The Midlife Feast
The Midlife Feast
#133 - We Need to Stop Pretending We Don't Have Time For Self-Care with Heather Chauvin
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What if self-care wasn’t a luxury, but a lifeline? Heather Chauvin joins us to share how she turned a stage four cancer diagnosis into a powerful mission to help women redefine self-care. Her energetic time management system has transformed lives, making it easier to prioritize well-being during midlife transitions like menopause and shifting roles.
We challenge outdated self-care myths and help shift the focus from external validation and comparison to personal fulfillment. Heather’s fresh perspective empowers you to embrace authenticity, build emotional resilience, and live with purpose.
It’s no coincidence that this episode is being released during the first week of December. From setting boundaries to finding joy in imperfection, this episode is packed with tools to help you reclaim your time and energy because you are worthy of feeling good right now!
To learn more about Heather and her work, be sure to visit her website at www.heatherchauvin.com and follow her on Instagram @heatherchauvin_ and listen to her podcast Emotionally Uncomfortable.
Click here to hang out with me on YouTube!
Looking for more about midlife, menopause nutrition, and intuitive eating? Click here to grab one of my free guides and learn what I've got "on the menu" including my 1:1 and group programs. https://www.menopausenutritionist.ca/links
Hi and welcome to the Midlife Feast, the podcast for women who are hungry for more in this season of life. I'm your host, Dr Jenn Salib-Huber. I'm an intuitive eating dietitian and naturopathic doctor, and I help women manage menopause without dieting and food rules. Come to my table, listen and learn from me trusted guest experts in women's health and interviews with women just like you. Each episode brings to the table juicy conversations designed to help you feast on midlife. And if you're looking for more information about menopause, nutrition and intuitive eating, check out the Midlife Feast Community, my monthly membership that combines my no-nonsense approach that you all love to nutrition with community, so that you can learn from me and others who can relate to the cheers and challenges of midlife.
Jenn Salib Huber:Has the thought ever occurred to you that maybe you should take better care of yourself or maybe you should put yourself first? I know that I had that thought many, many times about self-care, thinking that I needed to schedule it in, that I needed to do self-care before I realized that self-care was a lot like breathing and eating and sleeping it just needed to be part of my rhythm in order for me to feel my best. Whatever my best was on any given day, taking care of myself and, as I often say, putting my own oxygen mask on first became a really important part. It happened to kind of coincide with midlife. I think that for lots of us, midlife is when the gloves come off around. What are my needs? How do I want to feel? What do I need to feel better in my day-to-day, whatever it is, and that's kind of what happened with my guest today. So Heather Chauvin is a coach from Ontario in Canada, but she has a really powerful personal story about why self-care became so important to her and really became the focus of her work and helping other people to put themselves first.
Jenn Salib Huber:So we have a really great conversation about self-care and just before we dive into it, I want to let you know that it is December in case you haven't noticed the calendar turnover, and that means that self-care is on the menu in the Midlife Feast community. So we're going to be spending the month working on our self-care toolboxes and applying one of the things that Heather and I talk about, which is how do you want to feel? So if you're tired of feeling burned out at the end of the holidays because you're doing all the things for all the people but yourself, and that includes how you're eating and moving and thinking. I would love for you to join us. So if you would like to join the Midlife Feast this month, you'll find the link pretty much everywhere, but you'll definitely find it in the description of the show notes and you can join us anytime. To get started, Hi Heather, Welcome to the Midlife.
Heather Chauvin:Feast. Hello Jen, I'm so excited for this conversation.
Jenn Salib Huber:Thanks for having me Well listeners will know that I love talking about self-care. I think that it is a missing ingredient for many of us in this age and stage, but really it's not age specific. So before we dig into self-care, though, I would love to hear a little bit about how this became a topic near and dear to your heart.
