Heather Bartos Rocks Your Menopause
She's a Board certified OBGYN with a powerful message about how women can embrace pleasure and pivot into the best time of their lives.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today I’m sharing this fantastic 2023 interview with
, whose support for midlife/menopausal women is legendary. Best of all, her straightforward but hilarious style (which you can feel in this interview) has yielded A BRAND NEW SEXUAL WELLNESS AND ADVICE BOOK for all of us! I pre-ordered 6 copies for all my girlfriends, and I think you should to the same. It’s called “Quickies” and it appears on imprint, Empress Editions. And yes, I’m working on having them both back to talk about the book!Hi Heather, and welcome to the Womancake interview! How is your workday going?
I'm working from home today doing lots of meetings and connections. I have office days and surgery days and work from home days, and I love [them] because I'm wearing my David Bowie shirt and I'm just in some leggings, and so it's great.
I'm a huge Bowie fan, and by the way, for me, 80s Bowie is the best Bowie.
I still believe it!
I have four Bowie t-shirts and I wear them all the time! You're a board certified physician, an OBGYN, and you are well-respected and well known in the menopause space. Will you talk a bit about your work and how you do it?
It's interesting, I did not [start out planning] to be a menopause and perimenopause specialist. That was not ever part of the gig when I first started this whole crazy journey. But now I’m here, because I wanted to honor women as I went on my journey, Menopause Rocks, which is the idea that menopause is the best time of our life. That means we don't have to worry about, as I say, No bleeding, no breeding! and we are free to be who we want to be. I love this time of life, and I want to share that with other women. I'm a huge rock and roll girl, like we just talked about 80s music. I love music, and so I wanted it to be part of the deal. Menopause Rocks is my overall [group], and we do concierge medicine. We help women all around the country and the world. We do classes, we have a community, it's a whole thing, because women deserve it.
Love it so much! When you look out on the medical services sector, what are you most concerned about, and what are you most excited by?
The US medical system, I think, has been taking a nosedive since 2020. I think a lot of people are burned out, doctors are burned out, a lot of providers are burned out. We see a lot of people starting to leave the space, but I also see a lot of what I'll call just laziness, but not like [anyone is] trying to be lazy. I think everyone's just weary. So there's a lot of “I don't deal with that, you gotta go see someone else!” There's not a lot of people that are taking the time to really sit down and figure out root causes of issues, which to me is the fun part of medicine, to figure out what we do to fix it at the base level. There's a lot of patchwork and band aids and this kind of thing. To be a patient in the system is becoming cumbersome.
I [also] worry about us, [about] medical care for when you and I are older. That's the scary part. The good part is that there is a robust group of what I like to call “the GenX Women” that are really starting to ignite the fire in the medical community. “We're not going to take it!” to use a Twisted Sister quote. So I think a lot of us are trying to disrupt the field of medicine and what it means. Not that patriarchal thing of, “I am a doctor, you are the patient, you listen to me, I wear a white coat!” We're trying to be more authentically human as physicians and providers, and I think that's exciting. It's just that it's an unseen, unchartered territory.
Many of my friends and my peers have been talking recently about dismantling false psychological architecture that we all grew up with around physicians, and really looking to connect in a way that is more holistic, and much more in the holistic, functional medicine space. I know that you have some background in that too, will you talk a little bit about it?
I'm Western MD, medical doctor trained. But my parents were very much into the alternative medicine space. So I was very comfortable with it growing up, but to be a doctor 20-something years ago, you went through the traditional route. I remember getting into an argument with some kid, I mean, he was a kid at the time, probably 22, about how chiropractors were crap. I was like, “Chiropractors aren't crap, I’ve been going to a chiropractor for 10 years.”
