Announcer: 0:06

Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast designed to inspire your greatness and thrive through life. Get ready to conquer your fears. Here's your host, psychotherapist, coach, and empowerment expert, Beverley Glazer.

Beverley Glazer: 0:34

What if you look into the mirror and it reflects your strengths, not only what you see on the outside? Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion. I'm Beverly Glazer, a catalyst for women who are ready to raise the bar in their own life. And you can find me on reinventimpossible.com. Mary Coleman is the creator of the Whole Life Woman, a movement to help women in midlife reclaim their confidence, health, beauty, and yes, even their skin. With 40 years in the beauty industry, Mary now blends skincare with soul care, guiding women to see midlife and beyond as their most powerful chapters yet. This episode will give you the tools, rituals, and inspiration, and you'll even see aging in a whole new light. Welcome, Mary. Thank you, Beverley, for having me. Mary, you grew up and you still are, and you're living in Ireland. What was your childhood like back then?

Mary Coleman: 1:44

Well, Beverley, I was a 60s baby, so it was a bit quiet at that time in Ireland, and I suppose right across the world. So here in Ireland, big families, we live in the country, so it was quiet. A lot of the activities as a child you'd define from within. And I suppose I found some of those activities being skin care on my brothers. I had four older brothers, and I got an opportunity really firsthand at a very young age when they were, you know, starting to present with hormonal acne, which I didn't know that's what it was. But small, simple antidotes that I used for at home helped their acne improve and it helped me see a career. And that's where I am at today.

Beverley Glazer: 2:28

Yes. But did you have difficulty with skincare as well? Or was it just them?

Mary Coleman: 2:35

Just them, more or less, I suppose, you know, boys and being so physically active. And I suppose we see women today a lot more physically active than what they were in the past. And I suppose at that time it was just the boys. But now today it's it's every age, every creed, and every, you know, at every age, as I say, from young adolescents to mature people. So to answer your question, I didn't have acne, but I had very dry skin. And that's what I also got a chance at looking at and seeing where I could help myself.

Beverley Glazer: 3:05

Okay. Why did you feel it was necessary for you to be the one to help them? And maybe not your mother or a doctor or someone else.

Mary Coleman: 3:14

Yeah, I suppose, you know, at that time money was scarce in the 60s, and people didn't, you know, you went to the doctor when you were seriously ill. This wasn't ill. This was like a rite of passage, just tell acne was okay. But I could see for them their confidence and self-esteem was really low when their skin was problematic. So I thought, look, if I can help and do something, and they were very willing to let me do whatever I could to try and help it. And certainly, you know, just being mindful of cleaning it and having rituals around cleaning morning and evening, using, you know, witch hazel or rose water, which were very natural ingredients in those days, as a tonic, was very good to close down the pores after activity. And those basics, just instilling that in them and you know, making sure we didn't have sunscreen at the time, but to be in out of the midday sun when we did get a good summer. And, you know, simple things like changing pillowcases, not to pick at the spots. And that's what I learned and shared with them.

Beverley Glazer: 4:16

Okay. And you created a business out of it. And you were a woman in business back then. And women were supposed to take care of the family, and women not necessarily were the ones that were supposed to have a business. How did you just gravitate into doing that? Why didn't you say, no, this isn't for me?

Mary Coleman: 4:38

I suppose I got a great inner joy from seeing the results and seeing people uplifted by what I was able to do. And, you know, I trained at 18 to become an aesthetician, beauty therapist, skincare specialist, whatever title you give it today. And I could see just the small things that I was able to do to instill confidence, raise the bar, and just give back good, healthy skin, very simply at the time. And then, you know, I got the opportunity to open a business and it grew. You know, it's almost 40 years in existence now. It's a skin therapy clinic in the middle of Cork City, which would be the second largest city in Ireland, and it has done very well, Beverley. But I just felt, I suppose, as I matured myself and saw myself having my own family, my own home. It was hard and very difficult. And I got to see other like-minded women who were having the same difficulties. And I just had to reach out to a second business, which I know we're going to talk about in a while, but it was a stepping stone. So having the skin clinic was a stepping stone to another business.

Beverley Glazer: 5:46

And so you were an entrepreneur at heart. This was something you wanted to do. You were always stepping up to the plate and wanting to do more. And were there challenges in opening the business, getting the loan, getting the finances, getting help for the home, anything like that?

