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This Is Perimenopause
Menopause isn’t the end, it’s just the beginning. Hosts Michelle and Mikelle are on a mission to help others be better informed than they were when they started their perimenopause journeys. The podcast is a blend of health, education, mindset, and personal growth. Michelle and Mikelle along with their guests are sharing real-life stories and expert advice to help you navigate perimenopause, menopause and beyond.
This Is Perimenopause
Learning To Advocate for Your Best Health in Perimenopause with Shirley Weir
Menopause is having a moment right now, but Shirley Weir has been leading the charge since 2012 when she founded Menopause Chicks. Shirley has spent over a decade providing women with evidence-based information and a supportive community during this transformative life stage.
Today, Shirley shares her personal journey from an overwhelmed perimenopausal woman to a passionate health advocate. She offers practical advice for navigating the often confusing world of menopause, from dealing with symptoms to communicating effectively with healthcare providers.
In this episode, you'll discover:
- Why Google isn't your friend when it comes to menopause information - and where to find reliable resources instead
- The power of small, consistent actions in managing menopause symptoms
- How to advocate for yourself in healthcare appointments
- Why "perimenopause" doesn’t need to be a synonym for suffering
- Practical tips for partners supporting women through menopause
Whether you're just starting your menopause journey or supporting someone who is, Shirley's insights will empower you to take charge of your health and well-being.
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The masterclass was born really because, if you ask me what I thought one of the biggest gaps is in women's health, it's that often in grade six or grade seven, we're taught how to make a baby and then the following week we're taught how not to make a baby, and that's usually it. Officially it, my masterclass, is known to be the best health class you've had since grade seven, which is a bit of a joke because not many of us have had a health class since grade seven. When you walk away from the masterclass, you'll understand the roles and responsibilities of our hormones major hormones when cycles are regular, so you can make a plan or a health plan for yourself when they're no longer regular.
Michelle:Welcome to. This is Perimenopause, the podcast where we delve into the transformative journey of perimenopause and beyond. I'm one of your hosts, Michelle.
Mikelle:And I'm your other host, Michelle, and we know firsthand how confusing, overwhelming and downright lonely this phase of life can be.
Michelle:Join us as we share real life stories and expert advice to help you navigate this journey and advocate for your best health.
Mikelle:We used to think menopause signaled an end, but really it's just the beginning. Millions of women struggle every year to find reliable information and support for their perimenopause and menopause symptoms. You're not alone. It's happening to all of us, and many of us are intimidated during our healthcare appointments and we leave without the answers that we came there looking for. But we're hoping to help change all that today.
Mikelle:Please meet Shirley Weir, the founder of Menopause Chicks. An impassionate women's health advocate, she's been blazing trails for over a decade, empowering women to take charge of their midlife health. Shirley is a three-time author, tedx speaker and has even tweeted for Oprah. Her work addresses critical gaps in women's health education, particularly in areas like vaginal health, where her research shows that 77% of women have questions but struggle to find reliable answers. With a thriving community of over 300,000 members, shirley's on a mission to ensure that every woman has the resources they need to feel amazing during perimenopause, menopause and beyond. From finding reliable information to advocating for yourself at your doctor's office, shirley's got you covered, so let's dive in.
Mikelle:Welcome to the show, shirley. Thanks so much for coming. Thank you for having me. I'm excited. So are we so great to see you again? I think we'll just jump right in. We've got lots of stuff to cover because you've got so much information and we want it all. I think we can all agree menopause is having a bit of a moment right now, but you've actually been doing this since 2012, if I'm correct.
Shirley:Yeah, I launched 12 years ago. Oh my God, that's crazy.
Mikelle:We would love for you to share your story about what you were going through at the time and what led you to start the menopause chicks community.
Shirley:Sure. So thanks for asking to tickle my memory bank. I, you know, much like many of your listeners probably. I was in my early 40s juggling all the things. I had a small business, I had two small children, I had my aging mother living with us who was showing some memory or cognitive decline. And you know I was pushing through, because that's what we do.
