My Story
Meanwhile, perimenopause was quietly undermining me too — the depression, the brain fog, the weight that wouldn't move, the strain on my marriage, the rage that surprised me. Even with good medical care, the emotional and professional toll was real. I felt incredibly unorganized when really I just struggled to organize my thoughts. I couldn’t recall simple words.
I wasn't falling apart. I was navigating a massive transition that nobody had prepared me for — and I was one of the lucky ones who found help.
Luck is not acceptable as a system.
I got angry. At the injustice. At the silence. At the systems putting employers in a position of having to watch their most experienced women quietly unravel without the resources they needed to support these women.
I know what it costs a woman to struggle through deciphering between what might be depression or what might be low hormones. I also know exactly what it could cost an organization to lose her or at least lose her focus.
That building frustrations became Unfiltered Midlife.
Who This Is For
If you are a woman navigating this transition: Honest information, practical tools, and a community that meets you where you are. Not a protocol. Not a supplement stack. The truth.
If you are an employer or HR leader: A policy and culture perspective from someone who has sat at your table, understands your constraints, is experienced in employee engagement and change management, and has lived the experience your employees are navigating in silence. A legislative wave is building. The employers who move now keep their best people.
No Filters. The truth, even when it's uncomfortable. Because women, their employers, and the people in their lives all deserve better.
No Shame. I spent decades trapped in it. I'm not going back, and I'm not letting anyone who finds their way here stay stuck in it either.
No Limits. On what becomes possible when a woman finally gets the truth. On what an organization can unlock when it supports those female employees.
Let’s do this together.
I spent 25+ years operating at director and VP level inside a national research laboratory and a global engineering firm — the person people called when the message was complex and the stakes were high.
I was oblivious to menopause except for the horror stories my mom told me of her symptoms. At 49, a friend who is an integrative nutritionist mentioned the role of nutrition in hormones. I decided to be proactive and get a ‘baseline.’ Little did I know that at 49, I was way beyond baseline — my testosterone was nearly zero. I found a doctor, tried testosterone pellets, got horrible back acne and rage, and realized I needed a more holistic perspective. So I kept looking.
I found good practitioners. But here's the part that still makes me angry: I found them because I had friends who knew people. I had the connections, the resources, and the professional confidence to keep pushing.
Many women don't.
I also had something else most women don't: nearly 20 years translating complex scientific results into plain language. I know how to read a clinical study, challenge assumptions, and tell the difference between credible research and a marketing claim dressed up as science. When I started digging into the research on menopause — that training kicked in hard.
What I found made me angry. Not because the science doesn't exist — it does. But because there’s very little of it. And what there is isn't reaching the women who need it. It's buried in journals, lost in jargon, or cherry-picked by an industry that profits from keeping women confused and ashamed.
I watched this play out in my own family. My mother suffered through menopause without hormonal support and now has severe osteoporosis. She should have had DEXA scans in her 40s. Insurance doesn't cover them until 65, by which point women have already lost significant bone density. Her bones paid the price for a system that waited too long to care.
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