Heather Chauvin:Well, it's a very trendy term, right, everywhere you go, it's like self-care days. Self-care, I often feel that a lot of it has associated towards like spending money as well, which I actually don't think we need to spend a dollar to take care of ourselves, and the reframe is, for me, is like self-respect, self-value, really seeing that our needs matter and our my kind of journey took me down an interesting path, um to to get to the point where I knew I needed to take care of myself. The reality was, I knew this a long, long, long time ago, uh, but the messages that I was receiving as a, as a mother, um, as a woman, were self care, considering your needs at all is selfish, and we all know that cultural conversation, because I hear it every single day, as I'm sure you do too. And then, when we have a core belief like that, things manifest is like I don't have time. I don't have time, I don't have the resources to do this, and the reality is that is all false. And so my story started when I became a mother at the age of 18.
Heather Chauvin:That was my first moment of not what I call not this, like a not this moment, and on a primal level there was like I don't want to, like, I don't want to fail, I don't want to fail as a mother. I'm already doing this backwards. Um, I don't want my child to become a statistic I don't want to become a statistic and but I also don't want him to feel the way that I felt as a child. So I was the highly sensitive kid. I was, um, highly anxious, didn't know all of these things. And so, growing up in a culture where it's like what's wrong with you, let's put labels on you, let's try to mask this, let's talk about it, let's figure it out, there was no actual tools that I was being taught to manage emotion. Emotional intelligence was not a thing back then. And so, becoming a mother, I'm like, okay, I'm going to overdo it now, and so I'm going to overperform, I'm going to overachieve, and so I'm reading the books, I'm doing the things, but I'm also, at the same time, like internally, having this like early life crisis, where I'm like not this, not this. I can't, like I could see the future of this is not sustainable. And then so I would seek guidance, I would seek support, and the feedback I was getting was suck it up, buttercup. This is life. This is how you feel. You're a mom, you're a woman, you're whatever. Like, yeah, this is adulthood, like welcome to adulthood. And I thought, oh my gosh, not this, not this. So I go, I'm doing the things.
Heather Chauvin:I find meditation and mindfulness is number one. Why you think that might be a self care tip or tool. No, I'm doing the things. I find meditation and mindfulness is number one. Why you think that might be a self-care tip or tool? No, I decided that my child needed to meditate because he was anxious and he had big, big behavior and big emotions. And what do you do when you don't know how to regulate? You yell, right, you yell. Yelling is a stress response. It is not a parenting strategy, by the way. And so I'm yelling. No one will hear me, no one listens to me, and I'm like, yeah, because that's how we were parented, that's how we were taught. And so I'm like not this, not this. And so my son and I just kept like, he kept guiding me back home to myself and by accident, I discovered self-care. I also realized if I want him to do something, I have to be able to know how to do it myself. And so I was parenting and living from a place of fear because I didn't feel in control of any of these areas of my life, my big emotions, how to manage certain things.
Heather Chauvin:Fast forward. I leave my job as a social worker and I'm in startup in my business. And this is 2013 and I'm diagnosed with a stage four cancer and at that time I, you know, I had nine, jen. I had nine years of personal development under my belt. Like everyone always hears my cancer diagnosis story and they're like, oh, was that your awakening? Was that your moment, you know, like your midlife adventure or crisis? No, I was 27 years old.
Heather Chauvin:I was actually put in medically induced menopause, which was a whole other podcast conversation that we could do because I didn't know I was going to go in menopause, which was a whole other podcast conversation that we could do because I didn't know I was going to go in menopause. That was a very all or nothing scary experience. But in the moment, I was like I need to stop pretending or buying into this cultural conversation that my needs don't matter because I, regardless of why my body, grew cancer. I got there because of neglect or I got to the point of where I was from neglect, because if I gave myself anything, I was told that I was a bad mom. If I gave myself anything, I was told that I was a bad mom If I gave myself anything. I was told I was selfish and I just like it's like that.
Heather Chauvin:I knew all along that that was a BS cultural conversation that we were having, but I didn't give myself permission to really listen to myself and I started to abandon those parts of myself. I started to abandon the physical symptoms. I started to abandon the dis-ease in my mind. I started to abandon the lack that I could feel to be good, because that's everyone's like you gotta, you gotta be good, you gotta be good. And so that's part of my story and kind of what got me to a point where I'm like I really truly believe now self-care, however you define it self-respect, self-value is the most unselfish thing you can do. I actually think it's incredibly selfish for women and humans in general to believe that giving to themselves is taking away from other people, because I actually think we're more of a burden when we think that way.
