42. Perimenopause and Coming Home to Ourselves

What if perimenopause and menopause are actually a gateway into our most powerful years - but the systems in place really just want to keep us disconnected from that power? 

In this episode, I sit down with Caroline Burns, a menopause coach who went from living in a masculine, high-performance world (military service, then accounting) into a midlife turning point she never saw coming. Her story is honest about the scary moments, including a difficult start with hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and it’s also hopeful about what becomes possible when we stop ignoring the messages our bodies are sending.

We get specific about symptoms many people don’t connect to perimenopause and menopause: crushing fatigue, anxiety, sleep disruption, and the brain fog that can make simple tasks feel impossible. Caroline explains why “menopause is one day” (after 12 consecutive months without a period), how perimenopause can begin years earlier, and why so many women get dismissed as “too young” or steered toward fixes that don’t address hormones. Along the way, we unpack how culture, work, and the mental load at home train women to override their needs, then feel guilty for resting.

If this helped you feel seen, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so more women can find these conversations.

Interested in connecting with Caroline? Find her here! 

www.facebook.com/carolinejaneburns
www.instagram.com/carolinesoulwitch
www.linkedin.com/in/carolinesoulwitch
https://linktr.ee/revive_intuitive
https://reviveintuitive.blog/

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You can connect with me on Instagram @jesscallahan_, join my Substack community at conditioningtoconsciousness.substack.com, or explore more of my work at jesscallahan.com.

My Back in the Body Nervous System Healing course is now available! Find it here.

Thanks for listening — I’m so grateful you’re here.

Transcript

Why Menopause Conversations Matter

Jess Callahan 0:01

Hey guys, welcome back to the Kingdom Consciousness podcast. Super excited to share this conversation with you today. In this conversation, I'm connecting with Caroline Burns. She's a menopause coach and she shares her story of, you know, why she chose to become a coach and just like the story that led her here, her own journey through perimenopause and menopause. And I think that like we've most of us were raised in a time where it was still taboo to talk about periods and fertility, hormones, perimenopause, menopause. And so I just think it's so important to keep having these conversations. Our later years are the years when we really start to step into our power, but that's not the story that we've been told for most of our lives. So, you know, I for one have a lot to learn. I actually had no clue that menopause is literally just one day. It's just one day in time. I mean, like the thing I hadn't thought of it's this whole long like process, but and it is, but menopause itself is one day. So anyway, I hope you enjoy this conversation and all of her contact information is at the end of the post. But either way, um, you know, as always, let us know what you think. And if you have questions or just want to connect, you know how to find me. All right. Here we go. Caroline, I am so excited to have you here with us today. This is a conversation that I've been excited to have because admittedly, I don't, um, it's not a world that I've spent a ton of time understanding for, you know, understanding. And I think we're gonna get into all of that today, but we're here to talk about menopause, perimenopause, and how it, you know, keeps us disconnected. Well, I guess just how this like story that we're told through life keeps us disconnected from ourselves. And I think with that, I'm just gonna turn it over to you because you are the expert here. I'd love to just start with your story. You know, how did you get where you are today? Um, let's just start there.

