Lauren: Stop waiting to be heard.

In this episode, Kristin talks with Lauren (she/her), founder of Hormonally, a nonprofit focused on hormone health education and access. Lauren shares how her work challenges a common assumption: that education alone leads to better health outcomes. In reality, many people still struggle to be heard, often leaving medical spaces feeling dismissed or unsupported.

Together, they explore what it actually means to advocate for yourself especially when the system makes that difficult. From “care-seeking fatigue” to the gap between having information and knowing how to use it, this conversation gets honest about the emotional and practical barriers to getting care.

Lauren also reflects on her nonlinear path—from personal loss to academia to founding a nonprofit—and why feeling off track might be part of building something meaningful. This episode is a reminder that your voice matters, even when it feels hard to use. And that learning to advocate for yourself is just as important as what you know.

How to get in touch:

• Hormonally
• Lauren Redfern

Transcript

Kristin 0:03

Welcome to Everything Counts But Nothing Is Real, a podcast about careers, detours, and the absurdity of work. Here we explore the twists, the pivots, and the tiny choices that shape our work lives with humor, feminism, and honesty. I'm your host, Kristen. Let's get into it. Hello, and welcome to Everything Counts But Nothing Is Real. Today's guest is someone I'm so excited to talk to because her work is focused on women's health. And she has an incredible background. It's incredible, it's inspiring. I cannot wait to learn more. Lauren, she her, is the founder and executive director of Hormonally, a nonprofit dedicated to improving hormone health education and access across the lifespan. With a background in medical anthropology, her work focuses on bridging the gap between knowledge and care by empowering people to better understand and advocate for their bodies. Lauren, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being here. I'm really, really, really excited to do this with you. I just am really inspired by the work that you're doing, but I also know that it's a lot right now. So can you tell us what do you do right now? What is your job?

Lauren 1:13

Yeah, absolutely. So uh I'm Lauren. Uh I am the founder and executive director of Hormonally. Uh, we are a nonprofit focused on women's health education, health literacy. Um, and we take a life course approach. So from first period to post-menopause, uh, Hormonally is there to be your hormone ally. It's a nice play on on uh Hormone Ally. So we're a digital health platform predominantly, but we also do in-person community programming. Um, and this year we've also been expanding into supporting people with building self-advocacy skills. Um, one of the things that we recognized working in women's health is when we launched the nonprofit, it was a quite green idea, green approach, which was you improve education, you improve health outcomes. But actually, a lot of the feedback we had from the women we were working with was, you know, this education is great, but the thing that I struggle with the most is knowing how to advocate for myself with a provider. So when I go in and I have issues I want to talk about, sometimes it feels like maybe that drops out of my head, or I feel like I'm gonna use the word that we're not supposed to, but you know, I feel gaslit or I feel dismissed, or um, yeah, and and that leads to this what I like to call the care seeking fatigue cycle where people are seeking care. Um, but finding the process of seeking care so challenging that actually often they fall out of the system and end up in this position of, I guess I just have to live with this or manage these symptoms because the actual process of trying to get help is so challenging. So a big part of our work is on really helping people build that skill set to feel like they are able to champion their own health and not feel dismissed in those um in those spaces.

Kristin 2:44

I think that's beautiful and so important. And like when you talk about your work, I'm like, oh my gosh, it's me. Like I see myself in that, you know, for all the reasons you named. I think it's such important work. Can you tell me what's lighting you up right now? Like what's giving you hope?

Lauren 2:58

Yeah, I mean it's a what it's a wonderful time to be working in women's health. Um, but I think there is a there's there's a lot to be hopeful for and about. I guess it depends on positioning. Um, I think obviously it's it's a challenging time. I think we're very much in this space of unknown when it comes to access provision, service provision, what's going to be available for people. But I think the thing that's making me really excited is I think often we can dismiss digital spaces as sort of replacing that in-person community or taking away what's needed for building sense of self or creating spaces that are actually in person to help people feel like they're supported and in community. And I think digital can sometimes be placed as like, you know, the worst thing for us. But I'm actually seeing lots of really amazing things happening in digital health online spaces. Um, and it's making me quite excited for what the future possibility could look like for people's health outcomes if we're able to leverage these tools in equity-driven ways. You know, if we're able to take these technologies that are actually offering really amazing opportunities for people to take control and ownership of their health and use it in the right way, that makes me really excited.

