Leadership Doesn't Pause During Menopause with Doralice Allen

You know those moments when your body says, “enough,” but your ambition says, “keep going”? Today’s guest, Doralice Allen, knows that crossroads all too well. As a former corporate leader managing a 25-person team, she was powering through brain fog, sleepless nights, and relentless hot flashes—until she realized that pushing harder wasn’t strength, it was survival. That wake-up call led Doralice to rebuild her health from the inside out and transform her pain into purpose. Now a certified menopause and life coach, she’s the founder of Pause Evolution, helping high-achieving women 40 and beyond reclaim their clarity, energy, and confidence — without sacrificing their success. 

In this conversation, Doralice shares how understanding menopause symptoms like night sweats, anxiety, and brain fog can actually become a leadership advantage. She reveals her five-step Sleep & Focus Checklist, a simple yet powerful tool for restoring rest, balance, and mental sharpness — and shows us what’s possible when women stop pushing through the pause and start leading from it. Let’s “Call IT In” Call in: Leadership Doesn't Pause During Menopause! 

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Transcript

Speaker Dar: 

You know those moments when your body says, “enough,” but your ambition says, “keep going”? Today’s guest, Doralice Allen, knows that crossroads all too well. As a former corporate leader managing a 25-person team, she was powering through brain fog, sleepless nights, and relentless hot flashes—until she realized that pushing harder wasn’t strength, it was survival. That wake-up call led Doralice to rebuild her health from the inside out and transform her pain into purpose. Now a certified menopause and life coach, she’s the founder of Pause Evolution, helping high-achieving women 40 and beyond reclaim their clarity, energy, and confidence — without sacrificing their success.In this conversation, Doralice shares how understanding menopause symptoms like night sweats, anxiety, and brain fog can actually become a leadership advantage. She reveals her five-step Sleep & Focus Checklist, a simple yet powerful tool for restoring rest, balance, and mental sharpness — and shows us what’s possible when women stop pushing through the pause and start leading from it. Let’s “Call IT In”  Welcome in, Doralice. I'm so happy to have you with us, and before we jump into this fascinating topic, leadership doesn't pause during menopause, please tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to this point in your life. 

Speaker Doralice 

 Hi Darla. I am so excited to be here and thank you for inviting me and allowing me to share my story. Well, my name is Doralice Allen. I am a former corporate leader turned menopause coach, coach on a mission to help our achieving women over 40 reclaim their clarity, energy and confidence. So this is where my story started. I was at the height of my career, leading a high performance team of 25 while secretly battling relentless menopause symptoms. I'm talking about, you know, being awake at 3am at night with racing thoughts, feeling foggy in meetings and being terrified that I will not remember, you know what I'm about to say in meetings,and that was unbearable to me, because from the outside I looked confident, Right, but from the inside I was just struggling. And it got to a point where one day I was just sitting in front of my computer, staring at a computer, couldn't think straight, didn't even remember what I was about. You know what I was going to do. And I just told myself, Doralice, you can keep doing this. You cannot keep pushing through like this.  There’s got to be a way for you to feel like yourself again. And believe it or not, Darla, that was the point where I just made a decision to not keep pushing through, but to dive into research and understanding what's going on with me. I knew I was in menopause, right? But again, I was determined to understand what was happening in my body after I've done all the research and also invested in certification in menopausal health and also diet dietary supplement certification. I took all the information that I've learned and made the bold decision to leave my career that I've worked so hard to build. I've made that bold decision to live because I wanted to take care of myself. I wanted to heal my body. And let me tell you this: what I understood from all that experience was that, you know, when we women go through that, we feel like we are broken. But the reality is that we're not broken. We just need to understand what's going on with our body so that we can, you know, also get the help or get the tools that will help us sleep better at night, think clearly again and regain our confidence. So that's my story.  

Speaker Dar   

Well, thank you for sharing that bold decision to heal. And I know that many midlife women feel that they are broken and isolated and alone. Would you go into a little bit more detail about some of the symptoms and some of the things that you've learned? 