HRT Basics And A Scary Side

Caroline Burns 2:10

Oh, thank you, Jess. And it's amazing to be here. I've been looking forward to it too. So my story starts, I guess. I spent nine years in the military in my 20s, um, and I lived in Cyprus for most of those nine years. So a very military, very masculine environment. Um, and then following that, I actually became an accountant totally by accident. I kind of fell into it. So, again, another very um, very male kind of environment I was in. And it was only really, I guess when I started coming into menopause, didn't realise I was in menopause at the time, just starting to get symptoms. And it was only then that I realized that there was something else, you know, my purpose in life. It's like, because I think you question it, I think you question your whole, it's very easy to look back at your life and you get to certain stages and you start to question, well, is this it? And I knew there was something else and could never put my finger on it. And I think the whole experience, because I've had quite a traumatic menopause experience, and the whole me journeying through it and all the different symptoms and things that have happened to me, I think it's really made me look back at my life and see all the ways that I've conformed, that I've fitted in, that I've kept quiet, that I didn't want to put my head above the parapet. You know, it's like all this, and I think it comes from childhood. But I'm not saying, you know, for all you listeners, I'm not saying you will go through a traumatic menopause because for some of them, they'll go through menopause and they won't even realize it. So I want to get that straight. This isn't my story, is probably at the more serious end. When I first went, the first symptoms I ever had were a couple of hot flushes, and I remember thinking on the second one, it took me straight back to when my mum had hot flushes in manopause when I was a teenager. And I remember thinking, there is no way I'm not having this. I've got to I've got to find anything to get rid of it because I have memories of my mum doing this all the time, sweating, having to change her clothes. And um in the end, I found a little magnet which worked for me, a lady care magnet, they called it, and you wear it in the waistband of your underwear. And I've never had a hot flush since. Now I don't know, I'm not saying it'll work for everybody, I don't know whether it actually worked on some magnetic level or whether it was a placebo effect. But either way, it was like that was fine, it didn't work. It worked and it took the hot flushes away. The next symptom I got was the start of fatigue. Just that sense of feeling very, very um not tired. It was like I was wearing a weighted blanket and it just kept pushing me down. And I kind of put part of that down to the fact I was marathon training, and I thought, and I was in my I went into menopause quite late, but I was in my early to mid-50s, and I just thought I've reached a peak with my running, and that's why it's getting harder because I can't get any better, and it's just like on the downward trend now. So it was the fatigue that just started to build. Um and then I naively thought about six weeks before my marathon, I've had enough of this, I'm gonna go to the doctors, I'm gonna get some HRT, and it's gonna help with the fatigue. And literally, I went on HRT tablets to start with. I just thought it's easier to take. Within eight days, I was driving my car back from a dance class, and my vision went, and literally the road in front of me started waving like this. And I was I had a passenger in the car with me, an eight-year-old lady who was who went to the class, and I was just so concerned about her, managed to get her dropped off at home okay, thought I could get home, and literally I thought I was driving straight home. I was actually at an angle and I went careering into a parked car and had a car accident. So I came off the HRT because that's the only thing I could put it down to. I have since learned that that's that can be, that is becoming more common.

Jess Callahan 7:13

What is HRT, just for anyone who doesn't know?

Caroline Burns 7:16

Sorry. HRT is hormone replacement therapy, or they've started calling it menopause hormone therapy, which is to basically put hormones back in your body that you're losing in in menopause. So your estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, so it can it can put those back in your body. Um, some people can take them, some people can't if they've um had previous treatment for cancer, um, their doctors will tell them if they if they can or can't have it. Some people choose not to have it there, and they they look for other ways to manage their menopause symptoms. But I came straight off it thinking that is the only thing that's changed. I don't want anything more to do with it. And for I managed for a few more months and then had to go back to see a different, I had to pay privately to see somebody else to start on the HRT again. And he told me he never prescribes HRT in tablet form for a woman who's first going on HRT because of the impact, because when you take it orally, it just goes straight into you bloodstream, it's it's there, and it can hit like this. So you you know, it can just, and that's what this he said, the visual disturbance I had was due to that. So that's been a whole journey on itself. Um I wouldn't say I'm neither for nor against HRT, I'm for it for me. It is not for everybody, but the journey on HRT itself, if any of your listeners ever decide to go on it, um, it's not like going to the doctors and saying, I've got this wrong with me, and they give you antibiotics and it it will work. It's a case of tweaking the dosing, trying the different, whether it's a patch or a gel or tablet or a spray, however, however, whatever mode of delivery you have. So it's a case of working everything out. Um so yeah, I've had um even on HRT, when you try and get the dose right, I experienced more symptoms. And because if you take too much, I got anxiety, nosebleeds, dizziness, and vaginal bleeding as well, which if you're postmenopause and you have vaginal bleeding, they send you to a scan at the hospital just to check because it can be an early sign of cancer. Um, so I had to have a scan. It was 12 hours after my dad had passed away. We'd had three weeks' end of life care for my dad at home. The morning after I got a call from the doctors to say they were referring me back to the hospital for tests following the results of the scan. I logged into my account and saw referral for possible gynecological cancer, which is like okay, it's 12 hours since my dad's died, really. Luckily, it was all okay. It was just because we were tweaking my HRT, and that of course that can cause bleeding. So all of this has been going on, and because of my journey, I and I knew there was something else, and the communities I was putting myself into online, as a um, not as an accountant, but as a business owner that I was wanting to, I was looking for support. I was in a community and it became apparent that kind of the coaching world would suit me. And then because of my own menopause journey, it was the menopause coaching as well. So that's kind of how I found myself here.

