My mother is 86. She has dementia, and she lives in a care home in Ontario, while I live in Vancouver — a distance that is geographical and emotional, and sometimes like both at once.

I have written about her before: about the strange tenderness of becoming someone’s guardian when they were once yours; about the grief and grace of that reversal. It has made me think more deeply about what it means to “mother” — especially as someone who never had children of my own.

Doris was a dedicated French teacher, a heart-centred Catholic committed to social justice, and a woman who was often overextended. In taking care of so many others, she frequently abandoned herself in the process. That kind of self-sacrifice was expected of women in her generation. In many ways it still is.

Yesterday I saw something I hadn’t quite seen before in my mum’s face.

I had a FaceTime video with her, and I watched her brain work so hard. She was visibly straining to hold a thread of conversation, to answer a simple question, to stay with me. She rubbed her head. She rubbed her eyes. I do that too when I am exhausted and trying to force myself to solve or complete something on the computer that I so want to be released from.

On my mum though, this tired face-rubbing was constant.

And her face — the one that once animated every room she entered — was blanker than I had ever seen it.

Apathy is common in dementia, not because the person doesn’t care, but because the brain is struggling to generate outward emotional response. In my mum, in that moment, it looked like vacancy. It felt like a strange, potent absence.

This was a woman who was sharp and warm and charming, who made witty remarks and smiled easily, who knew how to be fully present in a room. I am watching that presence recede, slowly, and from very far away.

I didn’t want to dwell there. So I didn’t. I let myself feel it. I cried. Then I moved my body and got outside — a walk in the spring sun, in the forest.

When I came home, I spent much of the day spring cleaning. Not just as a distraction, but as an act of care. There is something deeply satisfying about tending to the chaos that accumulates when life gets too full to manage its shelves and closets. I sorted. I cleared. I made donation piles.

Later in the afternoon, I returned to the trails and biked through the forest to a yoga class. At the end, after savasana, the teacher invited us to turn onto our sides and hug ourselves — saying, “especially if you are mothers.”

I thought: or especially if this day brings up longing for a redo with your own.

Earlier that day, I had spoken with my cousin, a woman who lost her mother when she was a young adult. She never got the full arc of being mothered. That experience was cut short suddenly, and in the most confusing of ways.

And like me, I think she knows the ache of not becoming a mother — not by design, but by circumstance. That distinction matters. There is a different quality to childless grief, a different shape to the longing, when an anticipated path is not actualized, not because you chose not to train for it and walk the journey, but simply because life didn’t arrange itself to open up that particular route to you.

My cousin has done many full marathons around the world. She has built a life of remarkable resilience, soulfulness, and love. She knows how to create warmth and connection. She knows how to love generously, even when life did not make it easy.

After our conversation, I found myself thinking about do-overs.

When I speak with women who became mothers, some describe the experience as having an element of “do-over” for what they missed when they were little ones. Not a blissful, easy thing. Often it is painful, and sometimes marked by overcorrecting — by trying to give your child what you were denied, and feeling both the tenderness and the grief of that at the same time.

But there is something in the act of offering warmth, safety, and nourishment to another person that can begin to repair an original wounding. A way of loving forward what was missing.

I never got that particular do-over with another tiny human.

But I am beginning to understand that I am getting it — slowly, imperfectly, necessarily — with myself.

Not as a sentimental exercise in self-kindness, but as a deeper kind of repair. I’m learning to notice the places where I keep going when I need to stop, over-give when I need to receive, and withhold tenderness from myself in the very moments I most need it.

That is what I mean by remothering.

I also want to offer a small update.

I have been a bit quiet here, and that silence had real reasons. The past year held a great deal: the end of my aunt Kata’s life, inheriting responsibility for my uncle Stjepan (who also has dementia) and everything that came with it, and the accumulated weight of years of caregiving, clinical work, and high output and life never stopping, like it doesn’t for most of us.

I took a sabbatical from my clinical practice.

Some people received this with a warm, “good-for-you “response, “what a wise decision” Others received it with a subtle “must be nice”, as if I were heading off to sip mai tais on a beach somewhere.

It was mostly not a beach holiday. However, I welcome that ahead if you are listening, universe!

Much of it was spent managing the physical and administrative weight in two different locations in Ontario: an estate, a house filled with two lifetimes of belongings, and a care home placement for my uncle. The rest was spent recovering from the kind of depletion that does not fully show itself until you stop moving and realize you have been running on stress hormones for longer than you could safely acknowledge.

I came up close and personal to my own limits with what I have come to call the longevity load — the accumulated weight so many women in midlife carry quietly and largely without recognition: caregiving, invisible labour, emotional responsibility, and the relentless output of holding other people’s lives together while your own begins to fray at the edges.

We are not built to carry this indefinitely without replenishment.

What I learned during this time is one of the oldest truths I know: you cannot lead people where you haven’t been. I needed to go there first.

And I am so happy to share that I now feel much more resourced, human, and like myself.

One of the best things I did during this period was begin a year-long course with Sarah Peyton called Lifting the Shadow off Nourishment: A Year of Healing Mother. The course is rooted in relational neuroscience and understanding how to support our nervous system.

What I appreciate about the course is that it does not treat nourishment as a simple matter of better habits or more discipline. It asks a more complicated, and more honest, question: how is my relationship with myself revealed in the ways I do — and do not — nourish myself? In what I eat. What I reach for when I am depleted. The ways I care, over-care, numb, scroll, strive, or keep going when some part of me is asking to be tended.

And then it widens the lens even further: how was I nourished? How was my mother nourished? What was handed down, not only through stories or beliefs, but through nervous systems, kitchens, silences, sacrifices, and habits of self-abandonment?

Sarah talks about this as rewriting unconscious contracts. The work is not simply to understand our patterns, but to offer the brain and nervous system new experiences — small, repeated, embodied experiences — that begin to make another way of living possible.

It speaks directly to my experience of watching my mother fade. It also speaks to the book I am passionately writing, The Pink Zones, and to why this Substack exists at all. Because real nourishment — the kind I am interested in, the kind that actually changes health trajectories — is not just a meal plan. It is something we learn, or fail to learn, in relationship. And for many of us, there is still healing to do there.

The Pink Zones are about the conditions — internal, relational, cultural, and structural — that allow women to thrive. This includes receiving support and care, including from ourselves.

This week, I am writing the chapter called Rooted Nourishment. It is about women’s relationship to food across cultures and generations — not as diet, not as discipline, but as a lineage of knowledge, care, and the sustaining of life. It is about the expertise women have carried from seed to table, often invisibly and often without credit. And it is about what it means to reclaim that relationship for ourselves, especially now, in midlife and beyond.

That is a longer story, and I am excited to tell it soon. But for today, this is the dispatch:

I am back home, and I am, slowly and with more sweetness than I have ever extended to myself, learning what it means to be nourished.

If Mother’s Day stirred something in you — a missing, a longing, mixed feelings about mothering in any direction — I hope you found some small nourishment to offer yourself before the day ended.

Small sweet steps are where it begins.

Leave a comment

Research that supports this for the Pink Zones:

Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion describes it as something more sturdy than simply “being nice” to ourselves: it includes a sense of common humanity, and the ability to stay present with difficulty without being swallowed by it.

In one study of midlife women, Lydia Brown and colleagues found that self-compassion was associated with greater well-being during the menopause transition — along with a stronger sense of control and less interference from symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats.

And in a study of mothers, self-compassion was linked with more positive feelings about prioritizing health behaviours, while fear of self-compassion was linked with more negative reactions.

References:

Brown, L., Bryant, C., Brown, V., Bei, B., & Judd, F. (2014). Self-compassion weakens the association between hot flushes and night sweats and daily life functioning and depression. Maturitas, 78(4), 298–303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.maturitas.2014.05.012

Brown, L., Bryant, C., Brown, V., Bei, B., & Judd, F. (2015). Investigating how menopausal factors and self-compassion shape well-being: An exploratory path analysis. Maturitas, 81(2), 293–299. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.maturitas.2015.03.001

Simpson, K. M., Semenchuk, B. N., & Strachan, S. M. (2022). “Put MY mask on first”: Mothers’ reactions to prioritizing health behaviours as a function of self-compassion and fear of self-compassion. Journal of Health Psychology, 27(6), 1436–1448. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105321995979

I was on a leave from work—living in one of those periods where your output is constant and strangely invisible, and you feel stretched paper-thin. I was carrying long-distance caregiving for two elders with dementia, while also navigating the aftermath of a family death and the avalanche of responsibilities that followed. I have no immediate family members to share the actual labour with. I have good friends I can debrief with, but it’s not the same as sharing the mental and physical load.

My days were organized around other people’s needs: medical emergencies, major decision-making and financial- logistical tasks, early-morning hospital calls, and the constant hum of what now? In the New Year, I knew I had to step away from clinic work to be in Ontario for weeks—moving my uncle from the hospital into a care home, clearing forty years of a house, and preparing it for sale.

So, when the opportunity arose to join a group trip to India at the end of my planned “sabbatical” time—described as a devi (sisterhood) orientation, visiting sacred sites and opportunities for nourishing Ayurvedic treatments, I said yes. Not because I believed a trip could save me. But because I’ve always wanted to go to India, and I could feel how much I wanted beauty and spirit and community braided together in one experience to refill my tank some.

I’m a Vipassana meditator; I’ve sat multiple ten-day silent retreats and served for months at a Tibetan Mahayana center. The idea of being in places like Bodh Gaya—where the Buddha is said to have awakened under the Bodhi tree—and Varanasi, the city of ghats on the Ganges, the misty tea plantation hill stations of Munnar in Kerala… it felt like the right kind of medicine for me.

What I didn’t expect was that I would land in a group container and yet feel more alone than I had in months.

The trip was organized by a woman I respect—spiritual, generous-hearted, genuinely devoted—with a clear intention: Devis and sisterhood. Most of the women were already her friends. Then, at the last minute, her father died suddenly, and she couldn’t come. The trip went on without her, led by an Indian friend, a wonderful man who runs a travel company.

Within hours, it was clear there was no real “we.” All the women were paired off in tight units, and the energy tilted toward shopping, photo ops, status, and quiet allegiances—warmth reserved for insiders, and little extended beyond their clique.

I’ll say it just wasn’t the trip I thought I was walking into. What was most alarming was the relational coldness: the missing responsiveness, the lack of basic care. The kind of mean girls dynamic that really hurts—exclusion, social undermining, and when their anxiety rose, scapegoating. It showed up in small moments: I’d ask a simple logistical question and get silence—not because they didn’t hear me, but because they did. Sometimes I would ask one person directly and the question would still just… drop into thin air. A head would turn away. A body would pivot. Mid-sentence. Other times I’d get snapped at—like my asking in and of itself was the irritation. I couldn’t sit in a seat at a restaurant, bench or bus because it was saved…for their person.

It’s a strange kind of pain, the kind that makes you question your own perception. Have you ever experienced this? You’re not being attacked exactly, you’re being erased. What it injures isn’t confidence. It’s your mattering: the basic human experience that your presence registers.

What made it even more surreal is that I arrived on this trip already steeped in the question of community and connection- a big pillar of the Pink Zones. I had been reading Jennifer Breheny Wallace’s book Mattering, and was co-writing an article with a friend about why real community is so hard to find right now, and thinking about what connection women actually need in order to thrive as we age. And then I found myself in a group of women and felt… not just lonely, but socially marooned- outside the field of care.

Exclusion has a particular cruelty because it can look small from the outside while feeling enormous on the inside. You begin with hurt, but that quickly becomes confusion: What did I do wrong? Why are they pretending I don’t exist? Then confusion turns into self-surveillance. I started editing myself in real time. My nervous system lit up like a Christmas tree. I was hyperaware, muscles tense, searching for a way back into “safety” in this surreal group environment. Interacting with strangers on the street or restaurant or hotel felt so much more relaxing but in the group I was in, hypervigilance.

This is the part I want to name directly, as it’s important especially as we age: when the social world becomes unsafe or unkind, we don’t simply “feel bad.” We brace. And bracing changes us.

Neuroscience researcher Sarah Peyton has a simple way of putting it:

She says that when difficult events take things away—stability, ease, other people’s steadiness—and our nervous systems pay the price.

But she also says that relationships, when they’re healthy, give things back: regulation, sweetness, stability, healing.

For me, the potent antidote to the disorienting “adult mean girl” experience arrived in some surprisingly small packages.

At the end of the trip we visited a girls’ orphanage to “volunteer”—an extraordinary place run by a retired pediatrician who has devoted decades to caring for girls, supporting their education and focusing on cultivating their self-esteem as they grow into adulthood. I could say so much about it, but there’s one moment I want to highlight because it says everything I’m trying to get across in this post.

I had a tote bag with a strap that kept slipping off my shoulder. And again and again, without announcement, I would feel a small hand (often the littlest 5-7 year olds) move up my arm and gently lift the strap back into place—like someone quietly insisting: I see you. I want to help you. Then they would take my hand and quickly pull me along on the trail to pick some fruit off a nearby tree or pluck even more flowers to add to my hair or the overflowing bouquet I was already carrying. And after I received the gift, they would immediately resume holding my hand with such a delighted smile.

That was it. That was the whole thing. Not a big speech (some of the youngest didn’t speak English, and I don’t speak Telugu or Hindi). Not a bonding exercise. Not a “sisterhood” slogan. Just a sweet accompaniment. My body recognized it instantly as care. And I felt, in the simplest way, what had been missing: the sense that someone was tracking my comfort, my presence. I mattered.

What does this have to do with Pink Zones?

There’s a kind of wisdom culture that tells us, correctly, that no one can do our work for us. No friend can metabolize our grief. No teacher can hand us our authority. No community can swoop in and save us from the difficult task of becoming ourselves, the lifelong work of individuation.

But we often absorb that truth in a distorted form. It turns into rugged individualism: If I’m mature, I shouldn’t need anyone. If I’m strong, I should be fine alone. So, we swing between two extremes—enmeshed dependence on one side, disconnection on the other.

Pink Zones are built on a third way.

We can’t do each other’s learning, of course. But we can accompany. We can offer steadiness without taking over. We can make the hill feel less steep, simply by staying close enough that someone doesn’t have to face the whole thing alone.

Which is why I keep returning to the image of holding hands.

Holding hands is not only a metaphor.

In a now-classic fMRI study, neuroscientist James Coan ( ) and colleagues found that when participants anticipated a threat, simply holding the hand of a trusted partner reduced activity in brain regions associated with threat responding. This means that the same stressor can literally register as less intense when we are not facing it alone.

Coan, J. A., Schaefer, H. S., & Davidson, R. J. (2006). Lending a Hand: Social Regulation of the Neural Response to Threat: Social Regulation of the Neural Response to Threat. Psychological Science, 17(12), 1032-1039.

If you care about immune resilience as you age, this matters too.

When our nervous systems are in threat—especially social threat—our immune systems don’t stay neutral.

Research suggests that adverse social experiences (isolation, perceived social threat) can raise inflammatory activity while dampening antiviral defenses, while supportive social connection may do the opposite—lower inflammation and bolster antiviral responses.

In other words, your immune system isn’t only asking, “Are there germs?” It’s also asking, “Is the social world safe?”

If the body reads the environment as unsafe, it may shift into an inflammatory “prepare for wounding” posture. In that shift, antiviral protection can be dialed down. Acutely, that trade-off could be adaptive. If this is done chronically, that loss of protection becomes costly.

Leschak, C. J., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2019). Two Distinct Immune Pathways Linking Social Relationships With Health: Inflammatory and Antiviral Processes. Psychosomatic Medicine, Oct;81(8):711-719.

This is why we might see that chronic social unsafety—chronic self-editing, chronic scanning, chronic bracing—can become a detrimental health condition.

If we absorb the messages in our culture that our bodies are problematic as we age, that our very evidence of having crinkled our faces to smile (wrinkles!) needs to be edited out, that we will inevitably be less attractive, it isn’t only taxing on the level of our mind or heart; It can negatively impact our deeper physical health.

And there’s a gendered layer here that has been noted for a while: autoimmune disease disproportionately affects women (often cited as roughly 80%). The causes are complex—hormones, genetics, immune regulation, and life-stage shifts. If women are also the ones more likely to carry a chronic caregiving load and relational strain, and if we are taught that we constantly need to scan for signs we don’t fit or we need to fix ourselves in order to do so, what do these factors do to our immunity and ability to put inflammation in check?

Which brings me back to Pink Zones.

The Pink Zones are the conditions that help women thrive as they age.

Not the aesthetic of togetherness captured in a photo, not “girls’ trip energy”. True connection comes from real relational health. The kind of community where you don’t have to self-censor to stay included—where the relational floor is steady enough that your nervous system can relax.

In a Pink Zone, the bag strap gets lifted back onto your shoulder—not because you’re incapable, but because you’re human. Because we all need an assist sometimes.

