Empowered Ease
Welcome to Empowered Ease, hosted by Jenn Ohlinger—a holistic coach, founder of The Moonflower Collective, and critical care nurse dedicated to revolutionizing women's health. Join us each week as we delve into the transformative stories of healers, health practitioners, and everyday women like you, challenging the patriarchal framework through empowerment and holistic healing. Through engaging storytelling, our podcast highlights each woman's unique journey toward embracing their feminine gifts, trusting their body, and prioritizing their mind, body, and soul. Discover how by empowering ourselves, we can pave the way for stronger relationships and a more balanced world.
Empowered Ease
Avie Heidenfelder; Embracing the Menopausal Journey: Natural Healing and Honest Conversations
Hi!! I would love to hear from you!
Herbalist Avie Heidenfelder transforms women's menopausal journeys through natural remedies and frank conversation—a mission born from her own struggles after a hysterectomy at 39. Our candid conversation tears down the walls of silence that have surrounded women's hormonal health for generations.
"This is not like the curse," Avie asserts, rejecting the historical stigma around female bodies. "There's nothing wrong with us. It's a natural journey." We share raw accounts of emotional rollercoasters—from inexplicable tears to feeling completely detached from their usual selves. Our honest admissions validate what countless women experience but rarely hear acknowledged: the profound identity shifts that can accompany hormonal fluctuation.
After leaving her corporate career in finance, Avie embraced off-grid living and discovered herbalism, eventually specializing in menopausal wellness. Her approach combines personalized herbal formulations with holistic lifestyle adjustments, recognizing that every woman's experience differs based on diet, activity level, and individual physiology. This episode explores how women's hormonal health remains dangerously understudied, with Avie noting that many women in previous generations were institutionalized for what was simply menopause—a sobering reminder of why breaking this silence matters.
Beyond professional insights, Avie shares glimpses of her woodland sanctuary where boulder-strewn meditation spots and forest bathing constitute her essential self-care. Discover her free resources at myherbalistjourney.com, including specialized PDFs on herbal remedies and monthly virtual workshops covering energy work, mindfulness, and chakra balancing. For anyone navigating the complex terrain of hormonal shifts, this conversation offers both practical wisdom and the profound reassurance that you're not alone—and you're definitely not losing your mind.
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um welcome to empowered ease. My guest today is avi heidenfelder.
Speaker 2:Avi, tell me your title so herbalist and holistic menopausal wellness specialist um.
Speaker 1:Those of you that know me um know that that last name, heidenfelder, is my maiden last name and Avey is actually my aunt but Avey and I work together a lot.
Speaker 1:we do a lot of free workshops together, but I wanted to have Avey on the podcast because she has a interesting story and is helping women with hormones which, if you follow any of my socials, you know that mine are all over the place. Perimenopause is awful, so Amy, tell me, yeah, a little bit about this perimenopause hormonal awfulness that I'm going through and how you help people. Today's, one of those days.
Speaker 2:Today is one of those days. Well, I am not in peri, I'm already in full blown, so it is still one of those days. Well, I am not in Perry, I'm already in full blown, so it is still one of those days. Yeah, so I just, you know, I used to work in the corporate field and I did that for a lot, several years, working for a financial firm and stuff like that. And then, I guess, when my husband and I decided to move we actually live completely off grid, but when we decided to move down here and make a lot of changes, I got into the whole what can I use around the property? So I kind of jumped into the herbal part of it and absolutely loved that.
Speaker 2:But then, in the middle of all of that, you know, menopause hit and with being um, a woman who had to have a hysterectomy at 39, you know you're, you're playing the guessing game all the way through. The doctor tells you oh, you probably have 10 more years, you know, before you have to worry about it, but you're constantly thinking about it, you know. And so I finally got to the point where it actually hit and I'm doing one of those things, crying, and the husband's like, why are you crying? I don't know, you know. So we've all been there, and if you haven't hopefully you don't get to that point that bad. But then I wanted to just start figuring out what, naturally, can I do to help with my own menopause, which took me into this whole whole thing of okay, this is ridiculous. Women have got to know this shit kind of thing, you know.
Speaker 1:Well, I think you're touching on a big thing. This is a very understudied, under and under talked about area that I feel like like. For me, I had no idea what to expect. Now we have social media, so there is way more education there, but I'm still like, oh my God, how did I not know what this was coming?