Brain Fog And The Guilt Of Rest

Jess Callahan 11:18

Wow, from like from military to accounting to like you know, to all of these symptoms that I think we um, you know, even before we got started, I was telling you, like, admittedly, I like I really don't know a lot about it because as you pointed out, like we're just not taught about it. There's no like guidebook that says when you start to have these symptoms, you know, you have to start to really just pay attention. This is what it might mean. I think women are starting to talk about it more with each other now, but it's just not something that we've been culturally raised to embrace. Would you say that's fair?

Caroline Burns 11:52

Yeah, and I think there's a there's a lot of older women now. Um, and I occasionally see comments where people will comment and say things like, Well, I don't know why you just don't get on with it, we just got on with it in our day, which is not helpful at all because it wasn't spoken about at all. They had to keep it quiet, things like that. But it's like in general, for women in society, even your menstrual periods, your cycle that you have, there's no leeway given for that in our society, really. If you think about the workplace, um, I often think of it like men when they work, it's like a straight road and they're traveling along this road. Whereas women doing the same job, they travel along the same road, but they go from side to side, but they're having to keep up all the time because they're we cycle and we're better at doing certain things at different points in our cycle, but there's no accounting for that. You know, we we live in a very, this isn't men bashing, by the way, but we live in a very patriarchal society.

Jess Callahan 13:01

Very much so. All of our the systems that we live within are, yeah, they're not built, they're not only not built to support a woman's energetic cycle, but they're they're really built to like keep us from really like connecting with that and working with it. You know, I think like even I I've started just like cycle tracking more to understand what points I have more energy and what points I have less energy because we're just taught to go, go, go, produce, you know, work harder, achieve more. Yeah. But just as there are output cycles, you need, you know, the rest and input. And I found that that's a really helpful way to just start like tuning in. Um, okay, so so at what point then did you really start to realize that as you're experiencing these physical symptoms, that this wasn't just going to be like a physical journey for you. It was gonna, you know, be inner too.

Caroline Burns 14:00

Yeah, well, when I started, when I was doing my menopause coach training, there's there was a lot of um stuff around, you know, the physical symptoms that we can experience. And I knew kind of about those and about the emotional side of it as well. But there was there was something deeper when I was doing my training that I'm thinking it's it I knew it was deeper for me. I just couldn't articulate it, I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was, and it was only really earlier this year that it was like the identity piece. It was, you know, because I I'd only last year, the year before started working on my values. I'd never looked at values before in my life, and then it was suddenly I was asked a question on a retreat, and I'm like, I have no idea what my values are, and I came out with things like, oh, communication, which that is not a value guy line, but it was all the masculine in me, you know, from years and years of being in the do-do-do, what's next, all the structure, and I was so I mean, I never thought of myself as high flyer, you know, somebody who's always on the go. But I was always looking at the next thing. I was never in the present, never rested. And I even remember years ago my mum telling me, why probably very wisely, you need to slow down and rest. And I said, I can slow down and rest when I'm dead. Those are my exact words to her now. I look back and I think, yeah, she was so right. But when you're young, you don't want to rest because when when I tried to rest as well, if if the one thing I could tell your listeners is start to learn the value of rest now when you're younger, because the the longer you leave it, the harder it is when your body is giving you symptoms and menopause, and mine, the worst symptom I had was brain fog. And that was I was looking, opening clients' accounts online in the accounting software, and I'd think, yes, I'm gonna do such and such as accounts today. And I'd open it up and I'd be like, Oh no, I can't do that. My brain was literally, it was too complicated, the complex stuff. There was not a chance I was doing it. Even going from one tab to another on a spreadsheet, I'd go, you know, people talk about going into a room and forgetting what you go in for. I would go onto another tab on whatever it is, or another part of my computer, open up something else, another programme, and think, I don't even know why I've come to this. You know, it was quite debilitating. But but for me, trying to rest, it came with a lot of guilt. Because you then the voice in your head tells you, but you've got this to do, Caroline, you've got that to do. Why are you sitting there? You're being lazy, nobody else is done. You should be at your work at your desk at nine o'clock doing your job. Even though being self-employed, I can choose my hours. But so much guilt come up.

