1006: 5 Ways Perimenopause and Menopause Can Affect How Women Lead | Leadership Stories

Speaker A: Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why customers have enjoyed Progressive's Name youe Price Tool for years now. With the Name youe Price Tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com, find a rate that works for you with a name, your Price tool, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Welcome to Shameless Leadership. I'm your host, Sara Dean. This show is for women, transgender people, non binary folks, as well as allies who are committed to advancing their leadership while also advancing the leadership of those around them. In each episode, we will offer practical tips, leadership strategies, and inspiring stories to help you become a more confident, compassionate and inclusive leader. The truth is, you were born to lead. What might happen for you if you were to wholeheartedly embrace that, um, part of yourself. So let's start now, together. Hello, Shameless Leaders. Today we are talking about perimenopause, menopause, how it affects women's leadership, all the good stuff. I'm definitely going to get a little ranty during this one. This episode was actually inspired by a conversation I had recently with a leader. But this conversation was one of many conversations I've had like this. And this particular one, though, I was like, enough, enough. I'm so triggered right now because this is not the conversation I should be having over and over again with women in their 50s. It makes me just so angry that we have not been better served over the course of our lives and that the women who raised us were not better served over the course of their lives. With all that said, let's dive in. We're gonna be talking about how perimenopause and menopause can affect women's leadership. But I wanna be really clear that perimenopause and menopause do not make you, uh, a less capable leader, but they do change how you can access your capacity. And they do both change how your body functions. And if you don't have a clear understanding of that, you can't keep leveraging and accessing and using your greatest strengths and talents. And, uh, that can make life feel really hard. So having an understanding of what is happening to your body is absolutely crucial. That means that having access to care providers who have an understanding of what is happening to your body is absolutely crucial. And our, uh, Care providers have just really dropped the ball on this in so many cases. So I am so lucky that I have an incredible doctor who I've been with for many years and well before M. Perimenopause was part of my world. And she has done a great job of growing her knowledge base and making sure that she is very specialized in women's health so that she can best serve her women who are 35 to 65 years old and beyond when it comes to menopause and perimenopause. Many people have general practitioners, GPs, PCPs, primary care physicians who don't have any level of expertise in perimenopause and menopause, that don't have any specialization and they give advice or don't give needed crucial advice and that deeply compromises patient care. And I find it to be unethical and irresponsible and lazy and not caring or compassionate. And if it's a male doctor who has not taken the time to feel figure their life out when it comes to treating women who are of perimenopausal and menopausal ages, I find it to be extremely misogynistic and insulting. And so, yes, so that's what we're up against. So here's the situation that happened recently. I was talking to a woman who was telling me some struggles that she's been having recently at work. And it was a coaching client and she was telling me some really specific stuff that was happening where she was like, yeah, I've Dr. I uh, dropped the ball a few times and I just, I'm forgetting some things and I just. This didn't used to happen to me and this kind of was part of a bigger conversation. So at first I was like, okay, there's been a lot of chaos and things happening in the office. So this wasn't shocking to me. I was just like, okay, tell me what's been happening. So she gives me some examples. I'm like, okay, uh, this sounds like some, some kind of some brain stuff. Not Alzheimer's dementia brain stuff, but like some age related brain stuff maybe that could be hormonally related. Now mind you, I'm not a doctor, so I'm not gonna just start saying I think you have some brain stuff going on. I was just kind of list. So then she gave me a few other instances of just things that had happened and kind of ways that she'd been feeling about things. And I said, I'm curious if you've talked to your doctor about any of these things. These are really good examples of just kind of things that are. Have impacted you recently. And is this, um, have you talked to your doctor about anything, these things? And she said, yeah, she said, I had an appointment recently, and I told my doctor some of these things. And I said, do you mind me asking how old you are? And I sensed she was somewhere between this, like, 40 to 55 window. So she tells me she's in her early m.50s or mid. She's. I think she said she was 54. And I said, when you talk to your doctor about this, did he talk to you at all about hormones? And she's, oh, yeah. He said that. My doctor