And maybe that’s the simplest definition I can offer:

Community is not meant to do your life for you. It’s meant to help you keep your humanity intact and “have your back” while you do the work that is yours.

So here’s my practical question: how do we help one another feel like we belong?

How do we create a Pink Zone in ordinary moments, with ordinary gestures?

Here is what I am thinking so far…

Sometimes it looks like a deep conversation and listening.

Sometimes it’s answering a question that got ignored.

Sometimes it looks like turning toward a person at the edge and making room at a table or saving them a seat.

Sometimes it is smiling at someone even though they are a stranger.

And sometimes it looks like the smallest, simplest, kindest thing: offering a hand.

And I’d genuinely love to learn from you: what’s a small act someone has done that made you feel included—or what’s something you do to create that for others?

Leave a comment

In case you missed it, I wanted to share the replay.

We had a rich discussion about midlife women’s health, the invisible load many women carry, the Pink Zones, and why thriving is shaped not just by personal habits, but by the conditions that support women’s lives.

It felt deeply connected to so much of what I’ve been thinking and writing about lately, and I’m glad to be able to share it here.

If any of these themes are alive for you right now, I hope you’ll watch the replay below.

If listening is easier, the conversation is also available on Shannon’s Firestarters podcast here:

.

Get more from Dr. Heidi in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Growing up has a way of breaking spells. And right now, the wellness hero spell is breaking too.

Many a famous figure has fallen—among them a prominent wellness hero whose reach exceeded his integrity.
There’s a dark underbelly being revealed by the Epstein files: patriarchy, power, and the way an authoritative style—positions, credentials and confidence—can be mistaken for integrity. But my wheelhouse is health. So that’s where I want to look: what this moment reveals about medicine, wellness culture, and what we are longing for when we hand someone so much authority in the first place.

The hero model of health is starting to crack.

For years we’ve been living inside a heroic story—first medicine-as-hero (the doctor, the drug, the procedure), and then a newer version: the optimization hero. Confident. Data-driven. Certain. He promises something seductive: control over aging, over uncertainty, over the messy ambiguity of being human. Track enough, supplement enough, follow the protocol closely enough, and you can outsmart your biology.

For a while, it felt reassuring.

Lately, though, the hero narrative is wobbling—not only because prominent figures fall from grace, but because more of us are waking up to a harder truth: there’s a cost to outsourcing our sovereignty. We’ve handed authority to individuals whose influence can outpace their accountability. But also when the institutions meant to keep us well—medicine, public health, and now wellness culture and AI—feel disconnected from lived human experience, trust doesn’t just erode. It unravels.

If you want to see where this crisis of authority shows up most clearly, start with perimenopause—then follow the thread into a woman’s decades beyond.

Menopause isn’t only a physiological transition. It is often a psychological and civic awakening—an accelerant that makes it harder to tolerate dismissal, perform “fine,” or keep self-abandoning.

As women age, bodies shift, sleep shifts, brains re-wire and along with these changes come a growing unwillingness to remain silent and accept the status quo. These transformations not only shape daily life, but also fuel a renewed determination to question and challenge what is no longer serving them or others they care about. Women want more than just relief from symptoms, though that certainly matters. They seek rights, respect, and recognition in policies, workplaces, and public stories.

That may be why midlife women have recently become a cultural focus. In a recent piece I wrote for Katie Couric Media, I looked at how the label “wine moms” is being used by right-wing media not to describe drinking, but to diminish and discredit midlife and older women who have been involved in recent protests. The insult is telling: it suggests these women have become newly visible, highly organized, and therefore newly threatening to the status quo—powerful enough to require caricature.

What’s cracking open is larger than any one person, or stereotype; it is a culture facing the limits of hero narratives and searching for what comes next.

The rupture underneath the rupture:

What we’re watching in wellness is not simply a scandal cycle. It’s a transition. When a public hero cracks, we’re forced to admit what we were hoping he could do for us: simplify complexity, solve what our systems can’t. The good news is a rupture of trust can become a waking up and turning point.

Order - Disorder - Reorder

Medicine has gone through this arc before. Much of the 20th century was an era of medical confidence—an “order” phase—when antibiotics, vaccines, and surgical breakthroughs created a sense of mastery over disease. Doctors became cultural heroes; and interventions became synonymous with healthcare.

Then came disorder: chronic illness, burnout, escalating costs, fragmented systems, and the unsettling experience so many patients know: being reduced to a symptom, a lab value, a billing code. The old order no longer holds. Yet the new one isn’t fully formed.

In that uncertainty, people reach for substitutes. “Dr. Google,” influencers, and a new class of wellness authorities who speak with certainty because certainty sells. But the deeper hunger isn’t for a stronger hero. It’s for a model of health that can hold complexity without turning people into machines.

Women in midlife are often the first to recognize this, because they’ve been living the mismatch for years. Perimenopause arrives with real physiological upheaval—sleep disruption, anxiety, brain fog, shifts in mood and metabolism—and too often the response from the system is a shrug: stress, aging, “it’s normal.”

When women are dismissed at the very moment their lives demand steadier support, they don’t just lose trust in a clinician. They lose trust in a story: that authority will automatically be wise, and that health is something you can control if you try hard enough.

Evidence-based medicine is the gold standard—when the evidence exists. But in women’s health, especially beyond fertility, conception and childbearing, the evidence is often startlingly thin. Menopause sits within a broader pattern of neglect: historically, women’s health has been underrecognized and underfunded by major research institutions. A National Academies report noted that from 2013 to 2023, women’s health research accounted for about 8.8% of NIH research grant spending, leaving female-specific life stages—including menopause—underprioritized.

Women are also still underrepresented in many clinical trials.

When women’s bodies are left out of research, entire stages of life are misunderstood, treated unevenly, and lack resources—and what women experience as a personal health failing is often the downstream effect of structural omission. I see this every day in my practice: what feels like an individual problem—”I’m doing it wrong”—is often a predictable result of larger neglect.

The trap of optimization

This is where the wellness hero narrative becomes especially dangerous. It trains people to interpret disorder as personal failure: if you’re not sleeping, not thriving, not aging “well,” then you must not be disciplined enough, optimized enough, calm enough.

For women in midlife, that message lands on top of an invisible pile I think of as the longevity load—the cumulative weight of stress, sleep debt, hurried nourishment, sedentary living, chronic inflammation, environmental exposures, unresolved grief, and the erosion that comes from disconnection: from community, from meaning, from the body’s signals.
Perimenopause doesn’t always create that load. Often it reveals it. It exposes what we have been carrying—and what our culture has been asking women to carry quietly for decades.
This is also why the hero story fails women so predictably. The dominant wellness narrative is built on individual mastery: find the problem, hack the body, optimize the machine. It is clean, linear, and often male-coded. But women’s health—especially in midlife—is not a machine problem that can be overridden into compliance.

Midlife is not a productivity puzzle. Menopause is not a failure. Aging is not a glitch.

And yet optimization culture keeps telling us that the right tracker, supplement stack, protocol, or discipline is the solution. It can turn health into a panopticon of self-surveillance, one more arena where women feel behind, overwhelmed, and alone.

Reorder

If there is an alternative, it begins with a refusal— and a resistance: refusing to treat disorder as the end of the story.
Order, disorder, reorder is a helpful map many people recognize intuitively—one articulated well by Father Richard Rohr, who describes the passage from certainty, through disruption, toward deeper integration.

In medicine, reorder doesn’t mean rejecting science. It doesn’t mean romanticizing “natural” over “modern.” I wrote about this last year, it means using what works while outgrowing what doesn’t. It means care that is relational rather than transactional, preventative rather than perpetually reactive, and considers the social conditions that shape the body.

In aging, reordering doesn’t mean letting anti-aging culture dictate that we must resist time at all costs. I’m interviewing women and “tracking” the conditions that reliably support thriving in midlife and beyond. I’m using a term for this: ”The Pink Zones”, to describe those conditions. What shows up again and again isn’t a perfect protocol, but a set of pillars: cultural self-worth, belonging, sustainable movement, nourishment, rituals of rest, meaning, and creativity. These aren’t soft extras. They’re load-bearing. (I wrote about the Pink Zones Pillars here)

Menopause can be a body-psyche reckoning: the moment a woman realizes that her second half of life cannot reliably function on first-half of life operating systems. That she cannot keep performing wellness while feeling unwell. That she cannot keep shrinking to keep others comfortable.
In that sense, midlife women are not just canaries in the coal mine. They are early adopters of a new orientation: I will not be managed by dismissal. I will not outsource my knowing.

A different kind of agency

One risk after disillusionment is swinging into hyper-individualism: “Fine. I’ll do it alone.”

We can replace institutions with self-improvement and call it empowerment.

And increasingly, “doing it alone” gets mediated by tech.

We may see through the hero-guru, yet still hand authority to apps, trackers, algorithms, and AI systems, that replicate the same conditions. Used well I bet they can help. These tools process enormous amounts of data and speed everything up. But used as authorities, they harm- especially when algorithms become the arbiter of “normal,” we’re not gaining wisdom—we’re outsourcing it. And we’re choosing to overlook the environmental and human toll of that frictionless quest for our individual health.

But health has never been a solo sport. Neither is cultural change.

The most robust form of agency I see is community-centred. It is people learning together, supporting each other, comparing notes, asking better questions, and insisting that medicine catch up to women’s reality instead of treating menopause onward as a period of inevitable decline. It’s patients who don’t expect magic bullets, and seek a partnership with their clinician, not paternalism. It’s communities that resist guru culture without rejecting expertise. It is discernment practiced together.

The hero-saviour model—medical, cultural, institutional—is losing its grip. That doesn’t mean we’re doomed. It means we’re being asked to grow up.

What comes after the hero

No one is coming to save us. And strangely, that can be good news.
It means we can stop chasing certainty packaged as authority. We can stop confusing confidence with care. We can stop treating the body like a machine that must be dominated into perfection.
Instead, we can build something sturdier: a culture of health that is less heroic and more human, less performative and more truthful—one that understands that health is contextual, and that thriving is not an individual achievement but a collective condition.
The hero story is collapsing. What could replace it isn’t the current chaos, but reordering around a different kind of authority. Authority that is earned rather than branded, relational rather than solitary, embodied rather than optimized.
The future of health doesn’t need another hero. It needs a village.

Sources:

· National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (news release on NIH women’s health research funding; includes 8.8% figure):
https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/to-advance-womens-health-research-nih-should-form-new-institute-and-congress-should-appropriate-new-funding-says-report

· Association of American Medical Colleges (overview of gaps in women’s health research and trial participation; cites 2022 Harvard analysis):
https://www.aamc.org/news/why-we-know-so-little-about-women-s-health

Share

If this article resonates, this is the kind of conversation that lives beyond the page inside The Pink Zones Podcast Club. ….like a book club- only podcasts!

If you’re looking for a place to gather in community, you’re welcome to join us.

Our first one of 2026 is Feb 19th! Sign up here!

If you’re enjoying being part of my beginning journey here— and, if you’re reading this, you are already a part of this adventure — I’d love for you to leave a comment, or share this post.

And if you’re reading this in email, please always feel free to hit reply and send me a private message that way. I’d love to hear from you!

Leave a comment

When Fox News starts giving a group of women a nickname, it’s rarely flattering — but it is revealing.

Recently, conservative commentators began using the term “Chardonnay Antifa” and “Wine Moms” to describe the older, affluent women protesting ICE. The phrase is meant to trivialize them, paint them as unserious.

But nicknames are never entirely neutral. Historically, groups are named when they stop being ignorable. For decades, midlife and older women barely registered in political or cultural imagination at all. Now they’re visible enough to be mocked, and have their political bona fides debated on prime-time TV.

That visibility didn’t emerge overnight. It reflects a deeper shift that has been quietly unfolding in our culture over the last decade or so, one rooted in how women experience midlife itself, and how that experience is now intersecting with a rapidly changing world.

As a doctor with more than 20 years of experience working with women in midlife, I see menopause as more than a health transition. It’s a political, economic, and cultural inflection point — one that exposes how our systems respond when women’s lives change. Now we’re seeing how women respond when systems change.

Women in this time of life are seeking more than relief from symptoms (though that matters, too). They’re seeking rights, respect, and recognition — in healthcare, in workplaces, and in the stories we tell about aging. As , director of the Women’s Media Center Speech Project and author of All We Want Is Everything, has argued, women today aren’t asking for special treatment, but for the ability to live with dignity, agency, and authority within structures that were never designed for them.

So why is this happening now?

Internal authority becomes external voice

As I wrote in my previous essay about what a Kamala Harris presidency could signal for women and aging, midlife brings a profound internal shift, one in which authority moves inward. Women waste less energy trying to shape themselves to meet expectations and more energy on becoming the women they actually needed to see. Many call it “having fewer f’s to give.” I call it advancing into power.

What’s different now is that this inner clarity is turning into an outward voice. Still, culture has not caught up. According to the Geena Davis Institute’s 2024 “Frail, Frumpy & Forgotten” report, women over 50 in films are much more likely than men to be shown as senile, weak, or frumpy. Only one in four films passes the Ageless Test, meaning an older woman is shown as important to the story, not just a stereotype.

That long history of erasure helps explain why this moment feels charged. Midlife women are no longer willing to be invisible — culturally or civically. They’re asserting their voice and presence in spaces that once sidelined them.

In terms of the menopause transition, what was once managed privately is now being named publicly. Social media has accelerated this shift. Experiences that once lived in isolation — confusion, rage, insomnia, and a myriad of physical symptoms — moved into shared digital spaces. For many women, the moment of asking themselves Am I losing it? was met not with dismissal, but with recognition. That validation reduced isolation. It normalized experience. It cracked open the silence.

That shift matters. Validation alone isn’t a solution — but it is often the first step toward agency.

Women are now asking questions that were once left unspoken: Why are medical systems so often unprepared for — or dismissive of — women in midlife? Why does research lag so far behind prevalence and impact? Why is public funding insufficient for conditions that affect half the population?

These questions are no longer whispered. They’re being voiced: in living rooms, online communities, public forums, and increasingly, in publications like this one.

The world is changing, and women feel it

This awakening is unfolding against a backdrop of national instability. Rights we once assumed are being rolled back. Political decisions that shape women’s lives are often made without women at the table. For many, silence no longer feels like a survival tactic; it feels like complicity.

Women who once would’ve kept their concerns private are now speaking publicly, because the stakes feel shared: from reproductive rights and maternal mortality to research gaps, workplace protections, and access to care. Menopause is one point in a longer continuum of women’s health issues being under-recognized and under-funded.

Halle Berry’s recent comments calling out California Governor Gavin Newsom for overlooking women in midlife weren’t just celebrity remarks. They signalled a turning point in how menopause and midlife are being discussed — not as personal-wellness issues, but as civic ones. Berry wasn’t speaking only about symptoms or treatments; she was giving voice to a constituency that has long felt unseen by the very leaders who rely on them.

As , founder of Moms Demand Action and author of Fired Up, told me: “Gen X women, 40 million of whom are now well into their forties and above, hold over $15 trillion in purchasing power. We are the wealthiest, healthiest, and most active generation in history, and by 2025, it’s estimated that 1.1 billion of us will be post-menopausal. It’s time we band together to demand the care we need and deserve to live full, active, and healthy lives.”

Visible, finally

This convergence –of women’s lived experience, economic power, and political awareness -is now showing up in public life in unmistakable ways.

In recent weeks, tens of thousands of Americans have taken to the streets to protest aggressive immigration enforcement following the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis woman killed during a federal ICE operation. Large marches and rallies in cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul have drawn national attention. Photos show crowds holding signs, chanting, and standing shoulder to shoulder– including many midlife and older women.

In some cases, these women have been among those arrested, or directly confronting law enforcement. These images are a reminder that this participation is not symbolic, but embodied and consequential.

This pattern extends beyond immigration protests. As reported by , sociologist Dana Fischer researched the June 14th No Kings Day of Action – part of a broader pro-democracy movement and found that the majority of hosts and participants were female, predominantly white, and highly educated. This echoes patterns seen during resistance movements in the Trump administration’s first term and underscores the fact that midlife and older women are often organizing from the front, not the sidelines.

The women being labelled as “wine moms” aren’t protesting only for themselves. Many are standing up for migrants, for children, and for communities they may never personally belong to. Women in midlife and menopause are capitalizing on a life phase when the pressure to please recedes, clarity sharpens, and concern for the collective deepens.

When Fox News calls these women “Chardonnay Antifa,” it attempts to flatten them into a caricature. But that dismissive trope obscures the reality: Midlife women are increasingly present, organized, and unafraid. They’re caregivers, voters, and community stabilizers. They make up a substantial portion of the workforce and contribute billions of hours of unpaid labour each year. And they vote — at high rates. Women aged 50 and older made up nearly 27% of all registered voters in 2020 and cast 30% of all ballots, with turnout as high as 83%—higher than the overall population.