Jess Callahan 17:21

Yeah, that's such a hard thing. It's you know, it's not, it's not the same journey, but um, I have a fibromyalgia diagnosis, which is a disorder of the nervous system. And I know there's a lot of um overlaps when you're in like a fibromyalgia flare. Like, thankfully, mine's mostly managed, but you know, I can I can feel a flare up coming on when I feel some of these symptoms, and brain fog is a really big one. And so as you're describing that, and like I know that's that feeling so well, where it's like you just, you're just so well, whatever the reason, I guess for me, I was just so spent and so just like running an overdrive and and not rested and just like you know, constantly focused on that output that I just got to the point that I literally couldn't, I couldn't put thoughts together, you know, when it gets really bad. It's um it's a frustrating place to be, but I I would imagine, and and in my work, I hear it all the time that there's a lot of people that are experiencing things like that. And I think um, you know, I it's just such an interesting look at it as you apply it specifically to the perimenopause or the menopause journey, because it's like if you tune in ahead of time, maybe would you say it would make the journey a little bit easier?

Five Foundations For Symptom Support

Caroline Burns 18:39

Yeah, because

Speaker 18:40

the various things you can do, and they're probably things, some of them are things that we probably all know. Um, whether you decide to go on the HRT route or not, there are still things that you can do which will help. And the earlier you get these in place, the better. It's things like um cleaning up our diet. So, you know, less processed foods, um, less, you know, if you drink a lot, a lot of women will not be able to tolerate alcohol very well the older they get. Um, and that, you know, if you're having hot flushes, that's one to look at. You might find it's worse after you've had if you've had any alcohol. There's the hydration one as well, so making sure you hydrate properly. I used to suffer from, and this wasn't menopause related, I had it for years, this kind of cramping that would suddenly come on out of nowhere. And I went for CT scan, ultrasound, gastroscopy where they took samples, they couldn't find anything wrong with me. It was a sports therapist who said to me, start drinking more water. And the minute I did, and that was 2018, I've not had anything, any of those cramps since. And it actually changed me from somebody who wanted to stay inside all the time, didn't like the outdoors, and I lived next to a beautiful forest, didn't want the um to be outside, and I turned into someone who was out walking everywhere, would walk into town, and that that started me running and ultimately doing my marathon. So, because the the therapist described it as hydration to the body is like oil to an engine. If you don't have enough of it, it will just it won't be able to, the parts won't won't work in sync with each other. So there's nutrition, there's the hydration, there is movement, especially if people are deskbound in their jobs. It I know it's so easy. Some days I've had like under 2,000 steps a day, and I know that people talk about this magical 10,000 steps a day. But I I believe if you if you're doing under a thousand or two thousand steps a day, increase it slightly. You don't have to go trying to suddenly do ten thousand steps a day a day, but the movement will help to keep active. The fourth one is sleep routine, which you know, these things at night or first thing in the morning.

Jess Callahan 21:23

Yeah, yeah.

Caroline Burns 21:24

And you know, I I I do it as well. You know, I struggle with that as well. I'm very good at not looking at it in the morning. That I can do because I love my mornings to be slow, and I'm blessed with not having my children at home anymore, so I can afford to do that. I don't have other demands on my time, but at night it is so easy. I know how easy it is. You it's addictive, it's that you know, that light, that blue light.

Jess Callahan 21:51

And the doom scrolling, depending on what you're looking at, right? You pull up something and it just sucks you in, and you can't.

Caroline Burns 21:57

Not only the activity that it's you wearing round. It's you're viewing everybody else's highlights and your mental health just it's not going to do you any favours. So that a good sleep routine helps. Um and the fifth one, which for me ironically has been the hardest, is self-care. Because as women we take care of everybody else. We make sure everybody else's needs, whether that's family, friends, clients, whoever, everybody else is sorted before we are. And we don't even think of ourselves to replenish ourselves. We just get on and do it. And I think in a lot of households, I think it's the woman who I'm not saying the um women do like physically everything, but the mental load that we carry on, I don't know what it's like for you. Who is it who thinks about your your child's they've got a birthday party to go to, you've got to buy a present, and oh, they need new school uh school shoes, and oh, dentist appointment, doctor's appointment. And we take all these things on and keep them in here.

Jess Callahan 23:08

The emotional labor too. It's like after after my burnout, my husband and I, you know, had a lot of really like extensive talks about how we would better balance it. And he does a really good job and he's really in tune with trying to find more balance. But at the same time, there's just so much as you know, based on what what we have just historically what I have carried in the home, that I can't just turn it over. So, you know, no matter what, I'm still doing so much more of that like mental labor, the emotional labor, because it's just um, I don't know if it would have been different if we would have, you know, interrupted it earlier, or if it's just the nature of being mom, I'm not sure.