said that I'm not in perimenopause. And he checked my hormones and everything's fine. And so I said, okay. And then I said, have you been having any other symptoms that maybe could. That you've heard might be perimenopause symptoms? And she's like, I'm not having. She's like, I've been having some temperature control issues, but I don't think they're hot flashes. And then she describes to me what she's been experiencing. And I'm like, that's the literal definition of hot flashes. As she's telling me all these things, I am just getting mad on her behalf because I'm thinking. And then she references, at some point, references her doctor as a he. So I'm like, oh, uh, you have a male doctor? And she's like, yeah. I'm like, okay, so let me just be clear here. Everything you just said is a symptom of perimenopause. And you're 54 years old, and you took these symptoms to your doctor, and your doctor said, you are not in perimenopause or menopause. And she was like, yes, correct. And I was like, okay, there's no way, given these symptoms, that you can't be in perimenopause or menopause. Every single thing that you listed is a symptom. And I said. And I was like, I'm not a doctor. I. I can't give you medical advice, but I would urge you, you can Google and find this out. This is not me telling you information that is not widely available on this topic. I said, I really think you need to get a second opinion. And so we had a much longer conversation about some things that happen with our bodies and perimenopause and menopause. And she was like, oh, my gosh. I just accepted what my doctor said and just thought this is just me now, and this is just who I am. And I just am a little more forgetful or, uh, these things just seem harder than they used to. And I was like, no, that is not the case. And I'm so sorry and also so mad that your doctor was not more helpful. So, to, um, everyone listening, your body is going to give you many clues. And the thing that's really tricky about this season in life is that a lot of the clues come on slowly over the course of years. And so because perimenopause is a multi year situation, we don't notice the compounding effects of things. And so I will say for me and for many other women that I know we don't notice the compounded effects until we hit this moment of a lot of things are really rough and we can't put together why so many things are so rough at one time. But we can attribute it to, I don't know, work is challenging, the world is really stressful. I'm raising children or taking care of aging parents. It's like there's all these things happening in life. And so we think it could just be like the confluence of all those things that would make sense, that would just make life seem hard for someone. Or it could be that maybe there's some things going on with my body that make it harder for me to manage these things or harder for me to be responsive in these situations or adaptable in these situations. And that was the case for me where I had this kind of breaking point where I was like, I feel like I'm having some irrational responses to things emotionally, but it makes sense because everything feels hard right now and I have a lot of evidence that everything's hard. So I kept letting it go and then it hit this critical point where I was like, okay, I'm like feeling some despair that I've never felt in my life before. And I finally, uh, reached out to my doctor and was like, let me just check things because this is feeling pretty intense. And that's when I went in. And I've done multiple episodes on kind of what happened there and getting on HRT and et cetera. So you can go back and listen to those episodes. I'm not going to dig into all of that right now, except for to say that was very helpful and critical. And my blood work at that time was like, alarming when we found out what was actually happening in my body. And it showed this picture of, oh, uh, there's been a lot of things happening for a long Time that can't be clear on in blood work until a certain point. But your body is giving you all these little signals and if you're not paying attention and keeping track and sharing those with a responsible, knowledgeable doctor who specializes in middle aged women's health, you will not know that those are the signals your body's giving you. So what do we want to know and how can this impact our leadership? And then how can we be on top of that, especially in a world where all this stuff might be dismissed and in a world where we might be dismissive of ourselves, which I certainly was. I was very much like, come on, buck up, figure your life out, get it together. I very much was like hard on myself as I was figuring this all out, because I've always been someone who's been able to self motivate and be ambitious and push through. And when I started to feel like I can't push through, I just got, I just tried to push harder and it increasingly was not working. And then that made me more mad and made me push harder. But I could not get the results I used to get with that pushing. So it was like very much not sustainable. So let's look at how perimenopause and menopause can affect your leadership. What does that do to your career trajectory or to just how your work feels to you in terms of being able to feel like you can do good work day