Speaker 2:Well and that's where I jump on my soapbox is because you know, I am part of the generation that our moms didn't talk about it, and they didn't talk about not just menopause but any cycle of being a female. From you know your very first moon cycle, all the way through menopause. It was just a conversation that was not had, and it's not their fault because their moms didn't talk about it. It was just how everybody was raised in the whole society thing. And I think that is the part where I'm like bullshit. This is a conversation we're going to have. This is a normal thing for women. It should be able to be discussed just like somebody calling up someone and being talking to them Like I have the flu, what should I take? Well, women should be able to reach out and be like oh my God, I'm doing this and menopause, what do I do?
Speaker 2:You know, so it's like breaking the whole barrier. This is not. This is not like the curse that we, you know, kind of like getting your period and stuff like that. There's nothing wrong with us. It's a natural journey. It's different for everybody you know, and it's just something that I think needs to be brought out and talked about more oh my, my God.
Speaker 1:I believe I agree with you a hundred percent, but I I'm like I am in a young to go through perimenopause as intensely as I am, and I think there's probably other factors like my lifestyle and job choice that make mine worse. But it is probably like there. If I, if it wasn't so talked about to the level it is now, if I, I think I would think I was going crazy, like I think I was losing my mind sometimes because of how differently I can feel day to day. I made a post this week about feeling numb, like just feeling like, waking up one day and I just couldn't understand. I didn't feel caring towards anything like anyone else, and that was not who I am Like. I generally like an overly caring person who does a lot for a lot of people, and that was not who I am Like. I generally like an overly caring person who does a lot for a lot of people, and I didn't, I couldn't under even understand who I was Cause I'm like why do I do this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wrote. I wrote about it last week in my newsletter that I you know I'm usually the funny, the sarcastic, the usually annoying friend probably, and I'm the one that reaches out to everybody and I'm the one that tries to make everybody feel better or lighten the mood and everything else and like for two weeks I'm like I don't want to be around anybody, I just I. I was not me and I didn't want that coming off onto anybody else.
Speaker 2:And it's like no, they are, they don't know me that way, but I'm just going to sit here in my little show and I'm not going to see anybody and I'm not going to go anywhere and I'll communicate by messaging Betty, and I'm not going to go anywhere and I'll communicate by messaging, but that was even limited because you know, and then I went out and I sat in my garden and I sat there in the sun and I started crying for no reason, because and I can't say for no reason I started crying because I was not me and I you can, you can sit there and you can feel this is not me, this is not who I am, this is not how I'm normally am. This is not right. What the hell is going on?
Speaker 2:you know, yeah, so yeah, and that's why back in the way, back in the day, so many people, women that were put in psych wards, psych hospitals, yeah, their husbands were like oh my god, they're batshit crazy, or whatever. No, no, honey, it was menopause, it's our bodies. I swear, my body feels like it's killing, killing me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mine does too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I mean to me it's the, it's the whole conversation about you know, I want my granddaughter to know everything you know, I, you know, and I have no doubt that my daughter-in-laws will make sure that happens.
Speaker 2:But I also, I want, not just our daughters, I want our sons to know, because our sons are going to grow up and be around women that are going through all of this and they need to understand. They're not going to have total empathy or whatever, but they need to at least have a little bit of an idea of what is going on with women in their lives and how to help handle that and how to actually be a cheerleader and support system instead of oh my god, you're so crabby today, you know oh yeah, I think my husband just withdraws because he's like I don't know what to do with you.
Speaker 1:I'm going to take a few steps back now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it used to. Every morning I would get up and get coffee or whatever, and Mike would be like oh, did you sleep? Okay. Now usually it's like how are we doing today Scanning? It's like his pre-warning of the it's not a good day. Or hey, we're good, we're we're.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, I think, I, I, I can't say that. I feel sorry for him, but he does hear about the details and everything about menopause more than probably most men in this world, because I'll be like, hey, did you know? The reason I was like this is because oh educating him all the time.
Speaker 1:I do that to my husband too. Okay, he says he can tell what kind of a mood I'm in by how I greet our dogs at the door when I go to work. He's like how do you?
Speaker 2:greet the dogs. I can tell that's good, though, that he picks up on that, because a lot of guys don't, you know, they don't, they don't pay attention to that.
Speaker 1:So it doesn't mean we don't want to smack them around later, you know if we're in that mood, but I don't think it helps a whole lot, but right, so how do you um, how do you work with women and their fluctuating hormones?
Speaker 2:So I do have um a coaching program coming up pretty soon. I do have a free. I am doing some free little mini workshops that lets people get a little bit of information about menopause, whether it is an overall view of like the three stages so you can figure out where you're at, because that's always helpful. You can't I know they have the guidelines of the age and all that. You just cannot, you can't go by that.