Jenn Salib Huber:Oh, my goodness, I can't even imagine what that was like. You know, when I think back to 27,. I was just about to get married. You know, live in my best life. I think I was probably pregnant within a year of that and I just can't imagine facing, you know, a year of that and I just can't imagine facing, you know that, that level of health concern, so that that kind of shifted you. But it sounds like you were, you were working toward that, either consciously or unconsciously working towards, you know, kind of shifting that. How did you, how did you make that happen? How did you make the shift to my needs, matter and need to be part of this equation?
Heather Chauvin:Yeah, I always think about that when I meet people like your comment about being 27. I was married, three children. My youngest was like a year old at the time. I mean I went into adulthood pretty rapidly. I was like, okay, I had my first at 18, met my husband a few years after that. Three years after that, we had another one I never identified.
Heather Chauvin:I started taking care of myself as like a survival, coping strategy. I remember, after my diagnosis, and they're like it's stage four. I was like, okay, there's no stage five. And I felt like I was backed into a corner. Um, I had to ask myself how do I want to feel? And I always tell the story about I was at home, um, in the middle of treatment, and I was having a panic attack in the middle of the night, as one does, and I went into the bathroom.
Heather Chauvin:Why? Because I didn't want to burden anybody with my feelings, I didn't want to wake up my children. So I went into the bathroom and I'm crying in fetal position on the floor and I'm paralyzed in fear that I'm going to die. And I remember in my mind thinking I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die. I'm so scared, I'm like at my rock bottom moment, um. But I had enough coaching under my belt, I had enough personal development under my belt and tools that I was like, okay, you're not dead yet. Come back to the present moment. You are here, you are alive. Right now you're alive. You don't know what tomorrow's going to bring, but right now you are alive. And then I asked myself this question how do you want to feel If you don't want to feel dead inside? How do you want to feel? And I'm like I want to feel alive. I want to feel alive. I'm like closing my eyes, I'm like just repeating it over and over again. And then I got scared again because I had no evidence of what aliveness felt like and I thought this, this is it. If I have no idea or have evidence of a feeling that I'm after, I have to go on this journey and figure it out. And that's that was the moment where, like the tool I developed called energetic time management was kind of the birth of that, where I reverse, engineer how I want to feel and I teach women to do the same.
Heather Chauvin:But we're so conditioned to go after the accolades. What do you want to see on the scale. What do you want to look like in the mirror? You have no issue walking into an aesthetic spa and inject all these things into your face and them saying like that's three grand.
Heather Chauvin:But the second you walk down the street and you invest that in functional medicine or a practitioner or like personal development, you stop, you question, you paralyze, um, you know someone's like, hey, I want to do this, I want to become. I mean, in Canada, everyone wants to become a hockey player. So, oh, you want to invest thousands of dollars in this. Yeah, no, this I want to become. I mean, in Canada, everyone wants to become a hockey player. So, oh, you want to invest thousands of dollars in this? Yeah, no problem, I will bend over backwards, I will get a second job, I will literally sell the shirt off my back. But how dare I do anything for myself? And so we just, we have the conversation backwards and it's killing women. It's killing them mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and sometimes you wake up when you have a holy shit moment, but most do not my goodness.
Jenn Salib Huber:I love that you connected to how do you want to feel? Anybody who listens to this podcast or has worked with me will recognize that that is a question that I, you know, get people to ask themselves, because it's a much more attuned, interoceptive way of setting intentions. You know, when we're focused on an outcome that is defined by someone else or measured by someone else or has to be compared to something else, it's so easy to just get caught up in that comparison game and never feel like we're enough. But if we focus on how we want to feel and that's a subjective experience that only we can define, if it's good or bad or ugly or otherwise it just feels more. You know I hate the word authentic, but it feels more authentic and it feels more achievable. So I love that you use that too.
Jenn Salib Huber:So we've already talked about how this idea of self care being selfish we need to kind of let go of. But what else do we get wrong about self care? What is it that we? What are some other misconceptions about self care that are maybe kind of holding us back from accessing it?