Shirley:And then, when it started to impact my health, my sleep, my stress I didn't call it burnout in those days, but the rear view mirror has taught me a lot I really was looking for something to blame, because it certainly wasn't going to be me. I didn't have time and so I thought I know I'll blame perimenopause, but I'll do it in such a way that I will do all the right things. I'll show up at my doctor's appointment. I'll say to her, at the tail end of an appointment that was already running overtime, by the way, I think I'm showing signs of menopause, right, and God bless her. She's amazing. But she's like Shirley, you're 41. You're too young, you want to go back on the pill, like really. It just wasn't a very enlightening or informed conversation, and I say that now because I didn't show up informed. I had no idea what was happening. So, anyway, that is one part of the story that I tell in the menopause chicks journey.
Shirley:Another part that I tell is my sister's, and she's been very generous in allowing me to share her story. But she's 10 and a half years older than I am and she has a completely different health experience than me, so she reached menopause at age 36. Oh, wow, this was in the early nineties, um, and her doctor basically said, uh, good luck, but you should go and investigate this and this because everything's going to dry up and your boobs are going to sag, and and sent her out into the great wild looking for support. Now, luckily, my sister is very smart and savvy, and so she found experts that she needed to, and that's really where, like, we didn't call it this at the time, but it's where I got the phrase how to be your own best health advocate, because I watched my sister do that.
Shirley:Yeah, and then the third thing is really I like I love changing conversations, I love shifting paradigms, and so when I was going through sort of my own experiences and looked online and I'd been on Facebook for a few years, but you know I wasn't yet on Instagram or any of the other channels and I was like, wait, where's everybody going to clarify and find out what's true, what's not? And really, can you show me the shortest distance between two points? Because I got to get there. So that's how Menopause Chicks was born.
Michelle:Amazing. How have you continued this for 12 years? And the reason I say that is the work you do and what it. We know a little bit about what it has taken you to achieve what you have. How have you persevered?
Shirley:I have a lot of tenacity. I don't have a lot of other things, but I have a lot of tenacity.
Shirley:And you know I will tell members of my community that, especially when I'm advocating on their behalf or helping them advocate for themselves because sometimes it's a bit of both I am like a dog with a bone, like, oh, that didn't work. Okay, let's ask about this, ask about this and ask about this, and we'll just keep peeling back the layers of the onion until we get there. And so I think that's probably a good analogy to menopause chicks Like, yeah, it's been 12 years. Is that like a minute in the overall timeline of women's, the journey of women's health? Yeah, it is, and we have a lot of work left to do.
Michelle:Yeah, Maybe for our listeners who aren't haven't met you yet online, haven't aren't familiar with you Maybe you could just describe what Menopause Chicks is.
Shirley:Absolutely so. Menopause Chicks is an online community and an online resource center where you can access quality, evidence-based health information. I am not a health professional. I do have a certificate in peer counseling and I have, I think, just this amazing ability to take complex information and translate it into what it could mean for you. So you're not coming to Menopause Chicks to get advice per se or an opinion. You're coming to Menopause Chicks to be like. I got to narrow this content down to something that is palatable and I can either take on my own journey as I navigate sleep and stress, or maybe it's something I want to take to my next doctor's appointment.
Michelle:Right, and you have a master class correct.
Shirley:I do. I have a master class. Tell us a little bit about that. Sure, so the master class was born, really? Because, if you ask me what I thought, one of the biggest gaps is in women's health. It's that often in grade six or grade seven, we're taught how to make a baby and then the following week we're taught how not to make a baby, and that's usually it. My masterclass is known to be the best health class you've had since grade seven, which is a bit of a joke, because not many of us have had a health class with grade seven. When you walk away from the masterclass, you'll understand the roles and responsibilities of our hormones major hormones when cycles are regular, so you can make a plan or a health plan for yourself when they're no longer regular.
Michelle:Amazing.
Mikelle:And also you've got something new you launched last year I believe it was last year called the Nest.
Shirley:Yeah, so the Nest is a soft place to land and it's two things. It's a place for my members who really want to clarify, like they're on a learning journey, but they're not doing this all day, every day, Like I am. They have like other jobs and other responsibilities so they might get information, but then they need to come and say, okay, is what I'm thinking true? Can I do this, what should I ask? So it's that. And then the other part of the nest that's really exciting for me is, once we kind of lift the lid on this topic and you guys know this too other things come up. So my members are like well, okay, so what about sleep? What about sexual health? What about bone health? What do I need to know about pelvic health? So it gives us this opportunity or forum to take menopause, which might have been sort of the lead in to explore other things for our health for the next 50 years.