MontrealSouvenier.ca -available for purchase, (Heated Rivalry fan —or non)

The Quebec motto (and licence plate) “Je me souviens” — we do remember — seems apt here. (Regardless of the occasional perimenopausal memory lapse, as our brains rewire.) Ignoring this group is no longer a neutral political strategy; it’s a risky one.

The political awakening of midlife women is not a fleeting phenomenon — it marks a civic shift.

What this shift looks like in real life is quieter than we expect.

Now I want to talk about someone I know.

Jamie Wallace is a midlife woman who has shown up — every week for the past year — to protest in her small town in Massachusetts. Not for followers or chardonnay. Simply because she believes it matters.

She is not a public figure, not a celebrity, and not anything close to the caricature of a “wine mom.”

I met her through a writers’ group on Substack. is an exceptional writer with a keen, creative eye, and her work has real moxie — even on Mondays. There is insight and courage in her newsletter, Inner Wilderness Unlimited, the same quality that shows up in her actual life.

Jamie also organizes a bi-weekly Zoom group we’ve come to call Substack Sirens — writers who gather to talk, commiserate, and laugh. We cheer her on as she leaves to bundle up and head out to protest just as our Zoom group wraps up. Most of us aren’t out there in the cold the way she is. But we benefit from her steadiness. We are buoyed by it, and by her.

Jamie doesn’t look like a movement. She isn’t branded. But she is committed. She is informed. She is paying attention to people beyond herself — and acting on it.

This is the version of influence that rarely gets named. It’s steady. It’s not glamorous. And it’s exactly what makes real change possible.

If this is the definition of a wine mom, I’d better start training.

What we’re seeing now isn’t a theoretical shift or a caricature. It’s lived.

The world is catching up to the fact that midlife women are a power base. What’s rising now isn’t just a wine glass: it’s presence. And it’s no longer possible to ignore.

If this article resonates, this is the kind of conversation that lives beyond the page inside The Pink Zones Podcast Club. ….like a book club- only podcasts!

If you’re looking for a place to gather in community, you’re welcome to join us.

Our first one of 2026 is Feb 19th! Sign up here!

If you’re enjoying being part of my beginning journey here— and, if you’re reading this, you are already a part of this adventure — I’d love for you to leave a comment, or share this post.

And if you’re reading this in email, please always feel free to hit reply and send me a private message that way. I’d love to hear from you!

I met this extraordinary woman on a flight from Vancouver to Palm Springs last year — one of those encounters that feels anything but random. Her name is Betty, and from the moment I saw her down the aisle as I was waiting to board, I knew I needed to talk to her. As fate would have it, she was my seatmate.

A special window seat

She turns 100 on May 9th, and she embodies so many things I believe the Pink Zones represent: vitality, flexibility, curiosity, humour, and a zest for life that refuses to dim with age.

This year, when I realized she wouldn’t be in Palm Springs during my annual pilgrimage, I felt a real pang of disappointment. Our first meeting had felt so synchronistic — like something meant to repeat.

But life had a better idea. Instead of meeting in the desert, we planned a visit at her home in a neighbourhood close to mine near UBC in Vancouver.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with Betty, and it was nothing short of magical.

She shared story after story, each one unfolding like a well-wrapped gift with delightful detours and returns (for good measure- a common theme with my Pink Zones women). Tales from different chapters of her life — told with animation, wit, and a sparkle that had me laughing out loud again and again. Her memory for details is sharp, her curiosity alive, and her flexibility — both physical and mental — remarkable. I’ll have to include a video clip so you can witness this yourself. Look at those legs! She moves through the world with grace, openness, and a twinkle that feels utterly ageless.

A Love Story captured for the ages.

One of the most moving moments came when Betty shared a book her incredible daughter, Linda, created. She told me about this first on the plane. Linda (also an amazing artist) had discovered a collection of love letters written by Betty’s husband, Jack, during their long-distance relationship that began in 1945, during World War II.

Jack was stationed in Seattle, working at Boeing with the riveters, and the letters he wrote to Betty are nothing short of extraordinary.

Linda creatively and lovingly compiled them into a book—pairing the letters with photographs and Betty’s reflections—creating a living archive of romance, devotion, and emotional depth. The letters revealed insights into Jack’s inner world and emotional dimensions of him that even Linda, as his daughter, had never fully known.

To flip through this book is to step into another era and yet feel something completely timeless.

It’s a window into the heart of a man who was love-struck, emotionally intelligent, deeply connected, and beautifully expressive—qualities that feel both rare and urgently relevant today. Jack would be 107 now. (He passed away at 92.) And yet, through his words, his presence is vivid, tender, and unmistakably alive.

Agility of Body and Mind

I’d just come from a yoga class when I arrived, which made me wonder — almost absently — whether Betty had ever practiced yoga. Living in Vancouver, how could she not have? Side bar: Honestly, it’s a grievance worth of Festivus- you can’t throw a stone without hitting a hot yoga studio or get hit by a walker by carelessly swinging around their rolled-up mat (me, admittedly). Here is evidence that the detours and returns are contagious.

But I didn’t even get the question out about yoga.

As soon as we sat down, Betty casually lifted her legs into what looked very much like eagle pose (Garudasana in Sanskrit) — effortless, playful, entirely unselfconscious. As she moved from one story to another, her legs and feet seemed to dance along with her words, circling and repositioning as she changed gears.

It wasn’t performative; it was simply how she moved. I was frankly stunned. When we first met, I sat with her for almost 3 hours as we were immobilized on the plane, I never got to see this side of her paired with her stories!

Her body expressed the same vitality her stories carried — alive, responsive, full of personality. I found myself thinking, I need instruction from her. Forget the studio — I wanted Betty yoga.

None of it felt put on. It was embodied storytelling — a choreography of gestures matching narrative. And I couldn’t help wondering: if I had asked her to show me what she could really do, what might I have witnessed?

At 99, Betty is so agile, animated, and alive that I caught myself thinking:

If she were a teenager today, someone might try to medicate that kind of energy.

No Ritalin or Vyvanse for Betty. Just grace, openness, and an ageless twinkle.

This is precisely the vitality the Pink Zones seeks to understand.

What Struck Me Most

There’s much more I’ll eventually share about Betty — stories and reflections that will make their way into my book — but a few moments stood out. One of her strongest early memories is of being punished by a grade-school teacher in a way wildly out of proportion to the “crime”: her hands struck brutally with a ruler. It was her first recognition of antisemitism — the moment she realized she was Jewish, and the first time she became self-conscious of an identity that marked her as “other.” She remembers it as a clear before-and-after in her young life.

Hearing her describe this moment during Hanukkah — a holiday centred on resilience, identity, and the persistence of light — made her story land with even greater weight.

She also shared many stories about her twin brother, Sid, and the younger set of twin boys born two years later — all four of them lined up in a perfect row in the photo below.

The afternoon flowed from romance to resilience to laughter to memory — each reinforcing what I know to be true about the Pink Zones:

connection matters, love sustains, and staying emotionally open may be one of the greatest longevity practices of all.

And then there were the stories that had me laughing until my cheeks hurt.

One theme kept appearing: Betty meets gentlemen who are completely smitten with astonishing regularity. She shared at least four examples — each with such zest (with Linda pitching in to add corroborating and humorous details for good measure) that I found myself questioning my own approach as a single woman stubbornly avoiding online dating, holding the notion that I could meet someone by happenstance. Perhaps I’m living in the wrong Vancouver neighbourhood… or simply 45 years too young?

A Living Pink Zone

Spending time with Betty deepened my understanding of the Pink Zones in a way no research paper ever could.

She doesn’t talk about vitality, she lives it.

She doesn’t cling to youth; she expands into life.

One of her favourite phrases is “Don’t get rusty.”

Her presence reminds me that aging need not mean shrinking. It can mean more playfulness. More magnetism. More romance. More curiosity. More connection.

And this is only the beginning.

There are many more stories and pieces of wisdom to come from Betty, and I look forward to sharing them.

Stay tuned. 💗

“Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women.”
— Jessica Calarco, Holding It Together

Sociologist Jessica Calarco’s observation lands like a truth we’ve all felt but haven’t named.

In North America, women are the safety net. They hold together families, workplaces, and communities, sometimes at the cost of their own rest, health, and longevity.

And yet, we live in a culture that adores the story of self-reliance and feverishly promotes self-care as the cure for most everything.

If you’re struggling, the assumption goes, you just need to commit harder, optimize your habits, manifest, meditate, or cold plunge your way to solid ground.

But this belief—that individuals hold ultimate control over their lives—has troubling implications. It masks the truth that health, freedom, and rest aren’t distributed evenly—they’re shaped by the systems we live within. Yes, we do have agency, but our health, our bodies and minds don’t exist in a vacuum. Wellness isn’t simply a personal practice; it’s a social design.

The Longevity Load: Systemic Constraints

Across a lifetime, women accumulate what I call the Longevity Load—the invisible weight of systemic constraints on time, money, safety, and freedom.

From wage gaps, underfunded maternal care, and laws that restrict bodily autonomy, these are not personal shortcomings. They are structural limitations that determine whether a woman can access true wellness— rest, movement, nature, creative expression, and connection.

Here are some factors that limit access:

• Time: Women shoulder the majority of unpaid caregiving.

  In the U.S., women provide more unpaid care than in any other wealthy nation and report the highest stress from doing so (Commonwealth Fund, 2024). In Canada, women caregivers spend a median of 10 hours per week caring for dependents, compared to 6 hours for men (Statistics Canada, 2022).

• Money: Gender pay gaps and the high cost of care limit access to health-promoting resources.

• Safety: Chronic stress from insecurity, discrimination, threat of/ or exposure to violence has measurable physiological effects.

• Freedom: Legal and economic barriers restrict autonomy over health and life choices.

These constraints don’t just erode well-being—they shape life expectancy, mental health, and our capacity to thrive.

When Self-Care Isn’t Enough

In earlier essays, I’ve written about caregiving for my uncle and my mum, both in their eighties, both living with dementia, in different locations. There’s deep tenderness and heart expansion in that role, but also frustration and exhaustion. It’s the weight of love and massive admin needs meeting the limits of my human body/mind, trying to hold a job, and a self together. I am the only family member left.

When I admit I’m overwhelmed, people often rush to suggest that I must add in more self-care—as if a moisturizing facial was a fire extinguisher I forgot to grab.

Bless their hearts; these folks don’t know I was dubbed the queen of self-care twenty years ago, and the crown still fits.

The truth is, life can be hard.

Sometimes loads simply outweighs our capacity to carry it solo.

Sometimes we face systemic constraints.

And in our individualist, nuclear-family-oriented society, we’re often simply but profoundly under-supported.

We don’t hit our limits because we skipped a cold plunge or gratitude practice.
We hit them because humans all have a resilience ceiling. It’s just that we live in systems that ask us to push past them without rest or relief.
I feel like there is a great immaturity in our culture about this. It may sound harsh, but I want to help us grow up —collectively. It would help us both.

The Pink Zones: Systemic Support for Real Wellness

In the Pink Zones, women have access to time, safety, money, healthcare, and equity—recognizing that wellness is shaped by structure, not just self-discipline.

For women and female-presenting people, these factors are often the greatest determinants of health and healing. Thriving isn’t a mindset; it’s an outcome of design.

The Systemic Support Pillar of the Pink Zones calls for a shift from blaming individuals to building systems of care: policies that provide paid leave and childcare, legal protections that safeguard equity, and cultures that value care work as the foundation of community health.

Learning from Care Infrastructure

Ai-Jen Poo, nationally recognized labour leader and co-founder of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Caring Across Generations, has spent decades fighting for paid family leave, elder-care infrastructure, and dignity for caregivers.

Recently, she spoke beautifully about this on ’s podcast, in an episode titled America’s Caregiving Crisis, where she reflects on what it would mean to build a society that truly values care.

Ai- Jen’s work makes visible the invisible labour that holds families—and our health systems—together.
She teaches us that if we want a healthy society, we must invest in care: policies that support time off, continuity of care, and economic protections for those giving and receiving it.

These are not “extras.” They are social determinants of health.

Really, do we need to move to Iceland?

In Holding It Together, Jessica Calarco draws a striking comparison between the U.S. and Iceland.

Just over a week ago, Iceland marked the 50th anniversary of the historic 1975 women’s strike — when 90% of Icelandic women walked off their jobs and out of their homes to demand equal rights. The country stopped for a day, and history shifted.

Watch this short clip from the 50th anniversary celebration ↓

What followed was transformative: sweeping policy reforms that redefined work, family life, and care.

By 2023, Iceland ranked the best country in the world for women—while the United States stood at forty-third.

This contrast isn’t just statistical. The gap between them shows what’s possible when a society refuses to individualize struggle and instead insists on shared responsibility and structural change.

A Union of Care

Calarco argues that lasting progress can’t come from individual self-help or personal grit. The solution, she says, must be collective, built through systems and relationships that hold us all.

Her proposal—what she calls “unions of care”—imagines a broad coalition connecting paid and unpaid caregivers, alongside those receiving care. This network would advocate for policies that value caregiving as vital work and elevate it to its rightful social and economic importance.

Imagine a world where care, not achievement, is the truest measure of contribution.
Where giving and receiving care are seen as the shared infrastructure of a healthy society.

Some might hesitate to join such a movement, but the truth is: we’re already connected. The question is whether we’ll consciously choose to organize the chaos or just keep pretending that burnout is an inevitable fact of life for some women.

Where good things are happening

And yes, there’s reason for hope. Here is what we know:

• Social-protection programs designed with women in mind improve both physical and mental health outcomes (UN Women, 2022).

• Community caregiving networks, mutual-aid models, and inclusive workplace policies reduce stress and improve longevity (BMC Public Health, 2022).

These findings echo what many of us already know intuitively: when women are supported, whole communities thrive.

Thriving isn’t about doing more; it’s about being supported more.
It’s about systems that honour care as infrastructure—just as essential as roads or hospitals or Wi-Fi.

So no, we don’t have to move to Iceland.

Although honestly, the fjords, the hot springs and cold plunges sound tempting.

The Pink Zones remind us that wellness is never isolated. It’s not just personal habits.
It’s relational, systemic, and deeply political.
Because when we build societies that care for women, we build societies that care for everyone.

Leave a comment

P.S. Forget the fjords — we’re building Pink Zones right here!
Join the Thriving in Pink Zones Podcast Club for good chats, shared wisdom, and zero travel logistics.

💗 Free for paid subscribers! Sign up here

WHAT IS A PODCAST CLUB?

It’s just like a book club, but with podcasts.

Each month, we listen to two thought-provoking podcast episodes on themes that matter for women in midlife and beyond: vitality, meaning, belonging, resilience, and creativity.

Then we gather, not for small talk, but for meaningful conversation that helps us integrate these insights into daily life.

You’ll listen at your own pace, then join on Zoom for rich conversation, shared wisdom, and practical takeaways.

🗓️ 2025 NEXT 2 PODCAST CLUB ZOOMS:

• Thursday, November 13

• Thursday, December 11

Time: 5:30 PM PT / 8:30 PM ET (1-hour sessions)

Where: Zoom (link provided upon registration)

SIGN UP FOR THE PODCAST CLUB HERE

You’ve probably heard it: “Become the CEO of your health.”
It sounds empowering. But what if the boardroom is already crowded—every seat taken by invisible burdens?

How can we ask women to take charge of their health without first naming what has been steering it for years?

This is what I call The Longevity Load: the hidden, cumulative stress women shoulder in midlife. It’s the biological, emotional, cultural, and systemic weight that medicine and wellness models too often ignore.

And until we name it, we can’t begin to lighten it.

This also brings us to the Health Longevity Paradox…

Women typically live longer than men, in many countries by five to seven years.

But those extra years are not necessarily healthy ones.

Women are more likely to live with chronic disease, disability, and distress across midlife and later life. See this recent systematic analysis published in The Lancet Public Health (2024), citation below.

The truth is: women carry a heavier Longevity Load than men, and for a longer time.

This distinction matters. And it’s exactly what makes the Pink Zones different from the Blue Zones.

To create real health—to foster more Pink Zones, conditions that allow women not just to live longer but to thrive—we must first name the load. Only then can we co-create the pillars that lighten it and make thriving possible.

What Makes Up the Longevity Load

The Hidden Drivers of Midlife Distress

The Longevity Load is made up of invisible, often unspoken stressors that chip away at wellness, no matter how many supplements, green smoothies, or breathwork sessions we stack on top.

1. Internalized Ageism & the Cultural Nocebo

Women are taught, subtly and overtly, that their value declines after 40.

These beliefs don’t just wound self-esteem; they affect physiology, mood, libido, even immune function. Many enter perimenopause expecting to suffer, and healthcare experiences often confirm it.