Heather Chauvin:Well, you? The first thing that comes to my mind is, I don't know because I'm such a rebel that I don't actually listen to what most people say about self-care, because I feel like it's a very marketable term as well, right, especially in the wellness space, like when I go to the bookstore and I see books on self-care and I'm like you really have to buy a book about this, like the fact that, and it's like running a bath and doing all these things. What I often find, too, is people are doing what they think is quote, unquote self-care, but on somebody else's terms. I think we're so disconnected from ourselves that we're not even asking ourselves what does this look like? And so, to me, how do you even define self-care? So I think it's self-respect or lack of self-abandonment. Right, I am loving myself. However you define it, number one, write it down self I'm care, like. However you define it, number one, write it down. What's your definition of that? Great, what is a line for you for that and for me?
Heather Chauvin:If I say self-respect, self-value, okay, now I'm starting to look at where am I not valuing my time? Where am I not valuing my energy? Where am I not valuing my, my personal resources or myself, and how is that showing up in my relationships? How's that showing up in my work? How's that showing up in my parenting, or my health, or lack of, and then that's where I start to go for self-care. So for me it's like boundaries when am I abandoning or where I list needing to listen more to my intuition?
Heather Chauvin:Something else that I really like started to do is take a stand for the vision that I have for myself or my life, especially as a business owner where you know you start bringing on more people and your team, or someone earlier asked me, like what conferences do you go to? I said I actually don't go to a lot of conferences because most of the time it's just people like pouring information on you, and I hear a lot of people say like I'm so overwhelmed I don't know where to, where to go, and so I'm like come back to self, listen to yourself, and but when we do that, that's where we get emotionally uncomfortable. So to me, that's how I define it.
Jenn Salib Huber:Yeah, I love that. I love the coming back to yourself, because one of the things that I observe and I don't know how old you are, so I'm not going to make assumptions, but what one of the things that I observe, when people are kind of crossing this threshold of midlife, whatever age that is, is an urgent need to come back to themselves. But sometimes they can't see it because of all the other things that are happening or they've never actually honored that before. So they don't know what it is, but they know they have this discomfort. Something isn't working, I need to do something, something needs to change, and so I think this idea of kind of coming back home to yourself is is a nice, is a nice way of putting it. What are some of the?
Heather Chauvin:things. So sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say it's inspiring what I see people do, which is try to control and seek change on the outside. So they will say I need to change my career or I need to control somebody else's behavior and I love reading human behavior as a language, so I'm observant towards what are you trying to control externally? That means you feel out of control emotionally on the inside and pay attention to that right and your health whether it's menopause, perimetopause can lead you back home to yourself. But it's also you're entering a new season, seasonality, new change in your whole life and your brain is changing. Your relationships are changing. It's also fun when you're going through a change and your child is going through developmental change as well. That's always a good time. So it's yeah, it truly is about like we are constantly evolving and changing and I think when we are in denial to the fact that life just keeps happening to us, it's like you know you got to be in this creator role.
Jenn Salib Huber:So this kind of is a good lead into my next question, which is what are a couple of things that we can do to make self care easier to access? Not self care is an act. You know, not a thing that you do, but you know a philosophy that you're applying, that you're leading, or that you're just including self-care, just like you would eating or breathing or sleeping, that it just is part of what you do. How do we make that easier to access? Because I see people all the time who are just in this busy stage of life. You know there's the theory about the U-shaped curve of midlife, that we're unhappiest in midlife, in our 40s and 50s, and we're the sandwich generation, and so I think the idea of accessing or adding in self-care as a pillar is sometimes just feels out of reach. How can they make it more accessible? Feels out of reach.
Heather Chauvin:How can they make it more accessible? Okay, so I'm entering my 40s. I'll tell you how old I am. I think my soul is 1 million years old, so I came into this world as an old soul. But I will say one of the privileges that I have is I had to learn these things at a very young age and I had to grow up quote unquote quickly and I think it becomes an identity, so who I am now and how I move through the world. And I see this in my clients as well. When they first start with me, they're like give me the strategy, give me the roadmap. And that's why I have PDFs, that's why I have step-by-steps, because I I mean, I love chat, gpt and all the all the AI, because I will literally say I'm overwhelmed right now. Can you give me a step-by-step on how to do X, y, z, like how to meal plan or how to do whatever? I'm an overwhelmed woman with a lot on my plate. Talk to me like I'm a grade five and it will be like do this, do this. And I appreciate that. So I understand when your brain. It's a new skill, it's a new way of being for you.
