Everyone is talking about menopause. Why aren't we?

Episode 5: Menopause Is Having a Moment

Listen to the episode here

Last week I was making coffee and scrolling my phone, and in the time it took the coffee to brew I was served four different videos about menopause. A doctor in a white coat explaining why my belly fat won't move. An actress in her fifties on hormone therapy and supplements. An influencer in a beautifully styled kitchen with the exact protein numbers I should hit before noon. And the weighted vest woman. Why is everyone suddenly wearing weighted vests? I closed the app, drank my coffee, and realized I had spent two weeks consuming menopause content like a part-time job. And I had not said the word out loud to another woman in an honest conversation once.

Menopause is having a moment, and it is genuinely about time. We are the first generation of women whose information about our own bodies isn't coming from a thirty-second segment in eighth grade health class and a pamphlet. But the information has gone from invisible to overwhelming, and the conversation hasn't. Following an account is not the same as having a friend you can talk to. Reading the book is not the same as telling your partner what is happening in your body. This episode is about that gap, and about the training that keeps us watching the content while telling nobody.

In this episode:

• The four menopause videos my phone served me before the coffee finished brewing

• What happened when our mothers went through this: the study that was stopped early, the black box warning, and a whole generation of women told to tough it out and be quiet

• What it has actually felt like in my body: the tiredness that became a setting instead of a state, the brain fog that scared me more than anything else, and the rage I did not see coming

• The gynecologist who told me not to be upset about my divorce because it was raising my blood pressure

• Why content feels safer than conversation: the influencer can't judge you, and the book can't bring it up at Thanksgiving

• The living room in Florida, and why that conversation cracked open. It wasn't because we'd all been consuming the right content.

• The text to send one woman this week: "Are you noticing things? Because I am."

"You can know everything about menopause and still be alone in it."

At the end of this episode I ask for one specific thing. Send it to one woman, the one you've been thinking about while you listened, the one you haven't actually had this conversation with yet. Then call her. That's the entire conversation starter.

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