in, day out? And then how can you be responsible for taking care of your health, especially if you don't right now have the support that you need to do that? So perimenopause and menopause can affect your leadership in all sorts of different ways. And I want to give some specific examples here, not to point out again that you are less capable during the season of life, but to point out that accessing your capacity and your capabilities might look different. And if you have awareness around that, I think you'll be much more easily to keep yourself performing at the level that you want to perform. That keeps you feeling like yourself. So the first thing is that perimenopause and menopause, because of the hormone changes, impact how you access your executive functioning skills. This is why so many women in middle age are diagnosed with ADHD that has been part of their lives forever. But they've been able to mask and manage it in a way where they were able to stay on top of it. And then it there becomes this breaking point where it's like, oh my gosh, like I can't stay on top of it anymore. I can't seem to put the pieces together the way I used to. And, and now I'm seeing all these cracks that have always been there. And uh, now I, I'm not able to glue them back together on a regular basis. So that's which. This is not saying that every woman in Paramount palace has adhd, but that's where we, we are seeing this kind of explosion of women in middle age being diagnosed. It's not because all of a sudden all these women have adhd. It's because all of a sudden we can't mask and manage the way that we've been culturally conditioned to mask and manage as women. And so those ADHD symptoms become way more visible, which was definitely the case for me and for so many women that I know. So what's happening there is we have sleep disruption, we have brain fog, we have brain function shifting our changes in focus, our ability to receive information, organize complex ideas, keep track of complex ideas, like hold space for everything, prioritize competing demands. There's all these pieces of executive functioning, even if you don't have adhd, that just become more challenging. And all of that becomes harder to hold together when your hormone levels are shifting in dramatic directions and sometimes in all different directions depending on the hormone. So the distinction here is that your capability has not diminished or decreased, but the conditions that you need to perform at that level have. And until you have the right support in place, you need to be really aware of, okay, what are the conditions that I need to be able to perform at the level that I'm used to performing. Because if you're not able to figure that out, all your work always feels like crap. I can tell you, for someone as, uh, someone who experienced that. So being able to understand what that looks like, feels like, and then be able to set yourself up for success in that way becomes really important. When we're looking at how we show up and what it feels like to show up. When that executive functioning shifts for us and that cognitive functioning shifts for us, there's also some things that shift that can also really compromise confidence. And so the second thing I want to talk about is how perimenopause and menopause symptoms can really undermine our confidence in different ways because of the way that our brain is responsive in different ways than it used to be. And so this can look like forgetting a word and during a presentation or being like, in the middle of an uh, a high stakes conversation or kind of key moment. And all of a sudden you Completely lose your train of thought. And you're like, I was just getting to the critical part and now I don't remember anything I was gonna say. This can look like feeling anxious in situations that did not used to create anxiety, especially if you're someone who has never had anxiety before. For me, as someone who has had anxiety, this looked like panic for me. So I had some weird panic around things that did not used to cause anxiety, that didn't, uh, that made no sense. And it wasn't anxiety that I've experienced my whole life. It was like a different feeling of panic and it was a much more intense feeling for me. So when we have those moments of losing our train of thought or forgetting a word or just being in this moment and being, wait, where was I again? That faltering that way or feeling fumbling that way can definitely undermine our confidence and then make us feel a little like a little baby Doe, a little shaky the next time we go out to do something where the stakes are really high again. And I had this happen to me multiple times while speaking on stage where I would lose my train of thought or I would lose a word. I couldn't get it. And, uh, it made me over rehearse for everything because I was so worried that was going to happen. And I found that over rehearsing actually made me less confident on stage. So it became this vicious cycle that I really did not love. So the distinction here is that this temporary change in cognitive function or cognitive fluency is not the same as a lot actual, uh, loss of intelligence or credibility or actual leadership skill or potential. It's the way your brain is currently functioning is definitely different than how it used to