Mikelle:It's fantastic and it really yeah, and it really brings true to what Mikkel and I are trying to do, too, is create that soft landing place. I feel like women need someone to hold their hand and someone to tell them they're not alone, and someone to to see them and hear them and validate them. So thank you for thank you for doing all that you're doing, Thank you.
Michelle:Maybe we can talk a little bit about how menopause and the menopause movement has evolved. You know we've I think we've made some gains, but you know there are still some major deficiencies that need to be addressed. So what is it? What has the evolution been like in your experience.
Shirley:Yeah, thank, thank you for saying that. I think I think there's a saying that says sometimes things will get worse before they get better. Yep, sure, sure it does exist, yeah, so when I started doing this work, it was like you could hear crickets. It was so lonely. There was no one else doing it. Even amongst my own peer group I had friends who were saying I'm not there yet, shirley, don't talk to me about that. And I also had other people who said, oh, menopause, been there, done that. That doesn't apply to me, and so if you took those misinterpretations literally, that would make for a really small target market. Actually, it just reminded me I had someone tell me once I was at a dinner party and he asked me what I did and I told him I'm the founder of Menopause Chicks and he goes wow, that's really niche. And I said yeah, for half of the population.
Michelle:Jesus speaks to your tenacity, wow.
Shirley:But yeah, so I mean to your question. I think where we are right now is we are headed in a positive direction, but it continues to be a journey with hills and bumps along the way, and a lot of the noise will hopefully eventually fall by the wayside. And when I say noise, I mean the perpetuation of stereotypes, the outdated old information that keeps kind of getting like pulled up into the everyday conversation, the misinterpretation that happens in media from marketers and from the medical community sometimes and yeah, we're all humans, like a hundred percent of us will not get it a hundred percent right. A hundred percent of the time I get that. But we're heading someplace good and I have a daughter who's 21. So she was quite young when I started this journey, and my son as well, and they have grown up with their mother being a menopause chick. So every day I am here doing this because their generation is going to have an easier time.
Mikelle:I love this.
Michelle:Yeah, so, so important. You know, in your role as a health advocate, what are some of the biggest misconceptions and myths that, or myths that you see that are persisting.
Shirley:Yeah, I think one of the biggest misperceptions is that women are meant to suffer. And then into this conversation it's that the words perimenopause and menopause and postmenopause are synonyms for symptoms and suffering. Those are a lot of S words, but perimenopause is not a synonym for suffering. It's a life phase. Do some of us suffer Absolutely? Do we deserve to feel amazing? Absolutely.
Shirley:So let's close the gap on. You know, getting from A to B. But a headline you know a magazine headline or a search engine optimized headline on an. You know a magazine headline or a search engine optimized headline on a blog post. It doesn't do any of us any good if all it does is to continue to perpetuate this. You know, when a girl gets her period, she can expect pain and then for the next 90 years, let's just tell her all the ways that she can suffer. That's not right. 90 years, let's just tell her all the ways that she can suffer. That's not right. But there's another M word that is not being discussed all that much and that is money. Yeah, anytime you put 1 billion women into a spreadsheet, the business case will get approved. It doesn't matter if it's evidence-based. It doesn't matter if it's leaning into old stereotypes. It doesn't matter if it's continuing to push women down. If it's making bankroll, it goes through.
Mikelle:Can we talk a little bit about that, because some of our listeners might not know what you mean by evidence-based information. So when they're going to Dr Google, there's a lot of stuff out there. What is evidence-based information? What should they be looking for? How do they find it? Google?
Shirley:is not a doctor. Google is an ad platform that made $232 billion in ad revenue last year. It's not even a library.
Mikelle:No.
Shirley:If we can stop thinking about Google as a library. We will make some inroads in this, because you and I could be the same age with the same date of last period, looking for the same information, and Google's algorithm will feed us different content. So I can't even it's really really hard to even use evidence-based information in the same sentence as Google.
Mikelle:So where do they find what is evidence-based information?