This is what I call the Cultural Nocebo: when a negative belief about an experience creates real, measurable harm.

You’ve heard about power of the placebo effect?

Positive expectations improve outcomes. Its darker twin, the nocebo effect, is lesser known. It happens when negative expectations worsen symptoms or even trigger new ones.

Take menopause. Women today are conditioned to expect a fiery descent: hot flashes, mood swings, sleepless nights—with nothing ahead to look forward to but aging. And aging, by the way, is something we’re told to resist at all costs—both facially and financially. But what if those very expectations are shaping women’s experience?

What if the nocebo effect is amplifying discomfort—not because suffering is inevitable, but because women are told it is?

This narrative runs deep—baked into media, marketing, products aimed at fears of losing youth, and everyday jokes and endless reels about “falling apart.”

*Personal aside: I was at an intimate dinner recently, speaking about an injustice, when another woman interrupted me, saying (not ironically): “You’re flaring up your angry 11s.”

That’s how deep the fear narrative goes: women (unknowingly?) policing women, reducing righteous anger to a wrinkle. Even our faces are framed as liabilities. This is how patriarchy feeds the cultural nocebo—convincing us that #1, expressing a valid emotion is risky, and #2, it might also come (gasp) with a facial cost.

2. Chronic Caregiving & Invisible Labor

Women are conditioned to care—for children, partners, parents, workplaces, communities. Their own needs come last. Over decades, this constant giving erodes not only energy but identity.

As Ashton Applewhite notes: “Entire clinical empires rise around diseases like Alzheimer’s, while the caregiver crisis remains invisible.”

I have so much to say about this from lived experience and amazing activism and change-making in this realm. I will share more in my upcoming article on Systemic Support Pillar #5.

3. Systemic Constraints

Time, money, safety, and freedom aren’t equally distributed. Wage gaps, underfunded maternal care, and restricted bodily autonomy—all shape whether women can access real self-care. These aren’t personal failures. They are systemic limitations that directly impact women’s health.

A woman’s access to “real” self-care is dictated by the systems she lives within—economic, racial, geographic, and political. These constraints determine whether she can access cortisol-lowering practices like movement, rest, nature, socialization, or creative expression.

Many male wellness gurus speak about health optimization as if freedom is a given. Many women don’t have that.

That’s why the Pink Zones remind us: thriving isn’t only personal—it’s political. From the caregiver crisis to laws that protect women in the workplace, these structures matter.

One of the first articles I ever published—for Katie Couric Media—was called The Last Workplace Taboo: Why Menopause Deserves a Seat at the Table. Because menopause isn’t just a personal journey. It’s also a workplace, cultural, and political issue.

Subscribe now

4. Endocrine Adaptation

Hormonal shifts in perimenopause and menopause aren’t pathologies—but without support and accurate information, they become distressing. Sleep disruption, brain fog, mood swings, weight changes are real adaptations. Too often they’re dismissed, misdiagnosed, or pathologized.

Here’s the bigger picture: yes, hormones shift. But hormones never act in isolation. They always interact with context. And it’s at this intersection—hormones and life load—where women’s mood, energy, and health are truly shaped.

Think about when perimenopause arrives: often in a woman’s 40s, right as she’s balancing career, caregiving, aging parents, and an endless mental load. By then, reserves are thin. Self-care has been pushed aside. Her body isn’t breaking down—it’s asking for attention.

The menopause transition is an inflection point. To adapt in any transition, we need recalibration. If a woman enters midlife depleted or burned out, her experience will be very different.

5. Isolation & Loss of Meaning

As roles shift—children leave, careers plateau, parents pass—many women experience shrinking circles and a loss of identity. How many midlife women have you heard say they just don’t feel like themselves anymore?

Without ritual, purpose, or cultural frameworks for eldering, this stage of life can feel like a slow erasure. This erosion of meaning increases risk for chronic disease, cognitive decline, and emotional distress—but is rarely named in medical models.

It’s time to turn this around. This is why I started the Pink Zones Podcast Club. I invite you to join (details below).

Why Naming Matters

Supplements, green smoothies, meditation apps—none of these can erase the unspoken weight women carry. If we truly want women to be the CEOs of their health, we must clear space in that boardroom by recognizing the Longevity Load.

Naming it is the first step. Then, can we move from survival to transformation.

Looking Ahead: From Load to Liberation

This is where the Pink Zones Pillars come in. Unlike the Blue Zones (known for all ideal lifestyle and diet guidelines that you well know already and naturopathic medicine has been recommending for over a hundred years), the Pink Zones are about creating conditions that allow women to flourish, even in the midst of challenges and transitions.

In an earlier piece, The Hunt for the Pink Zones, I shared the seven pillars that make these zones possible. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be unpacking each one—showing how we can not only recognize what women are carrying, but also build spaces, practices, and communities that lighten the load.

Because women don’t just deserve longer lives.

We deserve healthier, fuller, joyful ones.

Reference

Differences across the lifespan between females and males in the top 20 causes of disease burden globally: a systematic analysis of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

1. Patwardhan, Vedavati et al. The Lancet Public Health, Volume 9, Issue 5, e282 - e294

   Thanks for reading Dispatches From The Pink Zones! This post is public, so feel free to share it.

   Share

Ready to lighten the Longevity Load?

Or maybe you just need stronger pillars beneath you?
Join the Pink Zones Podcast Club and let’s do it together.

Many women I know are tired of being told that midlife is a time full of more problems to fix.

What we really want is depth: health that feels real and bone deep, connection that sustains us, and wisdom that helps us grow into this stage of life with strength and joy.

That’s what the Pink Zones Podcast Club is about.

Each month, we listen to two thought-provoking podcast episodes on themes that matter for women in midlife and beyond: vitality, meaning, belonging, resilience, and creativity. Then we gather, not for small talk, but for meaningful conversation that helps us integrate these insights into daily life.

• It’s just like a book club, but with podcasts.

• You’ll listen at your own pace, then join on Zoom for rich conversation, shared wisdom, and practical takeaways.

This is a chance to step out of the fix-yourself culture and into community.

Together, we’ll have a good time discovering what it means to create more Pink Zones — the places and conditions where women flourish.

🗓️ 2025 PODCAST CLUB:

• Thursday, October 23

• Thursday, November 13

• Thursday, December 11

  Time: 5:30 PM PT / 8:30 PM ET (1-hour sessions)

  Where: Zoom (link provided upon registration)

*Paid Subscribers join for free!*

SIGN UP FOR THE PODCAST CLUB HERE

The greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble….They can never be solved, but only outgrown.” - Carl Jung

These two insights — one from a political activist /scholar, the other from an analytical psychologist — help me frame both the cultural moment we’re living through and the way I practice medicine.

• To be radical is not to reject, but to reach into the root.

• To grow is not to solve every problem, but to outgrow what no longer serves. Sometimes we do this by becoming “bigger” than the problem itself.

These ideas help me gain perspective during this time of disorder and regression. It’s as if the world is in a global tantrum, with many countries devolving to infantile stages, then lurching through a turbulent and raging adolescence, shouting: “Democracy gives me the right to choose not to have democracy!”

And yet, even in this chaos, many wonder if we may also be on the edge of a new order.

I see a similar pattern in my clinic each week, where patients are caught in the disorder of modern medicine and the confusion of “Dr. Google,” but also searching for something deeper, more integrated, more whole.

The people that come to me are frustrated by quick fixes that don’t last, overwhelmed by conflicting health advice, and longing for something beyond than the “pill for every ill” story.

Their questions are similar to ones I wrestle with in my own life and work:

• What does it mean to maintain health as a positive state, not just the absence of a disease?

• How do we age “well” in a culture that tells us to fight aging (and all evidence) at all costs?

• What does it mean to practice medicine that heals, rather than patches or kicks the can further down the road?

Two frameworks help orient me. Philosopher Ken Wilber describes growth as “transcend and include”. Each stage of growth goes beyond what came before but carries forward its essential truths. Kind of like those stacking matryoshka dolls, where we still carry all the previous versions of ourselves even as we expand.

Spiritual teacher Richard Rohr speaks of life as order → disorder → reorder. We begin with certainty and structure, encounter disruption and disillusionment, and, if we lean in, arrive at a deeper integration. My interview with , Talking With Strangers highlights how we might apply this to aging.

I was introduced to Ken Wilber’s integral approach in Cultural Studies in my undergrad studies in the 80s. My mum, an activist Catholic, and her ex-nun friends deeply resonated with Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk who is the quintessential wise man-grandfather we all wish we had. (He’s rocking Oprah’s world now). In the last few years, I have been reading writers like who often draws from both thinkers (Wilber and Rohr), showing how they apply to culture, spirituality, and our current moment. I find their frameworks just as relevant to medicine and aging.

Healthcare/ Medicine in Transition: From Order to Reorder

• Order: For much of the 20th century, medicine was defined by its confidence in “wonder drugs” like penicillin and the polio vaccine. Medicine entered a strong heroic phase. Doctors became heroes, armed with antibiotics, surgery, and technological breakthroughs that created a sense of mastery and invincibility with such an advanced arsenal of weapons in the fight against disease.

• Disorder: But cracks appeared. Chronic diseases surged, new viruses emerged, patients lost faith in quick fixes, and the very system became burdened by costs and burnout. Skepticism toward conventional medicine has increased, leading to more polarized and binary rhetoric, particularly evident in the United States today but showing up in smaller ways in Canada where I live too.

• Reorder: Out of disorder, a new integrative model is emerging — visible even on the edges of conventional medicine. “Functional medicine” and root-cause care aim to transcend the limits of heroic, intervention-first medicine while still including its life-saving tools. Figures like Andrew Weil, Mark Hyman, and Peter Attia are celebrated as allopathic pioneers of “functional medicine”. And while they are revolutionaries in that context of allopathic medicine, what’s often overlooked is that the functional medicine landscaping rests on the ground naturopathic doctors have been cultivating for over a century.

What is Naturopathic Medicine? (My Lineage)

It’s worth pausing to explain what naturopathic medicine actually is, because many people still don’t know. I’ve been a licensed naturopathic physician since 2002, and even after more than 20 years, I still meet people who assume it’s something new, trendy, or fringe.

In reality, naturopathic medicine is old school — the OG. It came to North America around 1900, rooted in European nature cure traditions: nutrition, botanical medicine, hydrotherapy, and daily lifestyle practices. Its core idea was radical then and still powerful now: that nature is a primary source of healing — through food, herbs, water, movement, rest, and connection with the natural world.

By the 1930s, thousands of naturopathic doctors were in practice, and nearly 50 naturopathic and holistic medical schools existed across the U.S. and Canada. But history intervened, and reshaped medicine in North America.

The Flexner Report commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation at the request of the AMA (American Medical Association), grouped together all schools that taught holistic modalities as what he called “sect” medicine *. He dismissed them as all being unproven and unscientific. And thus they were declared not worthy of university affiliation or funding. Sound familiar?

(If you’re curious about that story — including the impact of the Flexner Report — I’ve added a sidebar at the bottom you can explore.)

After World War II, the boom in pharmaceuticals created cultural faith in the “magic bullet,” and naturopathic medicine seemed nearly extinguished. By the 1950s, only one college in North America still taught naturopathic medicine — and it was barely hanging on.

Then came the turning point. On May 28, 1956, three naturopathic doctors filed articles of incorporation in Oregon to create the National College of Naturopathic Medicine. It was a revolutionary act, preserving a lineage that might otherwise have disappeared. It is now called the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland Oregon. (This is where I studied and graduated in 2002).

From those embers, naturopathic medicine evolved into a modern profession: four-year, full-time doctoral programs accredited in North America, rooted in biomedical sciences and all the traditional naturopathic modalities. In many states and provinces like BC, where I live, NDs are licensed as primary care physicians with prescriptive rights and many additional certifications.

Aging and the Longevity Load

The same frameworks that shape medicine also apply to aging.

• Order: In youth, health feels effortless. Vitality is taken for granted.

• Disorder: Over time, we begin to carry a load — the cumulative weight of stress, sleep debt, ultra-processed food, sedentary habits, chronic inflammation, environmental toxins, unresolved trauma, and disconnection from community and self-awareness. This is the stage when people often say, “I just don’t feel like myself anymore.” (I’ve developed the concept of the Longevity Load specifically for women, often invisible burdens that we carry into midlife, which I’ll expand on in future articles.)

• Reorder: Yet disorder is not the end of the story. In the communities I call the Pink Zones — inspired by the Blue Zones — women age with vitality not by resisting disorder (aging) at all costs, but by reordering their lives around deeper pillars- antidotes to the Longevity Load: cultural self-worth, belonging, movement, nourishment, rituals of rest, meaning, and creativity. These practices lighten the Longevity Load, allowing women not just to survive, but to truly thrive.

Integrating to Reorder

Naturopathic Medicine is the original functional medicine. Long before “root-cause” was a buzzword, NDs were practicing it: nutrition as essential, hydrotherapy to stimulate healing and nervous system regulation, lifestyle as a foundational pillar, and docere — doctor as teacher.

Unlike binary movements that pit “natural or traditional versus allopathic ” licensed NDs don’t reject conventional medicine tools. Our philosophy has never been dualistic. We transcend and include. We use the right tool at the right time. We empower patients to be the hero of their own health journey, rather than casting the doctor or the intervention as the hero.

As chaotic as it seems, I believe “medicine” itself appears to be preparing the soil for reorder. The old order of pill-and-procedure dominance is breaking down. Sadly, many feel and many are lost in the wake of this disorder. But out of that quaking ground, a new integrative model could emerge — one that carries forward the best of science and modern interventions, technology included, while rooting itself in an approach that supports human thriving not as machine, but as organism, aligning with, not against, nature. The environmental movement has already shown us this path: just as alternative energy seeks to harness natural systems instead of depleting them, medicine too can evolve toward practices that sustain and regenerate, transcend and include.

The same is true of aging. Disorder — the Longevity Load — is real, but it can lead us to reorder: a stage of life defined by wisdom, meaning, and a deeper vitality.

Naturopathic medicine — along with other systems of traditional healing such as Indigenous, ancient Chinese, Ayurvedic, and Unani — has been preparing this ground for more than a century. I don’t know whether it will endure as a distinct profession, evolve into something new, or be eclipsed — as so many healing traditions around the world have been, surviving instead in underground or community-based forms. It may also be absorbed into conventional healthcare by those rediscovering its principles through functional medicine, which, in turn, could bring these approaches to many more people. What matters most is the invitation: not to stay stuck in our fear of disorder, but to walk through it with courage, so that we can arrive at reorder, as patients, as practitioners, and as a culture learning not only how to grow up, but how to age well.

If these topics interest you, please join me for a live conversation!

I’m excited to be joining for a live this Friday, Sept 19 at 8:00 AM PDT: “Integrating Wellness: A Conversation between a Naturopathic and Osteopathic Physician”

JOIN THE LIVE SEPT 19, 800am PDT

Subscribe now

Historical Note: The Flexner Report:

Although the report recommended positive changes such as a strong focus on bioscience and increased education before and after medical school, it also required that the schools make significant investments in laboratories and research facilities, which few of the smaller schools could afford without university affiliation or funding. By raising the standards for laboratories and facilities in ways small colleges could never meet, nearly all ND schools were compelled to close.

The report’s conclusions and recommendations were widely adopted by licensing and accrediting bodies across the North America., resulting in the closure of many schools of medicine.

· A 2003 article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons examined the impact of the 1910 Flexner Report on medical education.

• 1904 → 160 MD schools, 28,000 students

• 1920 → 85 schools, 13,000 students

• All but two African-American schools closed

• Student bodies became nearly all-male and white

The closures hit African-American institutions especially hard: all but two were shut down, drastically reducing the number of Black physicians entering the field.

At the same time, the new scarcity of medical school slots reinforced existing inequities, leading to the near reemergence of almost all-male, overwhelmingly white medical student bodies.

What determines a woman’s health?

Hormones? Genetics? Access to care?

Yes—but the story is much larger.

A woman’s well-being is never in a vacuum.

It is deeply tied to her self-worth: her internalized sense of value, dignity, and agency. And this is largely shaped by how her culture reflects or diminishes her worth across her lifespan.

• Does she have access to education?

• Does she have equal rights to men?

• Does she retain value post-childbearing years?

• Does she have agency over her body, her finances, her choices?

• Is she shielded from violence—or exposed to it daily?

These are not abstract questions.

These factors ripple directly into a woman’s physiology, stress response, resilience, ability to advocate for herself, to seek care, and ultimately impact her health outcomes.

Subscribe now

A Journey To A Modern Matriarchal Culture

To see this more clearly—(bifocals optional)—let’s step away for a moment and travel to the foothills of the Himalayas to Yunnan, China. Here live the Mosuo, one of the world’s few remaining matrilineal societies.

