Jo Rennie

I recently finished reading Amy Edmondson's The Fearless Organization, and one chapter stopped me in my tracks: Dangerous Silence. Edmondson explores what happens when people don't feel psychologically safe enough to speak up at work. As I read, I kept thinking about the women I work with — and the women I've spoken to through my research. Because for so many of them, silence isn't a choice. It's self-protection. And when it comes to the menopause transition, that silence has a cost that we are

I was in my teens when I was first put on synthetic hormones to manage endometriosis. What I didn't know was that those same hormones were quietly masking something else entirely. I was diagnosed with early menopause at 41 and by then, the transition had likely been underway for years. Here's what I wish someone had told me sooner, and what you can do differently.

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.