Shirley:Yeah. So evidence-based information is you know the output from accredited research organizations or entities? Do we have a lot of places to look in the world of menopause? No, we don't. But we have many world menopause societies who all sing off the same song sheet. They are all using and endorsing the same data that is available. That's a bit of a problem because we don't have a ton of research in this world on women's health, solely but taking the data and knowing that that is a reference point. So that's like job one, that's like base level. That's the speed limit on the highway, right, but sometimes you have to drive slower and sometimes you have to drive faster, right. So what's the baseline? And then the next step is for consumers and their health teams, their medical professionals, to be able to interpret that evidence and say this is what this means for you.
Mikelle:And so in North America, one of the best sources for evidence-based information would be the Menopause Society Correct, Formerly the North American Menopause Society and some of that is a little bit difficult for women to distill and to understand. So how do they? Are there any other sources?
Shirley:There's a position statement. So the most recent position statement from the Menopause Society is from 2022. The other day I was thinking about this. I'm like I bet I've read it like a thousand times. And then I was like, no, maybe I've read it more than that. Like I refer to sections of that position statement a lot probably more than any other medical professional but it is online and it's not restricted.
Shirley:Remember the olden days where you couldn't get to the evidence because it was in a binder on your doctor's shelf? We have to celebrate the fact that that is available and so if you want to review it yourself, you can. If you want to come to the menopause chicks community and have an interpretation, like apply sort of your own experience and get an interpretation. If you want to walk in, print that off and take it into your doctor and say I've highlighted these two places, I want to talk about this. I think that is amazing. Like this is an amazing example. That's a really great suggestion actually. This is really interesting. But the opposite of your question is actually taking a meme off of Instagram and thinking that it's evidence-based or that it applies to you and it's limited in characters in the post, and we have a lot of people who are making health decisions based on memes, so please stop Good advice Full stop, yeah, stop.
Mikelle:Good advice, full stop, yeah, yeah, great advice, shirley.
Michelle:how do you distill all of the information out there? What's your? What's your go-to move when you're doing that?
Shirley:I'll share a quick story with you. I'll share a quick story with you. I um I interview on my own podcast. Last summer I interviewed my daughter, who was 20 at the time, and my director and she was 25. And so their conversation was really interesting because they brought up the fact that they make fun of their mothers who say things like I read on Facebook that right, and so they mock us. And then they quickly admitted that if it's on Health Talk, which is T-O-K health information on TikTok, that they take it verbatim, they think it's absolutely right, must be right, it's on.
Mikelle:TikTok, it's terrifying. Yeah, my son comes home all the time and he's like this is the fact and I'm like, okay, what is your source? It's, yeah, it's concerning.
Shirley:This is a difficult thing to teach, but we do need to remind each other to trust our intuitions, right, like it's one thing to sign up for a masterclass and kind of get the 411 on how your hormones work and what this means, but that only works if you're really in tune with your own body, you're aligned with your values, what makes sense to you, right? That's where, then, the evidence-based information layered in will really resonate.
Mikelle:So what for the women that maybe have never been in tune, but maybe just are so out of tune with their body and their mental health right now and they're so lost and they're so confused and they're so just in a fog and I don't know what the question is here, guys. But where is the hope for those women? How do they start? But where is the hope for those women.
Shirley:How do they start? I think a really great place for women to start, especially if they're in a state of overwhelm, is some of those affirmations that I alluded to a minute ago. It's like I deserve to feel amazing If you can start there, even if you are like deeply firmly parked in, not yet amazing, but you know that you deserve. You have that aspiration or that affirmation. Then I would say that, yes, absolutely, surely. From menopause, chicks wants you to know about progesterone and how it's produced in the second half of your cycle and you're going to be like no thanks, can't absorb that right now. Too overwhelmed, too busy, too tired. I have an inverted pyramid that I try to walk my members through and it's interesting because hormone therapy falls at the bottom of that pyramid. It's like that might be just way too much information for you to take in right now. But at the top is eat, move and the biggie, sleep. So whatever you can do to prioritize your sleep, manage your stress if all you can do is go for a 10-minute walk in nature today, start there, because all of those things will eventually start to add up so that you can then get really curious about some of the changes that are coming down the line and curiosity, to be honest, is falling by the wayside, right, we're having conversations about is this true? They're not true.
Shirley:Somebody said this. Right, be really curious about. True, they're not true. Somebody said this right. Be really curious about. Is this happening to me? Could this be helpful to me? What role do I play and where do I need to ask for help? Do I need help with my sleep? Have I just been putting it on the back burner and claiming that I only need four hours of sleep a night? Right, it catches up with you.