Speaker Doralice: 

Wow, when it comes to symptoms, I have so many of them. It was, you know, some of them, I didn't even know that they were related to menopause until I started studying about menopause health. And I have to admit, it's when I saw my symptoms on the list. Mind you, there's, there are over 35 menopause related symptoms that I learned, wow, and once I saw my symptoms, yes, yes, once I saw my symptoms on the list, it gave me it look it peace of mind in the sense where I could finally put a name on what I was going through, right? Let me give you an example. I mean, most of the common symptoms that people know about or heard people talk about at that time is night sweat, hot flashes, excuse me, a brain fog. But I had all of that and added anxiety to it. Add mood swing, add joint pain. I mean, I have pain in my hips, different part of my body, my shoulder, things like that. And I couldn't understand what was going on with me. I just felt like I was falling apart at some point. And even dizziness also was one of the things I was suffering from, and I remember going to the doctor, especially, you know, regarding that dizziness. And the doctors say, oh, it might be vertigo, but again, I just feel like it was a guess work, right? I'm just glad that I was able to, you know, through the education, at least Finally, on this, understood what was going on with me and So, like I was saying during my education, I found that there are at least 35 menopausal related symptoms, and I was shocked, first to know, you know, learn about that and then. But the things that for me,give me kind of ease of mind was the fact that I could identify my symptoms. It's on that list, and just be able to put a name on the symptoms that I was dealing with was powerful to me. So I could see where that would open a door to understanding. For women who think that they're going crazy that something more than menopause is hitting them, they can be more reassured. I would think, yes, yes, yes, definitely that. That's what did it for me, that reassurance. Why? Knowing that okay, I'm not just imagining, you know, all these crazy things that I was going through, but they are real, right? 

Speaker Dar  

So let's flash forward to today, and I would love to hear you talk about some of the transformations that your clients have had working with you, and that you know a little bit about the process you use. 

Speaker Doralice   

Yes, you know, my client, client, after working with me, they, you know, share about sleep, how they can sleep better and deeper, because that's the key, right? When we look at sleep, it's important to have that deep, restorative sleep a time and and when we know menopause is symptoms such as hot hot flashes or night sweat and things like that, and even you know, when you're dealing with anxiety, those can keep you up at night, laying in bed at 3am in the morning and just, you know, trying to go back to sleep. And it's hard. It's hard when you lay there and you just drench in sweat by dealing with those night sweats. And so sleep is, you know, one of the things that we focus on when I work with clients, right? Because, it's hard to run a business or, you know, lead the team. You know, when you don't have that, you know, a purpose sleep that will give you the energy that you need the next day to, you know, go through your day. So yeah, that's one area that we will work on. Work on sleep. 

Speaker Dar 

And as you said, leadership doesn't pause during menopause, so you definitely need your sleep. Yes, what other elements do you work on? 

Speaker Doralice  

We also work on nutrition, because it can be really confusing when we go through that phase to menopause, because our body in that, you know, phase, needs a different type of support when it comes to nutrition. I know for me, I've always been very in tune with my body, in very like, you know, my mindfulness on what I eat and things like that. And when menopause hit me, I was frustrated because I didn't understand why. It didn't matter what I did. My body was changing, and I was gaining weight, even though I was still eating a healthy, you know, balanced meal and all that stuff and being active, but the weight was just piling, you know, on, and I didn't understand that. And of course, like I say, I was so frustrated, and that's why you know the key is, when it comes to nutrition, in that particular phase in our life as women, we need to adapt. We need to nourish our body with food that will help, you know, balance our hormones. You know, food that will help balance our, you know, insulin and things like that. So that's an area that I also work with my client, making sure that I will, you know, put together a personalized, targeted nutrition plan for them. Because it's not about again, I wonder. One thing I want to make mention is that it's not about restriction, right? I don't, I don't like the word diet, but it's kind of seems like we, you know, we got to restrict ourselves. No, that's not what we do. We just make sure that we give our body to food, that we nourish it and help us, you know, feel overall, you know, good and also help alleviate some of those menopausal symptoms. 

