Making menopause business as usual with Sharon MacArthur

Transcript

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It's changed, but not a lot. It's changing, but still slowly. So I said women, they'll say things like Sharon, I felt so alone. I felt so isolated and so unusual that I was the only one this was happening to. And shame, anxiety, worry, concern, stress all of those things. I'm going to say it you you're in the least exclusive club on the planet, you are on the 100% club. So what I want you to do with that statistic as far from feeling shame and anxiety in worry and concern, I want us to flip that statistic on its head and take strength and power that you're in the least exclusive club on the planet. That's it.

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I am your host, Catherine Stegmaier. See a executive and team coach interested in the conversations that we don't have at work. This week's topic of conversation is one that I never had when I would when the corporate world I worked in a very male dominated world. So that's probably one of the reasons why it never came up. And so when I was first told I was in perimenopause, at that time of big hormonal changes as you go into menopause, I was in complete shock. I knew menopause happened, word was out there in the world. But I have my own lived experience of how completely life changing it was surprised me and sent me into a real panic, I had been debilitated. And I didn't know what the cause was, I had night sweats. I was exhausted, beyond anything I'd ever experienced.

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Even after nine hours of sleep, my memory just went out the window. And so being thrown into perimenopause, unaware and uneducated really challenged my sense of identity, and to sort of who I was becoming in our journey my body was taking me on. I mean, I was running a business at the time starting this coaching business. And so I had some flexibility around work because I was my own boss, how I would have had that conversation with my own boss asking for some understanding and flexibility I'll never know. But that's why I brought on this week's guest.

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Because I think it's a conversation we need to start having my guest calls herself Miss menopause, which is such a great name. And her objective is, is bringing menopause education into the workplace.

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And she's been doing this for six years. So Miss menopause is Sharon McCarthy. I love this conversation. If you think I'm a straight shooter, when you meet Sharon, her energy and her era, like sharpness on this topic is exactly what we need for this topic of menopause. Enough dancing around the handbag on this topic, you know, everyone in your team is going to be including user be impacted by this? Yes, you know, even then, because we all have women in our lives as mothers and sisters, as friends as lovers or wives. So you, however you identify you will be impacted by menopause.

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So we talk about the personal impact of menopause, the attitudes, society attitudes towards a new older aging woman, how you bring something personal into the workplace and why Sharon, I think we both did, you should do this, and how to adapt your policies in the workplace.

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It's less effort than you think.

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I'll give away there. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did if you're listening. So Sharon, welcome to answer your work. It's great to have you here. I'd love the listeners to hear about you from yourself and the kind of work you do in the world and why it matters. Wow,

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my name is Sharon McArthur, my company name is Miss menopause. And despite the vicious rumors where people think I might be a middle aged Mr. Man character, I came up with the idea for Miss menopause because the menopause being missed. Similarly, now I had no idea that I would get passionately involved with the menopause in the workplace. So I set up Miss menopause as an angry menopausal woman. Because at the time, like I say, this is like a setup six years ago, but longer. Seven, eight years ago, I guess I started my menopause journey. And I couldn't find any information at the time to tell me about what this menopause was all about. I didn't really know what seemed like a mythical beast, to be honest. So I set up Miss menopause, really with a mission to make menopause business as usual. Because I felt so angry that no one had told me about this. And I just imagined what impact that was going to be having. If you scale that up, to appreciate that all reproduce and females on the planet are going to have to go through this life event. It's not a choice, it's going to happen. And I think that's a really important point that probably if you're a younger woman, even now you probably think about that probably doesn't apply to me or I don't need to know about that. But it actually impacts everybody.

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Yeah, it's like the world's best worst secret. I

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don't know, isn't it?

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My experience is similar. I arrived at some point the doctors like oh, that's menopause. And you know, yeah, technically knew what it was but didn't understand how to navigate and so I love this ambition of making a business as usual.

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Something that we understand, we understand better and for ourselves as well as in supporting other people, right?

