I was taught to hide. Periods. Breasts. Pain.
From puberty to postpartum, I learned that a woman’s body should be private, sanitized, minimized, never named. So I did what so many of us do.

I tucked tampons up my sleeve. Covered up while nursing. Disguised my postpartum body to look like I’d bounced back. And mostly, I stayed quiet.

Even as I coached other women to speak up. Even as I built a career helping leaders unlearn their armor and tell the truth. I kept parts of my own truth off-limits. Then came the shift I couldn’t ignore.

The sleep issues I blamed on stress. The mood swings I chalked up to overwork. The moments I stood in a meeting and forgot what I was saying—mid-sentence.

No one had prepared me for this. Not doctors. Not school. Not the self-help books I’d spent years swimming in. No version of midlife came with a map.

So I started looking.

Not just for information, but for language. For proof that this wasn’t just happening to me. And what I found—again and again—were women whispering what they really wanted to scream:

“I thought it was just me.”

Midlife Reframed™ was born from that collective whisper. A place to talk about what’s really happening in our bodies, our ambitions, our relationships—without shame or shrinkage.

It’s not a hot-flash survival kit. It’s a permission slip. To stop saying “I’m fine.” To stop disappearing.

Because the truth is:
We’re not fading.
We’re arriving.

And we’re not asking permission this time.

When I asked my mom about menopause, she said, “I never really thought about it.” That was the extent of her insight. To be fair, it was about the same level of information she gave me when I got my period.

Back then though, I felt informed. We had sex ed in school, and a few girls in my class were far ahead of their age, leaving little mystery about what was coming. But menopause was different. No one talked about it. There was no version of sex ed for midlife.

It hit during mid-Covid, when I was already deep in anxiety about what was happening at work. I didn’t even realize it was perimenopause… I just assumed the sleeplessness and heart-racing panic were the by-products of a world unraveling.

It wasn’t until later, after I launched peoplepower.ai and that stress disappeared, that I realized something else hadn’t gone away. The 101-degree “mystery fevers,” the night sweats, the unpredictable swings between calm and chaos. That’s when it hit me. This wasn’t just stress. This was menopause.

And yet, even knowing it happened “around middle age,” I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I could possibly be old enough for it.

Midlife Reframed™ grew out of that moment - the realization that the silence around this transition has left generations of women unprepared, uninformed, and often ashamed. This isn’t about getting through it quietly or pretending it’s not happening.

It’s about naming it, owning it, and redefining what this stage means. Not decline or invisibility, but evolution and power. 

This is what 50 looks like: confident, bold, fully alive, and finally, unwilling to stay quiet.