Mikelle:Believe me, four hours of sleep a night. Right, it catches up with you. Believe me, yeah, I think everyone can raise their hand to that.
Michelle:Two things come to mind for me, shirley, when you talk about the inverted pyramid that you use, and the first is that there is no one thing that is going to fix where you're at and is going to help where you're at in the context of perimenopause and beyond. Right, it's about a toolkit that we all need to build, and it's going to take some time to build that, and it's going to start with maybe a 10-minute walk around the neighborhood, which some listeners might roll their eyes at. But please, please, please, don't discount the importance of all those small things, because it's all of those small things, applied consistently not perfectly right that are going to get you to where you need to be. The second thing it brings to mind and you just posted about this recently is the power of the word, and Maybe you could talk a little bit about the power of the word and in the context of the menopause transition.
Shirley:Sure, yeah, thanks. It just kind of came to me this past weekend where I was like that little word has such a big meaning when we're navigating our health, and so the first one, I think, was you can look okay and not be okay and really like to take that in. That was like part of my experience when I started menopause. Chicks was, people looked at me and was like, oh, you don't look like you're in menopause and I I'm like, do you know what it looks like? I am standing here with sleep deprivation for seven years, but I got things done, my kids were okay, they got to school on time, all the things happened right, and so it's sort of that delusional society that we live in.
Shirley:And then there's other things. I have to call up the post, actually, remember all the and examples. But you know, two things can be true at the same time. So you can be sitting in your doctor's office looking well, put together, present, well, have all the words and be calling in sick. You know, two, three days a week because of heavy, or a month, sorry, because of heavy bleeding, but no one really knows what that looks like, because magazines and media only put pictures up of gray haired ladies holding fans.
Mikelle:To that end, there was a newsletter that came out from a um that I subscribed to, from a pretty popular, I would say, menopause person today, and I was really surprised that it was this gray haired old and I thought, really, this is, this is who is representing menopause. I it it. It was very surprising to me coming from this person. I almost fell out of my chair, but yeah.
Shirley:Yeah, it's one of the hardest things for me to do is actually because I don't want to be in the business of calling others out. That's not what I do. Right, I'm just here for I want to be a curator and a purveyor of quality education and information. But right before I did my ted talk in 2016, there was an oprah magazine that came out and at first I couldn't even say the name of the magazine because I like I just I'm growing up with oprah, like I just love yeah, op content so much. And so the magazine came out and the front cover said hooray for hormones. And I was like, oh my God, Oprah and I think the same about this topic too. And then when I got inside the magazine, it was so disappointing.
Shirley:The art direction on the story showed that women, you know, turn into the Pillsbury dough girl, like in our 30s. Lose our minds. It was a colander that would have replaced her head lose, lose their minds in their 40s. And then in the 50s, it was a picture of a cut out yellow kitchen sponge in the shape of a woman who had urine all around her midsection and it just said, basically, you pee your pants. And I was like, wow, like every single image is just putting us down, putting us backwards, not forwards. Wow, the whole social construct of perimenopause and menopause is fascinating and it's going to be huge. That's why I'm so glad you guys are doing this work. Thank you.
Mikelle:Shirley, you just gave an incredible talk at the National Menopause Show called Speak Menopause. This is such an important topic for everyone to hear and for our listeners that couldn't make it to the show. Could you share some of the top tips?
Shirley:Sure, yeah. So I am on another mission to speak menopause as if it's a language or a lingo or a dialect. And it came from this like what if question, what if people could walk around with a big red button that says I speak menopause? And so imagine you're in a foreign country and you're walking around and you don't speak the language, and then you see somebody with that button. You're like ah, you're my person, let's go have a conversation about this. And so like that, obviously very quickly in the menopause chicks community takes people to a place of my doctor's office and there's a study that came out a number of years ago here in British Columbia called the In Her Words study so it's inherwordsca and what that showed us was that 54% of women in my age demographic leave their health appointments feeling dismissed or disappointed. That number is significantly higher for Indigenous women and women of color.
