I'm a Registered Nurse and Clinical Myotherapist. And I still didn't recognise my own perimenopause.
If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
Growing up in an English household, there were many things we simply didn't talk about. I know my mum had a hysterectomy, but I don't know why. I have no idea how menopause affected her. And now, as I navigate perimenopause myself, it's too late to ask.
That silence shaped me without my knowing it. It meant that when my own body started to change, I had no language for what was happening. No frame of reference. No one who had prepared me for what was coming.
I was not unusual in this. I was just a woman.
I Was Trained to Help Others. Nobody Trained Me for This.
I trained as a Registered Nurse after leaving school. Menopause was not in the curriculum. Years later, I completed my Bachelor of Health Studies. Again — menopause, and its effects on the female body, were absent from my studies.
I became a Clinical Myotherapist. I spent years treating women's bodies — their joints, their muscles, their pain. And still, nobody connected the dots.
I was a healthcare professional for over two decades. I knew the human body. I was good at my work. I was known for my attention to detail, for remembering my patients, for the kind of care that made people feel seen.
And I still missed it in myself.
What It Actually Felt Like
It crept up on me the way I imagine it creeps up on most women — slowly, and then all at once.
I started waking every night between 2 and 3am. Not just waking — unable to get back to sleep. Dragging myself through every morning on empty. I told myself it was stress. Work. Life. The usual.
Then came the brain fog.
That was what finally frightened me. I had always prided myself on knowing my patients — their histories, their nuances, the small details that matter in good care. And suddenly I couldn't recall them. The sharpness I had relied on for years was slipping, and I didn't understand why.
By the time I got home from work I had nothing left. My family got the worst of me. I was short-tempered, easily overwhelmed, and completely used up.
One evening I lost my temper with my teenager over undone chores. Something small. Something normal. He looked at me and said: "Mum, you just went crazy. That was so unnecessary."
He was right. And I didn't know how to explain it, because I didn't understand it myself
The Moment Everything Changed
I started researching. Properly. Obsessively. I found the work of leading menopause specialists in Australia, the UK, and the US. I trained with Newson Health and the Primary Care Women's Health Forum. I enrolled in a Postgraduate Certificate in Menopause Medicine. I read the studies, the guidelines, the evidence that most GPs in Australia had never encountered.
And what I found changed everything.
What I was experiencing — every single symptom — was perimenopause. My hormones were shifting, just as they had in puberty, just as they had in pregnancy. My body was not breaking down. It was changing. And change, unlike breakdown, has options.
"I had gone through hormonal upheaval before and come through it. I could do this too. But I didn't have to just suffer through it."
The fear and the fog began to lift — not because the symptoms disappeared overnight, but because I finally understood what was happening. And I finally knew what I could do about it.
The Question That Changed How I Speak to Myself
One of the most important things I've learned — and something I still have to remind myself of — is this:
"What would you tell your best friend right now?"
We speak to ourselves with a harshness we would never direct at someone we love. We call ourselves weak. We tell ourselves to push through. We dismiss our own suffering as drama, or laziness, or just getting older.
We would never say those things to a best friend who came to us exhausted and struggling. We would hold her. We would listen. We would tell her that what she is feeling is real, and that she deserves support.
You deserve that too.
Why You Can Trust What I Tell You
I was a Registered Nurse and Clinical Myotherapist with over two decades of clinical experience. I am a Menopause Mentor trained through Newson Health, the Primary Care Women's Health Forum, and Impart. I am currently completing my Postgraduate Certificate in Menopause Medicine.
I bring together the latest evidence-based research from Australia, the UK, and the United States — and I translate it into plain language you can actually use. Not to sell you supplements. Not to push a particular agenda. But to give you what I wish someone had given me: the information to understand what is happening in your body, and the confidence to advocate for the care you deserve.
I am not a prescriber. I am not your GP. But I am the bridge between confusion and a better conversation with the doctor who is.
Does Any of This Sound Familiar?
If you are reading this at 2am because you cannot sleep, I see you.
If you have been to your GP and been told your bloods are normal, or that you're too young, or that this is just stress — I believe you.
If you have a belly you didn't have before, joints that ache when they didn't before, a temper you don't recognise, a confidence that has quietly gone missing — I understand.
If you have started declining invitations, withdrawing from intimacy, or simply putting your head down and pushing through because you don't know what else to do — I want you to know that pushing through is not the only option.
You are not going crazy. You are not just getting older. You are not past your best. Your hormones are changing. And there is a great deal you can do about that.
What I Want For You
I want you to have a smoother path than I did.
I want you to know, earlier than I did, that this is perimenopause — not weakness, not ageing, not 'just how it is'. That your hormones are doing what they have done before, in puberty and perhaps in pregnancy, and that you already know how to navigate change.
I want you to walk into your next GP appointment prepared, informed, and confident. I want you to know what questions to ask, what options exist, and what the current evidence actually says — not the outdated information that has been frightening women away from treatment for twenty years.
I want you to get your sleep back. Your energy. Your intimacy. Your waistline if you want it. Your joy at saying yes to dinner with friends.
I want you to know that this is not the end. It is a transition. And transitions, navigated well, open into something better.
"It is not the end. It is a journey. And I will walk it with you."
Ready to start?
Download the free Menopause Symptom Checklist — a simple starting point to help you identify what's happening in your body and begin the conversation with your GP.