Mary Coleman: 6:04

Huge. You just said it. It was 87 that I opened. And at the time, getting a bank loan was just virtually impossible. Um, I remember the bank manager saying to me, you know, he said, Mary, we're in a recession. Do you think people are going to come to you for skin treatments? And there was no way, you know, really. And I said, Look, this is my gamble. The best tools I have are these and my head. And I said, please, I start small, let's keep it very tight. And that's what I did. I kept it so tight for the first few years. So 87 to 90, I just, it just took off. When I went back in 1990 to discuss my loan again, I had it cleared, what I had borrowed, and then I moved on. And it just, I'm not saying it's a million-dollar industry, it's not, but it provides and has provided an income for me and two to three other therapists over the years. And I've been able to rear my family on it, which I am so full of gratitude. And also showing my own, I had three sons myself, to show them that women can do it. It has been very difficult. I cannot say it was easy at that time. But it certainly, as you put it quite nicely there, I raised to the opportunity, and that's exactly and meeting other like-minded women, no more than yourself, Beverly, that just instilled. Yes, you can do it. The opportunity is there. You do meet the wall, but you try and climb the wall. I mean, and COVID, that was a huge fall.

Beverley Glazer: 7:35

Absolutely.

Mary Coleman: 7:36

That's yes, yes.

Beverley Glazer: 7:37

And you were retail, and people had to come to you. So what did you do there?

Mary Coleman: 7:42

Well, you know, for the first week, like all of us, I just literally sat and thought, oh my divine God, I've so much stock inside my clinic. The landlord that I um leased the building from wouldn't give me any let up from the rent. Um, and an awful lot of things, and even the staff I had, I thought, how am I going to manage? So I just literally got out of my head and said, look, let's connect every day with some customers. So I wasn't that familiar with Zoom at the time, bar doing trainings online, which were twice a year. But I got one of my nieces to show me how to do Zoom and how to invite people in. And I began doing daily classes with people. I would have eight to 28 at any one time talking about what they could do at home. And I started sending out the products. So they were buying products from me, but they weren't having treatments. But selling the products was meaning my stock was moving and I had some revenue coming in. And that was absolutely great because we were in COVID from March till June. We went back in June and then we came out again in October. And at that stage, really, for me, Beverly, it was great because my times, the word had spread. So Mary has an online forum now. As I said, I wasn't charging for this Zoom at the time, but I decided then I'd have to make more of a living from it. And I started doing um one-to-one online classes and then group sessions of telling them what they could do at home. But I found a lot of the women like myself in midlife were lonely, they were sad. They just started taking that dip that we do at midlife with a drop in estrogen, and a lot of self-negative negativity was starting to arise. So no longer was I talking about skin, I was talking about identity reset, confidence codes, you know, nourish to flourish, those kind of things. And that's how the whole woman program began.

Beverley Glazer: 9:38

And why do you think it's so important at midlife to make that change?

Mary Coleman: 9:45

I think it's a time when you come back into yourself and you don't realize the best is yet to come. You've been so busy as trying to find your career, come through college, take on a mortgage, you know, get married, have children. But then at last there's a gap, and you're going, oh my God, does this mean I can actually have a bit of exercise before work? I don't have to race home and catch up with homework. And I think it's not a time where we decline, we rise, but a rising tide lifts all boats and we lift each other. And that's what's so important. The power of just what we're doing here: chatting, discussing, you know, playing out situations that we're encountering and saying, how can I work on that? Where do I go from here? It can't be down here, and it certainly isn't.

Beverley Glazer: 10:34

Yes. What simple daily rituals do you tell people who are feeling, ah, another day, Mary, I don't know, I just don't feel up to it. What will you tell them?

Mary Coleman: 10:49

And I think that's that's the first thing. You know, where do you start? You know, you wake in the morning, and I suppose a lot of it is gratitude is attitude. And I think to have the gratitude that you wake and say, listen, how many never get to be 60? How many never get to be 55? So I am here, and I'm going to put my hand on my heart and say first thing in the morning, I am here. What is Mary or Beverly going to do for Mary or Beverley today? And I always try and think of something nice, be it the nice cup of coffee, maybe the walk to work, maybe the way I greet my neighbors, my dog beatress, who'll surely knock at the door any minute, but something that instills a bit of joy to get you going. And the first thing I always say is do not, do not look in the mirror at yourself first thing in the morning. I ban my friends and family from seeing mirrors. If anything, have less mirrors. Because when you've been comatosed and your head is on the pillow for six to eight hours, possibly with broken sleep, your face is not going to look good first thing. So when you look in the mirror and you see yourself, you get an awful shock. So I would suggest again, keep away from the mirror, start wriggling your mouth, waking up your muscles, the same for your face as you would for your body. 30 seconds even on the ground, just doing a yoga stretch, just loosening your back. Because remember, a lot of us sleep in a fetal position. So we loosen out and we get the oxygen flowing. And that improves the whole process of you thinking and planning for the day. And if you can get into the habit of doing that beverly for nine days, it's a habit. So don't be hard on yourself, but just slowly put this little ritual in place, and that's the first start to the day.