Shirley:The top two reasons for the doctor's visit was menstruation and menopause. So when I come back to this, like, can I help you with script tips to take to your next health appointment? It's really to kind of really try and make a mark by changing those conversations that happen inside a tiny room that nobody knows about and then the patient or the individual walks away with this feeling of that's not what I wanted, that's not what I went in there for, this doesn't feel like it's going to work for me. What about this, what about that? And we all know our doctor's appointments are fairly short here in Canada. So what I teach is a model, and it's really easy for me to rhyme it off. I know that not everybody can take that same level of conversation or even confidence to the doctor's appointment, but I want you to remember that we can change how we show up for our hair appointment. So it might be an analogy, right? It might be like if you went in to get a perm at your hairdressers, you would probably say to your hairdresser hey, have you ever given anyone a perm before? We do that, right? Yep, if you're hiring a tradesperson for your house and you were going to install a skylight, you would probably say, hey, tell me about the skylights you've installed before before they cut a hole in your roof. It's what we do, but we don't always do that in our health appointments. We sometimes will show up and I'm going to really exaggerate here, so everyone listening just needs to forgive. It's for illustration purposes only.
Shirley:When we go into our health appointment and there's three exam rooms and there's a baby crying in one room and there's someone bleeding, her needs a cast on their arm or something in another room, and we walk in and we say, yeah, I'm good, thanks, no, well, I'm just not sleeping the way I used to. Your health professional doesn't have a clue what to do with that. They are scientists, they took an oath to support you and they need to know your goal of the appointment and the impact it's having on your quality of life. So I want you to show up and say doc, you know I'm 47. My last period was 45 days ago.
Shirley:I used to be a good sleeper. I am now waking up every morning at 3 am. It is impacting the quality of my life, so much so that not only am I yelling at my kids and my partner, but I've found that the insomnia is so bad I am calling in and missing work three times a month. Now your doctor is like great, I have the data, I know the impact. I can offer you these solutions, and sometimes I even encourage women to walk in there knowing what's on the menu, like there's. These are the two things that are approved for your situation. What you want to do is then invite your healthcare professional to help you discern which is the best option for you yeah, and and and lay out the risks and the benefits in the context of your particular health profile.
Michelle:Right, absolutely. I think that's amazing and you mentioned you know this is an extreme example or this is for illustration purposes, but I think you've just described probably the majority of women presenting in their doctor's office. Well, I'm fine, but it's almost, I feel like, for myself, it's almost like I go in there wanting to please them.
Shirley:I don't want to offend my doctor. Yeah, I hear that a lot. Yeah, and I just gave you an example of you know, really we're putting a lot of pressure on women. But if we want things to change and we want to prioritize our health, we have to accept that responsibility. Accept that responsibility and the next step would be learning what your rights are, what you deserve, and part of that is learning what gaslighting looks like. So, if you have a health professional, or anyone for that matter, who says things to you like oh yeah, that's just part of being a woman, that's just part of getting older, oh yeah, right, you know, you will experience vaginal dryness, everyone does and they stop the conversation there without offering you the approved solutions that are on the menu. You've just been gaslit.
Mikelle:And you need to find another healthcare provider.
Shirley:I don't tell people that.
Mikelle:Oh, no, okay, tell me.
Shirley:Well, I can't. I can't send people out into the wild looking for shopping for another doctor, we I mean, there's a million people in my province, six and a half million people in Canada who don't even have a health, a family doctor to begin with.
Mikelle:So what so what do you advise your community to do?
Shirley:I give them script tips, I I work with them to craft a different script. And I have to do that for two reasons, michelle. One is because we don't have the inventory of doctors to just go shopping door to door. And the second thing is that I have to A help the individual who's sitting in front of me, but I also have to prevent that same conversation from happening with all the other women in that health professionals practice.
Mikelle:Very smart. Yeah, you're right, you're right, you're exactly right. Yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way.
Shirley:Those words are golden. I love when people say that.
Michelle:It's not an either or right. You can come in proactively and prepared and ask for specific things without offending.
Shirley:Absolutely, and you can shop for another health professional if that is the best solution for you. But it might not be the shortest distance between two points, but having a health team, if you are privileged enough to do that, then for sure.
Mikelle:Over the last 12 years that you've been doing this, have you noticed that our healthcare providers have more education around menopause and HRT and things like that? Has that gotten better?
Shirley:Not really.
Mikelle:Okay, not really Bad question. I was hoping for a different answer.
Michelle:And that gets back to why it's up to each of us to really take charge and go in asking for better right.