function. So either you need to put some things in place to support you in terms of being able to set up optimal conditions for your brain, or you need to talk to your doctor about how you can get your hormones re regulated so that you can access what you need to access. It's so wild to me. After starting hrt, which I hadn't even realized how kind of losing my train of thought had become so common for me. After starting hrt, I realized like probably a month or two. And I was like, oh my gosh, I haven't lost my train of thought in a high, uh, stakes conversation in a couple months now. And I didn't realize how often it was happening until it wasn't happening anymore. And then I was like, oh my gosh, that hasn't happened in quite a while. This is really lovely. Such a nice surprise. Because that, for me, wasn't even one of the more pressing symptoms that I was having. It was just something I noticed over time, but also felt had always been there. Because, again, it's a slow burn. It had built up over the course of years, since my early 40s and since becoming a mom and having a lot of life chaos and all these different things. So I was just like, I don't know, I guess that's just like something that happens as you get older. And then it completely went away. Like, I don't lose. Not that I don't ever lose a word or ever have, like a. An issue with word recall, but I don't lose my train of thought in the same way. And I don't lose words for phrases and people's names like I used to. I used to lose people's names. People, uh, who I had known for a very long time. And I'd be, like, looking right at them and be like, I don't know their name and like, I've known them for 20 years and they're standing right in front of me and what's their name again? It was the weirdest, like, short circuiting thing ever. This episode is supported by Monarch. Everyone has a story with money. Everyone has a relationship with money. For me, mine started when I was a really little girl, and yours maybe started when you were a child as well. My story with money started with always feeling like there might not be enough and feeling scared and fearful around, what if we run out and what if we don't have enough? I didn't have control over my parents money, obviously, and the way they talked about money always made me feel like we were on the brink of, you know, not making it to the next payday, not being able to buy the next meal. And that was a scary feeling growing up. And it's taken a lot of undoing, unlearning, relearning, rewriting my narrative around money to shift things for me. And Monarch has helped with that. Monarch is a personal finance app that lets you see in any given moment, exactly what money you have and where it's sitting. Whether it's in retirement account, retirement accounts, or checking or savings. You can see how your money's working for you. You can see how you're moving toward your goals. You can confirm at any given moment, do you have enough to make it till Friday or to the next payday or next month or next year? This has been tremendously helpful for me and really constantly seeing what is the story I'm writing with my money and how is my money working for me so that it feels like I have power over this and this is a narrative that I can control, which I love. I also love that if things start to shift or go sideways or change in any direction, all the built in AI tools inside of Monarch will let me know so I always feel safe and secure. Rewrite your own money story with Monarch use the code shamelessonarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at ah monarch.com with the code Shameless. Want smoother, brighter skin without adding another complicated step to your routine? Try Daily Microfoliant from Dermalogica. This exfoliating powder activates with water to gently polish away dull, flaky skin, leaving it feeling smoother and looking brighter. It's gentle enough to use every day, so keeping your skin looking healthy and fresh is easy. Ready to see the difference? Visit dermalogica.com and use code SMOOTHART for an exclusive gift with your $65 purchase. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doomscrolling Smart Move. Another smart move getting help from one of State Farm's 19,000 local agents when you choose. Bundle, home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with the personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer availability, amount of discounts, and savings and eligibility vary by state. Okay, Number three Perimenopause and menopause can reduce your tolerance for dysfunction. And so when you have a reduced tolerance for dysfunction or reduced tolerance for chaos, or reduced tolerance for like uncertainty, unpredictability, you're you can become someone you don't want to be in tense moments. So in work moments for me, I was able to hold it together. I'm like an excellent masker. I can mask till the cows come home. I can figure myself out and hold my things, my stuff together. But where I couldn't do that anymore was at home. So where the stakes are a little lower, I would find myself really mad about things. But knowing you're way too mad right now, this is a level of mad that is not appropriate to the situation or really sad or really whatever. Just really strong emotions. And recognizing this emotion does not match the situation. But it's also very real. The intensity of it is very real. And so when you're feeling that in the workplace, being able to having to hold that and try to balance it and show up in a way that's still workplace appropriate is really challenging. And so you might find yourself where you're, maybe you're speaking out, you're saying things that are like more bold than necessary or more bold than you used to, but also maybe more gruff than necessary or maybe even aggressive where you're like, I'm gonna get myself in trouble. Maybe you're having poor boundaries around something. Maybe you're like getting into drama or workplace politics or being opinionated in a way that isn't actually adding value. It's just, you can't hold yourself back. But it's also just a waste of your time. But you can't help yourself. So there's almost an impulsivity to it because the, your emotions are stronger and your reactions are stronger. You might feel chronic urgency. You might find yourself carrying other people's emotional labor, which that was one that came up for me. If other people are all sad around me, then I'm going to feel so, so sad too. If everyone else is all fired up, I'm going to feel really fired up. So I'm had a hard time like regulating emotion around people because I would take on whatever they took on and then take it onto the next level. So that doesn't become sustainable in leadership. That doesn't allow you to be a leader who is empowering others or who really has your act together and can stay well regulated in situations that call for that. And so that can be really challenging. So the distinction here is recognizing you're not becoming less patient or tolerant or more difficult. It's that you're having these mood and hormone fluctuations and you're like legitimately less willing to put up with certain things and less able to buffer certain things. And so that's all real, but it's all fixable if you can get your hormones back and re regulated, if you can have a doctor helping you with that. Next is that this whole situation creates a whole nother workload for you. And so on top of all the decision making and kind of never um, ending task lists and things that you have to compartmentalize in your leadership and in your life, and especially if you're also a caregiver, this becomes its whole own thing as well, where you're like, okay, now I'm tracking symptoms and I'm making appointments and I'm trying to do research and I'm like consulting with doctors and I'm asking friends for what they're going through and I'm like doing chat, GPT or Claude, like research and Google research, what have you. I'm going to appointments. I'm. I'm doing medication trials and hormone trials, and I'm tracking some symptoms with that. I'm going to different pharmacies because if you haven't heard, there's an estrogen patch shortage nationwide. So it becomes this whole other workload, and having that added to everything else. Again, we only have so much capacity. And so if I'm having to put 10% of my day's energy into how I'm managing my hormones on any given day, or maybe more than 10% on any given day, then that's another workload thing. And dudes are not doing that. Dudes are not spending. I literally, multiple times this month, spent hours on the phone calling around to find patches for myself. And then I had a friend going through a crisis, and I was trying to help her pick up some slack in her life, and she needed patches and she couldn't get them. And I was like, I got you. I'll do it for you. And so I was calling around for her a week later, hours and hours on the phone, trying to get medication refills and, uh, show me the dude that's doing that. So the mental load and the actual workload, task load, very real. And so recognizing that yet again, we are carrying multiple balls in the air and trying to keep everything afloat. And so you're so giving yourself a little grace for that. But recognizing this is a legit demand, and it is something that you need to be responsible for and you want to be responsible for it. Because I can also tell you that when you take on this responsibility, while there can be some heavy lifting up front, oh, my goodness, the payoff and the results for everything else I just mentioned, getting so much better is, like, so well worth it. Especially again, if you have the right doctor, the right care team and support team helping you through this. And then the last thing I want to touch on is how the Season of Life invites you to redefine what sustainable leadership is for you. And I actually think this part is really great, but it can be frustrating at first. And so I actually have a friend who's a little bit older than me, and she started going through this phase a few years before me where she was like, I just don't. I'm unwilling to constantly be, like, hustling and pushing and being, like, overly ambitious. I don't need to. She's like, my job is fine and my income is fine, and I don't need to be, like, constantly reaching and Climbing higher and higher. That doesn't feel right to me anymore. And it was funny when she was doing, when this started for her, I was like, that's great. And I love that you're recognizing this for yourself. And I was kind of watching how she was, like, getting more intentional around rest and recharging. And I was like, that's amazing. And I, uh, wasn't there yet. And then I started to get there and I was like, oh, I get it. Where you're like, I don't need to get to the top anymore. Uh, not that I'm not ambitious and not that I don't care about my work, and not that I don't want to have an, you know, impact or build a great legacy, but there is something that shifts around what allows for ease and contentment and joy and connection to purpose and meaning and what feels sustainable. And I actually think that it's a really lovely element of permission that you can find yourself granting yourself around. There's a lot of things where good enough is good enough, and that's actually really nice, especially if you've been a high achiever your whole life or super ambitious your whole life, where you're like, do I need to be the best at everything? Do I need to, you know, push myself so hard in every capacity? And for me, where I've talked about this on the show before, is enjoying being bad at things, like enjoying being bad at skiing or pickleball or giving myself permission to start a podcast and be like, I don't know where it's going to go. We'll just see. And so permission to just try things and kind of see, rather than this really intense pressure about everything needing to be the very best and really perfect and look so great to the outside world. And I think there's something really great in that. And so being able to redefine what's sustainable for us in terms of sustainable energy management, sustainable leadership practices, sustainable behaviors and habits that support us in the workplace, out of the workplace. And so thinking through, what do you want that to look like for yourself? And where can you create some invitations to yourself to sit down and rest for a minute? If you've gotten this far in life, you deserve to sit down and rest, probably way more than you do. So what I want you to be thinking about is how you can recognize and acknowledge how things have shifted for you over the years. What are the symptoms that you have noticed and maybe not given attention to? Where are the care providers? Who are the care providers and the people in your life who are able to speak to you about this and able to give you a clear understanding of what is happening in your body. And if you are anywhere between the ages of 35 and 55 and someone is like, oh, that doesn't apply to you yet, run the other way. Because anyone who has seen patients between the ages of 35 and 55, and some doctors would say that window is maybe even wider, should be able to speak to how this is either impacting you right now or going to impact you very soon. And what you can do to support yourself and what they can do to support you, because that is their job. And if they do not have the credentials and qualifications to do that, then they should be sending you to someone who can, because that is their job as a healthcare provider. That is their, the, uh, ethical standards of the industry. To do no harm would be like, hey, if I can't help you, I'm going to point you to someone who can. I'm going to refer you elsewhere to a specialist, because that's what this profession is ethically obligated to do as a general baseline standard of care. So, number one, I want you to ask for the support that you need in from your medical providers and also in the workplace. And you don't need to go be like, hey, I'm having some pause, whatever. You don't need to out yourself in that way. But hey, if you need to crack a window, if you're dealing with chronic pain, get a sit down, stand up desk or stand up in meetings, I can't tell you. In the last five years, I don't think I've sat in a meeting that's more than an hour long without having to go stand in the back of the room, literally in five years. And because my hips and backs start to hurt and everyone who's in a meeting with me knows that at some point I'm going to go stand in the back of the room, unless I'm leading the thing, in which case I'll be standing in the front of the room. But I can't sit in a chair around a table or in a conference situation for more than an hour. So asking for the support that you need, letting it be known and in the medical from your medical care providers, and then also workplace support, separating your changes in performance and changes in how you show up from competence and capability, you are not less competent, you are not less capable. You just need to access your competencies and your capabilities in different ways and so recognizing how you need to do that now and what supports you need in place to, to do that. Building leadership practices around your current capacity. How are you building practices that are sustainable around the current capacity that you have? How are you giving yourself the grace and permission that you need to be in this season as you are and to take care of yourself in this season? And what would you say to your daughter or sister or best friend if she was experiencing the things that you're experiencing? Would you tell her to just push through and not take care of herself? You absolutely would not. So whatever you would tell to her, you know, to, you know, to support her and take good care of her, that is what you need to be telling to yourself. And then defining what leadership looks like and feels like