Heather Chauvin:So, number one. Give yourself permission. Know that it's going to be emotionally uncomfortable, know that you're going to have resistance to becoming a different version of yourself. I always say new identity like different version of yourself. It used to be difficult for me to drink water and now I carry it with me everywhere I go and I'm like I don't even think about it anymore. But there's still challenges that I have that I'm like I should know this by now. This should be easy. Wow, let's be kind. Let's be kind to ourselves.
Heather Chauvin:The second thing is so, yeah, strategy, step-by-step. Have your strategy, implement the strategy, even if it's 10 minutes at a time and I talk a lot about my energetic time management process. I'm happy to give you that PDF at the end if you want it. But honestly, I tell people put things on your calendar, 10 minutes at a time, physically on your calendar. It might be a walk, it may be you're getting clear on how you want to feel, but maybe it's a walk, maybe it's reading, maybe it's writing, and at first you're going to feel like that 10 minute walk is taking up your whole day because the amount of resistance you have and after you're just going to be like, oh, it's time to walk, like your body's going to know, your brain is going to know it's B, it's this becoming of you.
Heather Chauvin:Um, you know I have three children. Like people are like, oh, it must be so chaotic in your house. It's not because that's not the energy I want in here. It's taken me forever to cultivate that in relationships and how we communicate with each other, in the standards and expectations for myself, my kids used to barge in every single time I would be on an interview, regardless if they were a toddler or a teen, because I didn't value my space, I didn't value my bubble. And now they know the door is closed. We don't interrupt, the door is closed. You raise your standards for how people treat you and that's only one little act of courage at a time and sometimes it's physically on your calendar. And this overdoing for everyone, this over nurturing, over mothering, um, I mean, we're recording this. The holidays are coming up and might, they might be done when it?
Jenn Salib Huber:you know, when they are listening to this, but there's always these periods of time, okay, good.
Heather Chauvin:So there's always these periods of time where women are like I'm so exhausted, I'm so angry, I'm so resentful, like nobody's helping me, and I'm like but are you easy to help? Like, or are you know? Do people get close to you and you're prickly Like? Are you approachable? Are you easy to help? Are you easy to love? Is it easy for you to receive love? You are easy to love, you are lovable, but it's like the conversation goes so much deeper.
Heather Chauvin:We're telling ourself a story and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So we have to have to have to let people help us and let it be messy, but also pay attention to what brings you joy, what fulfills you, and start adding those little bits to the calendar. Like to be in relationship with others who are very difficult to co-create with, very difficult to be in relationship with, and I often ask myself am I like that? Do I want to be like that? And most of those women that I know? They're busting their ass to make things perfect, but the one thing they forgot was cultivating and creating that energy within themselves, because it looks beautiful on the outside, but I don't feel safe in their presence. I don't feel safe to be myself, and so it's really it's working it from the inside out.
Jenn Salib Huber:I think that's really, really great advice as we're coming into the holidays and this is coming out in early December. I talk so often to people about, you know, in December, and I don't know if it's a generational thing it's probably not just a generational thing but I definitely feel that you know we had like to create the perfect Christmas or to create the perfect holiday gathering or whatever it was, and as my kids got older, I really realized that I was the only one who was putting that pressure on me and they didn't expect it. They appreciated it, they probably enjoyed it, but I think that they never. And my husband, my family, they never put that on me. I put that on myself.
Jenn Salib Huber:So part of my kind of realignment with my values a few years ago was kind of like I need to really take responsibility for that and and also give myself permission to let that shit go and you know, to focus on what really matters in the holidays. And that it's probably not having everything perfect, but that's hard when you're a perfectionistic people pleaser and you want everything to be perfect for the people that you love. Very well-intentioned, but it's definitely hard. But again, coming back to how do you want to feel right. I don't want to feel stressed and burnt out on December 26th. I want to feel relaxed. I want to feel joy. I want to feel stressed and burnt out on December 26. I want to feel relaxed. I want to feel joy. I want to feel like I have connected with my people.