At that point I realized there was very much an egoistic [attitude] for some people [who were] going into medicine. It is, “I am to be respected and revered.” And I think you have to check that ego at the door to be a really good physician. Because you know, we're not in control. I take care of women, but the woman that I work with, she's in control, and I'm kind of like the Sherpa going up Mount Everest with her. Or I'm like the doula trying to help with the birth, I'm there to support the journey. But I am not the one that says, “This is what you do, my way or the highway.”
There are still people who are like that, and I think that is where functional medicine [can go wrong]. You go and you pay a lot of money, and they give you lots of supplements. That to me is semi-functional. I like to say that in functional medicine we operate symbiotically, just like a relationship. I'm not going to be in a marriage with someone who just tells me what it is all the time, right? I'm not going to do that, you're not going to do that. It's give and take, and both sides feel equally respected.
I think you have to check [your] ego at the door to be a really good physician. Because you know, we're not in control. I take care of women, but the woman that I work with, she's in control, and I'm kind of like the Sherpa going up Mount Everest with her. Or I'm like the doula trying to help with the birth, I'm there to support the journey. But I am not the one that says, “This is what you do, my way or the highway.”
I think that’s an excellent way to describe a good doctor-patient relationship, and I hope we can seek out that type for ourselves. All right, I'm going to shift gears now. The theme of our current issue of Womancake is “Power Songs.” Will you share your top three?
Can I just share that you and I and
created a Menopause Rocks Playlist together? I was listening to it on the car ride home yesterday, because it has songs that feed a piece of my soul when I need it. So like if [I’m in ] my like, “I am awesome, bitch, hear me roar!” phase I'm gonna have to go with “Still Loving You” by the Scorpions. That gets out my Bic lighter every time. “Barracuda” by Heart. Mercy, that is a corset and black leather pants and a whip. I'm gonna go with Bowie’s “China Girl” and, “Under Pressure,” but that's of course a Freddie Mercury [duet]. Oh, and “Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen.Excellent choices! Do you have any daily wellness habits or practices that are meaningful to you?
I am not a singer, but I do like to pretend to be one in the car or the shower. My big routine on the way to work or on the way home is I put on some song that feeds it, and I just wail it in the car. I'm talking Whitney Houston, and I probably look ridiculous [to the] people next to me in the car. But to me if I do that for 10 minutes on the way home, I am a better human when I get there. I'm not good at meditating. I can't sit still, but I can sing, and that is my meditation.
I'm gonna add that as a speech and presentation coach, and a singer, I wish that all human beings would find time to just feel the joy of singing, and feel that endorphin release.
It's been proven! It literally helps release a cascade of serotonin when you feel you can get inside a song and be one with it. It's simultaneously validating and deeply releasing, and just very centering and grounding. I'm preaching to the choir literally, here, but you can have that deep chest vibration, and [feel] what it does to the vagus nerve. Yesterday I was listening to kd lang's, “Hallelujah,” and I was all in my chest, and I could just feel the vibrations going through all of those chakras. I was like, Oh my God, my whole world is better now! I think every woman should do it.
I love everything you just said. What is your favorite guilty pleasure treat?
Well, you know, I'm in Texas. So I do like me some crappy nachos. I am a salt girl, I am not a sweet girl. My adrenals like salt, they need that for my overused epinephrine, fight-or-flight pathways. So I go for something salty. Actually, right before we talked I was eating some cinnamon sugar pretzels, they're sweet and salty. But anything salty.
How does wisdom manifest for you at this stage of your life?
To me wisdom at menopause as a woman is in the deep knowing, almost like a universal wisdom that [is] deep in our heart as we get to this age. We just know shit. We know things. I don't have to question where it comes from, I just know that it's from the deep female knowing. And that's so refreshing. I don't have to think, I can feel and I know that wisdom is from feeling.
Will you share an aspect of your character that you've grown to love, and one that you still struggle with?
Well, I am a recovering Type A woman. I must do it all today, and if I'm not achieving 25 different things I have failed as a person. I have been in recovery for a long time now. I think that was kind of a little bit of genetic character, and then of course being in medical school, and I was also in the Navy. So a lot of that was kind of force-enabled. So I do have to work on that. Every day like I have to go Okay, it doesn't matter if I have a to do list. We're going to do what we're going to do. I talk myself through that.