Kristin 4:05

In the tech space, I also, I mean, I don't know if it's just my age, but like I see a lot of content these days about hormones and symptoms and things that aren't talked about. And so like the two can be really complementary, hopefully.

Lauren 4:17

I mean, totally. I've got into working in this space. So my background is a I'm a medical anthropologist by training. And if you don't know what that is, then that's fine. I don't think I even know what it is. So um, but we uh as medical anthropologists is looking at the social cultural dimensions of health and really how I think we often think about health in the body. Basically, it's not value-free. The knowledge that we have about our body, about the ways that our health works, it's implicated and impacted by social cultural narratives. And my PhD research was focused specifically on women's experiences of navigating, perimenopause, and menopause. And I think really from that research and those findings, what was coming out so clearly and so strongly was um, well, two narratives really. The first was, you know, I had no idea what was just about to happen to me, but also I had no idea where to look for support or help. And, you know, this rise of misinformation has made that even more challenging. So our want, really with hormonally, was to create a platform that was, you know, housing easy to access, straightforward, evidence-based information that also just help you to feel more in control of those life stages. And I think what I realized was mostly it wasn't like women were arriving at perimenopause and menopause, and it had been smooth sailing until that point. Actually, reproductive years were often very challenging. Lots of people living with quite debilitating uh reproductive conditions, really heavy symptom burden, and just no clear information about how to manage that. So I think the the digital space offers people a lot of support for knowing, just you know, I've had it described to me before as almost like a Pandora's box that gets opened when you reach this life stage and then suddenly all this stuff comes flying out. Um, and it's terrifying. So, where are those spaces that we're able to create sort of safe environments for people to not only learn about their bodies but also come together in community? You know, in that introduction, you said, Oh, that's me. You know, how nice would it be to feel like I'm able to meet other people that are going through that or, you know, have that conversation of this is happening to me, is it happening to you and making you that feel this way as well? Yeah, I mean, 100%.

Kristin 6:08

Let's go back to the beginning of your life and tell me any of the things from childhood that may have inspired you and put you on this path. So that could include your family, your background, your astrology if you're into that kind of thing. Any reflections on sort of your foundation of who you are?

Lauren 6:25

I'm kind of obsessed that you asked this because I am into astrology. I have not just decided with everything that's happening in the world. I just want witchy women to tell me what's happening in my life, and I will just follow you blindly. But um I'm a Gemini. I'm born, I know, and I feel like I said I realized only recently that apparently we're like a villain star sign.

Kristin 6:44

People don't love us, which is it's like yeah, that's such a bad reputation, but it's not fair.

Lauren 6:49

It's not found, it's not grounded in reality. I think there's a difference between May Geminis and June Geminis as well. That's the one that we get out of here that you think, okay. Um but I'm actually born on May 28th, which is the International Women's Health Day, which I find really crazy, and I only learned this quite recently that I was like, oh, that's weird and interesting and strange. But yeah, I I feel that is an important thing for me, that that has always, I don't know, somehow resonated with me. I grew up in a part of the world which is in the UK, it's a place called Totnes, and it is known as like the hippie capital of the UK. Lots of crystal shops, lots of homeopathic remedies. But the one thing that I think I was exposed to that was really interesting was just lots of people that were very conscious of their health and well-being. And I never really thought about that as special or interesting, and the work that we do is evidence-based and mostly looking at allopathic medicines as opposed to functional or naturopathic roots. But I think what we try and do at Hormonely is present a really strong overview of all of the different areas of health that you might want to think about and how, you know, your mind and body is interconnected. But I think that was really instilled for me at a young age of just being around that and being around those different modalities of thought when it came to how you take care of your body was quite special. And I think I took that for granted in some respects of realizing that that wasn't usual for lots of people. And I think I developed a very deep sense of compass around social justice. Um, just like care, care is baked into everything I think about and feel, but not just care for self, but care for others, care for community, care for the planet. So yeah, that feels like something that's sort of been a really big driving force in what's pushed that forward of saying, I want to build something that feels like it's actually doing something about the problem. And that was the biggest frustration I had working in academia is I think it's a lot of conversations about what's wrong and very few attempts to sort of build something that responds to that. You know, I I have this conversation a lot with people where they'll say, you know, we need to raise awareness. And I will often say, awareness has been raised. We know what the problem is, what we need is people creating solutions for it. So yeah.