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Absolutely everything PSM, whether that's directly or indirectly is going to be impacted by menopause. So I think we need to get away from this notion that menopause only or the information about menopause only applies. I mean, there's this horrible phrase, and I must be honest, I have used it hands up, I have used it. women of a certain age. It's awful, but we do. I mean, I do hear it practically daily. But my ambition is again is get that freeze kind of stomped out, because technically menopause could happen to women of any age, technically. And also, indirectly, I see women of the world who are insidious, aren't we, we're everywhere, there's no escape. We could be a colleague, we couldn't be a friend, we couldn't be a family member of yours. So what I'm saying the men of the world out there and everybody else is this information about menopause? It absolutely can't harm you. But it probably absolutely can help you. And I guess that's why I'm so passionate about the subject, Katherine, because there isn't anybody, in my opinion, who couldn't benefit from here and are learning about this information, whether you're a younger person, whether you're at work, whether you're not, because you're actually going to encounter it one way or the other. One interesting point would be, we might think, as a younger person, I don't need to know that. But we know, don't we that statistically, women having children later in life, we know that's a statistical trend. So the chances are, you could be living with a menopausal mother while going to school, which is not beyond the realms of possibility. So anybody and everybody needs to learn about this. And if Sharon was for President, I'd say absolutely, can we get some good quality information about menopause in the curriculum, which I believe is meant to be in there, but I haven't really found much real evidence of that. My opinion is we should be able to say should we hand foot vagina penis in a sentence? Without good? Yeah, having an attack of the vapors, because we've all got bodies, and we've all got body parts. So if we can just normalize these conversations from a very young age, then ultimately, my ambition, which clearly I'm a rubbish businesswoman, is to be ultimately made redundant, because that just means menopause, then is business as usual.

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It's an ambitious goal, there is a long way off. I don't think you're gonna be anytime soon. Well,

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maybe not.

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When I was told I was menopausal maybe six, seven years ago. Now, I think I there wasn't anything to your point of lack of information. There wasn't anyone I could turn to. My mother didn't remember going through it. Like there was no family story about how we, as women went through it. None of my friends were going through it, none of the elders in my friendship circle, had a view or had much information other than a very personal story, which was always different. And so I love this idea of like, how do we sort of democratize the information for all of our benefits, including people who love us who might not have a uterus who want to support us in some way? Yeah.

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It's such an honor, really, you know, and a very important point, I've christened menopausal women as live living experiments. And that's because your experience and how you might choose to manage or look after yourself through menopause might be entirely different from me. So I'm saying we're like live living experiments. And ultimately, it's like trial and error. And I think the interesting point, you also touched upon about that in talking about your family or your ask around, certainly, if I'd asked my mother and even grandmother, they would have probably said, Well, in our day, we just got on with it. That's what we do. Just got on with it.

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And I'm not I'm not being really mean or unkind when I say if you look at my mother's generation, and even then certainly my grandmother's generation, women didn't even work at all, or if they did, they might work part time. So my view is I'm not being disparaging about either of them. But they might have said their biggest stressor was would the boil the potatoes over for the tea that evening? That was their biggest stressor. So if they were having a terrible day, the baby could lie down on the city. But what so therefore, what I'm seeing women in the 21st century, why are you trying to emulate what's gone in the past, because could not perish it? My mother in the 21st century, just retired many years ago now. And gasca, to do what you do, what I do in the 21st century, just couldn't it couldn't be done. So I really my message is if menopause is negatively impacting the quality of your life, doing nothing shouldn't be the option that you take and have. And I think we've got to stop this to sign of weakness. We've just got to get on with it. Because that's what everybody else's been doing. I'm like, this ridiculous set of behaviors just really has to stop. And you have to get more caned for yourself. Yeah, we talk a lot about kindness and self care. And I'm being really generalized here. When I say the majority of women I speak to are really rubbish at self care, that caring for vote, their families are caring for their partners. They're trying to hold down full time jobs that run in a household, and they're not even caring for themselves. I would say are you in danger of becoming what I call a dead hero, where you're kind of dead on the floor in front of everyone because you've worked yourself to death and you've tried to help everyone else. But you've given yourself nothing back in return. When you have everything you need, surely therefore, you can help others more. So maybe it's a bit of a shift in attitude that we'll have to have here. I think.

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Yeah,

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that's a deep shift, cultural shift. But not Yeah, I can see the link and I think there's something. My experience of menopause was the body decided a big no. Yeah, point, right. It's like, yeah, I was sleeping nine hours a night feeling completely exhausted. My memory went out the window, like I, I would struggle to finish sentences, not know what I was doing. And I'm like, Who the hell is this person? So whether I wanted to be in menopause or not, wasn't the point I was going in? Yeah, well,

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you've got no choice. Yeah, my body and

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then it's like, you go in, and you can say your mother managed to better than you. And, you know, the comparison stuff was unhelpful.

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Yeah, absolutely. What we do to ourselves, like my mother was okay. Or my grandmother said she doesn't remember it. Kind of in that bigger deal. And helpful.

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Yeah,

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totally. And that's the thing. I mean, there's a statistics where you would say, if asked the question, is the menopause, negatively impacting the quality of your life? Statistically, around 80% of women. So you think about it here, that was 10 Women are going to see, Karen, it's not the best a further one.

