In 2018, Kate and I created Launch Your Pause . When we started talking about our idea to celebrate menopause, it was like we wanted to to make people look at monkey throw-up. Sometimes when we talked about what we were doing, people snickered. Often they’d look interested, but I could tell that behind their eyes was an impatience to just move on. But there was a small and curious group of women who wanted to jump on our weird uterus-muraled retrofit school bus and see what

A few weeks ago, we hosted Camp Menopause, an annual two-night, three-day retreat in the woods on Whidbey Island. While walking through the woods one morning, a participant said to me, with a huge sigh, tears rimming her lower eyelids, “It’s so beautiful here. And I am so grateful to be slowing down enough to have a conversation. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to follow a thought from beginning to end.” She looked up at the sky, “not just with other people,” she c

In September I attended a big menopause symposium in Seattle. I was excited to be in a room full of women my age, seeking a deeper understanding of the changes and opportunities experienced by women and people with uteruses at this time. I was quickly dismayed by the growing list of medications, therapies, treatments that were advised by the “expert” practitioners, none of them covered by insurance. Thirteen minutes into the conference we were already focused on libido. It wa

Last Saturday I turned 57. My strength training teacher has been inviting me (and other women from the gym) to go running and plunge in the lake afterwards every Saturday morning for the last six months. I’ve mentally committed to going several times but bailed every Saturday morning. Then, last week, the run-plunge fell on my 57th birthday and I took it as a sign that it was time. Kate and I used to run in the trails of Seward Park almost every weekend. At some point I faded