Among the Mosuo, women lead households, inherit property, and make key decisions. They practice what are called “walking marriages”: instead of a husband moving in, men visit partners at night but continue living in their mother’s household. Children are raised collectively in the maternal home, under the enduring authority of women.

As Mosuo women age, their value doesn’t decline. It increases. Older women become decision-makers, cultural anchors, and respected elders. Aging elevates their status, rather than erasing it.

Menopause Across Cultures

Why does this matter for health?

A recent cross-cultural study published in March of this year, (Gao et al., 2025) compared the illness conception and menopausal symptoms of Mosuo women with two neighbouring groups—Yi and Han Chinese women. All three groups share the same physical environmental conditions. Yet the health outcomes were starkly different.

Mosuo women reported significantly fewer menopausal symptoms.

Of the 11 main symptoms examined, these in particular were notably different : less insomnia, fewer hot flushes, reduced anxiety, less melancholy. The Yi and Han women—living under patriarchal norms—reported much higher symptoms overall (you can read the full fascinating study here).

Culture as a Protective Factor?

So why the striking contrast? Researchers suggest the key lies in cultural framing.

In the Mosuo context, menopause is not pathologized. It doesn’t signal a chaos state of impending decline and social recession. Instead, post-reproductive women are venerated as wise, powerful, and essential to the community.

This researchers suggest that this esteem—woven into daily life—creates resilience. Lower stress and higher self-efficacy buffer women against the very symptoms that, in the West, often feel overwhelming.

What this tells us:

• Menopause severity is shaped by cultural context and resilience, not just hormones.

• Biology might set the stage, but culture writes the script.

• Where society honours women as they age, the body itself responds differently.

Bringing it back to Basecamp.

What does this mean for us? We can’t all move to the Himalayas or overthrow patriarchy overnight. But we can learn from the Mosuo.

If cultural self-worth protects health, then we must ask:

How does our own society value—or devalue—women. How about at midlife and beyond?

Do we treat aging as a diminishment or a part of growing up?

Do we listen to women’s lived experiences as seriously as lab results?

Do we create systems that support dignity, autonomy, and visibility across the lifespan?

This is the vision behind the Pink Zones: environments where women are rooted in self-worth, supported by systems, and uplifted by community.

When these conditions exist, the second half of life need not be a portal to a crisis—but an even better fitting next chapter.

A Mentor Close to Home

Right here in Vancouver, British Columbia, where I live, one of my longtime heroes has been saying something very similar for decades—through the lens of endocrinology.

Meet Dr. Jerilynn Prior, a pioneering endocrinologist and professor at UBC. She founded the Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research (CeMCOR)—the first institute in the world devoted to understanding ovulation and cycles as central to women’s health.

Her career has been about flipping the script: insisting that women’s hormones be studied not as problems to be managed, but as vital forces supporting whole-person health. (This is so very naturopathic!) As Dr. Prior says:

“We have to value women’s experiences and stories just as much as lab results”.

Against a medical culture that has often been dismissive, sexist, and slow to change, she never wavered. She was among the first to champion bioidentical progesterone in perimenopause—long before it was accepted as more than just a uterine protector.

She has shown, for decades, that women’s health is not only biochemical. It is emotional, cultural, and deeply lived. And that listening to women isn’t just compassion—it’s science.

And at 83, she is still publishing, still challenging, and still rewriting the field.

In a recent chat with me, she described her upcoming memoir as “a feminist endocrinologist’s life story about discovering that ovulation and progesterone, in partnership with estrogen, are essential for lifelong health.”

Research Spotlight: Self-Worth and Cycles

Just a few weeks ago, August 12, 2025, Dr. Prior and colleagues published a prospective year-long study in PLOS One, (Shirazian N, et al 2025) tracking daily feelings of self-worth in 53 healthy premenopausal women, for over a year (over 698 menstrual cycles). The findings:

These data suggest that Feeling of Self-Worth is a trait that is stable within a person and changes little, if at all, related to women’s menstrual cycles and ovulation.

The narrative that women experience dramatic vacillation in mood and self-worth BECAUSE they are “on their period” is pervasive. But the questions need to be asked- is it the “menstrual cycle” or the hormones themselves that are to blame, and/or is it the conditions that disturb the healthy hormone cycling and ovulation.

It’s important to point out that the women in this study were ovulating at least at the beginning.

Normal ovulation indicates a healthy interplay of cycling hormones, especially sufficient amounts of progesterone production.

Dr. Prior speculates: “ovulatory disturbances such as short luteal phases (less than 10 days) or not ovulating (anovulation) occur when women are under physical or emotional stress related to inadequate nourishment, being physically ill, over-exercising, having insufficient energy intakes, or related to abuse, psychological conflict or depression/anxiety.”

In other words: self-worth is not solely influenced by hormones—it can be a stable trait, shaped by challenging life circumstances in combination with disruptions in biology (short luteal phases, not ovulating!)

I discovered similar findings when I dug into the research on the issue of depression during perimenopause- a time where progesterone production does decline (short luteal phases and anovulation are the norm here). It’s important to emphasize in this case, this is NOT a sign of pathology- this drop in progesterone is normal in the initial phase of the menopause transition.

I wanted to know: Is depression to be expected now that we even have an expected drop in hormones?

Research Spotlight: Depression and Menopause

We’re often told that depression in the menopause transition is inevitable.

But the data tell a more nuanced story.

A 2024 Lancet review (Brown L, et al. 2024) —one of the largest and most rigorous syntheses of prospective studies on mental health across the menopause transition—analyzed dozens of cohorts from North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.

Here’s what it found:

• For women with no prior history of depression, only 10–30% experience symptoms.

• For women with a history of depression, the risk of recurrence is much higher—45–65%.

The key insight?

Hormones influence mood, but their impact depends on context—stress, inequities, and past vulnerabilities shape how women experience the transition. Sleep disruption or hot flashes don’t directly cause depression. It’s when these biological shifts collide with stressors that the risk escalates.

In other words, supporting women’s mental health is not only about providing effective and safe hormone therapy ( Yes, I prescribe hormones daily in my clinic, and have for decades!) But it’s ALSO about buffering the cultural and social contexts that amplify risks.

The larger thread + why it matters for you and me.

What unites the recent research findings, Dr. Prior’s work and the Mosuo women’s experience is a profound truth: when women’s worth is affirmed, health itself transforms.

Culture is not just background—it is biology’s partner.

It can either burden women with stress, stigma, and invisibility—or protect them with dignity, self-respect and agency.

Cultural self-worth isn’t a soft, abstract notion—it’s medicine.

Leave a comment

CITATIONS:

Gao L, Wang J, Zhang Y, Zhao X, Fu H. Psychological and cultural correlates of illness conception and menopausal symptoms: a cross-sectional and longitudinal comparative study of Mosuo, Yi, and Han women. Front Psychiatry. 2025;16:1496889. Published 2025 Mar 21. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1496889

Shirazian N, Shirin S, Kalidasan D, Prior JC (2025). Feeling of self-worth in healthy premenopausal women—relationships with menstrual cycles and ovulation over 1-year in the prospective ovulation cohort. PLOS One 20(8): e0327539. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0327539

Brown L, Hunter MS, Chen R, Crandall CJ, Gordon JL, Mishra GD, Rother V, Joffe H, Hickey M. Promoting good mental health over the menopause transition. Lancet. 2024 Mar 9;403(10430):969-983. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(23)02801-5. Epub 2024 Mar 5. PMID: 38458216.

When National Geographic explorer Dan Buettner introduced the world to the Blue Zones, he gave us a map of regions where people live the longest, healthiest lives.

His work brought global attention to the conditions that support human longevity. It had a huge impact and inspired many, me included!

For me, that inspiration also traces back much further, to when I was a young girl poring over the National Geographic magazines that arrived at my house.

By 14, I had discovered anthropologist Margaret Mead, whose work so captivated me that I declared I would become an anthropologist myself.

What drew me in was the idea of being an activist anthropologist, doing “participatory action research” where collaborative research could lead to community-led positive systemic change.

That spark led me through scholarships to study anthropology, unforgettable fieldwork opportunities, and eventually toward an even more actionable, “put theory-into-practice” path: naturopathic medicine. I trained at the oldest naturopathic medical school in the U.S., where the philosophy of treating the root cause (carried forward from its licensure in North America in the early 1900s!) remained the guiding lens of the medicine.

It was in studying this dynamic field—one anchored in a holistic lineage yet remarkably powerful in its relevance for our times—that I encountered mentors who embodied Mead’s famous words:

“There is no greater force in the world than a post-menopausal woman with zest.”

Something clicked.

(an aside: In a future piece, I’ll share more about my training with pioneering naturopathic doctors who were supporting women with bioidentical hormones long before the mainstream caught up—a story that shows how women’s health has so often been reshaped by trailblazers undeterred by resistance and the bias that persists in medicine to this day!)

Through those years and the decades since, I see how I’ve been on a lifelong hunt for what I now call the Pink Zones.

I didn’t have the name for this until recently, but the Blue Zones helped me recognize what I’d been seeking all along.

As a naturopathic doctor focused on women’s health — and one who sees longevity through an anthropologist’s lens — I began asking: Why do some women flourish through midlife and beyond, while others struggle? What conditions make the difference?

In searching for answers, I’ve explored cultural practices, health rituals, and modern science that reveal how women live well — not just long.

What emerges is clear: this is not about anti-aging. After all, aging is the goal. What I’m interested in is vitality — something that, as both a naturopathic doctor and a woman juggling a lot (a few times acquainted with the unsavoury edges of burnout), I know vitality is central to health.

That’s why I’ve been mapping the Pink Zones: the conditions that allow women to thrive in midlife and beyond.

These pillars are the heart of the Pink Zones — evidence-informed conditions that support women’s health and vitality through midlife and beyond.

In upcoming articles, I’ll unpack each pillar in depth, drawing on research, clinical experience, life histories of women I interview and cross-cultural insights.

I hope that you’ll see yourself in this roadmap — and find ways to create your own Pink Zone, wherever you are in life!

TikTok is having its skinny moment.
And it’s not just sparking nostalgia—it’s triggering a kind of communal nervous system flare-up for Millennials who lived through the first wave. As a Gen X woman, I remember it too. I watched the cultural famine unfold from just upstream — and now I watch it trying to re-enter the current.

There has been a surge of teens and women in their early 20s romanticizing what they are calling “Y2K skinny” bodies, and referencing a version of thinness that once ruled magazine covers in the late 90’s and early aughts. The “look” that nearly destroyed a generation of women.

In a time when clavicles are being flaunted like accessories, thigh gaps measured like metrics, and the gaunt aesthetic is making its way back into digital consciousness, women who survived the last cultural famine are speaking out—not for clout, but for care.

This is Pink Zone territory.

Subscribe now

Because here’s the truth: when women warn each other across time, it’s not trend commentary. It’s trauma alchemy. It’s survival skills being passed down like medicine.

Millennial women — many of whom came of age watching Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, and Kate Moss disappear before their eyes — are raising their voices. Not out of superiority. Out of hard-won wisdom. Out of a sacred obligation to say:
Don’t go back.

Creators in their late 30s and 40s have been prompted to come forward and trauma share in hopes of preventing Gen Z and Gen A from repeating the past.

Creator Kaila Uli (@kailauli) said it best in a viral reel that now feels like a feminist siren:

“So many people say they're Y2K skinny and using this as a way to body-shame other people, but you guys don't understand what you are calling Y2K skinny. Within the Y2K, it’s been called fat… We need to not forget that 2000 skinny was underfed… Mama, you would not have survived the 2000s.”
— Kaila Uli (@kailauli on Instagram)

Part PSA, part big sister tough love, part war story — her post hit a nerve. Because it’s not just about what it looked like. It’s about what it cost.

Uli, who modeled during the aughts, recalls being sent home from shoots for being “too fat” — even when she was rail-thin. Her reminiscent message, and others like it, are flooding social channels right now. A growing chorus of women naming the harm out loud. Naming what they once internalized.

Many of us remember the 2000’s era:

• The pop culture cruelty of “heroin chic.”

• Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, and Kate Moss were all so thin it hurt to look at them.

• Kate Moss's infamous “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Though, she’s since distanced herself from the phrase, for many women, its cultural (and personal) damage remains.

• Richie has spoken publicly about her health struggles in the aftermath of that time, as has Lohan.

Looking back, it wasn’t just fashion. It was a famine of self-worth.

And yet — in 2025 — it’s creeping back. Under the guise of “aesthetic.” With nostalgic filters and innocent hashtags. Which is why this is a Dispatch from the Pink Zones.

We don’t gatekeep this knowledge. We offer it with open hands.

Because what Gen Z and Gen Alpha are reaching for isn’t always thinness — it’s belonging. It’s agency. It’s identity. But when those things get wrapped up in shrinking ourselves? That’s when the alarm bells ring.

Some creators are warning younger women what the #Y2KSkinny body actually took:

• Disordered eating.

• Diet pills and cigarettes.

• Shame.

• Loneliness.

• Hospital visits dressed up as glamour.

The truth is: the reason Beyoncé and J.Lo are celebrated as beautiful now has everything to do with the cultural work Millennials and Gen X women have done to reject the starvation scripts. To write new ones. To reclaim curves, softness and strength. To let bodies change — and still be worthy.

Today, shows like Michelle Buteau’s Survival of the Thickest celebrate full-bodied joy, love, and style without apology. There are more shapes on screens than ever before, and, yet, the pull to restrict, shrink, and disappear is showing signs of returning.

Even artists once celebrated for body positivity are navigating the complexity of society feeling like artists bodies should be open to public commentary. Recently, Meghan Trainor revised the lyrics to her hit “All About That Bass,” swapping the line “I ain’t no size two” with “I got some new boobs.” The update came alongside her public admission that she’s been using a GLP-1 drug. Fans had mixed reactions — some applauded her evolution and transparency, while others felt betrayed by what seemed like a departure from her original message of size acceptance. The complexity of it all is peak 2025 — and part of the conversation too.

Which is why this moment matters.

Because we don’t just want to look well. We want to be well.

Let’s be clear:
“Strong” is a far better marker of health and longevity than “skinny” ever was.

Muscle mass, especially in women 35+, is protective.

It’s resistance against not just osteoporosis or injury — but against the invisible forces asking us to disappear.

It’s not just personal. It’s ancestral.

The Pink Zones are not about aesthetics. They are about vitality. Intergenerational care. Nervous system regulation. Thriving over shrinking. Muscle over fragility. Nourishment over negation.

The same cultural current that’s reviving “Y2K skinny” is also flooding timelines with anti-aging hacks, injectables, and biohacking regimens — all promising to freeze women in time.

It’s not just about thinness anymore. It’s about resisting any visible sign of maturity, change, or lived experience.

But in Pink Zones, we know: aging isn’t something to fear. It’s a privilege. A body that changes is a body that’s alive.

We’re not here to look young OR disappear.

We’re here to live well — out loud, out front, IN our bodies, without apology.

And yet, like a skinny-scary ghost, another flashback from the fashion past may be appearing on a screen near you:

Do you recall Rachel Zoe? She’s the stylist credited (or blamed) for curating the skinny aesthetic of boho heroin-chic, styling starlets into ghost versions of themselves.

Now in 2025, she is eerily re-emerging on Real Housewives.

Many worry the architect is back in the building, but are hoping she, too, has grown and learned from the past

Because when millennial women speak now about Y2KSkinny, it’s not from superiority. It’s from survival.
It’s not for clout. It’s for continuity.
This isn’t a trend.
This is a warning flare from the women who made it through to a different zone.

Because of the work millennial women have done over the past 15 years to eradicate the scary skinnies from the zeitgeist, they’re sounding the alarm as they see it creep back up. #NeverForget.

This is what makes it a Pink Zone moment: a zone of lived wisdom, of care passed between generations, and of women trying to protect each other.
It’s not a trend. It never was.
It’s a warning.
It’s firm, fervent, and — in my opinion — very PINK.

Let’s Talk:

• Did you survive the Y2K Skinny years?

• What wisdom would you offer to someone feeling the pull toward that aesthetic now?

• What’s your current relationship to strength, softness, or shape?

Care has never been simple—especially for women.
And in midlife, it often becomes a quiet inheritance OR disinheritance: of people, of roles, of responsibilities, of grief.

When my 82-year-old aunt Kata died last week, I didn’t just inherit grief—I inherited her husband, my uncle Stjepan, 81, who lives with dementia and insists he doesn’t need help. He won’t accept any home care (“I’m fine!”) and won’t move into a retirement home. I live in Vancouver, BC. He’s in London, Ontario.

My mother, Doris, who also has dementia, is already in long-term care, 2 hours away from there in Windsor, Ontario, and I’ve been managing her needs from across the country for 5 years.

Two weeks ago, I got an early morning call —the kind that tells you everything is about to change.