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And for our potential potential potential, we see it's catastrophic. And that's a problem with menopause. It's weird, wonderful, wild and wacky. I mean, things that you would least expect can happen to your mind and body. So one of my favorite symptoms, I say that with kind of not with my tongue in my cheek, I suppose. But a real common symptom is electric shocks. Now, I wish it meant that because we've gone through the menopause to turn into a superhero, wouldn't it? That anyone who didn't like you could zap them with electricity that would become amazing want to be with totally worthwhile be menopausal for that? But it means becoming statically electrically charged, and it's a real common symptom and never heard of it. Yeah, well, let's talk a woman, a woman not too long ago to win, whether this is a benefit or not to have a contract with a dog. And I can't touch my husband. It was like, Okay. And then like, several months ago, I was I was running a session and a woman shout to Joe Inc. Sharon on you. And I said, why? Trent, you're not going to believe it too. And only yesterday, I had my electricity coming out testing on my electrics because every time I switch the light on, I get a massive shock. Because like you're not telling me it could be menopause could do is like, it's really quite common.

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So it truly is the gift that keeps on giving, you know, dry eyes, itchy skin, bleed mouth and tongue it you know, in giants, weird, wonderful and wild things that you would never really imagine anxiety. Yeah, that well, that's kind of the number one thing that's reported to me. To be honest.

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I had a friend who was given an anxiety medication for two years for the doctor thought that she might be menopausal and then HRT and it was gone in two months. Yeah,

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yeah. I think what's really interesting about how we're since we're looking at this medically, so I'm not a medical person I don't pretend to profess to be, but what I see is, statistically, if you're in and around your 40s, and you're starting to notice some weird, wonderful and wild, wacky things happening to you mentally and physically, let's turn it on a tendency, statistically, it's probably most likely to be menopause related. But what seems to happen when you go down the what I call the medical route, doctors are rule and everything else in as opposed to even think about menopause. So I've had women been tested for heart problems, memory problems, fibromyalgia, say depression, if we started with menopause, and wonder what a different place we'd be in as opposed to having that almost last on the list. Or quite often because we're not even on the list. Not even thought about or mentioned.

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In some way, friends. Yeah,

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totally unacceptable.

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I've been the one going after all this.

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Why did you ask them to consider? Yeah. To menopause?

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What was when you first diagnosed with menopause? What was your initial reaction to the word?

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Why I was like, well, that truly caught well. My initial reaction was How dare you was it wasn't even be diagnosed. A good friend have to say to me, Sharon, do not think you're menopausal. And that was absolutely outraged. I was like, How dare you think I could be that menopausal thing because in my mind's eye, I believed it was an old woman who was past work and age, who was kind of spent on the scrap heap.

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I mean, that's terrible. So please forgive me anyone who's listening. But that's ultimately what I thought so in my mind's eye, it was absolutely nobody like me at all. I had no sense of what menopause was was,

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but I think that's something I asked the question because I think there's a I want to normalize.

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That was my response as well.

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It's like me, ya know,

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couldn't possibly clone

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next door maybe but no Meet ya baked into going into menopause. This is an idea of, I think a lot of sort of misogynistic patriarchal ideas of spent old, tired, not useful anymore. And I think part of the reclamation here is how do we see menopause as a next beautiful chapter? Hey, there's a prospective mind shift opportunity here. What would you say to that? Well,

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absolutely.

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I'm going to be brutal here when I say because the majority of women when I asked them, What are you doing, look after yourself and manage your menopause, majority of women sadly, still see really nothing or very little. So what I'm saying is, and I'm being brutal here, I would like to think about not choosing to become what I call a victim of the menopause. Because it truly is the gift that keeps on giving.

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And once you're menopausal, you are menopausal for the rest of your life. So once your fertility has ended, it is not coming back. So whatever age you might be, once you menopause, or menopause, or for the rest of your life, I'm 56 coming up this year. So my philosophy is, I believe that I've lived longer than I am going to live. And lots of people shouldn't let a terrible morbid thought process.

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But personally, I don't want to be 112 and weighing in my slippers. But that's just my outlook. My mindset is, why would I not want to maintain and retain the best quality of life that I've got? For as long as I've got it? Why would I not want to do that, it's back to what we said, it really isn't about self care, knowing that nobody knows when their time will end on this planet, nobody has that information about you, you simply don't have that about yourself. So if you can embrace, getting older is a privilege, not a given rights for us to get older. So if we can all care about ourselves a little bit better, then again, maybe we'll feel less stress, less anxious, all of these things, because we're putting some energy and some effort in our own self care. I mean, there's tons that we're talking about this all the time, don't but how many of us really do that? And take the time and really do that? I remember asking a question once to a roomful of women. And the question was, in the last seven days, what have you done for you and only you not a partner, not a husband, not a family member, not a colleague, for you, and only you in the last seven days, for you and only you. And honestly, the Tumbleweed was absolutely astonishing. Most of us are pretty just just rubbish.

