I had spent more than 30 years as a registered nurse caring for other people. And yet, when menopause happened to me, I didn’t recognize what was happening to my own body.

I knew about hot flashes. I knew periods eventually stopped.

I thought I knew menopause.

I didn’t.

Someone changed the rules

Before menopause, I knew myself. I was busy, capable and independent. I had raised three daughters, built a career in nursing and spent decades being the person other people could rely on. Of course life had its ups and downs, but I knew my body, I knew my emotions, and I knew what felt normal for me.

And then, slowly, I started to feel like someone had changed the rules without telling me.

It wasn’t one symptom that suddenly appeared and announced, “This is menopause.” It was a slow accumulation of changes that, one by one, began making me feel like a different version of myself.

I wasn’t sleeping properly. I would wake in the night, sometimes drenched in sweat, and struggle to get back to sleep. My joints hurt. My brain felt foggy. My energy changed.

Then there was the weight gain.

My body seemed to be changing despite doing the things that had always worked for me. Weight settled differently, particularly around my middle, and suddenly I didn’t feel as comfortable in my own skin. It wasn’t simply about a number on the scale. It was the unsettling feeling that I didn’t understand my own body anymore.

And emotionally? I could be all over the place.

Things that normally wouldn’t have affected me could suddenly feel enormous. My mood could shift, my patience could disappear, and there were moments when I wondered, “Is this really me?”

That question, Where did I go? may have been one of the hardest parts of menopause for me.

Searching for answers

This was about three years ago. Menopause certainly wasn’t new, but we weren’t talking about it the way we are today. The information existed, but it wasn’t everywhere. Women weren’t having these conversations as openly, and I hadn’t been prepared for the sheer number of ways menopause could show up.

So I started searching for answers.

I did what I had spent my nursing career encouraging patients to do: I asked questions. I researched. I read. And I advocated for myself.

Slowly, the dots started connecting.

The sleep. The brain fog. The aching joints. The hot flashes and night sweats. The emotions. The weight and body changes.

Things I had been experiencing as separate problems began to make sense as part of a much bigger picture.

And that’s when something really struck me.

I was a nurse.

I had more than three decades of healthcare experience. I knew how to research credible information. I knew how to navigate the healthcare system. I knew how to ask questions.

And even I had struggled to figure this out.

So what about her?

So what about the woman who doesn’t know where to start?

What about the woman sitting in her car after an appointment wondering why she still doesn’t feel heard?

What about the woman lying awake at 3 a.m. searching her symptoms on her phone?

What about the woman looking in the mirror and thinking, “I just want to feel like myself again?”

I understood her.

Because I was her.

That realization changed something in me.

I began learning everything I could about this stage of a woman’s life. I learned to better advocate for myself and became more confident having conversations about my own care. Finding what worked for me wasn’t one straight path, and I’m still navigating menopause today.

But I’m no longer navigating it in the dark.

For my daughters

I’m also the mother of three daughters, and the more I learned, the more I thought about them.

I don’t want my daughters arriving at midlife someday completely unprepared for what’s happening to them. I want their generation to understand menopause before they’re in the middle of it. I want them to recognize the signs, know that they have options, ask questions and feel confident advocating for their health.

And I realized I wanted the same thing for other women.

My own experience ultimately led me to become a Certified Menopause Coach and to create Haute Flash Menopause RN, where I can bring together two very different kinds of knowledge: more than three decades of nursing experience and the lived experience of being the woman who once needed answers herself.

I’m not on the other side of menopause telling women I’ve figured it all out.

I’m walking through it too.

But now I understand so much more than I did three years ago. And if there’s one thing I wish I could give the woman I was then, it would be the reassurance that she deserved information, support and the confidence to keep asking questions.

I see you because I was you

That experience eventually gave me the words that have become the heart of what I do:

I see you because I was you.

I was the woman wondering what had happened to her sleep, her body, her emotions and sometimes even her sense of herself.

I was the woman searching for answers.

I was the woman who wished someone had connected the dots sooner.

Today, I want to help other women connect those dots.

Menopause changed me in ways I never expected. But somewhere in the process of finding my way back to myself, I found something else too.

Purpose.

And if telling my story means another woman recognizes herself a little sooner, feels a little less alone, or finds the confidence to ask the question I wish I’d asked sooner, then my story is worth telling.