Caroline Burns 23:49

But it is, it's yeah, there's a reluctance to let go. Even my partner, if he um, because he's semi-retired now and he's always done like he'll take the bins out and he'll do the garden. He loves the gardening, which I'm not really a I'll sit in the garden and enjoy it, but I'm not really a hands-on person. But if he does something around the house, I I feel like, oh, I should be doing that. I can feel myself thinking and actually thanking him all the time for doing because it's so ingrained in us. And you know, that used to be our role years and years ago when women weren't working at home only and not really having any kind of job outside the home.

Jess Callahan 24:33

Yeah, we're just used to it, and it's just the roles, you know, were not to go off on this tangent for too long, but even just like if the nine to five workday was built for, you know, a man usually to go to work and work eight hours of more like physical labor, right? It wasn't built for the knowledge economy, and then he'd come home. And the wife who, you know, was just home all day with the kids, just watching the kids would then, you know, do dinner and the kids, and and there just like wasn't a break, but that was just the home was like her area. But yeah, um, we had this like the other night we wanted to watch a football game together, and I had some schoolwork that I had to get done. And my husband was just like cleaning up for company coming, and I found myself like almost like twitching, being like, he's like, you know, cleaning around me, and I'm just sitting here and I finally just had to name to it and you know, name it and say, like, I I really like want to get up and help you right now. Like I'm having a hard time not doing it, but I have to just say it out loud that like that's amazing that you said out loud.

Caroline Burns 25:36

Yeah, because acknowledging that and communicating that it makes all the difference.

Jess Callahan 25:41

Yeah, it's little, it's those little, you know, the little things, but it is, I think that um, I think that there's just a lot of just like like discussions that we have to be having and and and programming sort of that we're interrupting so that we can all just start to balance our our needs as humans and not, you know, in like different gender roles. Yeah. So, okay, I have another question for you. Why do you think that it is common for these two things to happen together? So, you know, as a woman starting to feel those early signs of perimenopause or menopause, and then there's like this invitation at the same time to go inward and sort of spot those things. Like, why do you think it's common that they happen or can happen together?

Caroline Burns 26:35

So there's there's three phases for a woman in life. So you've got your maiden phase, um, you've got the mother phase, and then you've got the crone phase or the wise woman phase. And we when you get into menopause, when your menopause symptoms are starting, it's basically your body saying to you, you don't need to be reproductive anymore. You know, that that part of you, it's starting to go, but what it's been replaced with is the wisdom. You know, when you look at countries, say in Asia and Japan, they revere the the elderly, whereas in the West, not not so much, and that that's a whole other con conversation around aging, which society does not when you get to be when you I remember, and it's only been in the last few years, so it is menopause related. I remember I remember starting to feel annoyed when you go in the shops and it's anti-aging products, and then you sort of because when you're older, you think, but what's wrong with aging? Actually, you know, and that's another society thing. You start looking at things and thinking, oh, that's interesting, how we all we, you know, the grey hairs, the wrinkles, and there's all these products set up to help you get rid of them. But actually, why? What are we actually frightened of? What do we not why do we not want to get old?

Jess Callahan 28:01

Yeah. Because yeah, you named it, because we don't revere wisdom and we don't, you know, it's more of like, oh, well, they ran their course, cool. Like move over and let the next person come in.

Caroline Burns 28:13

And that's what society's being, hasn't it? You get to a certain age, and you can see on the TV or in films in Hollywood, you see it, the you don't get many good roles for older women. It's starting to change, but notoriously it's been, oh, they're over 40, no. Yeah.

Jess Callahan 28:30

Although 10-year-olds, she's like all into the skincare, you know, it's like a big thing for that age. And she's like, Well, I just I want to make sure I'm not getting the wrinkles as I'm getting older, right? And I'm like, What's wrong with wrinkles? You know, like I earned every single one of these. And um, but you know, it starts young, it really does.