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People should pause the podcast at this point and go just like just think about what Terence has said, What have you done for you in the last seven days? Yeah, it's a sobering little question.

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very sobering.

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I'm not talking about grand gestures here I'm talking about you might lock yourself in the bathroom and have a bath, you might read a chapter of a book you might have, you know, buy yourself something cook have a favorite meal that you would like, see, we're not talking about massive gestures that are huge things.

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And I think we need to maybe think about what small, tiny things could I do that would make me feel better, or happier or whatever. But I think sometimes we think it's such a big thing that we don't even go there and we're just doing all I'll just keep looking after everybody else. A lot

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of your work is in educating people in organizations about menopause and the impact of women with menopause. What are some of the myths that you hear about menopause in your work?

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Well, myths about menopause is that it probably won't impact me. I don't need to know about that.

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Which is why I like to say my mission is to educate everybody.

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What I really enjoyed is to educate men, about the menopause,

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I was gonna say, what assumptions are men sitting on? Yeah, tell us more.

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I'm doing a lot of work. At the moment. I'm down the UK, very male dominated places, where you put the poster on the wall, you sent the email out, and quite naturally, men are going to see that subject matter and younger people, of course, I'm going to go through exactly what we said, this is for women of a certain age. But what I'm saying is, if you identify as male, heterosexual the chances are you will be going home to a wife, or a girlfriend, who I can guarantee will absolutely be going through menopause at some point in their lifetime, absolutely 100%. So what I'm able to say is I can guarantee you that this information that I'm going to share with you, you are going to find it useful. So you might think you might look around your organization go well, we didn't work with any women here. That's the pink department of men. Not brilliant, but I'm guessing you're gonna go home to friends, family members, like say, wives, partners or girlfriends. And I think that's what really surprises lots of men that quite often shuffling along the sessions, Word will have to be here. And then they leave and saying things like, it's probably one of the best things I've ever done because left to my own devices. I knew I wasn't going to research this level of information about it. But when I've had men over the years telling me it's probably helped to save Their relationship. That to me is when you know you're working within for an employer of choice. And yet, we obviously we want to bring young people into the into the workplace. So that's really important part of having different generational aspects. And again, like I said early, you might be younger person who's living at home with a menopausal mother. So we know, younger people are spending longer at home. I had a really interesting conversation. This is several years ago now with a younger woman who was in a session, she was really quiet.

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Till eventually she said, You know what to think my mom is going through the menopause. And I was like, Oh, really, she said, when I left for work this morning, she threw a dish at my head. And I was like, well, that's not a common symptom of menopause, I've come across, but I came to take your point. And what's really important about that is often we might spot signs in other as long before they spot signs in themselves, because you notice things that they don't notice. So she said, I love my mother, but I don't like her anymore, because she showed me she's throwing things and I just do not want to spend any time in our company. So because this younger woman had come to a session around menopause, not only did you have a more happier, more engaged employee, because she was able to go home, have an open, honest, candid conversation with a mother. And a mother didn't know she was in the early stages of menopause, menopause, perimenopause, we'll call it. So she was able to encourage them to go down, she decided to go down a medical route ended up on hormone replacement therapy. So not only did that transform their relationship, because their mother now was managing a menopause. But that younger woman was now more prepared for her own menopause, as when the time comes. So I often say that I believe menopause has tentacles that reach and at the corners of every single person's life. And I think that's the important thing. So a lot of organizations quite rightly so.

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And I absolutely wholeheartedly agree with this will have done a lot of work around mental health and well being since during the pandemic, and since the pandemic, absolutely the right thing to do. But what I would say is, I hope and wish that the smallest percentage of any population would suffer from let's call it mental ill health.

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So if you want to think about if you metaphorically put little health in the ring, with menopause, what your full scale knock down every single time by menopause, because menopause is 100%. So it's no competition.

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And I guess what I want organizations to appreciate is that a lot do this almost for a living. Now, menopause is not more important, in my opinion than any other people issue that you have in your business. But what is entirely different about menopause is the scale of it.

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Because every single person in your organization is going to have to deal with it, at some point, directly or indirectly.

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And I think it's trying to break down those myths and legends that only women of a certain age need to be engaged in this conversation, I'm saying the world will be a better place when we all just understand what this is all about. So we can understand it, whether you're a younger person, whether it's happening to you whether indirectly, you're involved with women who are going through their own menopause, it can only be a good thing, if we all understand it, I see we should be able to say should we hand foot vagina penis in a sentence without going legacy and having an attack of the vapors. Because we've all got bodies, and we've all got body parts, you know what I mean? So,

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and bodies that are doing things

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pretty good on their bodies.

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You make such a great case for bringing the full human in to the full human is in the workplace, whether you want to compartmentalize or not like it's just not going to work.