Speaker Dar 

Yes, I'm glad you talked about it not being restricted, yeah. Now, what about the brain fog? We hear a lot about brain fog and memory. Could you talk about that a little bit? Yeah? 

Speaker Doralice  

Yes…oh, yeah, that definitely a big one. That's also another thing, I heard a lot of time women complaining about brain fog. And again, brain fog. It's, you know, it's something that it's not fun to deal with when you're when you know, when you forget what you're about to say, or you have a meeting in a conversation. And even, you know, imagine meeting the meeting, right? You have a presentation to do, and then you just lose your train of thoughts, right? That that is not fun, that sometimes it could look, you know, feel embarrassing, right? And, and that's something definitely, that there's some strategy that you know can be done to help with that. I don't want to go into, you know, the science, but you know, during menopause, the changes of hormones affect different parts of our body, our brain, you know, and so forth. I don't want to get into that science, but I wanted, you know, say that the good news is that there are things that we can do to help, you know, with a brain far one of, one of the things that I share with my client, or, you know, to to Do or to try is even, you know, like, 10 minutes short walk, believe it not, can boost focus and also help with sleep, right? So exercise, definitely, you know, improves or helps clear brain fog and also improves our sleep. So that's why exercise. It's, it's part of, you know, it should be part of our daily active activities, right? And I'm not talking about heavy exercise, just 10 minutes of walking can do the trick? 

Speaker Dar 

Yes, 10 minutes of walking sounds like a great simple idea has something to start with. Yeah. So do you have an activity, just a simple step by step, maybe awareness thing that we could do with our audience right now. 

Speaker Doralice 

Are we looking for exercise to do? Let's do breathing exercises. That's also a good tool. You know that? Yes, that's a great tool. Yeah, I like to, I like breathing exercise. I call it, you know, like 477, breathing, you know, exercise, which is basically what you can do. You know, you can inhale. You know, calm. To come to four. You inhale 1234, you know you. I want you to inhale the nose. Okay, and then once you, once you come to four, you're gonna hold it for 71234567.  And then you're going to exhale for seven. And when you exhale, I want you to make that noise like you want to exhale through your mouth. Okay, you breathe into the nose, and then you want to exhale through the mouth,  Even those simple, you know, breathing exercises, believe it or not, help, you know, with anxiety, also, even with for you know, calming our brain and things like that. So again, they are so many little  tips and strategies that I like to share with my client, when we work together, because stress management is also part of, you know, my program. So that's also part of the work that we do. Yes, yes. 

Speaker Dar  

So sleeping, better nutrition, some things to do for brain fog, some stress management, and exercise? 

Speaker Doralice  

Yes, all those things. 

Speaker Dar   

So tell us a little bit about the gift that you've brought along today to give to our audience. 

Speaker Doralice  

Oh, yes. So I put together a sleep and focus checklist. It's really simple because, again, I like to keep things simple. It's five proven shapes that she can use to help you sleep better. Really, five simple steps, nothing complicated, but very effective, because these are science back shifts, okay, so the proven to work, and you cannot start, you know, applying this tonight, okay? And one thing that I always recommend is just, you know, track your progress. Just Just try for track for seven nights and see you know where you are and what, what are the progress that you made? And, yeah, so we'd love to share that with the audience, so I will link Darla, you then we're going to have a link available for them to download.  

Speaker Dar 

Yes, we're going to put the link in the show notes. And I want to thank you so much, Doralice, for being with us today. And I'm just wondering, before we wrap up, if there's anything else you feel called to share with our audience about how leadership doesn't pause during menopause. 

Speaker Doralice 

Oh, yeah, yeah. So because for me…, I wish I had the tool that I'm giving you know, my the woman that I work with today, I wish I had those tools when I was going through that journey of menopause, being at corporate and leading a a high achieving, high high performance team of 25 people. So so if I had to, Maybe, you know, I wouldn't have left my career sooner than planned. But they say everything happened for a reason. I am grateful that I went through that right? Because that's the journey which led me today to my mission. 

Speaker Dar  

Yes, yes, and we're so grateful for your mission. Thank you. Thank you for being with us today. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai