Why I started Hotflash inc
If you are new here, and even if you are not, this will explain a few things
Sometime around my early 40s, things started to get really weird.
I began having nightmares, crazy vivid ones in which I was dying of something undefined and needed to take a pill to stay alive.
Night after night I would jerk awake, gasping, thinking I had forgotten to take the pill. That I would die if I didn’t take it immediately.
Daytime wasn’t safe either: I’d just be sitting somewhere, minding my own business, often having fun, and a sheet of fear would just rip right through me. The fear was attached to a horrible thought, one that never made any real sense.
For example, one frosty February morning back in my hometown in Canada, I dropped my toddler niece off at daycare, taking off her little snowsuit and boots, stowing them, and holding her hand to her classroom. Soon after my dad picked me up to go see the World Figure Skating Championships. I was watching the pairs warm up for their portion of the competition, fulfilling a dream I’d had since I was a young figure skater, when it happened.
Like a lightning strike, terror, and a voice: ‘You left her in the van. She’s there now, frozen’. I sat there for hours on what was supposed to be a fun day in mental agony, arguing with myself about saying something to my dad or calling my brother. I knew it could pour water on my brain, but I’d be alerting them to the fact that I was clearly losing my mind.
I had lots of physical issues too: crazy headaches, heart palpitations, body aches and sharp chest pains, the kind that sent me to the ER at 3am, only to have a full cardiac workup finding nothing wrong. I’d feel tingling all over my body, smell things burning that were not and get a really strange whooshing feeling in my head – enough so that I’d think to myself ‘well, at least if I have an aneurysm and fall out of my chair, my staff can take it from there’.
IBS issues I’d had for more than a decade intensified. I was so tired. I got paranoid at work, developed a sudden fear of flying – and was plagued by obsessive thoughts. A family member got a terrible diagnosis that changed our lives forever. Then all my eyelashes fell out.
You get the picture. I was a mess. At the same time, we had a major, scary family illness, my live-in relationship was falling apart and I was in the most demanding job of my life. To deal with it, I did what I’d always done: hard work, punishing exercise, restrictive diet, lots of self-flagellation, and self-medicating with unintended binge drinking a few weekends a month just to get some relief from the anxiety, followed by excruciating days of shame, depression and regret. Repeat. I did do a lot of positive things during those six or so years, don’t get me wrong: lots of therapy, lots of self-exploration.
I saw about a dozen doctors, too. A naturopathic doctor taught me about adrenal exhaustion, and helped me realize I needed joy in my life. She scared me straight, saying I would end up with cancer or an autoimmune disorder if I didn’t change my ways.
None of them flagged what I now realize was a big contributor to all this internal chaos.
It wasn’t until I was 47, and skipped my first period, that the light bulb went off. And I finally found out about this thing called “perimenopause”.
I definitely hadn’t heard of it. But I was also embarrassed! I am a journalist for goodness’ sake. I was a trends columnist for Canada’s Sun Media newspaper chain, and in 2007 – when I was 37 – I even wrote about menopause under the headline “It’s the new puberty.”
If I didn’t know about this, someone with years of experience covering health and wellness, on top of all the latest trends, what hope did other women have?
I started a Google alert for perimenopause and menopause in 2018 and found that most of the media coverage was just not good enough. It was either fear-mongering or unbalanced, thinly veiled PR, or driven by affiliate links – all still a problem five years later, unfortunately. I could see that menopause was becoming increasingly polarized, people arguing for whether hormone therapy or the natural approach was better, as if this is an either-or proposition.
I’ve always approached my journalism career with curiosity, skepticism and an open mind. A good journalist is a scared journalist. I’m not a big proponent of living in fear, but here it needs to exist. Fear of getting it wrong, of quoting the wrong person, of missing something drives us to be exacting. A good journalist also has courage, because when you are doing the job right, you are pointing out things that don’t make sense, inaccuracies, injustices, inconsistencies and conflicts of interest – and that tends to piss people off.
Along the way I’ve learned hype is never a good thing, negative narratives fuelling fear and division, arrogance, egos and obstinance, hurts all of us. And that the people who yell the loudest usually know the least.
I started to realize that no one was producing the kind of perimenopause information that I would want to read. Everything got easier for me once I knew what was going on with my body and mind and I wanted to give other women that feeling too. And I felt my fingers itching, the way they always do when I want to get to the bottom of something.
I had always admired the way the American actress and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow launched Goop as a newsletter, and started talking about doing the same. “Will you have enough to write about?” was the common question I’d get back.
“It’s so niche!” was another. One friend said she was worried I’d get depressed, but having pulled myself out of those horrendous years where I didn’t know what was happening, with only my own innate positivity, tenacity and curiosity to lean on, I wanted to tell other people what I’d learned. And I also knew I could bring my renewed light to those who had maybe forgotten where their own switch was.
I launched the first edition of Hotflash inc in June 2020 and have not looked back. More than 200 issues of the newsletter, more than 100 podcast episodes, robust social media and overall, a community of more than 50,000 women and growing.
During that time the space has only become more polarized, and it’s even harder to know what’s true anymore. Too many people with obvious conflicts of interest are trying to make money by instilling women with FUD. (To borrow a crypto term, that’s fear, uncertainty and doubt). Too many are yelling “science” with the barest of ideas what that means. We have barely begun to scratch the surface of what there is to learn and there is just no room for absolute certainty or arguing about who is right.
I’ve watched as the narrative about menopause has grown even more negative: that it’s a deficiency, possibly even a disease. That it’s akin to any other disease where you need to give hormones. That we need it to prevent disease. It’s still steeped in ageism. Most doctors still know very little about it (including mine, who won’t prescribe more than one tube of vaginal estrogen at a time).
And women everywhere continue to struggle.
All this entirely skips over the incredible heroine’s journey that this whole transition has taken me on, that I want other women to think about and experience too. As I see it, there just is no other way. It’s a mind-body-soul business, this peri/menopause-midlife reckoning, and we need to pay attention to all of it.
I’ve learned that the panic I felt was probably sparked by falling progesterone, characteristic of the earliest stages of perimenopause, but we also have evidence it can be exacerbated in midlife by unprocessed trauma from adverse childhood experiences (ACE). That’s just the start of what I have uncovered, and addressed in myself, over the last 10+ years – and what I now share with others.
Things actually got a bit harder when I launched Hotflash inc. There’s a quickening as you get closer to menopause, at least there was for me, and the three years before I finally entered it were crazy. Everyone talks about falling estrogen but mine must have been at all-time-highs. Looking back at that recent past, I can barely fathom the energy I poured into dating; the complete awakening I experienced during the pandemic, an explosion in my health, followed by healing. So much hard healing. We don’t talk enough about the trans-menopausal year, the one where we have to go a year without a period. That one was just wild. I’m still piecing it together.
We bring all of ourselves to this time of life. Changes need to be made by the time we hit our 40s, regardless of how perimenopause hits you. We become more sensitive, I believe, so we are forced into changing, into taking radical responsibility for all parts of ourselves. In figuring all of that out, I’ve slowly moved into an easier, more peaceful and grounded life. It’s gentle, nuanced – and it’s becoming the way I always hoped my life would be.
One thing people tell me about Hotflash inc that makes me incredibly proud is that they appreciate the way I look at all sides in a search for the truth.
I always say ‘this is going somewhere good’, something that has been reaffirmed every time I talk to a woman who is well and truly on the other side. And now I am experiencing that for myself: After an epic perimenopause, I am finally in menopause.
And after a true rollercoaster, I feel like a completely different person – with growth happening exponentially. I’m finally happy with myself. And I’m thrilled that out of those years wandering in a perimenopause wilderness, I got a new life’s purpose in helping other people navigate it, too.
I’m not about to stop now.
Yes there is enough to write about.
No, something half of all women go through is not niche.
And there’s nothing depressing about menopause.
It can be a rocky path, that’s for sure. But I promise: it’s temporary. And it’s taking you to the person you were born to be.
This is a piece I wrote for Menopause Goddess last year and updated for you.
Love this — and your mission! While I am officially post menopausal, and as a fellow journalist have dug into this topic for my own well being as well as to report on occasionally, I am increasingly discouraged by the finger pointing and name calling amongst doctors. There are still so many unanswered questions and things to learn (niche, not a chance!) and I wish doctors that are all at the forefront of this movement to educate, increase research and support women would unify and remember they have one goal.
“… there just is no other way. It’s a mind-body-soul business, this peri/menopause-midlife reckoning, and we need to pay attention to all of it.”
This is absolutely phenomenal! I am SO glad I clicked through your funny note. I’m 10 into menopause but you’ve given me a new lens to look back on a difficult and lonely phase of my life. I’m going to be thinking about this for a while! 🙏🏼🌸