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Yeah, people say what I'm professional, I don't bring my work stuff at home. But if you've got a female partner who's throwing butter dishes at you, it's very hard to come to work and bring your full self if you're not feeling a little under attack and worried about your partner. Yeah, I

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just hope in the future that we can be a bit I'm gonna hold on the pandemic in some respects, as enabled, hopefully a little bit of this to happen, where we become a bit less uptight. I was in an organization on yesterday. And they were like, well, pre pandemic, I would have been suited and booted and worn all these office where I would never have looked like this. This woman said to me, and I went well, you look perfectly gorgeous to me. You know what I mean? Another shocking thing to bear in mind. Did you know all humans apparently pee and poo? I mean, can you believe it? So I think can we take down the mantle of we're being professional, what does that really mean? It normally means you're putting a mask on, and you're feeling probably a little bit stressed about the mask that you're wearing. So all I'm saying is there's a lot of work now is bring your authentic self to work be the best you that you can be in all of this kind of stuff. But I will really allow and enable that to happen. So it really is as simple as enabling all of the people in your workplace to have the ability to tell their own story, whatever that might be. I know we're talking about menopause today, but everyone's got a story. And if we all just listen and hear each other Stories, then we will understand more, we will have more empathy, we will probably behave differently and will hopefully will build more respect and understanding if we all just enabled tally to the stories. So I guess when I'm working in organizations, I would actively encourage, especially if you're either a business owner, or you're more senior in the business, to show an element of vulnerability about yourself, because that is the gold dust that you can bring to your organization. So I remember having a conversation I was running a session for was a big group of managers actually.

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And it was several years ago, and they were telling me oh, we've got these passports for wellbeing now saying, Oh, wow, okay, that sounds pretty good.

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Tell me more. Well, this is the passport where you share your What's up with you as a human and document is down and whatever. So my question was, well, okay, I said, so as leaders in this business, how many of you have actually filled out your own passport with your manager? And so of course, the Tumbleweed. And then I said, an N Out of how many of you, which was maybe a handful, a tiny handful of people said, Yeah, me. So now out of that handful of people who maybe have done that? How many of you have shared that with your people? I said, because think about it like this? If you're my manager, you're asking me constantly to share maybe really intimate things about me or things that you're asking of me? And it's a one way street, isn't it? So I said, would it not be better in a more healthy relationship? If you are able then to say, well, here's a little bit of information about me. And I think until we can get that two way street, it still feels like their menos. And you're not really going to have the best culture or the healthy environment that you can. So I would always actively encourage, especially like, say, more senior people, or people that you'd maybe least expect, maybe they're looking at you and your business, and thinking Oh, my goodness, Shanti taught me together, just seems totally confident just seems about because we all make up what they don't know, don't they? You might put your persona your mask on. But wouldn't it be really brilliant if you could say, this is my story. And it hasn't always been like this, or some days, I feel terrible, or this is what's happened to me. And that when I've seen that happen, the power gives to the room of people who are they were listening, you can't buy that.

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And I call it the gold dust that's in your business. And it's all about simple things.

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And it's already there. The thing that worries me about selling about the subject of menopause, I feel like sometimes there's a lot of complication, and a lot of fear being sold in this area, where I'm a big fan of simplicity, and using what you've already got

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when everyone's got a story, as opposed to adding, bringing in something clever.

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Yeah, well, just getting it out there. Yeah, utilize what you've got.

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Because we spoke in the prep call. We spoke about commercialization of the menopause transition period.

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And there's lots of money being made out of yeah, this now.

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Absolutely, what I'm thinking more of the non medical grades, supplements and all that sort of things and more sort of health programs or yoga for menopause or meditation for menopause, which is encouraging because it sort of normalizes it, but I think it also, I find it concerning because why we monetize it was distress and confusion in a natural process.

00:28:22,500 --> 00:28:23,130
Yeah,

00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:37,349
I think I think the difficulty is because we're not taught this information from a young age, or we haven't been historically, we don't really know what's happening to us, when desperate to fix it, or to find out more.

00:28:37,500 --> 00:29:27,450
Nobody has known a great deal for a long time. And so I suppose, yes, I'm going to be cynical and say, of course, there's going to be people out there who are just in it for a fast book, I'd like to think the majority of people who are doing stuff have come coming from a good place. But I think there's if we're looking at the root cause I think fundamentally, there hasn't been enough research on women's health worldwide forever. So I think if we were to find out more more factual things about bodies, what they don't do, what they're capable of, I think if we all had a lot more information that was just readily available, we could make more informed choices about what we might want to choose to put in on or around our own bodies because I always say it's your body belongs to you. If you want to dangle crystals off your nipple lens and you think it works for you.