Shirley:Yeah, so family physicians anyone with prescribing rights can prescribe hormone therapy if that's what your appointment is about. That doesn't mean they have to have taken a certification course or gone to any continuing education. They write prescriptions for the birth control pill and the IUD all day long, so menopause hormone therapy falls under that same umbrella. I think that in the script tips that I write about, 99% of them end up achieving the goal that they went in to discuss. Now it might be a multi-step process. The physician might say let's look at this and this. That's great. I love that. There's only been one in the last year whose doctor came back and she said look, I've been doing this for 27 years. Who are you to come in here and tell me what you need? And that's. You know, we're all humans. We're all going to bump into individuals like that, and that's a really good case where you might say I don't, I think I'm going to invite somebody else to my health team.
Mikelle:Are these script tips? Are they available on your website or is it part of the community? Do you have to join the community?
Shirley:Yeah, so it's kind of like an ad libs template where you can fill in the blank, and then I usually work with individuals in the nest who have, like, a specific situation right that they're trying to solve for X.
Mikelle:Okay, perfect, we'll make sure to include the links to all of that in our show notes. So that's awesome.
Michelle:Thank you, your advocacy work extends beyond the individual and going into their healthcare provider to get the care that they need and deserve. It's also now in the workplace and how to have a menopause inclusive space and how to advocate for yourself in that environment. Can you tell us a little bit about that work that you do?
Shirley:Yeah, there's been a lot of demand recently for menopause education in the workplace, which is amazing. I think that when we hear about menopause at work education, there's a natural assumption that we are trying to talk about menopause in the workplace. That is not the mission. You can talk about whatever is going on with your health or not going on with your health, that's very personal. But what we are doing is ensuring that we are meeting a large section of the population by offering education at work, and then what employers have the opportunity to do is to say to their employees this is important information, and so we're sponsoring it for you information, and so we're sponsoring it for you.
Shirley:Menopause education in the workplace sponsored by employers sends a great message to their teams and their employees that this is important, critical information that they want to be the sponsor or the purveyor of. But it's not saying and now, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to talk about our periods at work or not having a period at work, like it's not that. It's just about being able to say, oh, we haven't reviewed our employee benefits for 20 years and it has come to our attention that some of these supports that you might need to feel well, while you're at work and at home, might not be covered. So we're drawing a line in the sand and saying we're going to do this for you now because you matter.
Michelle:You also posted recently about what it means to be a menopause inclusive employer, and maybe you could tell us a little bit about that, because I know you were pretty fired up in that particular post.
Shirley:I was pretty fired up.
Shirley:You can tell I get fired up about a lot of things. I think one of the one of the things I get fired up about the most when under the the umbrella of menopause at work education is not the people who come to the session. I don't worry about them because I get an hour at least to spend with them and I get to give them all of the resources where they can go to. I worry about the people who don't come to the session. So they see it advertised on their internal intranet, they see the poster in the elevator, they, you know whatever it is and they assume or draw conclusions about women in particular in their workplace. So an extreme example again would be like oh, michelle, I saw you walking into the lunchroom on Thursday. You must be hot, old, tired. You're kind of moody lately too right. And then stereotypes they find their way into business decisions. Oh, we'd invite Michelle to lead that project, but let's. Maybe, you know, john might be better for it. Yeah, I do not want the menopause conversation to contribute to that.
Michelle:Right, there's still a lot of stigma associated with menopause in general, but particularly in a workplace.
Mikelle:So how do you?
Michelle:how do you navigate that? And I know a lot of our listeners are probably thinking, oh, it would be great, how do you navigate that? And I know a lot of our listeners are probably thinking, oh, it would be great. Wouldn't it be awesome if my employer paid for me to be in one of Shirley's masterclasses as an example? But I can't bring that up. I don't need one more tick against me in terms of the promotion I'm vying for. So how do you help folks or how do you talk to folks about navigating that?
Shirley:Yeah, it takes courage, folks. Or how do you talk to folks about navigating that? Yeah, it takes courage. It takes a forward thinking employee and employer to do that.
