again. It felt a bit like when she had children and couldn’t finish a sentence only that there were no children running around demanding her attention.
For a brief period she also experienced anxiety for the first time, and gained an understanding of people who live with it and its e ects on daily life.
During the Covid lockdowns she took up yoga, which has become a morning at-home ritual for she and Hamish. An online class, five mornings a week for between 15 to 30 minutes.
She also loves walking the dog in nature – “it’s so good for my heart, body and soul. It’s just a triple whammy”. Walking more has also helped her lose the weight that was making her feel uncomfortable.
Initially she embraced the weight gain, thinking it was a given for this season of life, so was pleasantly surprised when it dropped o after a holiday in France where she “walked, and walked and walked”. In the meantime, daughter Venetia was, and continues to raid her extensive wardrobe filled mostly with New Zealand labels Bagust is passionate about supporting.
Bagust has a growing new relationship with food and says she’ll end up being the weight her body wants her to be.
“My relationship with my weight is pretty standard white western middle class where if you are skinny, you’re good. I got tired of that because again, my body was either succeeding or failing, it’s either good or bad, for or against me. I saw the acceptance as an opportunity to find freedom and wholeness.”
Bagust believes that during and after menopause women can take on the world because hormonally you’ve got less estrogen in your system.
“In menopause we are released into this low estrogen season that comes with challenges, some more than others, but it also comes with a new orientation, creativity, energy and passion. We can literally look out and go, ‘what do I want
It’s a biological transition that happens to all women with uteruses and who reach a certain age...It’s a rewiring of the brain, it’s a hormone transition that’s incredibly powerful and has significant impact before, during and after.”
What if we were able to align ourselves with our bodies, see them as our very dear friends, our closest good friend, our friend we literally can’t live without.”