00:29:23,970 --> 00:29:29,670
My philosophy is who cares? But don't do nothing. Yeah, knock

00:29:29,670 --> 00:29:30,750
yourself out. Absolutely

00:29:30,750 --> 00:30:13,440
knock yourself out. There's no right or wrong here. There's only what's right for you, but doing nothing shouldn't be one of them. So I think there's that lack of information that there's still I call it the void. It's a void of ignorance really, we don't really know still a great deal to we're trying to chat to each other and you'll say your friend and your friend might say ah, when I tried this, I did dangled crystals off my nipples and it really made a difference to my hot flushes and I'm caught often had some rose quartz or whatever it is. And then I find oh my goodness, it didn't have any impact on May it all and it's that whole, there's, if you could say, all Sharon's born in 1968, who were going to have a menopause like this, and you could manage it like that, then it would be an easier process.

00:30:09,450 --> 00:30:41,640
You could almost even process pregnancy that was step next step, because usually, after nine months, in most cases, a baby appears, after nine months, menopause. It does, what it wants, how it was worth, it just goes on and on. And there is literally no end. And I have to keep pointing out to women that just because you may go home financially, you'll hear a lot of women use the term, I'm through the menopause. Well, you're not through it, your periods have ended. That's probably what you mean by that.

00:30:41,940 --> 00:30:52,559
But your symptoms can go on. And on. So it's about being aware and getting the facts. So you can make an informed decision.

00:30:52,559 --> 00:30:57,359
But realizing that again, did you know shocking statement, no.

00:30:57,359 --> 00:31:05,519
Human age is more well, think about that. No human is aging more well. So it's only a one way street that we're all on.

00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:27,750
Hormones are going to fluctuate and change throughout the rest of your life. So what might be okay, today may not be okay, tomorrow or three years time. So again, it's back to that self care and no person is whatever it is negatively impacting the quality of my life. And if it's a yes, don't Tusu

00:31:27,750 --> 00:31:30,930
thing nothing. Get away with it.

00:31:30,930 --> 00:31:59,849
Sharon's comments. I also want to kind of amplify the message of an informed choice. Like I went, I mean, I'm a little, I'm probably very unusual. But when I when the symptoms started, I went down this huge rabbit hole research and reading everything I couldn't understanding and managed the symptoms for several years through diet and exercise, like very large, I went vegan, and it worked. It worked for me for several years. And then to your point, it stopped working.

00:31:56,759 --> 00:32:44,130
And then I was back doing microbiome tests and did it anyway, I ended up with a doctor. She's like, why don't you just take HRT, and like, that's a good question. Because I said no, seven years ago, doesn't mean I can't say yes, now. So it isn't the you don't get the right answer the beginning of the perimenopause, it will change. And you said Wild West earlier, I think it's great experience. And all the men listening just know this is what your women are going through writing the Wild West feeling quite alone a lot of the time because even our friend, sisters sister in the sisterhood doesn't have a similar experience. Because it's also unique. I find it very frustrating. I want to find the group of sisters out there who have exactly the same experience as me so I can feel at home. I know it's I know, it's a little childish, but that feeling of how do we feel less alone in this? Well, I've built

00:32:44,130 --> 00:33:37,799
the community on through Facebook, and it's a community page has nothing to do with anything but help me support and it's just an attempt 1000 women on their thing that breaks my heart, I think a lot and I still hear this very frequently. And this is six years down the line from when I originally started to do this work. It's changed, but not a lot. It's changing, but still slowly. So I say to women, they'll say things like Sharon, I felt so alone, I felt so isolated and so unusual that I was the only one this was happening to and shame, anxiety, worry, concern, stress, all of those things. I'm going to say it you you're in the least exclusive club on the planet, you are in the 100% club. So what I wanted to want you to do with that statistic as far from feeling shame and anxiety in worry and concern, I want us to flip that statistic on its head and take strength and power that you're in the least exclusive club on the planet. That's it.

00:33:37,829 --> 00:33:42,359
Yeah, that's sisters. So that that's the sisterhood.

00:33:44,700 --> 00:33:46,470
Absolutely, absolutely

00:33:46,559 --> 00:33:48,690
lovely reframe like that a lot. Yeah.

00:33:49,769 --> 00:34:02,700
And if people listening to this, have some influence or power their organization and they want to sort of for sake of a bit of word and educate or bring that weapon oppose awareness into the workplace, where do you start leaders on that path of bringing that in? Well, I

00:34:02,700 --> 00:34:31,949
always say start small, start small start, you know, I work with organizations from 10,000, heads down or 100 heads, and I will say who at whatever size of your organization, you need to start small. And what you really need to do is you need to get some influence as I call in the room for those call it a pilot session and test session. And the reason being is because whether we like it or not, sadly, the world still appears to be run by white middle aged men, whether we like it or not.