The palliative care team said my aunt was close to dying. I cancelled my clinic day, took a redeye flight, 5 hours to Toronto, drove 2 hours to London, and stayed with her for the week. She talked (and yelled) about it to be over. She wanted MAiD. She was tired and “done”. She was clear. She passed for first few assessments but ultimately didn’t qualify —when she finally said yes to some morphine, for her it quickly blurred the line between pain relief and lucidity, and the window for consent closed.

She didn’t want to tell my uncle she wanted MAiD.

They’d been together forty years. Loving. Codependent. Entwined. She was the one who held things together, administratively, financially and linguistically.

She was born in Canada to Croatian immigrants; he immigrated from there in his 30s and still struggled with fully expressing himself in English.

She wasn’t scared of dying. She was scared of what it would do to him.

Saturday she died.

Monday he forgot.

I got another early morning phone call from the palliative care ward in London. He took a taxi back, convinced she was still there. He’d already visited once, but the memory had vanished.

At the same moment, as I am on the line with social worker feeding him a sandwich and tea, his doctor was calling me—he’d missed labs and specialist appointments.

Suddenly, I wasn’t just next of kin—I was everything.

Executor. Medical contact. Power of attorney. The keeper of all the pieces.

Just yesterday, I got a call at 4 am my time that the police had been to my uncle’s house.

Stjepan had called the police saying he was looking for his missing wife.

I find out just after from my uncle that he does not know why they came, and when I start to sound alarmed but he says, “Heidi what are you so upset about? I enjoyed talking with them, they were nice people”.

I also found out for the first time that there is a 30-something-year-old woman who has discovered his vulnerabilities. She met him as he was heading back from the mailbox, looking like he was having trouble walking, she drove him home.

She was sitting at his dining room table having a coffee with him when I called. He told me she was so kind, she drove him to the bank a few days ago. I later see on-line he withdrew 2500 in cash that day. I later register to put on an alert.

When I asked to speak with her, I tell her I’m his niece and POA and found out her name was Nicole—and she was already positioning herself as his new “caregiver.” She says she has 3 kids and is visiting her mother who lives nearby. I think to myself, how does she have the time to sit with my uncle and drink instant coffee at his dark dining room with newspapers, ads, mail and opened bank statements, and disorganized bills scattered across the table?

She reprimanded me for sending a repeat grocery order via Instacart, saying she had already stocked his fridge.

Then came the red flags: she started to pummel me with questions about his medications, his car documents. She doesn’t know me….

When I paused for more than a moment and asked, “Why do you need to know?”, she said: “Heidi, it sounds like you are getting irritated. I am just a caring neighbour trying to help a heartbroken man”.

Inappropriate, urgent, and unnerving.

I called the community police officer who’d recently visited my uncle. He told me best to cut this off immediately. “He’s very vulnerable. I’ll call her,” he said. “She needs to stay away.”

Needless to say, it’s a lot. And yet—I care.

The Myth of Midlife Apathy

There’s a cultural story going around that menopausal women have stopped caring. We’re fed this image of the “I don’t give a f*ck” midlife woman, shedding people-pleasing and externally imposed responsibilities like a snakeskin. There’s much truth in that shedding but let’s not confuse boundaries with emotional disinterest.

The truth is more nuanced.

I’ve never cared more deeply in my life.

But what’s shifted is how I care. And why. The care isn’t reflexive. It’s not performance. It’s not self-abandonment masquerading as obligation. It’s intentional.

There’s a difference I’ve come to understand—one I think many of us reach in midlife, sometimes through exhaustion, sometimes through clarity:
The difference between reflexive care and intentional care.

Reflexive care is what many of us did in our earlier decades—automatic, expected, unexamined. We cared because we were supposed to. Because we didn’t yet know how to say no.

Intentional care is different. It’s chosen. It costs something—but it’s given freely, not out of performance or pressure, but out of deep alignment with who we are becoming.

That’s the kind of caregiving I’m navigating now—not easy, but real.

Not always graceful, but grounded. And I’m imagining more sustainable.

The Staging of Awakening and Caring

Here’s what I’ve seen—in myself, in my patients, in the women of Pink Zones. There’s a staging to the maturity of waking up.

Stage one: Self-abandonment.

In our earlier years, we often mistake over-functioning for love. We say yes too easily. We tolerate too much. We care so hard (about how others feel and how they think of us) that we vanish ourselves in the process.

Stage two: Boundary building.

Eventually, something cracks. We read the books (Terri Cole!). We listen to the podcasts (Re-Imagining Love!). We find the language. We start saying no. It can feel abrupt, even aggressive when the pendulum swings—but perhaps it’s necessary. We need to feel the difference between a reflexive yes and a conscious one.

Stage three: Discernment.

With time, boundaries become less about defence and more about discernment. We know what depletes us. We know what matters. Both “whats” can indeed tax us and drain us at times, we are human after all but we will ALSO carve out time to refill and restore. It might be at the very end of the day or it might be a week later, but we will not neglect ourselves indefinitely. We stop asking for permission and validation.

Stage four: Capacity.

And then, a second blossoming happens. We come full circle—not back to endlessly over-giving, but forward into right-sized care. We choose love, even when it’s hard.

We show up, not to prove our worth, but because we’ve clarified what is worthy of us.

This is where I am now. Not because I’m trying to be a heroine.

Not because I have unlimited energy (I don’t).

But because I’ve come to understand what this life is really about.

I saw that in the conversations by my aunts’ bedside, me and her and her and him. The love I witnessed between them and me for them was otherworldly and melted my heart. And that care—when offered with intention—is one of the most radical, powerful things we can give.

The palliative care nurses, doctors, and social workers who see some version of this many dozens of times weekly and yet continue to hold compassion hourly in their workday and likely at home.

I’m behind on everything—work, life, a mountain of to-dos, and the never-ending admin that comes with caring for my mum. And still, I keep coming back to this sense that this is what I’m here for: to witness these moments like when I was in London, to feel these feelings, to be fully present with the people I get to exchange presence with.

I’ve been back home for two weeks before heading to Ontario again. Most mornings have felt like a shock of too many early ringing phone calls and dense days at times a blur of putting out fires alongside clinic work. But I’m so grateful for the long hours of summer light with the sun setting at 9:20pm, which have let me slip in cold ocean swims, stretch out on warm sand after, share meals with big-hearted friends, and find comfort in small rituals: cuddling with a lover, a sauna and cold plunge, acupuncture squeezed in a break, massage therapy after work, and a pedicure at the end of a day I felt like a complete zombie. The image below is one illustration of me at days end.

I’m soaking up all the Heidicare while I can—the things that fill me up. I know I won’t have the same access to them once I head off in a few days to tend to all things Stjepan... and a generous dollop of Doris.

Gus, my mum’s boyfriend of two years, has been calling in a state of panic lately. He’s insanely smitten with her special charm and totally devoted to ensuring her well-being and happiness, but also needy and insecurely attached. Gus swears another resident—George, who sits at her dinner table—is making a move.

Doris denies it completely. “Nonsense. Gus is my sweetie,” she tells me.

When I suggest, “Well, Mum, maybe you need to reassure Gus and let him know that you’re not into George,” the normally loquacious Doris must also be channelling her inner Boundary Boss and cuts in firmly:

Anyway, this Ontario trip has a different mission entirely.

Subscribe now

Pink Zones Reflection: What We Carry, and What We Choose

In the Pink Zones, we talk a lot about resilience, wisdom, and reimagining the feminine. And here’s what I’ve learned: Care is not the opposite of boundaries. It is what happens after boundaries—when we choose, freely, to invest our love.

The real flex of midlife isn’t detachment. It’s discernment. It’s not that we don’t care anymore. It’s that we’ve learned to care with our eyes open and hearts often broken but bigger. We have a different capacity.

So if you’re in that messy middle—where the old reflexes don’t serve you, but the new clarity still costs something—I would say this. You can care. You can have limits. You can show up when it matters—and still hold onto yourself.

That’s what mature care looks like. And that’s what the world needs more of.

👵🏽 Research Finding for Flourishing #1: Caregiving and Longevity in Women

A large 10-year study found that:

• Women who reported being caregivers at two points in time had a 9% lower risk of all-cause mortality than non-caregivers.

• This longevity benefit held true even after accounting for age, health status, depression, and optimism.

• The effect was consistent across subgroups—including less frequent caregivers and those with depressive symptoms.

The takeaway: When caregiving is sustainable—not rooted in depletion but in connection—it may not only support others, but also extend the life and well-being of the caregiver herself.

• As the population of women 65+ grows, understanding the *true* health impacts of care will be essential—for policy, for families, and for how we care for ourselves.

🔗 Read the Caregiving and All-Cause Mortality in Postmenopausal Women full study

🧠 Research Finding for Flourishing #2: Why Self-Compassion Matters in Midlife Care

A 2025 study of postmenopausal women (ages 50–60) found that:

• menopausal symptom severity significantly impacts social well-being, but that self-compassion plays a key role in preserving a sense of social coherence and connection.

• the more self-compassionate a woman is—even in the face of hot flashes, insomnia, or brain fog—the more likely she is to feel grounded and emotionally connected in her relationships.

• The researchers note that fostering self-compassion can be a protective factor during this life stage, especially when social support or understanding may be lacking.

• Women who were gentler with themselves stayed more connected to others—even in the midst of discomfort or change.

• This mirrors what I see in practice: women who cultivate gentleness toward themselves often care for others from a fuller, steadier place.

  The takeaway: Self-compassion isn’t just self-care.

  It’s a *relational anchor* that helps women stay present, emotionally intact, and able to care for others without losing themselves in the process.

> 🔗 Read the full study:

Exploring the role of menopausal symptoms and self-compassion in post-menopausal women: Implications for social well-being

Leave a comment

Early Monday morning, I got a call from the palliative care unit.
My uncle had taken a taxi to the hospital, walked into her ward, and asked to visit his wife.
She had died two days earlier.

I hadn’t realized how far his dementia had progressed. My aunt Kata, his partner of forty years—had quietly been filling in the blanks of his mind, never letting me into this truth. As I have come to learn about dementia the hard way, they both hid it well. Everything was hidden inside their unit—the way they functioned only as one.

She passed on Saturday from metastatic colon cancer (very quickly, thank you, creator). She had wanted MAiD, and passed the first few assessments, but then didn’t qualify. When at her very late stage, she finally, finally, accepted pain meds, her mind had then become too muddled by hydromorphone to pass the very last assessment to allow her that choice.

But in only a matter of days, her body, graciously, ended the fight she didn’t want to have.

Now I’m holding what they used to carry together: the grief, the logistics, the unravelling of a life that worked because they were so beautifully—yet completely co-dependently—two halves of one whole.

In 30 minutes, I’ll be doing a remote viewing to identify her body with the funeral home.
Me in Vancouver, BC.
She—her remains—in London, Ontario.
No one else but me in their family on either side.

I’ve navigated the shock of dementia-grief before—with my mum, Doris, who is still very much alive and zesty, rolling around in her wheelchair with her muddled but relentlessly upbeat (thank you, Jesus) mind. Back then, it was all on me—but I was functioning solo, and (mostly) whole.

Now, my uncle is left as one-half, alone.
I’m trying to fill a bit of the void with care.
I have a front-row seat to his unravelling.

The disorientation of loss.
The shattered mind that forgets and grieves.
The hidden but rising panic—when your whole world starts slipping through your hands.

And yet… I saw his love. In her final days, Stjepan sat beside her—tender, devoted, heartbroken. Expressing emotion like I’ve rarely seen in a man.
In Croatian, with adorable terms of endearment. She said them back in a whisper with her eyes closed.
In thickly accented English, his deep love: how she was so precious, how lucky he was, how much he cherished her.

And articulate, though he never finished high school.
He turned to me and said, simply, “I am shattered.”
He held her hand like it had always been their anchor.

I know I’m not the only one navigating this terrain.
If you’ve been here—or are here now—I’d welcome your story.

This article was first published in Katie Couric Media May 12, 2025

There’s been a surge of excitement around hormone therapy (HT) — and for good reason. Adding estrogen, progesterone, and even testosterone to your daily routine can be life-changing for a woman experiencing fluctuating hormone levels (and help with countless irritating symptoms). However, the way hormone therapy is often positioned — as the missing piece in your health toolbox, a cure-all for every ill — is misleading. It’s a powerful tool, yes, but not a panacea. It doesn’t undo the menopause transition and it doesn’t put the process of aging on pause.

Hormone therapy can be like the napkin you wedge under the short leg of a wobbly restaurant table. It helps stabilize one corner. But if the other legs — rest, nourishment, movement, and emotional well-being — aren’t solid, the table will still wobble.

After more than two decades of working with women and bioidentical hormones, I understand the promise and limits of any medication. Yes, micronized progesterone can be a game-changer for sleep and night sweats. And transdermal estradiol does offer powerful support for bone health, reducing vasomotor symptoms (hot flashes and night sweats), and GSM (genitourinary syndrome of menopause).

But some women, because of various health issues, don’t find it a proper fit to take HT in the first place — or don’t find it sufficient to address their overall well-being. So what can you do if hormone supplementation isn’t right for you, or just isn’t enough? Here are other ways to shore up your resilience, broken into the most important wellness pillars for a woman in any phase of the menopause transition.

Rest and deep sleep

Sleep disturbances are often the first and most disruptive symptoms women experience during perimenopause. Hormonal fluctuations — especially declining progesterone, which happens early in perimenopause — can increase anxiety, disrupt sleep patterns, trigger early morning wake-ups, and result in a racing mind at 3 a.m. And when you’re not sleeping, everything else suffers: mood, focus, metabolism, and immune function.

Why is sleep so important? It isn’t just rest — it’s restoration. Sleep is when your body recalibrates and your brain gets a cleaning via the glymphatic system, a kind of nighttime rinse cycle. During this period, the brain clears out metabolic waste, including the plaques linked to Alzheimer’s. Without enough deep sleep, that crucial housekeeping gets skipped. Deep sleep also helps quiet cortisol and ghrelin (those stress and hunger messengers), while increasing leptin and growth hormone — key players in satiety, repair, and vitality.

When you don’t get sufficient deep sleep, it’s harder to regulate cravings, stay emotionally steady, or feel like yourself. Over time, it can nudge your body toward weight gain, blood-sugar imbalance, inflammation, and cognitive decline. Honoring your need for sleep isn’t indulgent — it’s essential care for a body in transition.

Here are non-hormonal supplements and strategies that support deeper, more restorative sleep:

• Magnesium glycinate: Calms the nervous system and relaxes muscles. Start with 200 mg at night.

• L-theanine: Promotes calm without sedation by elevating the body’s levels of GABA, dopamine, and serotonin.

• Herbs: Ashwagandha, lemon balm, passionflower, and magnolia bark are gentle-acting allies for both reducing stress and aiding sleep. And so many more herbs…

• Melatonin: You may already take this when your circadian rhythms are disrupted, like in the case of travel and time-zone changes. The natural production of melatonin decreases with aging across genders, but menopause is associated with an especially significant reduction of melatonin levels for women. Melatonin can also support bone-building via increasing the growth of osteoblasts, the cells that generate new bone tissue. You don’t need high doses here. 1-3 mg is often sufficient. *consult your individual healthcare provider as there can be some interactions with some prescription meds*

• Cooling and calming strategies: Lower your room temperature, aiming for a sleep environment around 68°F, or 20°C. Avoid caffeine within 10–12 hours of bedtime, and alcohol within 3 hours. Get some sunlight in the morning, even via a 15-minute walk around the neighbourhood. Keep vigorous exercise earlier in the day, and not within 3 hours of bedtime.

Nutrition

Menopause changes how our bodies use energy, metabolize nutrients, and maintain structural health. So it’s ideal to get your eating habits in tip-top shape to support you through your change. Luckily, there are plenty of delicious ways to make that happen. Foundational nutrition strategies include:

• Protein: Aim for 20-30 g per meal to preserve muscle and stabilize blood sugar.

• Healthy fats: Omega-3s, (which can be obtained from fish or algae supplements or flax, chia seeds) are especially important; they reduce inflammation and support brain health.

• Vitamin D & K2: These are essential for bone health. Other minerals too.

• B-complex vitamins: Crucial for energy metabolism, they also aid in stress management, mood, and cognition.

• Antioxidants: You can get these from a colourful, plant-forward diet to combat oxidative stress. (The risk of cardiovascular disease also increases after menopause, and antioxidants are cancer-preventative as well.)

• Blood sugar balance: Eat balanced meals with fiber, protein, and healthy fats to avoid insulin spikes and insulin resistance. This helps reduce hot flashes and brain fog.

Think of focusing on nutrition as an invitation to expand your nourishment, not make you feel restricted. Bringing in the right nutrients lays the foundation for steadier energy, a more balanced mood, and the optimal functioning of every system in your body.