Caroline Burns 28:51

It does, it does, and it's it's not that you know, that is a societal issue that we that we're it's just there, it's it's what we see. I you know, I grew up in the 70s and 80s where it was stick-thin models, and it's like that's what that's that's perfection, that's what you need to be like. So that is the image that you hold in your head, and whether you consciously do it or not, you're still trying, you still have this image of, oh, well, I don't want to put on weight, or I don't want, I don't want to get, you know, any grey hairs, or I I can't look hold it. Why? But we don't ask our question ourselves these questions, it's not questions, it we just accept it. And I think in menopause, I don't know whether something goes on within you that it's like, okay, you're done with the reproductive stuff, and there's just a switch that kicks in. For me, it was um it was a complete change of of looking at the way I had been up until that point when I went into menopause, operating in my full in full masculine energy, subscribing to work, work, work, do next thing, and never being present, and actually slowly being able to bring myself back to using practices which brought me out of that and grounded me in the now, and it's created space. That was that's my number one value, and that's why when I mentioned values before, working on those was a game changer because I realized and I kept thinking it's space my number one value, spaciousness. And I kept and a couple of people said to me, What do you mean? And I says, Well, I don't really know, but I just enjoy I enjoy being on my own without lots of people around me, and I enjoy space in my head, and that's the game changer because we fill our heads all the time with thinking even when we're doing one thing, the the number of times I used to, and I do still sometimes do it, I'll have there'll be a programme on the television and I'll be scrolling. And it's like I'm not doing one thing or another, I've got two things going on here because I've it's still easy to fall into that trap. But spaciousness for me uh has enabled me to get a far more peaceful life, and with that has become a as has come a change of perspective. It's been more embracing the fact that rest is good, it's restorative. You slow down to get quicker, but not quicker in the sense that you used to know it. There's a lot of um when you first start experiencing menopause symptoms, it's like, oh, I want to stop that, I want to stop that. I I want to go back to the way I was, I want my life as it was. And it's like menopause is telling you, it's giving you symptoms to tell you, look at your life. What needs to change? You know, I knew brain fog, it was, you know, when I look at it now, I think it was telling me slow down. I'm gonna give you brain fog until you actually do something about it. That's not to say that's not to say things if you decide to do HLT that they won't help, because you are having biological changes happen in your body, but look at the bigger message. You know, boundaries are a big thing for women. Where are we saying yes when we're really, you know, how many times have we somebody's asked you to do something, and you're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, cause no problem, and then you squash it in or you work late to do it. Resenting it the whole time, exactly, and that resentment, any kind of those kind of emotions, because we're not we're not really taught to let those emotions out, they sit in our body, and um eventually it can come out as disease, you know.

Jess Callahan 32:52

Just because you're not feeling them doesn't mean that they're not happening in your body and getting stuck in your body. And yeah, I I attribute that directly to uh my fibromyalgia diagnosis, just like stuck emotion, stuck just stress and stuff in your body. And so I'm hearing what you're saying is it's like as the symptoms arrive, it's really just like it's a guide and it says like like listen, your your body, it's like it's gonna act out in the ways that it's telling you, like, tune in here for a reason. Yeah, you know, you can't just um you can't just bypass it, right?

The One-Day Definition And 60+ Symptoms

Caroline Burns 33:29

You have to you have to no, because it's like the more you fight it. I could have just fought on and through it, but the thing is, um it's I don't think it ever works just to if you keep fighting it all the time, it's just gonna make you miserable. Um I definitely think just just trying to be more present would be a game changer. And that that I I acknowledge that that is so hard to do because we do have busy lives. We and we have to acknowledge that we are living in you know the century we're living in. Um and we as women we did want we do want it all. We want to be able to have equal rights with men, but we also need to learn to let things fall away that we don't need to worry about anymore. We need to, you know, just find more ways to be present, to slow down. I'm not saying if you're in your 30s, you know, you need to start meditating or anything. You you find something that works that just works for you. Yeah. You see, peramenopause symptoms can come on as early as people for for women in their 30s. It can for any of the listeners who um not really sure about menopause, menopause is actually the day after you've not had a period for 12 consecutive months. It's literally menopause is literally one day. And perimenopause is the period from there. If you go back to when you first have your first symptom, so that is perimenopause. You have that day where you've not had your period for 12 months, 12 consecutive months. Everything after that is post-menopause up until the day you die. So we're in menopause once you start getting symptoms for life. Menopause is a generic term, but it is really just one day.

Jess Callahan 35:33

I had no clue.

Caroline Burns 35:34

Yeah. I did not know that, yeah. Yeah, but so the average age for that one day of menopause is between 45 and 55. Now I was 55 when I had mine, I was right on the end. But if you think about it, for if somebody has that day after 12 months of no period and they're 45, symptoms can occur up to 10 years before that point. So you could go back as early as 35 years. There've been some women in their 20s because they'll go into early menopause, yet the medical profession will often, from women I've spoken to and worked with, it's like they'll go to the doctors, and because of their age, it'll be like, oh no, no, you're too young for menopause. Because it I don't know what it's like in the in the US, but in the UK, doctors only get about one or two hours training on menopause in their medical training.

Jess Callahan 36:31

Wow. Even like an OB doctor, like an OBGYN.

Caroline Burns 36:36

Um, no, they well, they will have had more specialists, and and like the the consultant I went to see was um an endocrinologist. So he was that's different, but the general practitioners in the UK, the doctors for your everyday stuff.

Jess Callahan 36:49

I forget that the medical system all works differently in where we are versus where you are too. But so like sort of you're like gateway into that, like they've really have very limited knowledge.

Caroline Burns 37:01

So they'll be they'll be following guidelines that are just written down. And you know, if it's like, well, menopause, if they've been taught menopause occurs between these ages, if you present 10 years before with the few symptoms that you think are it's very easy for women to get dismissed. And it's not necessarily that they are in menopause, there could be a number of reasons, it could be an indication of something else, but there is this in the UK anyway, there are a lot of women who are being say, if they go uh uh one is if they have depression and they're told it's it's not hormonal, so they'll be given antidepressants, which when it's in menopause, all they need is some HRT if they can have it. That's if they're able to take it, you know. So it's just something to be aware of. And you see, the more education women have on it, when they start to experience symptoms, and I suggest they just write things down when they start experiencing things, keep a diary. Because there are, I don't know officially how many recognized menopause symptoms, but I quickly Googled before the A to Z of menopause symptoms, and there's over 60. It is literally, it can affect anything. You know, I've had dental issues more prominent in the last two years. Um it can be, you know, anything, anxiety, depression, itchy skin, hair falling out, um you know, tinnitus, hot flushes, night sweats, cold flushes, you know, there's there's just bladder problems. There are so many that they and a lot of them and women do tend to put up with a lot before they'll do anything with it. So there might be things that like if you start if logging everything, it gives you an overall picture rather than thinking, oh, I've just got a you know, bit of hair starting to fall out or starting to get headaches, or you know, it might not be related, but it but it might be. There are so many because estrogen affects your whole body. So when it starts to go down in menopause, it's not surprising that there are so many symptoms that can come up.

Jess Callahan 39:26

Wow. Wow, it is. Um, I'm just I'm glad we're having this conversation because I feel like it is just even though there's so many of us trying to just have these conversations, and even like at the same time, while I'm having this conversation with you, like learning for myself, my friends, anyone here who's listening, like I'm also taking notes and just thinking, like, you know, on the other side, you know, I've two daughters and I'm thinking, like, how do I start to have those conversations? Maybe not necessarily about just like menopause, but just cycles and natural cycles and like going just like living with the ebbs and flows of your body, you know, how do you have those conversations forward? Because we, you know, we weren't modeled that because it's just not how the generations, you know, multiple generations before us were. We just, you know, you don't talk about it.

Caroline Burns 40:16

No, and that's the problem.

Start Small And Track What Changes

Jess Callahan 40:17

Yeah. So, okay, so if somebody's starting to notice these early symptoms, and I I think that there's a lot of people living in just a state of overwhelm. And I'm hearing you, you know, functional freeze, overwhelm, like burnout, some some variation, whether, you know, it's sort of like a spectrum, and depending on where you are on that spectrum, depends on how um how much you're able to deal with like the stress and and notice what goes into your body. So yeah, what's going on in your body? What would you say to that woman who's starting to maybe like see, hear, feel the whispers of it, and isn't really sure what to do, but you know, they're just a feeling it.

Caroline Burns 41:05

Yeah, first of all, don't panic and assume the worst. And I know my story's pretty extreme, but you know, I'm thankful for everything I've been through because it's taught me so much. And that's the key, and that's been key in menopause and in life in general, for people to understand that even the hard times, there's a lesson to be learned. It's all it's all for our good. But if you're starting to feel any symptoms, log them down, make keep a diary of when they started and just start to notice them. Educate yourself as much on menopause as you can. Um, start to look after yourself, a bit of self-care. You know, like when you get sit on an aeroplane and they say if the masks come down, you put your own mask on first. Well, that's the same with in life, really. You you're no good to anybody if you don't uh you know look after yourself. So start to find things for you because especially in midlife, you might just have, you know, you might be in a relationship, you might be starting to have a family. That is a huge energy sucker, and it it's just give, give, give at that stage. Or even if you're not doing that, if you're in a job, in a career, you're working hard, and again, it's giving everything out, you need to start taking some power back for yourself and saying, no, no, no, I matter because the more you can do that, and it will be easier later on to do that, and look at you know, look at the self-care. Um, look at see at how much you move. And I don't mean you need to start running marathons or anything, but just move, move a bit more. Look at your hydration, look at your nutrition, and look at your sleep routine. Don't look at it all and say, right, do you know that thing where you think, okay, I'm gonna start it on Monday? Whether it's running, whether it's starting the diet, whatever it is, and we go health a leather and we last three or four days, and then it's like, no. But the thing is to make changes, if they're gonna make any changes, make them slowly and gradually and choose the easiest things first to change. You know, it's easier, but you know, even if a thing of water, change it so that you're drinking a little bit more water each day. It just helps your general health, and the healthier you are going into menopause, the easier it'll be to cope with any symptoms. But overridingly, the self-care one is yeah, that's the biggie. Because it kicks up a lot of other things, as we've talked about guilt, the emotional side of things.