00:34:28,559 --> 00:35:09,630
So what I'm saying is quite often those some of those senior decision makers are unbearably like middle aged men who are possibly thinking, Well, this has got nothing to do with this our business or nothing to do with us. So it's about you're going to have to maybe build a business case to get your management team to understand the business issue. And when companies are more diverse, either more profitable, ultimately you are losing and have lost and will continue to lose good quality people out of ignorance because when they leave And they're not saying I'm leaving because of menopause or sick leave me because I've seen I've got terrible anxiety or they're feeling really anxious or can't concentrate anymore.

00:35:05,610 --> 00:36:53,340
They're not often even aware themselves that it's menopause related because of this void of ignorance. So what you've got to do is you've got to build that business case, first of all to get something to happen. But then I always advise starting small, and I don't know why I've called them John's of this world, but everyone's probably got somewhere in their business at John and John might have been there maybe 10 years in your business. And John's not even a senior lead. In fact, John's been doing a similar sort of job for the last 10 years. John's really influential. So if you can get John's, in your test session, and if John really gets it, he's going to start helping you excel, the reality and the reasons why you really need to educate everybody about menopause in the workplace. And it's about getting, I think the word that the word we use at the moment as allies, call them whatever you want, but we need everybody to be part of the conversation. And I think that's what I find really interesting that a lot of the John's of this world who have been engineered to come along sessions in the way that I've described, the kind of come along, what's this gonna be like, it's gonna be terrible. And then they're almost doing a 180 gone. Oh, wow. I didn't expect to learn so much. And I didn't expect to appreciate how much this was going to benefit me not like I say, not even necessarily right now, in the workplace, but that I can take this out of the door and take it home with me. So what I'm saying is, once you've got this information, it's yours for life, you've got it. Now, this knowledge, it took you what you choose to do with it. But I can guarantee you'll be able to use it, if you so wish, because you're going to encounter it one way or the other. And I also think it's about realizing that it's a bit like what I alluded to earlier, most of the things you could ever need, when it comes to the subject of menopause, you've already got, you've already got these things.

00:36:53,639 --> 00:37:01,829
So you've already got the stories and your business that exists. Have you really flushed out those stories? Have you really asked each of them?

00:36:59,159 --> 00:37:48,360
What's your story? How's this gone for you? So when we talk about getting people to share their stories, I've heard senior guy saying, I'm going menopausal. I found my girlfriend, and I'm willing to share that with you. And this is one of the reality of that to be like. And when you get those simple things happen. It's really, really amazing. And then most companies have really good processes, most have really robust processes one way or another. So it's about realizing that a bit controversial in this space, I would say, I don't believe you need to write a menopause policy, which seems to be a big drive direct policy for everything. And menopause is really probably number one on the agenda right now. And all I'm saying is, if you write the menopause policy, then you're going to have to write a policy for every other human condition.

00:37:45,059 --> 00:38:09,449
Because if you write a polyp policy for menopause, surely if I've got diabetes might not knock me off by not writing one for diabetes. And if I've got prostate cancer, and you haven't written a policy, now I feel excluded, and that you don't really care about me as more as much as you do about menopausal women. So unless you write the policy for every single thing that can befall a human, then why should you write the policy specifically just for menopause?

00:38:09,900 --> 00:39:14,309
What might be better for you to consider is how you can have made up a word menopause allies, your current processes. So how can you stitch menopause in all of the ones you've currently got, for example, and there isn't that I can't really think of an occasion where the things that you may have in flight. So for example, I'm guessing most people would have a return to work policy if somebody's off sick or absent, for example. So what I'm saying is you stitch menopause in your return to work policy, that potentially is the reason the root cause for you as a manager, or export, maybe it could be the reason for the absence, or the lateness. So when you start helping your people to understand what's the same, not what's different, you're gonna get a much better buy in than trying to, when you put things in little groups in silos. That's when people go, Oh, another thing you're asking me to think about now, you get that eyeroll, don't you? So what I'm saying is, if you simply keep it simple, the most simple you can keep it is better for humans.

00:39:14,519 --> 00:39:23,429
It's a very inclusive approach. When you have the processes in place the documentation in place, how you sort of layer on a conversation around menopause, is what you're saying.

00:39:23,969 --> 00:39:40,829
Yeah, because remember, that reason that your male colleagues say your My line manager, Catherine Nitze, I'm a guy working for you. And I'm kind of coming in late recently, I'm looking really tired, I don't appear to be thinking straight, maybe the root causes.