Movement and strength-building

Exercise is one of the most potent non-hormonal therapies available, yet it’s often under-utilized. It improves mood, sleep, metabolism, and even hot flash frequency. As a bonus, movement helps shift the nervous system from fight-or-flight to rest-and-digest. It’s mood medicine and a stress buffer.

But “exercise” is a pretty broad term. Where should you start? Here’s what to prioritize:

• Resistance training: Try it two to three times per week to support muscle mass and bone strength.

• Weight-bearing exercise: hiking, dancing, jogging, and stair climbing all strengthen bone and can help slow bone loss, reducing the risk of fractures.

• Cardiovascular movement: Improves insulin sensitivity, heart and brain health, and thermoregulation.

• Yoga: A 2024 study showed that 60 minutes of yoga twice per week significantly reduced menopausal symptoms across physical, emotional, and urogenital domains.

Emotional well-being

Midlife brings emotional transitions just as significant as physical ones. Roles shift, priorities change, and unresolved wounds may rise to the surface. What worked before may no longer serve you.

This is a season that requires:

• Self-compassion: Releasing the need to be perfect and choosing to honour your humanness over high-functioning.

• Emotional hygiene: Incorporate practices like journaling, mindfulness, or expressive writing. Research shows that writing about what you’re experiencing improves both mood and immune function.

• Therapeutic support: Modalities like somatic therapy or Internal Family Systems (which explores the subpersonalities within each of our identities) can be incredibly effective.

• Connection: Whether through community, support groups, or meaningful conversations, being seen and supported is protective.

  
  You’re not meant to white-knuckle your way through this period or do it all solo. Tending to your emotional landscape and seeking support for your spirit builds stability from within.

Your true menopause “prescription”

Menopause is a turning point, and hormone therapy can help, but it’s not a stand-alone solution. Your health in this phase of life is scaffolded by what you do every day: how you sleep, what you eat, how you move, and how you care for your emotional self.

Remember that menopause also isn’t a failure of the body:

It’s a transition that asks for new support. And if HT isn’t right for you, or isn’t a cure-all for your symptoms, know that you still have power and options. You can build the stability you need, one steady leg at a time.

Leave a comment

🎙️ I was recently a guest on The Hotflash inc. podcast where we explored The Pink Zones and how perimenopause and menopause intersects with cultural expectations, hormone therapy, and care. You can listen here:

We often assume mothering is tied to biology or a particular life stage. But what if it’s also about how we show up for others—and for the future—with care and creativity?

A week ago was Mother’s Day, and like it does for many, it brought me a mix of emotions.

My mother has dementia. I’m her sole caregiver. It’s a role that carries both privilege and pain. To show up daily for someone who once showed up for me feels like the kind of reciprocity I wish the world had more of.

But there’s grief, too. The one who mothered me now needs mothering in ways I never imagined.

I call my mum every day, though sometimes she can’t quite manage to hang up the phone on its base properly. She often doesn’t know what time it is, what meal she’s just eaten, or that she’s not at school teaching, that she’s in a care home now. But she still knows it’s me. She still tells me she loves me. I don’t know how long that will last, but I hold on to it.

This tender reversal has made me think more deeply about what it means to mother—especially as someone who never had children of my own.

I’m also aware of the ways I longed to see my mother live her life differently. She was a dedicated and perfectionist French teacher. She was a dutiful wife of a (very old school) Croatian husband. She was also a heart-centred Catholic committed to social justice work. My mother was often overextended. In taking care of so many others, she sometimes abandoned herself in the process. That kind of self-sacrifice was expected of women in her generation—and still is, in so many ways.

Dementia brings to mind the stress of a brain that can’t stay on its tracks.

A runaway train whose engine is burning out, veering off-course, no longer following a familiar route.

When my mother had her fall—hitting her head on the pavement and sustaining a brain injury—my mind felt like it was slipping its rails, too.

At the very same time, I was navigating the early stages of perimenopause and my marriage was ending. My epic fertility journey had failed. My husband’s startup had collapsed, and a deep depression took hold of him—the weight of both of those “failures” (one of which was societally ascribed to me, of course, as the woman) pressed into our relationship. Then came the pandemic.

All of it collided.

My brain was trying to do something natural—rewire itself in the hormonal shifts of the menopause transition—but it was happening against a backdrop of rupture. While I was being asked to rise and leave everything (on the West Coast) to tend to my mother’s breaking world in the East, mine was quietly breaking too.

Dementia really is a form of derailment— the mind loses its sense of direction, and I often hear in my mum’s voice just how exhausting it feels to live inside that disorientation.

Still, my mother remembers love. And that feels like something worth anchoring to.

Through all this, I’ve come to reimagine mothering not as something we do only for children, but as something we offer to the world when we nurture, tend, witness, and hold.

What if mothering isn’t just about raising children, but about raising consciousness? About nurturing possibility? About making space for others to heal and grow?

Octavia Butler, for instance, who had no biological children, gave birth to entire worlds. She created herself into the future and mothered generations through imagination, truth-telling, and radical vision.

“I wrote myself into the world,” she once said.

In The Pink Zones, we talk about mothering as something that can evolve into eldering—a form of creative, grounded, and wise care. Not about obligation, but about tending to what matters. It might look like caregiving. Or activism. Or mentoring. Or storytelling. It might be quiet. It might be fierce. But it always carries life-giving energy.

You don’t have to be a biological mother to be a life-giver.
You just have to care deeply and stay rooted while you help others rise. Sometimes from bad falls.

I know Mother’s Day can be tender for many. It brings up grief, longing, and even estrangement—for our mothers, or for the motherhood paths we didn’t walk.

But I’ve learned that there are so many ways we mother, even when no one names it. We do it through our care, our presence, our love.

So much of mothering goes unseen. I realize that’s stating the obvious—and it’s part of why Mother’s Day can feel so absurd: 1 day out of 365 to recognize what is, for many, a lifetime of relentless devotion. The care, the tending, the holding-it-all-together often happens in the quiet—without applause, without acknowledgment.

I want to acknowledge something else. The people who mother my mum in her care home are extraordinary. They are “PSWs”, personal support workers—both men and women —who show up with tenderness and consistency. They look out for her. They hug her. They speak to her with dignity.

After months of uncertainty, grief, and what felt like an impossible search, she got into this incredible facility, called “The Village of Aspen Lake”. It was a small miracle after being on a long waitlist, in the liminal space of trying to piece care together and figure out what I could afford with her pension.

I know many people with a parent or loved one living with dementia understand this struggle—the stress of navigating systems, the exhaustion of filling in the gaps, the emotional toll of waiting while the need for care becomes more urgent. To have found a private room in this thoughtful community-centred care home, where she is truly cared for, feels like grace.

I’m grateful beyond measure. I know what good fortune this is—after years of navigating loss, being stretched thin, though I hesitate to say it as it sounds so “victimy”, often feeling forsaken.

All kinds of care work—so often categorized as “women’s work”—is essential, sustaining, and too often taken for granted. But that doesn’t make it any less powerful. It is quiet heroinism, love in action.

To all who are mothering in their own way—through presence, through creation, through “care”—I see you.

I want to do my best to honour the daily, unseen acts that shape futures, even when no one is watching.

Leave a comment

You’re in a meeting, mid-sentence, when your face suddenly flushes. Your heart starts to race. You fumble for your words, hoping no one notices. You’re not anxious. You’re not unprepared. You’re just having a hot flash.

Menopause in the workplace: It’s a topic we rarely address, yet it affects so many of us. This transition is a natural phase of life for half the population, but too often, women feel isolated, misunderstood, and ashamed. A hot flash in a strategy session. An unpredictable period before a big pitch. (“The ultimate scheduling betrayal” is what a member of my podcast club called it.) A myriad of symptoms, as unique as you are, met with silence or stigma.

And that shame? It doesn’t come from your body itself, it comes from the meaning society attaches to it. It’s the antiquated notion that menopause makes you less capable, less relevant, or somehow “past your prime.”

But that narrative? It’s not just outdated—it’s harmful. Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician known for his work on trauma and the mind-body connection, reminds us:

When the world pretends menopause doesn’t exist, or frames it as decline, you’re left to process it alone. Without understanding, shame fills the void. And shame doesn’t just sit quietly—it activates your stress response. It triggers cortisol spikes, disrupts your immune system, and puts your nervous system on high alert. It becomes a vicious cycle: the more shame you carry, the more stress you feel. The more stress you feel, the harder it becomes to think clearly, sleep deeply, or show up fully. Over time, this erodes not just your health, but your ability to work with ease and confidence.

So now you have to ask yourself: Is menopause as a biological transition the problem, or is it this stress cycle that gets triggered in this inflection point? The distinction matters. Because when you take away the shame, the silence, and the systemic neglect, what’s left is often manageable, and even transformational.

Here’s the truth: menopause itself isn’t a decline. In many ways, especially when it comes to your capacity to lead, to make decisions, and see things clearly, menopause can be an upgrade.

Subscribe now

The Blind Spot in the Boardroom

Despite the millions of women navigating menopause, most workplaces haven’t caught up. Menopause rarely shows up in wellness programs and HR policies, so you’re left managing symptoms in secret, worried about being judged, sidelined, or dismissed.

You might power through the day after yet another sleepless night. You might second-guess your memory or feel emotionally raw in ways you didn’t before. And still, you show up, deliver, and lead. But at what cost? You shouldn’t have to choose between your health and your career. You shouldn’t have to pretend nothing’s happening. And you shouldn’t have to educate your manager about something half the world will go through.

We’ve made space in the workplace for parenting, mental health, and fertility support. Isn’t it time we did the same for menopause? By 2030, around 1 billion people worldwide are projected to be in menopause, with 47 million new people entering this phase each year. Currently, one-in-five people in the workforce is navigating perimenopause or menopause, and 20 percent of them are experiencing symptoms severe enough to interfere with work and life.

This same midlife demographic is the backbone of essential career sectors — bringing hard-earned wisdom, deep competence, and a level of experience that holds entire systems together.

The Disruption — and What Comes Next

Let’s be honest: Perimenopause can be disruptive. Especially when it arrives unannounced in your forties — right when you’re already carrying the weight of a career, caregiving, aging parents, and a never-ending mental load. For many of us, the demands of our thirties and forties push true self-care — healthy boundaries, nutrition, movement, and rest — off the agenda. Sleep has likely been stretched thin for decades. Your needs may have been quietly deprioritized in service of everything and everyone else.

By the time perimenopause hits, your reserves are already low. Your body is asking for attention you’ve trained yourself to ignore. The transition can feel like it’s unravelling you, particularly if you don’t have the foundational support — medical, social, or professional — that you need.

But even as it feels like things are coming apart, your brain is undergoing something far more interesting. Dr. Lisa Mosconi, a renowned neuroscientist who has extensively studied the female brain, writes in The Menopause Brain: “Many lines of evidence indicate that women’s brains have the remarkable, much underestimated, yet-to-be-celebrated ability to adapt to menopause.”The Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation, better known as the SWAN study, followed 2,362 participants over four years and showed that while women may feel foggy or forgetful during perimenopause, those changes are part of a neurological rewiring — not a deterioration. Brain scans do reveal temporary dips in gray matter and energy use during the transition, but these recover post-menopause. What’s more, research shows that women in midlife don’t perform any worse on cognitive tasks than men their age — not even when they’re in the thick of hormonal changes.

Yes, you may feel less sharp — compared to your baseline — but the data tells a different story. A 2021 study published in Scientific Reports led by Lisa Mosconi used advanced neuroimaging to track structural and metabolic changes in the brain across the stages of menopause. While it confirmed significant shifts in energy and connectivity, it also found that these changes do not result in diminished cognitive abilities — especially when compared to age-matched men.

There’s another chapter we don’t discuss often enough: Neuroscientists and physicians are beginning to paint a new picture of the postmenopausal brain — one that’s clearer, more focused, and more emotionally attuned. Louann Brizendine, calls this phase “The Upgrade,” which is the title of her book — and it’s not a euphemism. It’s a real, measurable shift in how you think, lead, and operate.

You’re less burdened by the hormonal rollercoaster. You’re less likely to ruminate. You’ve developed the kind of intuitive thinking that lets you see around corners. This isn’t about surviving menopause — it’s about emerging stronger, wiser, and more equipped than ever to show and contribute.

These are the qualities we need in our organizations. These are the superpowers that deserve a seat at the table. And yet, menopause still lingers on the margins of HR strategies, despite its widespread impact on performance, retention, and workplace equity. One study found that menopause-related symptoms cost U.S. employers $1.8 billion annually in lost productivity, absenteeism, and turnover. And much of that is preventable.

Changing the Conversation

Thankfully, the silence is starting to break. A handful of companies are introducing menopause policies, manager training, and flexible work options. Conversations about menopause leave and workplace accommodations are gaining traction. And around the world, women are pushing back against the narrative of decline.

But we can’t wait for top-down change. It starts with conversations, with rejecting the tired narrative that menopause marks decline. With building cultures where women are valued not despite “the change” — but because of it. With building workspaces where women can bring their whole selves to work — imagine a workplace where menopause is discussed as openly as maternity leave, where HR has a playbook, and managers aren’t caught off guard. One where you don’t have to hide, explain, or overcompensate — because you’re already supported, understood, and respected.

That’s not a fantasy. It’s a future we can build, if we start now. So ask yourself: Do your colleagues or managers understand menopause? Do you have the structures you need to work through it with confidence? Can you show up as yourself — fully — without having to filter or apologize?

If the answer is no, then it’s time to start the conversation. Not just for you, but for every woman coming up behind you. Let’s stop treating menopause as a private burden and start calling it what it is: a powerful, natural, and often transformational phase of life. Let’s rewrite the narrative. Let’s claim the seat at the table. Because when women thrive, everyone benefits.

What’s one thing you wish workplaces understood about menopause?

I’d love to hear your thoughts or experiences in the comments.

Leave a comment

P.S. If sleep has been one of the challenges for you during perimenopause or menopause, I’m hosting a free online webinar on May 24 10-11am PST all about sleep, hormones, and practical strategies to get your rest back.

I'll be joined by Sukhpreet Patel, MD (ObGyn, India) | MPH | HCA-Registered Health & Nutrition Counselor™ (Canada), founder of Menopause Wize.

FREE WEBINAR ON SLEEP AND PERIMENOPAUSE

In this free webinar, we’ll explore:

• Why so many women struggle with sleep during perimenopause and menopause.

-The hormonal changes and other physiological shifts that disrupt your night. -Why waking at 2-4 a.m. is so common.

• How getting back your deep restorative sleep both reduces symptoms and provides the vital support for all other systems (metabolic, brain, heart) during this transition and beyond.

• Natural strategies and practical tools to improve sleep.

• 30 minutes for Q+ A

Whether you’re perimenopausal or menopausal, or simply wondering why your sleep has shifted, this morning will offer real talk and real tools to help you reclaim your rest.

You can find all the details and sign up below— I’d love to have you join us!

Sometimes these conversations happen while waiting for a train. Other times, they unfold in a Zoom room, as this one did. I met during a virtual session, organized by the incredible writer-connector , and from the moment she spoke, I felt drawn in by her warmth, quick wit, and luminous energy. One spontaneous exchange led to another, and soon I found myself asking if we could “sit down” for a more in-depth conversation—she in New York City, me in Vancouver, BC.

She said yes. And I’m so glad she did.

And as we spoke, I realized we had more in common than I expected.

We both come from families shaped by immigration and the kind of parental hopes that valued material security and stability above all else. And yet both of us chose something different —lives built around exploration and movement, driven by a thirst for expansion and a willingness to take risks that our parents have found bewildering (and perhaps others too).

We’ve each lived in multiple places, taken unconventional paths, and been married twice and don’t have children. Cathy speaks about these marriages with neither regret nor apology. There’s no bitterness, no self-blame—just clarity. They weren’t the right fit, and she knows herself to be whole regardless. We are both child-free, I by circumstance, she by choice and again, no regret or apology, motherhood wasn’t a longing for her. While she remains open to future romantic partnership, she has many rich and fulfilling relationships, so she’s not searching from a place of lack.

This, I thought, is something more of us need to hear. Especially as we age.

So back to my quest to find out the conditions that help someone thrive in midlife and beyond? Cathy’s perspective gave me a few potent clues—and yes, they surfaced through the kind of organic meaningful dialogue she explores regularly in her own writing.

Cathy writes beautifully in a Substack called Random Conversations, where she reflects on the unscripted, human moments that connect us. It’s a space shaped by curiosity, storytelling, and the wisdom that can surface when we pause to really listen without judgment—to others and to ourselves. Cathy points out that too often judgment kicks in and we stop listening, especially in these times of fractured communication. She says, “I consider curiosity and listening without judgment to be superpowers”.

In many ways, this piece is a continuation of that ethos. A conversation that began as chance, then deepened into insight. A reminder that the stories we need most often arrive in packaging that may surprise us.