Heather Chauvin:Yeah, I mean, that's such a the holidays is such a people pleaser time of year and we don't realize that when we're trying to please other people, we are always setting ourself up for disappointment right. There's so many big emotions during the holidays. I used to feel so sad around the holidays and I tried to overcompensate by making everything look perfect and then, when the story didn't go the way it did, in my mind it was such a letdown, so such an emotional roller coaster. And I can feel it happening already, like with my kids this season, where I'm like, gosh, they don't physically need anything and I'm going to feel like crap when I don't know what. I don't want to buy crap. So I'm like, oh my God, what do I do? What do I do? And I'm like where is this pressure and expectation coming from? And it's this like invisible thing. But that's mine to manage. It doesn't mean I actually have to create it. It's okay, get back. How do you want to feel this holiday season? What does that look like? And then asking the kids to like what, what is really important to you, versus what's not.
Heather Chauvin:And over the years I'm sure as they grow up, they'll tell you more and more. But I even remember that in my own childhood. There was an age where I had two households I had my mom and my dad and very different Christmases. But there was one where I could tell like my stepmom was like and my dad were just like done with Christmas. And I'm like in hindsight, I'm looking, I'm like yeah, she was about midlife and she was like I'm done performing.
Heather Chauvin:And, to be honest, as a child it was kind of there was a little whiplash experience, because you have created and orchestrated this fake narrative and all of a sudden you're like I'm done with that and so you stop and you become a different version of yourself and everyone that was tied to you in that ecosystem is now learning a new version of you and that ecosystem is now learning a new version of you. And so I think the more honest we are with ourselves every year, every day, we just slowly, slowly, slowly integrate back into ourselves. The people around us are getting to know that new version of us too. And I think that's the most difficult thing is when you know you're like well, it's not going to affect. We think we're being selfish by taking care of our needs, but really we're just experiencing the contrast of other people being affected by our actions or our inactions. So it's a wild ride.
Jenn Salib Huber:It is a wild ride. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your wisdom and insight into self-care. Before we end, though, I do have one question for you what do you think is the missing ingredient in midlife? Even though you're not, maybe, quite there yet, you might have some thoughts.
Heather Chauvin:Well, a lot of the women in my world are in that space and they always say to me such a profound question Heather, how do I want to feel? And you know, I never asked myself that before. I think it's really giving yourself permission to lean into feeling the way you want to feel because, regardless, if it's a missing ingredient, yes for you, but also you are giving every human around you permission to feel the way they want to feel as well, and I think we wildly undervalue the leader that we are and the value and the impact and the power we hold in other people's lives. We all know, we all know what it's like when the mother, the woman in the home, is not happy, fulfilled, aligned. She's the keystone of the family, she's the keystone of the environment. Literally, we call it mother earth and we need to realize that we have value, we have power and tiny, tiny, tiny little acts of permission that get you more in, aligned with how you want to feel. That's the missing ingredient.
Jenn Salib Huber:I love that. Thank you so much for joining me. We will have links in the show notes. Is there anything that you would like to anything that you have going on that listeners might want to know about?
Heather Chauvin:people so you can head on over there. Time management, creating more time, creating more of your three resources time, energy and financial abundance are kind of my jam. So you can go to heatherschauvincom forward slash time and I do teach you my energetic time management process. I break it down into those six steps so if you're new on this journey, it's incredibly overwhelming to you. Go there. Heather Chauvin, cauvincom forward slash time Amazing.
Jenn Salib Huber:And we'll have those in the show notes to those links. Thanks so much for joining me and I know that the this will be a really helpful episode, especially at this time of year. Thanks, jen. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the midlife feast more non-diet, health, hormone and general midlife support. Click the link in the show notes to learn how you can work and learn from me. And if you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, please consider leaving a review or subscribing, because it helps other women just like you find us and feel supported in midlife.
