Meet Dr. Andrea Slominski of Regency Rising, LLC. but I brand myself as Dr. A..

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Andrea Slominski.

Dr. Andrea, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Like many women, when I began to go through my perimenopause, midlife, and menopause journey, I felt the call of change. I had been caring for everyone and everything around me for the previous 20 years, while putting my needs and interests on the back burner. I was working as an adjunct college professor at the time, teaching, directing, and producing in the theater department. I had been producing and directing live theatre for over twenty years and decided to go to grad school to explore shifting my career from theatre to television. After the first year of school, I knew television directing was not for me.

My passion was and is around the power of story to empower transformation in the individual and the collective. Researching for a film, I discovered that Joseph Campbell’s private library, was only forty-five minutes from my home, and housed at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Nine months later I began their MA/PhD program in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology.

It was during my Ph.D. research that I uncovered the startling facts that form the basis of my women’s 4th life stage theory of Regency. It was a stunning realization when I learned that multiple synchronicities had occurred during the twentieth century, contributing to the rise and return of the sacred, or archetypal feminine. Over the past one hundred and twenty years, changes occured within the archetypal, psychological, cultural, and biological, aspects of women’s lives, indicating that a big upheaval is coming in the current patriarchal social system.

Recognizing the emergence of a new life stage for women, from ages 45-70+, that I named Regency, led me to develop a therapeutic coaching method that guides women through the triple transformations of Regency. Peri to menopause, and menopause to post-menopause create the physical transformation, midlife is the, “Who am I? What Now?”, psychological shift, and the third change is the spiritual perspective shift in meaning, purpose and belonging.

In private practice for over ten years, I have been coaching women, teaching classes and workshops, and leading retreats. I coach using Archetypal and Depth psychological principles and modalities, invoking women’s myth, fairytales and folktales, tapping into the mythic stories of women’s lived experience to find ancient and powerful keys to unlock the opportunities and challenges in Regent women’s lives today.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Shakespeare said it best, “The course of true love never did run smooth: . . . ”

I began coaching after I received my master’s degree in 2015. Over the next four years, while working on my Ph.D. thesis, I coached women, held workshops, and built my business. I defended my dissertation in 2019 and rebranded my business and website. I launched my new website in January of 2020, and in February, COVID shut down the world. I had to restructure my business from primarily in-person to completely online.

The challenges included learning multiple new programs to run an online business, including expanding my website’s capabilities, video recording and editing, online marketing, Facebook Ads, Instagram ads, email list development, and restructuring classes and coaching models.

By leveraging the new world of online teaching and coaching, I expanded my business from primarily serving women in California to the entire US, Canada, and the UK. It ended up being a blessing in disguise.

The main challenge is always marketing. It’s time-consuming and expensive. Over the past ten years, I hired and fired three separate marketing companies. Experience has proven that I know best how to identify and connect with motivated Regent women. My ideal client is a woman who wants to reclaim her life for herself, and is willing to engage in the inner personal work it takes to recreate herself at this time of life, with all its other demands.

As you know, we’re big fans of Regency Rising, LLC. but I brand myself as Dr. A… For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
My midlife and menopause coaching is unique. I am the only Ph.D. coach in this space that focuses on the psychological journey that women make while going through the physical transformation of menopause. Women are facing aging in a misogynistic, ageist culture that worships youth and dismisses older women. At midlife, women must make the transition into this new psychological stage of human experience, while their bodies, minds, and souls are transforming. The struggle around mental health and wellbeing is real.

I am also the only midlife and menopause therapeutic coach who uses depth and archetypal psychology approaches to personal rediscovery. In my coaching, women find themselves and their stories alive in ancient mythology, folktales, and fairytales. These tales of women’s embodied experience offer the keys to unlock the opportunities and challenges that Regent women face, by allowing them to see that the answers to the questions they seek are often hidden in their stories and the myths that they are living.

An important revelation from my PhD research is the fact that since 1900, women’s life expectancies have increased. In 1900, the average white woman, statistically, died at 51, and women of color at 43. Black women’s life span has more than doubled, and white women’s has increased by one-third. Boomer women and all the women following them are the first generations of women to live past menopause as entire generational cohorts. It has never happened before in human history. There have always been individual older women who lived past menopause since the time of Plato, but never before have entire generations of women lived into the post-menopausal years together. This is why this time of life is so confusing; there are no road maps, there are no models, there are no signs for women to follow, instructing them how to navigate the triple transformation that happens to women during these years

During the 25 years of Regency, women will have to navigate Seven Realms of Change, more than once. As women age, change becomes their constant companion.
The Seven Realms of Change are; your changing body, self-image, feelings, needs, roles, priorities, and goals. All of these aspects of change are interconnected within women’s lived experience as we age.

I offer one-to-one and group coaching programs, classes, workshops, and retreats that address all the aspects of change a woman may experience during her Regency years.

Perimenopause and menopause are having a well-deserved moment in the spotlight, and there is more accurate, actionable information available to women than ever before. I celebrate that and share it all with my clients, keeping them up to date with the latest medical research and treatment options. However, there is a troubling trend in menopause care of focusing primarily on the physical. Do we want to reinforce the belief that a woman’s most important currency is her body and her looks? Isn’t this the narrative that we have been trying to dispel? In Regency, a woman has all her life experience, her career or home experience, and her wisdom. She has all her creativity, emotional intelligence, intuition, instinct, and inner knowing to claim and empower her, while learning to influence, direct, and support the changes she’ll experience.

I specialize in helping women understand their stories, identify the ancient myths they are living, reclaim their lives, tap into their innate feminine power, and create the life they want, while making the best health care decisions possible.

Regency is a time of change. As Carl Jung noted, midlife is the time of turning away from the outer world of accomplishment and diving into the deeper worlds of psyche, soul, and spirit.
With my clients, we endeavor to discover and create a life where they feel acknowledged, appreciated, respected, seen, heard, and loved. A life where they make their own informed decisions about their healthcare and lives, and they develop skills and tools they will use to manage change for the rest of their lives.

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
As the US population continues to age and the next generations of women enter the Regency years, there will be an increasing demand for support services for women.

Contact Info:

• Website: https:///www.drandreaslominski.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreaslominskiphd
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drandreaslominski
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-m-slominski/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/ and https://youtube.com/@Dr.A.MidlifeMentor