Jess Callahan 43:54

Yeah, not even just like for I mean, preparing for menopause a thousand times. But also just like because we deserve it, right? Like we deserve to not feel guilt when we take time for ourselves, but it's just really hard to rewrite that. And so yeah, those are they're really, really good pointers. It's um just messages that we hear them and and eventually, you know, for each of us one by one, it sort of sticks. And it's like, okay, yeah, I think I might tune in a little bit.

Caroline Burns 44:27

So yeah, because some we do have to hear things a lot of times and not to feel guilty for that, because I've sat, like I can think back, you know, three or four years being in different circles of things, women and and stuff, and they might have mentioned something like, don't make the mistakes I made, do it this way. And I'm like, okay, okay. But I still made the mistakes, but I learned from them. And one thing out of all the things, you know, if there were six things they said not to do, I would have taken on board one. Not them all, but I've got something from it. But it's easy to feel guilty for then, well, they told me not to do that, and I did it. Again, this we're terrible at berating ourselves that we've not done the thing, that we're not enough, that we've not done enough, but we are.

How To Work With Caroline

Jess Callahan 45:19

We are. We are so okay. How do how do you work with clients? Like what's um, how can people get in touch with you? And if they and if you know, if you're taking on clients, like what could they expect in a journey with you?

Caroline Burns 45:32

So I'm on all Facebook, Instagram, um, LinkedIn, Substack. I'm on. I've got a blog site as well. Um, I just started, I ran the first program uh last month, which was called the Circle of Calm, which was guided visualizations, and I'm about to put that so people can buy that independently. And basically, it's um where you get a guided visualization five over a 10-day period, and it helps you create space in your life because the biggest thing for me was creating space, and I found guided visualizations um were so it was such a beautiful way of when you drop into a visualization, that time is yours, you know. You put your headphones on and you're in that space, and you you make sure you can't be disturbed in that space, and the the things that have dropped into me when I've done guided visualizations, you just realizations, and that's your intuition kicking in. Because we're not taught to, we're always taught to think, we're not taught to relax and feel and because things will come through then when we when we get out of our head and into our body. So that's um that's what I'm about to put on so people can access that and buy that separately. Um, I do take on one-to-one clients as well, and that's usually over a three-month period. So we'll get together, we'll have six Zoom calls, usually it's every fortnight. That seems to work really well with support in between. Um so yeah, and I've got free resources as well. If they connect to me on social media, they can connect with all the free resources. There's a guide on the five pillars I spoke about. Um, there's a there's a checklist of symptoms, which I know it's probably more UK-based, it's called the Green Climactoric Scale, and that's where you can grade how uh like how bad a particular symptom is. But you could, I mean, you could download that, they can download that from the internet anyway. As an accountant, I've also got a free guide on with your business finances as well in menopause.

Jess Callahan 47:54

I love that. I love the blending of worlds, and yeah, no, all of that sounds so cool. The guided visualizations sound really powerful. I know how um how those are sort of like the the things that just stay with you long after you know the the visualization is over. So um I'll include links to all of your socials and everything else in the show notes. Um with that, I thank you so so much for having this conversation with me today. I know I have personally learned like just so much, and I'm really excited to share it.

Caroline Burns 48:28

Thank you. It's been such a delight. It's lovely to actually, you know, when you get to the age I am, being able to step into that role of actually looking back at my life and everything I've been through, it's something I can pass down. And like you say, if we equip the next generation with this knowledge, it'll just tumble down then, like you've said about speaking to your daughters about it. And we need to get keep the conversation going.

Jess Callahan 49:01

Yeah, yeah, that's so well said. Well, thank you.

Caroline Burns 49:05

Thank you, thank you.