Who This Is For: Every Midlife Woman, and Every Helper and Healer Who Serves Her

I am writing this to YOU, the 1 Woman reading this right now.

You may be reading it because a friend encouraged you to. You may have found it at 3 in the morning, awake again, searching for a reason you feel the way you do.

However this book reached you, I am so thankful that it did.

The Woman Nobody Sat Down With

Nobody sits you down and explains what happens in a Woman's body from 35 onward. There is no appointment for it and no class. Most Women learn about Midlife the hard way, through unnecessary suffering.

For a long time now, I have been giving a free Midlife talk. It runs 2 hours, and in it I pour out everything I have learned about this season of a Woman's life.

Learning everything I have over the years has cost me tens of thousands of dollars. None of my insurance-covered practitioners and doctors were knowledgeable in what is in this book, so none of them could help and guide me.

I had to find Functional Medicine practitioners and pay out of pocket for the appointments, the labs, my medication, my supplements, and everything else insurance did not cover. That is what it cost me to get the care and the education Midlife Women are not being given.

I put myself through trainings, and I got myself well. I did it so this path would be far easier for the Women who come after me, and for the helpers and healers who sit with them every week.

This book is the Midlife talk, grown all the way up. It expands everything I could fit into a mere 2 hours.

I know there is pain and suffering in life. Grief, loss, and change come to every 1 of us.

This book is here to lift the unnecessary suffering, the kind that comes from a thyroid nobody fully tested, a ferritin nobody read against the right ruler, and sex hormones nobody checked at all.

Who This Book Is For

I picture a Woman in her 30's, 40's, 50's, or beyond. She may be saying, 'I don't feel like myself.' She may sleep and still wake exhausted, feel tired all day and wired at night, and lean on sugar and caffeine to keep going.

Her hair may be falling out. Her brain fog may be awful. She may not really care about sex anymore, and that may quietly scare her.

If that is you, this book is yours.

If you are in your 50's, 60's, or 70's, it is yours too. Your body keeps responding to good care at every age.

Why This Guide Exists

I created this guide for Midlife Women across the United States, so you do not have to find your own way through this season while you are also living inside brain fog, fatigue, and every other symptom this guide names.

· · ·

No single doctor's job is to walk a Woman through everything happening to her in Midlife on the Physical, Mental, Emotional, Relational, and Spiritual layers at once.

Endocrinologists treat glands, therapists treat minds, OB-GYNs treat your reproductive organs, and urologists treat your urinary tract, each within its own scope.

None of them is tasked with helping your primary care physician see the whole picture, and no single one of them is positioned to hold it themselves.

Even OB-GYNs, the specialists you would most expect to have Midlife covered, mostly trained in residency programs with no dedicated Menopause curriculum.

This guide was also built to put a real dent in the 5 crises in Part 1. It gives you the actual physiology, the actual testing, and the actual language to bring into your doctor's office. The goal is fewer Midlife Women, 35 to 65 and beyond, spending years inside an antidepressant, an undiagnosed Autoimmune condition, or a string of misdiagnoses that a properly checked hormone panel might have explained.

You have every right to feel like yourself. You have every right to feel great energy.

Why This Book Is Also for Therapists, Helpers, and Healers

I also picture the helpers and healers of the world: psychotherapists, yoga teachers, bodyworkers, educators, Reiki practitioners, and spiritual teachers. I picture the Women who come to you, too. In large numbers, they are Midlife Women.

Our yoga teachers are innocent. When a student says she has anxiety or depression, a teacher may offer a sound bath or a morning practice, and it helps in the short term. She has simply never been trained to help her student look further.

Many helpers and healers hear a Woman say 'anxiety' or 'depression' and send her to a therapist. Most therapists were never trained in Midlife physiology either. We have to do a better job with this.

Yoga cannot raise your ferritin. A sound bath cannot fix your thyroid.

Every helper, every healer 'should' know, and I put 'should' in quotes because I'm not a fan of the word, and should have a physician, a functional physician, that they can refer their students and clients to.

I can be that person, and it does not have to be me. When a student or client describes the symptoms in these pages, send her to themidlifementor.org. Start where it's free.

The 5 Layers, in Short

Physical. This is the layer that answers to numbers: ferritin at 70 instead of 17, vitamin D at 60 instead of 22, progesterone drawn at the right point in your cycle instead of never. It is the ground the other 4 layers stand on, so this book starts here.

Mental. Estrogen feeds your brain directly, including the regions doing your memory and your clear thinking. The brain fog of this season is real and physiological, and for many Women it eases once the hormones, the gut, and the inflammation are addressed.

Emotional. For so many Women, Midlife arrives as an identity quake. Perimenopause removes the physiological scaffolding under the competence, vitality, and motivation you built your sense of Self on, and it often brings real grief with it.

Relational. The layer nobody warns you about. When testosterone drops, desire, patience, and the wish to be close often drop with it, and a Woman may not know why.

Spiritual. The body is the vessel, the host for the Spirit, and you cannot pour from an empty vessel. A nourished, regulated body is what lets the Soul settle in and stay.

What I Believe

The scientist in me wants to know your ferritin, your vitamin D, and where you are in your cycle. The mystic in me wants to know whether you feel what Joseph Campbell called the rapture of being Alive.

I have come to see that these 2 questions belong together. When we are off in the Physical layer, we are going to be off in the Spiritual layer too. They go hand in hand.

So this book gives you the facts and the heart, side by side. The real mechanisms, the named tests, and the numbers sit right next to the grief, the tenderness, and the longing to feel like yourself again.

I am an educator. I am here to help you understand your body and walk into your next appointment with better questions. Every medication and every dose decision stays with you and your prescriber.

· · ·

For Midlife, I found my answers with Functional Medicine practitioners, who look at how all your systems work together and search for the root cause underneath each symptom. They are incredible detectives.

I believe your body has been responding, intelligently and for good reason, to everything it has been carrying. Your symptoms are a language, and this book will help you learn to read it.

· · ·

Above all, I believe you deserve to feel Alive in your own body again.

What I Hope You Feel, and What I Hope You Do

I want you to feel seen, heard, and validated. There is a reason so many Women in Midlife feel burnt out. Burnout is real, and much of it has physiology you can test.

Like me, you are not going to get your old life back.

My Midlife was a wrecking ball to my life. And I got a much better life back.

· · ·

This is you being tired and achy and foggy. This is not getting old, and low libido is not getting old. That's nonsense.

· · ·

When a Woman's body finally gets what it needs, I watch the light go back on. It can feel like coming up for a big gulp of air after being underwater, and then looking at your life again with clear eyes.