I just love who I've turned out to be. [In the past] I always wanted to be someone different, like Why can't I have J Lo's legs [or] Shakira’s belly dancing style. Now I'm just happy for them that they have that, and I'm happy that I am who I am. This is what I got, and I'm totally thrilled with it.
Will you share an event from your life that created a distinct “before and after,” and what kind of wisdom in hindsight you gained from the “after?”
This is deeply personal, and I'm going to share it because that's how we all grow. I went through a phase in my marriage, and it was probably 10 years ago, where my husband chose to stop having sex with me. We went through a sexless period of our marriage for two years. Like a lot of women I was like, “What's going on? Tell me what's up? What are you feeling? What are you doing? Are you gay? Are you having hormonal issues? Is it me? Am I fat? What is it?”
I had to go rock bottom. I was like, This is it. Either I get divorced, or I live in this marriage. That's very unsatisfying, because there was no intimacy in addition to no sex, and we had young kids at the time. At that moment, I said, Okay, well, the only thing I can change here is me. So I stopped doing what I'll call the feminine thing where you [ask your husband], “How do I look?”. I would go to the mirror and say, How do I look? I look fantastic. Thank you for asking Heather! And I started relying on my sexuality and my sexiness being internal. I didn't need to be validated by another human, which is something that we're not taught as women. We're taught that a man generally needs to validate that we're sexy.
That was a huge two or three year life path for me, and I came out of it feeling better about myself, and stronger. The marriage fixed itself, because I wasn't sitting there worrying. I came into my own self, and that, of course, is crazy sexy for people to see women that are authentically living their strongest selves. But it was rough! I did podcast episodes on it when I had my podcast, and I just shared it all. It was sexless and bad and icky, and now it's great.
I stopped doing what I'll call the feminine thing where you [ask your husband], “How do I look?”. I would go to the mirror and say, How do I look? I look fantastic. Thank you for asking Heather! And I started relying on my sexuality and my sexiness being internal. I didn't need to be validated by another human, which is something that we're not taught as women. We're taught that a man generally needs to validate that we're sexy.
What would you say to a woman who is going through that in her own life? What kind of advice would you give her?
You know, the biggest thing I think is, we always look for a reason why. Generally, it doesn't really have to do with us, it has to do with the other person. He was going through some of his own stuff, and he had been molested as a child, and he was starting to kind of live through some of that trauma. But I thought it was all about me. It's not always about us, but as women, we like to make it about us.
I should have said, “Tell me what's going on? How can I support you?” It really is just giving people the space to come to you. If you both kind of hold the space, you both tend to come in together. What I would tell women is, give that space, but also, start to look at your own thing. If you had to live by yourself the rest of your life, could you do it? I had to come to terms with that. And I was like, You know what, yeah, I could. I couldn't at 40, but I could at 42, 43, 44 for sure.
That's a very important point you just brought up, and we should all keep asking ourselves that question. Would you like to share anything about your perimenopausal or menopausal experience that you think would be helpful to a woman who is in the thick of it right now?
I think the biggest thing is, [before] I was going through it I had big struggles with fertility, and I had endometriosis, and I had a lot of reproductive issues. So for me, it was very freeing to get to the point where I didn’t have to worry about that anymore. I had hot flashes when I was going through fertility treatments because I was on Lupron, so I could try to make more eggs. So a lot of the symptoms I'd had before. The biggest thing is that there's a mindset component or mind shift about what menopause means. I always tell women, “Look to the women way ahead of us. Look to those women and tell me that they're not succeeding at life. Michelle Yeoh won an Academy Award at 65. Betty White still kickin at 99. Angela Lansbury. Helen Mirren.