Speaker 2:It's very understudied it is. And everybody you know everybody is different. It's not like Tylenol works for everybody. Everybody's different in their daily lives, their diet, their activity. All of that affects what you're going through when it comes to menopause. So I do some mini workshops and, like I said, I've got the coaching program coming up. I probably will be rolling that out in about a week or two actually. So I'm really excited about that. So that will be. It'll be a month. So it'll be four check-ins, about an hour and a half to two hours each time, and what we're going to do is we're going to start out by assessing where you're at, how your body is, what your lifestyle is and everything else. I'm going to personalize a product specifically, whether it be tincture or herbal tea, that is solely just based on the assessment that we do. Oh cool. And then we're also going to work through some of the holistic stuff, so it'll be diet, you know, activity, moving, mindfulness and all of that. So we'll do that for a week, yeah, or a month, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Once a week for a month. That sounds awesome, yeah, or a month, I'm sorry. Once a week for a month Sounds awesome, yeah. So also, I wanted to touch on this earlier, but you mentioned that you live off of grid. Yeah, you want to tell us a little bit about how cool it is where you live.
Speaker 2:Actually, it's very cool it is very cool, it is very cool, you, technically it's not cool to get to my house because our neighbor up front is kind of, you know, junkyard-ish. But it is cool in the fact that a lot of people don't know we're back here, because you have to drive in his drive to get to us. And so literally, yeah, we're back here, surrounded by just woods, and that's it. Yeah, so we've been here for nine years. Yeah, we've nine years. We've lived off grid. We started out in um, we like to call it our little tent house.
Speaker 1:So you guys quit your, you quit, you retired, right? You both retired and uh decided to like live like you guys, bought some property and basically built your own little paradise, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what we were doing was we bought the property. We lived in Illinois. We bought the property. We were going to come down here on the weekends and do stuff. Mike retired and this was just going to be our hangout and place to get away and we were down here. I think we bought it in March and we had had it for a year that we both were working and we would come down here and hang out and do some stuff. And then the following year he had retired and we came down like three months after he retired and we spent two weeks down here and when we left we left knowing that. And when we left, we left knowing that.
Speaker 2:Or I knew I had no clue when I was going to be able to get back down here because I was still working full-time and doing, you know, 50 hours a week and stuff like that. I left crying because I didn't know when I would be able to get back down here. But on the way home Mike was like hey, you know I, I know at some point this was supposed to be our retirement live here once I retired. And he's like but what we want to really do, living off grid is going to take a lot more work, so I think you're just going to have to retire early.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, because the plan was we were eventually going to move down here, but I was just going to move branches. I was going to transfer from the branch in Illinois that I was at to a branch in Rolla that was closer and I was going to continue to work. But it did take, because we built our own house, the two of us and everything else, and it was solid woods where we were, so we had to clear out stuff and clear the trees. So it was a lot of work. And so he was like I think you're just going to have to retire early. Okay, okay, you know I was ready for a stroke anyway, working with the stock market and stuff.
Speaker 2:So it's like no, no, yeah, let me be out in nature in my tank top and and whatever, and I'm good playing in your playing in your garden and in the woods yeah, yeah, definitely. We have four gardens, so and that is that.
Speaker 1:So is that when you started um getting into herbalism or was that? Had you done that, any of that stuff before?
Speaker 2:actually I hadn't um, not the herbal part now hiding in the woods. I did that my entire life growing up. So you know, everybody used to, everybody used to. You know talk about you, knew you had a good life when you knew you went home when the street lights went out. Well, I lived. I lived out in the middle on I can't even I can't say a farm.
Speaker 2:We did have a lot of animals. I helped my dad hand milk cows, I had 13 baby goats for my 13th birthday. You know, we had the pigs, we had all of this stuff, the chickens obviously, and stuff like that, and I would go out into the woods and hide. I would pack me a backpack and I would go hide in the woods and I actually had this one tree. There was this huge juniper right on the side of a pond and it umbrellaed. It was so big that the bottom would umbrella and I would climb underneath that and that was like my little fort. Oh, I love it underneath that. And that was like my little fort, oh I love it.
Speaker 2:So when it was time to go home, you could hear my dad honk the horn on the truck and that meant get your butt home, it's time for dinner, kind of thing. So I mean, the the outdoors part has always been in me and I think that was the hardest part with having a corporate job was, you know, that was two different lives. And when, when I actually told people we were moving down here to do this, everybody that I had worked with for and known in the industry for, you know, almost 20 years, was like oh my God, why would you want to do that, why are you doing that? And I'm like but that's where I'm from, that's what I used, you doing that, and I'm like but that's where I'm from, that's what I used. No way, because I was, you know, the five inch heels, the, the dress for corporate, the whole thing.
