Jo Rennie

Most guides give you three stages of menopause and stop there. But there's a part of this conversation that rarely makes it into the standard answer - one that could completely change how you understand your own experience. Here's the complete picture, including what happens when menopause arrives far earlier than anyone told you to expect.

Many women navigating menopause tell me they don't recognise themselves anymore. They are more reactive, more anxious, more overwhelmed. But hormones are only part of the story. Here's what's really happening inside your nervous system, and why it matters more than most people realise.

There are things we talk about when we talk about menopause. Hot flushes. Night sweats. The end of periods. A vague sense that life is shifting. And then there are the things we don't talk about. The ones that lurk underneath the surface, affecting millions of women every single day, but rarely making it into the conversation. One of the biggest? Work. Your career. Your performance. Your sense of capability and worth within a professional life you have spent years, maybe decades, building....