These are women that are well into menopause who are thriving and succeeding. I think we were kind of taught, “You're gonna look like the queen when you turn 50. Little pinched face, bouffant hair, and sensible shoes.” That's just not the case, there's a lot of women ahead of us that are looking fantastic and feeling good, and being really successful. Some of them were really at the prime of their careers, post-menopause, and I think that's a big lesson. We can get you through some of the symptoms, and [remind you], “Okay, this is short lived, or we can fix this with acupuncture or hormones or whatever, then you're free, you're actually free!” It's what men feel like their whole lives.
…There's a lot of women ahead of us that are looking fantastic and feeling good, and being really successful. Some of them were really at the prime of their careers, post-menopause, and I think that's a big lesson. We can get you through some of the symptoms, and [remind you], “Okay, this is short lived, or we can fix this with acupuncture or hormones or whatever, then you're free, you're actually free!” It's what men feel like their whole lives.
I think that there is a much larger cultural conversation to be had about pleasure for older women. Those women that you mentioned, to me, when I look at them, what I see and the vibe that I get from them, is that they have a deep connection to pleasure. I don't even necessarily mean sexual pleasure, although I'm sure that's part of it. I look at Helen Mirren and I'm like, “Please let that be me in another 25 years!” but also just having a connected sensual experience of life, and a very deep sense that they deserve that connection.
It's a conversation that we don't talk about very much, and I think it’s because the stigma around menopause is so powerful. I have some close girlfriends who feel almost a sense of shame about their meno process, like they have to kind of fake it in the world and act like, “Everything's fine! Nothing's happening to me!” Obviously that's not true, but because of the way that our physiology changes and our sexuality changes during this time, they're not sure where they sit with pleasure. They're not sure if they even deserve it.
Definitely. The thing about those [actresses] is, I don't think they take themselves super seriously. I think they're able to kind of feel the joy of how life flows. Angela Bassett is another one. They're just so comfortable at this point with what they are and who they are. I have a really good friend who's 60, and she's a sex and intimacy coach, and she describes pleasure as, “How would you order your perfect cup of coffee at the restaurant?” She's like, “I know I want it. Steaming hot oat milk, lavender syrup, one pump not two, in a saucer with a demi-tasse.”She's got this whole sense of what she wants, and she's not afraid to ask for it. She wants that pleasure. That translates later to the bedroom or to other things because that throat chakra is open, you're able to ask for what you want.
Love everything you just said, and I’m in full agreement. Lastly, will you share a book, movie, podcast or TV show, or some kind of culture that you're currently enjoying?
I just started watching “Orange Is the New Black” again for like the third time. I really did enjoy “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” I'm reading “The Sisters of Belfast" right now, which is by Melanie Moore. I try to get into a book [that] serves a mood and serves an emotion that I don't go into or tap into very often. So if I feel like everything's up, I want to kind of read something that brings me down so I can kind of get that variety of emotions. Her book is very serious. It's kind of like an “Angela's Ashes" kind of book. You know, there's nothing wrong with some good “Bridgerton.” I mean, Shonda Rhimes, God bless her, she brought back the bodice ripper. I recommend it when women tell me that they have low libido. I'm like, “Have you ever watched ‘Bridgerton?’”
Yeah, speaking of things that give us pleasure, I take pleasure in rewatching and rereading things, because I feel like I've matured to a place where I have so many more layers and lenses through which to view the culture that I was attracted to when I was younger. For me, a consistent through-line is really powerful women going through important things on their own, and getting what they want and need from men in a way that feels right to them, and learning about the world in their own way. I can see those characters across every single thing I've ever loved in my life.
Yeah. They've always been there, but we weren't. We couldn't see them before.
Heather can be found via her website.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I love that part about looking at yourself and saying, I look hot or sexy or healthy or whatever you feel. Not relying on any outside validation to feel good about yourself.
And yes to the idea of older women enjoying pleasure, including sex. Yes we certainly are, thank you very much!