00:39:37,199 --> 00:40:37,048
So we're going to be open and our thought process now. Now we've understood the subject matter, because the root cause could be he's living with a menopausal wife, partner, a girlfriend and that's the root cause of what's happening to him. So I guess why I created this menopause is to create a level of knowledge and understanding to enable people to have a level of empathy under understanding about people help them as individuals to maybe think about how they may care for themselves better help organizations to think about small reasonable adjustments that already exist in your business that could help you make menopause business as usual. But I worry sometimes that I feel like there's a bit of a movement out there to make sound really complicated. And really like scary Oh, you're gonna need all these things. All we're going to need separate training for managers versus non managers, you're going to need this that the other and all I'm saying is I don't believe you need all of those things, I believe you've already got them.

00:40:37,378 --> 00:40:58,768
What you just need to do is stop a moment and see what is the same as this. So if you've done a lot of work around mental health and wellbeing, menopause anxiety is often the number one symptom reported through menopause. So if you don't, if you put it in silos, you're about to divide and conquer and make it seem really complicated.

00:40:54,869 --> 00:41:17,458
If you hadn't well being policy, for example, where mental health well being your diversity, menopause was all encompassed within it. That's much easier, surely understand, than having a little box or a little policy or process for each and every one.

00:41:14,248 --> 00:41:17,458
It makes him really complicated.

00:41:17,458 --> 00:41:18,539
And it turns people off.

00:41:18,659 --> 00:41:51,449
Yeah, it makes complete sense simplifying it all leveraging what you have in the three important conversation. So it turns out as all good conversations about metaphors have to end. Oh, yeah, I was gonna Yeah, I was gonna go off to Litchfield, probably even for this podcast. But I mean, your work really is about helping people educate their staff, their employees around around this. Is it mostly through workshops? Yeah. How are you doing at the moment,

00:41:51,570 --> 00:43:10,320
mostly through workshops, there are a couple of hours, keynote speaker. But no, if you didn't want to invest in anything, the very best thing that you can do is just start to open up the conversation, ask people, What do they know about menopause? What's their story about it? But yeah, like I say, I try to live through my own values of simplicity. So my model is very simple. I have a very inclusive workshop, which means it doesn't matter who comes to it, whether they're a manager, non manager, junior person, male, female, or they're, the session that I have designed with the session design is totally inclusive for absolutely anybody and everybody. And again, I feel my philosophy is, should surely gone are the days where you think all managers get secret information that I haven't got, and it almost divides and conquers, I'm saying is that we're just sounds a ridiculous statement, because it's such a new subject. And nowadays, but the terrible that was saying this in the 21st century, is there not a great opportunity to treat everybody the same on a level playing field and everybody learned together, but surely is going to build a much healthier relationship and culture in your business where everyone's just starting from the same place. And then as adults, we can just go off and have adult conversations moving forward. I love that.

00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:25,469
Yeah. So if you were able to get ahold of you via your website, details and everything in the show notes, they're willing to make a small investment call you in. Or as you said, if they want to do it on their own, there's a DIY option, just open the conversations, start the conversations about the story.

00:43:23,699 --> 00:43:25,469
Certainly,

00:43:25,469 --> 00:43:43,829
you know, when I will say about the work that I do, remember I said earlier, I'm not medical, I don't pretend to profess to be so I would say if you're looking for somebody very medical and very technical about the subject, I am not your woman. But if you're wanting somebody to engage and motivate your audience to do something, because I'm all about action.

00:43:43,858 --> 00:44:13,768
This isn't about investing on something where people go, Oh, had a lovely day and was given a lovely 10 out of 10. But I've never talked or thought about it ever again. That is not what I'm about. I'm about insisting that your people take action on the back of it however small but I'm going to if you'd have to get in touch with me to know what one of those tiny action points is, but it's very small, but it's very effective. If I had to sum it up, just keep it really simple. Simplicity is the key and talking Never underestimate the power of just having a conversation.

00:44:13,949 --> 00:45:14,760
We've heard it here first unsaid at work from Miss metaphors. I mean, who else do you want to have the kind of conversation with Jared I appreciate your work and your humor that you bring the word Thank you which feels like a difficult topic for some of us. But I think we can approach it with light Edison compassion and storytelling and beautiful. Absolutely. Thank you for joining the one thing that stands out for me in this conversation is this idea of self care as a priority. It's not a focus on a word. I love things been hijacked. But I think you know to get back to the basics of it, what is it about us as women who get to an age when our hormones start kicking in like this? And we've we've been putting ourselves second and third our entire lives. And to navigate this phase this is the time where you've got to put your oxygen mask on first though is you absolutely useless to everyone else that you want to take care of in your life. So share this episode with the women in your life as a way of encouraging them to take care of themselves.

00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:25,440
Whether they're in the transition or not taking care of ourselves becomes a practice becomes a first and becomes a way of life. So thank you for listening to this episode. This is your wing woman signing off until next week.