Shirley:It's not impossible, it's being done. We have lots of great examples so we can draw on, draw some strength from that. One of the places where I quickly go early on in conversations about menopause at work is I will draw an analogy. So my husband is a counselor in a middle school grade six, seven, eight and it's the very first time I heard the phrase menopause policy. I went to him and said what's your puberty policy at school? And he looked at me and he's like puberty policy. We don't have a puberty policy. All we do is foster an environment where children can learn and grow and have flexibility and accommodations where they need it. And I'm like what if we just foster a work environment where employees can learn and grow and have flexibility and accommodations if they need it? I find that that's very powerful.
Mikelle:What a wonderful world it would be.
Michelle:Do you give talks, then Do companies reach out to you. How does that happen?
Shirley:I do Very full calendar.
Michelle:I bet.
Shirley:I bet.
Mikelle:Well, that's so great. Are you all over Canada or are you just in BC Um?
Shirley:I've done some international, North American, two great North American companies recently 6,000 employees.
Mikelle:That's amazing. And how many people were in the class.
Shirley:Um, like they get to keep the recording. So I think two or 300 would attend live where they had the chance to. They can attend anonymously, they don't have to show their name. I think that's very important in a workplace environment.
Shirley:There's a few other things that are challenging too with providing education at work. One of them is I don't want to leave anything off the table because, let's say, you know, susie comes to the class, she has 45 minutes with me, but we don't get a chance to talk about vulva and vaginal health or the impact to vulva and vaginal health. And then Susie wakes up, you know, on her 60th birthday, and is like but Shirley never said anything about. Nobody told me that this was going to be a thing, and so I worry about what we leave out. And the other thing that you know, some HR leaders have said to me is, first of all, you can only have 45 minutes for this lunch and learn, and then the next thing is where can we go next? Where's the session on sleep? Where's the session on sexual health? Where's the session that we can point our employees towards, because it does kind of have that tendency to have Once your eyes are open?
Mikelle:Yeah, the branches keep reaching out and I would also suggest I am assuming there's probably based on McKellen, my experience at some trade shows there's probably quite a few men on these two wanting to find out a bit about their for their wives, because Mikel and I have been to a few shows and the men that come up to us and they're like, oh, I didn't even know, I think. I think my wife might need some information about this.
Shirley:Yeah, men are amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. I have so many people reach out to me and the questions that they ask, the care that they want to offer up to the women in their lives that they love, it's just so heartwarming, yeah.
Michelle:Oh, it's beautiful. Do you have a couple of top tips for our male listeners? All three of them just kidding. Hi, Jason, what are your tips for talking to your male partner about what's going on?
Shirley:Yeah, so I would. It's funny, but one of the questions I used to well, I still get it right now and then is do you have a book for men or do you have a class for men? And I'm like yeah, it's the same Sign up and like, and it's the same Sign up and like, and I will give you everything. And then also, I find that, with a lot of like, my friends, partners, that have consumed my content as well, they're like that makes so much sense now that you've explained it. They love connecting the dots on things. And so, yeah, same content. What else do men need to know? They need to know that she deserves to feel amazing and that it's not you.
Michelle:Well, it might be, you. Yeah, it's a big caveat. It's not you, huge asterisk.
Mikelle:This has been amazing. There's been so much great information. Thank you, before we let you go, what is the one thing you would love every woman to know about perimenopause, menopause and beyond?
Shirley:The one thing I want everyone to know is that you deserve to feel amazing, even if you are currently going through a place called Not Yet Amazing. You are smart and you are savvy, and when you have the right information, hopefully supported by a health team and a community like this that has your back, you can do anything so great, thank you.
Mikelle:Yeah, I'm feeling a bit weepy hearing that. I don't know, maybe I'm having some hormone moments, but that really hit home. Thank you, shirley. Thank you, thanks so much for listening to the show. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate and subscribe to our podcast. When you do this, it helps to raise our podcast profile so more women can find us and get a little better understanding of what to expect in perimenopause.
Michelle:We also read all the reviews the good, the bad and the ugly, to help us continuously improve our show. We would love to hear from you. You can connect with us through the podcast, on social media or through our website. Our information, as well as links and details from our conversation today, can be found in the show notes. This podcast is for general information only. It's designed to educate, inspire and support you on your personal journey through perimenopause. The information and opinions on this podcast are not intended to be a substitution for primary care diagnosis or treatment. The information on this podcast does not replace professional healthcare advice. The use of the information discussed is at the sole discretion of the listener. If you are suffering from symptoms or have questions, please consult a qualified healthcare practitioner.