Speaker 2:And I'm like no, this is me for a job, but that's me you know, so when we got down here and got in the woods, this was like, okay, I'm finally home. You know I'm finally home. But there was, um, there was a time that I saw one of the wineries that we love to go to, peaceful Bend in Stillville, and they're amazing, love the owners. And they had what they were calling a wild walk and they had a lady coming and you could come. You could, you know, get your wine, have lunch, whatever. She took you on a walk around the property and pointed out all the different plants and things like that, told you what they were good for, and it just like it was like something. A light bulb went off and I'm like, oh, my God, this is, this is amazing, you know.
Speaker 2:And we left there and on the way home I told my husband, I'm like you know, what would be cool is if she would do a class or a internship or apprentice, something like that. I'm like I would really like to know. You know, we have all of this around us. I said, uh, I would love to know that there's something out there I can use if we're in the woods and get hurt or or anything. And it basically, it was just that, just the basics. What can I use if I'm I'm here, cut myself, but don't have a band-aid? Well, you can use yarrow. Well, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:So it's so simple.
Speaker 2:yeah, it was those simple little things and I think it was like three months. I started following her, Colleen from Turtle Earth, and I think it was like three months later and all of a sudden she posts on Facebook taking applications for my first apprenticeship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, meant to be.
Speaker 2:I instantly sent her a thing. She sent me the application, I filled it out and sent it back the same damn day. I didn't need to. I had two months to do it, but I did, and luckily she did. She ended up picking five of us and so I did a working apprenticeship with her and so we would go and we would do stuff for the property that they were building and then we would do herbal and stuff like that. And then, as I got into that, I just was like, okay, now I want to, I can't, I can't, um, I can't save the world. I can't know absolutely everything about every plant and what it does. And so I wanted to kind of I don't want to say minimize, but focus.
Speaker 2:And that's when the menopausal part came in, yeah, and that's when the menopausal part came in Cause I'm like this is so needed. This is, you know you can find the other, you can Google. Something simple Like the yarrow will stop, you know, a bleeding for cut and stuff like that. But I didn't feel like there was as much herbal when it came to natural things that help balance your hormones and things like that. So that's when, yeah, I dug deep for that.
Speaker 1:So very cool, very needed. So, um, if people want to learn more about you or follow along or receive your blog, where will they find you?
Speaker 2:Okay, so I'm kind of everywhere in odd places. Facebook, definitely Under my herbalist journey and warrior heart. I am also on Instagram, youtube. I just started YouTube. I'm trying to move some of my videos over to that. I just started Substack so I do have a free subscription for a weekly newsletter that I do. It's not always herbal, sometimes it's just me on whatever hits me. So that's on Substack. And then I have a website that is myherbalistjourneycom. Love it. All those.
Speaker 2:And on the website. I do have several free PDFs. So I have a PDF on quick herbal guides, I have one on embracing menopause, I have a specific one on endometriosis, ovarian system, uterine fibroids that's all together in one, and then one on the wise women ways and hormonal health. Those are all out there. You can view them or you can download them and print them. They're on your website. Those are onto my website. Yep, it's underneath the article. And free PDFs yeah, awesome.
Speaker 1:Yep, amy and I also do together. We do two free workshops a month. We do like a one on the new moon for, like, clearing energy box and do a line with whatever. Like the goals of the new moon are? Um, they're basically a little education on energy and and herbs or herbal allies. And then we do too long mindfulness and then we're starting a series, um, on the chakras and we're doing this month we're just doing an overall like introduction to the chakras and then we're going to work our way from the root to the crown and then do like a full balance of the whole thing at the end. So those are all free and we do them virtually online if anybody wants to come to those.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of fun. We've gotten a little following, so it's exciting and you leave feeling really good because it's basically just like two peaceful mindfulnesses. So, yeah, it's very good. And a little education, yeah, definitely. Well, amy, thanks so much for coming on here. I was excited. We are, we work together all the time, but I definitely wanted to have you on the podcast so people could hear about all the awesome things you're doing. So thank you. Yeah, anything else too? Oh, I didn't ask you. I always ask everyone what their go-to self-care is.
Speaker 2:What's your go-to self-care when, like, things are awful and it's your one thing that makes things better? Honestly and I'm lucky enough to be able- to do this.
Speaker 1:I usually go out in the woods and sit.
Speaker 2:I was wondering if that was what it was going to be. Yeah, we have a section of our property that has huge boulders and, like when I do a new moon ceremony, I take people over there and that's where we meditate and it overlooks the dry creek and stuff. So that's my go-to. I'll just pack a little backpack and walk over there and hang out Yep, I love that. And hug a tree, oh hug a tree.
Speaker 1:That's cute, I love it. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, and all the links to all your stuff in the show notes Awesome.
