How I came to this work
A few years ago, my personal trainer started asking me about menopause.
She was in perimenopause. She had been reading Tamsen Fadal's How to Menopause, and she had questions about hormone therapy: whether it was safe, whether it might help her, how to think it through. Frankly, I didn't know the answers.
At the time, I was working in the hospital, caring mostly for people with cancer. Menopause care was not part of my daily practice. I had also trained during years when hormone therapy was not an emphasis of clinical care in academic medicine.
Then the questions kept coming. My mother asked whether she should be on hormone therapy and described symptoms that had been bothering her for some time. A friend's mother reached out for advice. Before long, many of the women in my life were asking about perimenopause, symptom management, and what the evidence says about prevention and longevity. Friends in their 20s and 30s started asking too, for their mothers and for themselves, so they would not miss the chance to start when it matters most.
Going back to the evidence
I took Dr. Rachel Rubin's course, Hormone Therapy for Early Adopters, and read the original studies it was built on. I wanted more. I subscribed to Menopause, the peer-reviewed journal of The Menopause Society, and decided to pursue the Menopause Society Certified Practitioner credential. I bought the textbook and never stopped reading.
Today I follow the menopause literature closely, and I am building a structured women's health curriculum for my own ongoing training.
What I noticed along the way
When I started telling people what I was studying, the response surprised me. I have shared a lot of academic and clinical interests over the years. None has drawn as much interest, from as wide a range of people, as this one.
My sense is that this hunger for information says something about access. Many women are looking for clear, evidence-based answers and are not finding them. The feeling that this work meets a real need is a large part of what keeps me going.