Beverley Glazer: 12:36

And what would you tell women that say, I'm too busy, or I don't have time, or Mary, really, I feel so guilty? What would you tell those women?

Mary Coleman: 12:46

This is us. This is us in here. This is our time. You have time for everything else. You've time to scroll, you've time to, you know, spend longer, you know, watching TV, eating the wrong foods. Five minutes in the morning and the evening. It is crucial. And you'll be surprised. You look forward, and I hear a lot of my own clients saying this to me, they look forward to waking even earlier to say, Oh my god, I've got a little bit of time to myself. You and I both had the same 24 hours. It's just how we manage the 24 hours. And I think, you know, calling that out, getting out your journal, you know. I had this earlier today, showing it to somebody, and I said, This little book is a lifesaver. Writing down the two or three things before you go to bed at night in that journal and saying, I'm going to take that off in the morning. You and I know Beverly, there's a great sense of satisfaction with the pen and the ticking. And if you say, I will have those three things done before my day starts, this is my time. If I'm not going to give it to me now, when am I going to give it?

Beverley Glazer: 13:50

Excellent. What's one message that you tell women that are over 50 about their beauty and aging?

Mary Coleman: 14:00

Well, I suppose the first thing is, you know, you can't look 30 if you have a 30-year-old son. So be realistic. And I think I know that's a real cleat here. So we do our very best. When you wait after that 10 minutes and you look in the mirror, you see your face is a lot brighter than you think. Again, you know, don't be looking too close. When you I'm talking to anybody, and even yourself from our screens, we're a good foot apart. So people only see a lot less than you think. And people are so caught up in themselves. If you ask them an hour later, what color lipstick or had I on or what color blouse, they wouldn't remember. So get out of your own head and trust the process. You know, the looks you've had, they're still there. They might be a bit more subdued, but highlight the good points. If you have nice hair, if you have nice eyes, you know, draw attention to your lips. I think for all of us, as we get older, myself, I see it. You know, things fade. So I deliberately make the effort. And that's what I suggest to people. Put on a bit of lip colour, a bit of eyeliner, add a sparkle of color through a scarf, maybe through your earrings. But this is your time of beauty. Just like you were a baby, just like, you know, you were four, fourteen, forty-four, sixty-four. It's changing, it's evolving. And how lucky are we to be going through this change?

Beverley Glazer: 15:20

Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Mary Coleman is the creator of The Whole Woman, a movement to help women in midlife reclaim their confidence, health, and beauty. With 40 years in the beauty industry, Mary blends skincare with soul care, guiding women to see midlife and beyond as their most powerful chapters. Here are a few takeaways from this episode. Confidence starts with soul care. It's from the inside out. Small daily rituals can spark big shifts in your self-worth. And you are not invisible. Your voice matters more so than ever when you're older. If you've been relating to this episode, here are a few actions to take right now. Instead of criticizing yourself in the mirror, name one thing that you love about yourself. Take five minutes for soul care, breathe, stretch, journal, or sit with a cup of tea, as Mary said, no guilt. Choose one small daily ritual, skin care, movement, meditation, and commit to it. It's a gift to yourself. For similar episodes on claiming your worth, check out episodes 144 or 147 of Aging with Purpose and Passion. And if you link podcasts for women in midlife and beyond, the Late Bloomer Living Podcast is your weekly invitation to embrace change, spark joy, and live playfully at any age. Yvonne Marchez chats with inspiring guests who share practical real-world tips, and that link will be in the show notes below. And so, Mary, where can people learn about you, learn about your courses, get information? Please share your links.

Mary Coleman: 17:12

Perfect. So the wholewoman.life is my u website. So please, you can email me as well on infotheolewoman.com. I am up around just if you literally Google Mary, Whole Woman, I would come up. I am in Ireland, but I do enough how to work online, especially in the UK. Um, so I'm wide open to dealing with anyone. You can do a one-to-one or you can come into a group environment. Tomorrow I have another group session of six. And again, none of these women know each other, and it's not that they have to share anything personal. It's just the next part of our journey we're going to go through together.

Beverley Glazer: 17:50

Thank you, Mary. Mary's links are going to be in the show notes and on my site too. That's reinventimpossible.com. And so, my friends, what's next for you? Are you just going through the motions or are you living a life that you truly love? Get my free guide to go from stuck to unstoppable. And that's also in the show notes, too. You can connect with me, Beverly Blazer, on all social media platforms and in my positive group of women on Facebook. That's Women Over50 Rock. And thank you for listening. Have you enjoyed this conversation? Please subscribe and help us spread the word by dropping a review and sending this out to a friend. And remember, you have only one life, so live it with purpose and passion.

Announcer: 18:45

Thank you for joining us. You can connect with Bev on her website reinventimpossible.com. And while you're there, join our newsletter. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep aging with purpose and passion. And celebrate life.