Power, purpose, & the gift of midlife: Petra Bagust & Niki Bezzant
Midlife gets a bad rap – often portrayed as a slow descent into elastic waistbands and forgetting why you walked into a room. Television personality Petra Bagust and acclaimed journalist Niki Bezzant tell Metropol deputy editor Tamara Pitelen that finding yourself in your fifties might be the best chapter yet.
Midlife is a woman’s paradox. It’s the season of giving. Giving to kids, to ageing parents, to work, to community – yet, Petra Bagust and Niki Bezzant, now in their mid-fifties, have discovered it is also the season that asks you to finally give something back to yourself.
“The menopausal transition rocked the boat enough for me to make conscious decisions about what’s a coping mechanism and what’s a fantastic habit? What’s a defence mechanism and what’s a sustainable way of being in the world?” reflects Petra. That kind of personal reckoning isn’t a loss, it’s a doorway, she says.
One of New Zealand’s most well-known broadcasters and a respected podcaster, mother, and longtime spiritual seeker, Petra’s journey into and through menopause has been more than hormonal. Now aged 53, the process of being diagnosed with ADHD earlier this year has added another layer of self-reflection and evaluation into the midlife mix. It’s seen her intentionally slow her previously relentless pace, and shift from people-pleasing to purpose-led decision-making.
“Finding out that I was ADHD made me realise I did not want to sustain all these systems that required relentless movement. I felt a bit like a guinea pig in a wheel, just in constant motion. So, I’m enjoying the oestrogen drop in that I don’t care about everything so much. That loss of energy is one of the signs of perimenopause. I want to decide, ‘yes, I’m going to do this. No, I’m not going to do that.’ So, no, I don’t want the energy back because if I had limitless energy, maybe I would just carry on with that old way of being.
Despite claiming to be slowing down, Petra still has plenty going on. As well as touring Hot Mess: Navigating Midlife and Menopause, the show she co-hosts with Niki Bezzant, she also presents two podcasts – Grey Areas and Sunday Sanctuary – and works as a chaplain, emcee and public speaker. Let’s not forget she’s also mother to three adult children, and wife to cameraman Hamish Wilson.
For Niki, a journalist, speaker and women’s health advocate, midlife also brought a new clarity. “This phase strips away what doesn’t work anymore,” she says. “You come out the other side knowing yourself more deeply than ever before.”
The author of best-selling menopause book, This Changes Everything: The honest guide to menopause and perimenopause and 2024’s The Everything Guide: Hormones, health and happiness in menopause, midlife and beyond, Niki rejects the idea so embedded in Western culture, that menopause is purely about loss: of fertility, youth, or relevance. “We’re told we’re declining but we’re actually gaining wisdom, mana, power. You give fewer shits about things that don’t matter. You get to focus on what truly does.”
Rethinking midlife
Why is menopause getting so much attention? Because a growing chorus of Generation X women is challenging the narrative that ageing equals decline.
“Our generation, Gen X women, are completely rejecting that idea,” says Niki. “We are not losing relevance, and we’re not going to be like many of our mothers’ generation who were stepping back at this time. We are definitely not. Our lives are different. So, no, it’s not acceptable to think that we’re going to just step off into the sidelines and not be completely engaged with life. Our lives are expanding, not shrinking.”
“We’ve internalised this Western, patriarchal idea that this stage is a problem,” Petra says. “But what if it’s actually a doorway to the next level of our lives? What if it’s an invitation to pay attention – to our bodies, our values, our purpose?”
A recurring theme in both women’s reflections is the urgent need to depathologise menopause. It’s not a disease, they insist. It’s not shameful. It’s not the end. Yet many women are still blindsided by it, and too many suffer in silence.
“Some women need medical support, absolutely,” Petra says. “But for the rest of us, this is a natural, powerful transition that deserves attention, not embarrassment.” It’s something women shouldn’t face alone; it deserves community. “You can’t do it alone,” Niki adds. “We’re not meant to.”
This point underscores their reasons for taking the conversation to women throughout New Zealand on their Hot Mess tour. They first brought the sold-out show to Christchurch in April, now they’re bringing it back as part of the WORD Christchurch Festival this month.
The struggle is real
Of course, all the spiritual awakening in the world doesn’t cancel out the real and often extremely uncomfortable and upsetting physical shifts that come with perimenopause and beyond, yet for both Petra and Niki, the key is agency – tuning in, not checking out.
“The biggest myth is that the answers are out there. They’re not. The answers are in you,” Petra says.
“It’s so individual. It’s important to honour what’s happening in your body and pay attention to it. A big change for me was falling in love with sleep. I very much had a child of the 80s attitude, that ‘Heaven is for sleep’. I thought sleep was something that got in the way of working and fun. Now, though, to be able to nap in the sun on the weekend or to go to bed at a regular time with my husband, has made all difference. I like the palpable effect of getting a really good night’s sleep. I’m like, ‘Oh, wow, this actually makes me feel emotionally stable. I’m really happy. I can take it today…’ So to support sleep, I take magnesium and taurine, and try to stick to a routine bedtime.”
For Niki, strength training has been her anchor. “Movement is medicine,” she says. “Especially lifting weights. It’s been essential, not just for physical health, but for emotional stability too.”
However, there is never just one magic solution nor one thing that works for everyone, says Niki. “This is the message that I really try and get across. There’s never one solution. It’s a whole lot of things, a big jigsaw puzzle, and you need to pay attention to all the pieces – food, sleep, movement, stress and hormone therapy, potentially. To me, the first non-negotiable is exercise and moving your body. There’s so much benefit to that, to doing whatever movement you can, as often as you can. And there’s no downside; it’s only going to be positive. For me, that’s been strength training and working with weights, which is something that every human needs to pay attention to as we age but it’s particularly beneficial during this transition. If you haven’t already, think about picking up some weights.”
Then there’s alcohol, which is something both women have re-evaluated. “It’s a physiological thing,” Niki says. “We just lose tolerance for alcohol as we age, and that happens to women much more than men. I’m such a lightweight with alcohol now, one or two drinks and I feel it the next day. It’s like stress or not getting enough sleep – it makes everything worse. Cutting back can be a real game changer.”
Message to their younger selves
Now that they have reached midlife, do Petra and Niki look back and wish they could reassure or advise their younger selves?
“I would have liked to have told my younger self to learn about this a bit earlier, so that I knew what was coming and kind of had a handle on it before I got to the age where it was starting to happen to me. And not to be scared of it, that’s the other big thing,” Niki says.
Petra, who had only heard negative things about midlife and menopause, would say to her younger self: “Hey babe, this is going to be a wild ride. It’s going to be amazing. And you’re on the right track. Don’t give up. Let your curiosity run free. That’s not to say I didn’t, at different points, get freaked out. I experienced the shame of being seen and I experienced the pain of some of the signs of it but just don’t believe that it’s all bad. It’s like, buckle up babe, let’s go.”
Hot Mess is playing at The Piano on 28 August as part of the WORD Festival, go to hotmesstour.co.nz or WORD Christchurch Festival wordchristchurch.co.nz. Hot Mess is proudly supported by amazing, female-led NZ businesses including Everee Women, Pharmaco, Elta Ego and Flo & Frankie.