for you in this stage so that it can feel good, so that you can be connected to your purpose and your passion and work that is meaningful. Because you're going to start to recognize that there's a whole bunch of things that don't have meaning to you that maybe once did. Let those things go. It is so freeing. Let them go. And then really get clear on. These are the things that matter. These are the things I'm building legacy around. These are the ways and capacities in which I want to grow, in which I want to show up, in which I want to be known for and double down on those things and dive into those things and let a lot of the other stuff go and also do that in a way where you're, like, not taking everything so seriously for yourself to let it be known. Yeah, I'm letting some things go right now. And this thing over here, that's one of them. I can only care about so many things so deeply. And so that is one of the things I'm not. I'm choosing to not care about right now. Giving yourself permission to have some levity around, that can also be really freeing, but also absolutely be modeling to other women that we don't have to carry everything. And at a certain point in your life, the more you can model that, the more you can model, uh, recognizing some of the burdens that were placed on our shoulders without our consent and deciding that you're no longer going to carry them, the better it is for all of us. Which leads to my last strategy for you here. Please share what you learn about your body and what you're learning about perimenopause and menopause as you're learning it with the women around you. Because I, uh, cannot tell you how regularly I am shocked by women who know nothing about this still, my social media feed is just packed, like, all the algorithms know. Oh, Sarah Dean center, all of your parent menopause, everything. All your menopause, like, all the things, right? But people who are not on social media, who are not getting, who don't have some sort of, like, algorithm. There are so many women who don't know what is happening to their body and they think they are losing it. They think they're like, this is just what happens. At a certain age, women just go crazy. And there's a narrative around that is absolutely unacceptable that women lose their mind in their 50s and that women just. Everything just starts to fall apart. It doesn't have to be that way. And we need to disown that narrative and we need to take responsibility for disowning that narrative because we are doing no one, any service when we are holding onto that. We need to be modeling to other women and helping other women understand what's happening, because it's going to happen to them, too, if it hasn't already. And we need every man in our life to understand that. This is what half of the world deals with. Like, you are not in the minority. This is what half of the world deals with this. Every woman who has a uterus deals with this. This is not an uncommon thing. And yet when it's just you in the office dying from your 30th hot flash of the day, cultural conditioning will tell you that you're the only person and you shouldn't make a stink about it. Go crack the window for the other woman in the room who's also having a hot flash and doesn't want to say anything. Or for the woman who's 22 years old and needs to know, hey, sister, at a certain point in your life, you're going to hope people are cracking windows for you too, right? Like, this is what we do for each other. So please share with other women what you're learning as you're learning it, because no woman should be in the dark about what the season looks like, because no woman should have to try to navigate this as if nothing is happening. No woman should have their doctor tell them that nothing's actually happening to your body when you're 54 years old. There are many things happening to your body when you are 54 years old and in the 10 years prior to that and for many of us, in the 20 years prior to that. So I hope this was helpful. Share this episode out with other women in your network who you think would benefit from it. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. I can't wait to be back with you next week, and until then, know that I'm in this with you always. Thank you so much for being here and allowing me to spend time in your ear today. I take that responsibility very seriously. If you're interested in learning more about my speaking training and executive coaching services, you can go to saradeen.com that's S A R A D E A N dot com if you have follow up questions or comments about this episode, please come join me on LinkedIn@saradeen.com LinkedIn there's nothing I love more than a listener dropping into my DMs. Thank you for taking the time to show up for yourself today. I see you, I hear you, and I am holding space for you today and every single day. Experience a membership that backs what you're building with American Express Business Platinum. Enjoy complimentary access to the American Express Global Lounge Collection and apply to find out your welcome offer, which could be as high as 300,000 Membership Rewards points. American Express Business Platinum there's nothing like it. Terms apply, welcome offers vary, and you may not be eligible for an offer. Learn more at americanexpress. Com Business Platinum.