Cathy works as an independent consultant and training facilitator, specializing in strength-based change. She lights up when she talks about her work—work she has no plans to retire from EVER. Her career so clearly nourishes her not just professionally, but personally.

One of the most meaningful experiences of her career, she told me, was facilitating a program for UNICEF in Islamabad, Pakistan.

“My Voice, Our Story was created to surface and amplify the visions of the future held by the youth of Pakistan,” she explained. “We used Appreciative Inquiry as the interview methodology—it was powerful and deeply moving.”

She shared a photo from that time (included below). There is a special warmth, connection, and shared purpose that her approach cultivates—whether in a training room, a virtual call, or an impromptu conversation with a stranger.

So what has helped Cathy flourish and what can we learn from that as we navigate midlife and beyond?

Here’s what stood out.

1. The Power of Compartmentalization- Practical Resilience

Cathy has lived many different lives in many places— from Ohio (her birthplace) to Arizona (four cities), Los Angeles, Johannesburg, Connecticut (five cities), and now New York City. She says: “It took all those moves to finally find home”.

Over time, she’s developed a powerful ability to prioritize. Compartmentalizing, she explained, helps her manage challenges one at a time without becoming overwhelmed. It’s how she adapts, protects her energy, and stays grounded in the face of complexity. She’s weathered big moves, significant losses, and change—but has learned to adapt. She made many adjustments and employed some fancy footwork where required. This type of inner agility you don’t develop with out being tested and choosing, again and again, not to harden—but to bend, not break.

Far from avoidance, this kind of compartmentalization seems to me a potent form of wisdom. It’s knowing where your energy is best spent—and where it isn’t.

2. Trust in Life’s Flow- Emotional-Spiritual Trust

“I have had phenomenal people in my life,” Cathy told me. “I have a safety net with my friends. I trust that whatever I need will be there when I need it, because that’s what life has shown me—over and over again.”

That kind of trust doesn’t come from naïveté; it’s forged from lived experience. It's a deep-rooted belief that resources—emotional, relational, even spiritual—will rise to meet you when you need and call upon them.

3. Rethinking the Narrative of Aging

One of the most striking things Cathy said was:

“Aging is not the answer to everything.”

How often do we blame a sore knee, fatigue, or mental fog on the simple fact that we're “getting older”? As if that’s the full story. As if there’s nothing else to explore.

Cathy’s powerful reframe: Aging is an inevitable process in life, yes—but it isn’t the root of every difficulty.

Too often, we lean toward attributing each of life’s challenges or discomforts to getting older in years. For instance, someone might say, 'My hip is sore—well, that’s just old age for you,' or, 'I’m tired, but what else can you expect when you’re getting older?'

This is potent! Naturally, aging does bring changes and challenges. It’s a fact that our bodies will not have the same function as they did in our earlier years.

But while this change is certain we have some agency here. For example, mobility can be improved at any age. Even in our 20s, a herniated disc might require months of rehab, and in our 30s, pushing beyond our limits can also lead to exhaustion.

When we default to age as the culprit, we can overlook what’s actually within our control—how we care for ourselves, the habits we’ve neglected, or the limiting beliefs we’ve inherited.

Age may change our bodies, but decline is not a foregone conclusion.

By challenging these narratives, like Cathy does we open ourselves to a more empowered and optimistic view of aging—one that embraces growth, agency, and the possibility of addressing issues beyond simply declaring them as *sigh* 'part of getting older.'

Not every bodyache or heartache is age’s fault—but it’s the lens through which we look at things that makes the difference. And sometimes, what changes everything… is a conversation.

(If you're curious about how cultural narratives around menopause and aging shape our experience—and even our symptoms—I dive into that more here in my piece on the Nocebo Effect.)

Cathy shared this:

“When we blame aging for whatever ails us, we set ourselves on a downward trajectory. We validate over and over that we are old and getting older still. Age doesn’t have to plummet our wellbeing downward – it can also enable it to soar upward”.

4. Connection as Lifeblood

The willingness to talk to strangers, to stay close with tried-and-true friends while also expanding our circles of connection—these, too, are beyond survival skills. Cathy’s story reminded me of the importance of staying open, curious, and relational. Not just for joy, but for true resilience.

Talking to Cathy reminded me of how expansive aging can be—not in spite of our years, but because of them. With more life experience, we can learn to hold more: more self-awareness, more agency, more trust. And we can redefine thriving on our own terms (not our parents, not our culture). What I walked away with, after speaking to this stranger-turned-guide, was this:

Not every ache of the body—or the heart—is age’s fault.

And what matters most?

· How we tend to ourselves.

· The stories we inherit/carry—and whether we pause to question them.

· And how we show up for the connections that hold us.

Has a conversation ever cracked open an aging myth you once believed and are now ready to question?

Leave a comment

“It started when we were born...We expected forty pairs of eyes greeting us in the morning, and all we got was one or two… It is to our deep grief that the village did not appear.

Of course, we were disappointed in our parents—they needed a village, and so did we.”

-Francis Weller

Many of us never received the compassion and accompaniment our souls longed for.

And now we’re witnessing a global grief ripple through the world.

Fragile strongmen glorify individualism while they dismantle the systems of collective care that allow communities and countries to thrive.

The violent extraction of social, emotional, and communal resources can leave us depleted, exhausted, and disconnected.

But we aren’t accepting this as the end of the story.

Rebuilding the village

The antidote women have always employed is

in gathering, remembering, reweaving.

We know in our bones that we were never meant to do this alone

A few weeks ago, I met with a gathering of international women I connected with through Substack—our group calls itself the Substack Sirens (thank you, 🙏🏼). We spilled our grief. We shared laughter. We spoke about the compulsion to write, even when the world feels overwhelming.

In that space, stretched across oceans, I felt the village.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written here. ✨

So much has shifted—in the broader world, in my own life, and I imagine in yours too. 🌍

One truth keeps returning to me with clarity:

💫I know that I am not meant to go through this menopause transition + aging journey alone.

Yet our culture teaches us to go solo. To figure hard things out without authentic guides. To keep pushing through. 🚶‍♀️💨

But that model is breaking down. And in its place, something more ancient and more true is rising.

We need:

• Connection.

• Shared wisdom. The kind that comes from lived experience.

• Space to speak freely, to be seen.

• A sense of where and how our needs can be met.

• A place in the larger story of this transition.

That’s why I’m dreaming into what comes next—

Midlife as a Gathering Point

In February, I hosted a gathering of 130 people for a screening of The (M) Factor documentary, followed by a very lively panel conversation about the menopause transition with three women doctors—each bringing a distinct lens on women’s health:

• Myself, a naturopathic doctor with a background in cultural anthropology.

• Dr. Sukhpreet Patel, an Ob-Gyn with a Master’s in Public Health, weaving clinical expertise with a broader view of systems

• Dr. Jerilynn Prior, a legendary endocrinologist and founder of CEMCOR at UBC, whose decades of research have profoundly expanded our understanding of perimenopause and hormonal health

  

Together, we engaged in an honest, spacious dialogue—responding to thoughtful questions from the audience. It was a living example of how we begin to rebuild the village: by gathering, asking questions and remembering what becomes possible when we share our knowledge and experiences.

What’s Nourishing Me Lately

I’ve also been tending to my own roots—refilling the well in ways that remind me of what matters most. Some of that has involved travel.

☀️ A sun-soaked week in Baja, Mexico with a girlfriend and many whales 🐋.
♥️ A nostalgic visit to Santa Barbara to visit an old friend—woven with memories from many chapters of life ✨
🌳 A soulful retreat on Bowen Island with a circle of wise elders who have been gathering for 16 years. I’m newer to the group, and the youngest at the table. Every time I return home from these gatherings, I feel deeply spirit-fed.

I’m back now, planted for spring—grounded, inspired, and ready to co-create what’s next with The Pink Zones, I have been collecting many interviews I can’t wait to share with you in posts.

In these upside-down times, may we remember what it feels like to be accompanied—to listen with presence, to speak what’s real, and to slowly, lovingly rebuild the world we long for.
One gathering. One story. One moment of true connection at a time.

If you’ve found ways—big or small—to co-create your village, I’d love to hear.

Hit reply, or share in the comments. Your voice belongs in this story.

Leave a comment

With love,

Heidi

And of course,

I’d love for you to join me at our monthly gathering on Zoom of:

…like a book club but easier! info and sign up here

✨ Let’s build the village maybe we didn’t have.
✨ Let’s create what we do need.
✨ Together.

I know that’s a tall order: Our tolerance for messiness and delayed results is at an all-time low. Plenty of online influencers present their lives as polished, packaged, and instantly viewable at the tap of a screen. Their aim? To give themselves a “glow up” in the form of a better self.

But what if, in our pursuit of efficiency, beauty and enlightenment, we’ve not only lost patience but also our connection to authenticity — to the messy, imperfect processes that reveal our genuine, illuminated selves? What if a “glow down” is the route to a more authentic version of you?

I know the allure of “optimizing” firsthand — I’ve been operating from a mission-driven mindset for much of my life. During my university summers in the early ’90s, I worked as a chef at Mt. Assiniboine Lodge, a historic backcountry lodge in the Canadian Rockies accessible only by a 27km hike, ski, horseback ride, or helicopter ride. (It’s North America’s first backcountry ski lodge.) Wanting to use my midday break to scramble up spectacular mountain peaks, I would get up painfully early to get a head start on breakfast. During my break, I’d escape to the alpine meadows and hike for 4 hours before returning to cook dinner.

The “top-of-the-world” views were exhilarating, but my drive for — ahem — peak experiences came at a cost. Crafting meals for 40 guests and staff meant early mornings and sticky dough, slimy squash innards, and chopping onions that brought tears. Before every pot of squash soup or tray of cinnamon buns came some chaos: garlic skins, carrot peels, maple syrup caramelized on cake pans, and endless bowls to scrub. And at this off-grid lodge, even cleaning was a process — hot water came from a spring-powered wheel heated by solar energy, and food scraps were hauled to Oink and Boink, two muddy pigs, our resident composters, living their best life in a messy pigpen paradise beneath glacier-tipped peaks.

Yet, there was beauty in this rhythm. The labour involved in cooking from scratch and orchestrating with a team of kitchen helpers illuminated for me a deeply satisfying connection — the one between effort and outcome.

But most cooking videos and social media posts filter out the mess, showcasing pristine counters, and neatly prepped ingredients, hiding the slow, imperfect reality behind it all. Pre-packaged meal kits make healthy eating easier and save time, but they strip away the process — the full-circle connection that turns effort into fulfillment. The truth? A truly delicious meal, like personal growth, emerges from the disarray: trial and error, adjustments, a pinch of salt here, a squeeze of lemon there, until you taste it and say, Wow, now that’s it.

Changing your swing (and perspective)

Our modern obsession with polish and perfection leaves little room for the messiness of the “middle” — where growth happens. A golf video that went viral on TikTok recently perfectly illustrates this: Professional golfer Georgia Ball uploaded a video of herself practicing a swing change at a driving range, when an older man chimed in with unsolicited advice. Despite Ball’s polite explanation — that she was intentionally working on her technique — he persisted, citing 20 years of golfing experience.

Ball’s TikTok sparked plenty of conversations about “mansplaining.” But when I watched it, I noticed that the impatience displayed in the video doesn’t seem exclusive to (older) men critiquing (younger) women — it’s something many of us internalize. We reprimand ourselves when we don’t immediately excel at something or when our efforts aren’t Instagram-worthy. But things can’t look pristine when we’re learning and evolving.

@Satya Doyle Byock, author of Quarterlife, talked about this video in a Substack post, and reflected on the deeper metaphor it presents. According to Byock, the video showed Ball “consciously deconstructing things in order to enhance her skill and improve her performance for the long term. It might look less than perfect at the moment, but she understood the larger picture.” To Byock, a “swing change” is “the perfect metaphor for creative and personal transitions. It’s not a crisis or depression, but it’s also not yet a sailing success.”

We need grace to be human — to try, to fail, to miss the mark — because getting it “wrong” is often an inevitable step en route to getting it “right.”

Avoid or Allow?

• What do we avoid or deny that we’d be better off allowing to happen?

• What if we embraced trial and error, rather than trying to transcend it?

• Here, according to me, are some intriguing ways that embracing imperfection offers growth:

Personal conflict

Relationships often grow stronger after a rupture-repair cycle, including difficult but necessary conversations, expressing hard truths, or even time apart. Many therapists emphasize that conflict and disconnection shouldn’t be suppressed, since they’re inevitable. In fact, it’s in navigating the repair process — with open communication, empathy, and accountability — that we deepen trust and build resilience and true intimacy. Embracing (productive) conflict actually strengthens a bond, making relationships more dynamic and fulfilling.

Spiritual bypassing

Coined by John Welwood in 1984, “spiritual bypassing” describes the tendency to use spiritual practices as an escape hatch from difficult emotions, unresolved wounds, and real transformation. In a culture that often prefers quick fixes and analgesic relief with little side effects, spiritual bypassing fits right in. While mindfulness becoming mainstream in the West has undeniable benefits, it sometimes gets watered down and repackaged for easy consumption. Social media wellness slogans, in their gleaming paintbrush fonts, promise peace and enlightenment in one simple mindset shift.

But this approach often skips over the hard stuff. Think of the way fiber gets stripped from whole grain to make a fluffy white flour product that doesn’t require so much chewing — it gives us a quick sugar rush, but leaves us crashing later. By glossing over “negative” emotions like anger or shame, we’re denying what makes us human. True transformation isn’t delicate or tidy.

As Thich Nhat Hanh wisely said, “No mud, no lotus.” You need to wade through the mud of discomfort to nurture the roots of true happiness. So embrace the muck — because that’s where the magic of a full, embodied life blooms.

Microbes: A healthy immune system develops from exposure to bacteria and challenges.

From a naturopathic perspective, a well-functioning immune system isn’t built in a vacuum—it develops through natural exposure to bacteria and environmental challenges. The hygiene hypothesis suggests that early and diverse contact with microbes trains the immune system to recognize what is truly harmful and what is not. When this exposure is too limited, immune tolerance can weaken, increasing the risk of allergies and autoimmune conditions.

In Let Them Eat Dirt, microbiologists and father-daughter duo, Brett Findlay PhD, and Marie-Claire Areita, PhD, explore how embracing the natural microbial world—rather than over-sanitizing—helps build resilience from an early age. He also co-authored Whole-Body Microbiome: How to Harness Microbes - Inside and Out - For Lifelong Health with his other daughter, Jessica Finlay PhD, who specializes in health geography and environmental gerontology.

A side note: I met Brett and his pediatrician wife at a friend’s deck on a Gulf Island a few years ago and enjoyed his homemade mead from the stone fruit of homegrown trees. He practices what he preaches.

Slow Burn + Sweat:

True satisfaction comes from embracing the journey, not just rushing to the finish. I’m thinking of the difference between heli-skiing and ski touring. I’ve also been lucky enough to cook in remote backcountry ski huts, slipping out with skins on the bottom of my skis hike up a mountain with the guide and group in between breakfast and dinner.

With ski touring, you spend hours climbing uphill—quads burning, breath fogging your sunglasses, sweat soaking through every swish swish. Then, you pause. Sip hot tea from a thermos. Take in the glistening champagne powder stretched out below.

The descent? Just minutes. But those effortless turns through untouched snow feel infinitely richer—because you earned them. The effort, the grind, the burn—it all closes the loop, leaving you both superhuman and deeply connected to your amazing body.

Natural Beauty (whatever that means)

The current trend of “natural beauty” is, let’s be honest, a bit of a cheeky oxymoron. Let’s not kid ourselves — that “effortless” glow we see on ads and social media is anything but. It’s the result of a fleet of products, perfect lighting, filters, and a sprinkle of meticulous editing magic.

This picture-perfect, “natural” ideal keeps us spinning in circles of self-criticism, comparison, and dissatisfaction when really, the kind of glow worth chasing is the one that comes from embracing the messy, unfiltered energy of being unapologetically yourself. The most compelling beauty isn’t about perfection; it’s about authenticity. It’s in the laughter lines that hold memories, the scars that tell stories, and the messy hair that shows you’ve been living life, not posing for it.

Like a “swing change” or the messy process of cooking from scratch, personal growth happens in the tangled in-between — not in the polished, airbrushed final product but in the raw, vulnerable moments when we’re inhabiting ourselves from the inside out.

1. Balance Training Reduces Brain Activity during Motor Simulation of a Challenging Balance Task in Older Adults: An fMRI Study

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00010

2. Lower Cognitive Set Shifting Ability Is Associated With Stiffer Balance Recovery Behavior and Larger Perturbation-Evoked Cortical Responses in Older Adults

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2021.742243

   Are there some other ways you have experienced the upside of embracing imperfection? I’d love to hear!

Leave a comment