Kristin 8:49

Yes. Oh my God. Every single thing you just said was like, yes, yes. First of all, you have such a literal background. Like the literal story of your background leads you to this place. I wonder what it was like. I assume you left to go to university, you left your town. And then around that time, did you start to notice that not everyone approaches life and health in such a holistic way?

Lauren 9:12

I had a very interesting experience. I was a caretaker for my dad when he became very unwell when I was about 18. He was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and died. It was five weeks between diagnosis and death. So it was very sudden and very intense. And I mentioned that for a couple of reasons, which is I think it's a quite life-altering experience to lose a parent at that age, but also to recognize the experience of feeling completely helpless around health or feeling like you're unable to do anything or treatment is out of your control. So I think that was something that really created a juncture for me. I actually ended up, after that happened, I went on a totally different path. I was planning to go down a very arts-based route. So I did an art foundation, I started a degree in costume design. Um, yeah, it was too much. I I hadn't taken any time to process what had happened. Um, so I yeah, my mental health suffered and I ended up uh leaving university and just having a complete, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. And I ended up getting a job in the UK. We have a store called Anne Summers. Um, and the only way I can describe it for American listeners is imagine Victoria's Secret but with sex toys. So there's like a little back part at the back of the store with sex toys. And um, I just loved that job because I got to talk to people all day about sex, about their sex lives, and and people were pretty open. They wanted to talk about it. All their worries, all their concerns, everything. Uh, and and the thing that I found fascinating was it wasn't one type of person, it was every different type of person you could imagine. But they all had this one thing in common, which was uh sex sexuality. And I ended up, I think, one day looking up, you know, what what study is this? And that's what led me to anthropology. And then I did my undergrad in sociology and anthropology, a master's in reproductive and sexual health research, and a PhD in medical anthropology. So what's hilarious is that job in a sex shop is really kind of what changed my direction. Yeah, in answer to your question of like, did I start to notice moving out into the world that people didn't feel that way, didn't think about health and the body, I think definitely losing my dad at that age, seeing what he went through. It was a shock just at how limited I say this a lot, which is I think treatment is a part of what people want, but a bigger part is I always say care is a form of treatment, or care as a form of treatment is is important as well. So I think that's been hugely influential in the work that I've developed as a consequence of that.

Kristin 11:22

That's beautiful. I'm sorry about your dad. I have also lost my dad and um in my 30s, but still like that felt so young and that's so impactful, and I'm sorry. And also, what a beautiful way to sort of honor that time in your life to have that be the pivot moment where you figured out what you want to do. That's really cool. Let's attempt to define medical anthropology. When I hear it, I think it sounds kind of aligned with um ethnography, where you're sort of like you're studying people as they are navigating medical care. Does that sound great?

Lauren 11:57

So ethnography is our major discipline as anthropologists. So anthropology is the field of study, um, which would be looking at the social cultural behaviors of humans in in different ways, different spaces, different places. Um, medical anthropology focuses specifically on that, but in a medical context. So we'd be thinking about the social cultural dimensions of health and healthcare. So when you're looking at how surgeons navigate um a particular form of care or a particular surgery and the social cultural dimensions of that, so it's often specialized in a particular area. And that the method that we would use is ethnography. And the way that I describe that often when teaching students is like it's basically uh professional people watching and hanging out. So for my own research looking at pro-menopause and menopause, I spent a year in a clinic offering care. And some of that was sitting in appointments and observing those appointments. A lot of it was just spending time in the clinic. So also with nurses as they're taking blood in the reception area with the administrative staff. And through that, you're basically sort of emerging yourself into the culture or context of that space, and you're able to get a sense of how all of that informs the experience of medicine and care. So even the physical building or those things around you, how that informs your navigation of your healthcare.

Kristin 13:09

I love ethnography and I actually love your description of it. It actually sounds really fun. Um tell me about how you ended up founding hormonally. I know that there's a donor involved, and then like it's also based in the US, right? It's founded in the US.

Lauren 13:26

Yes, I I always I trick everybody with the British accent, but the one thing I think it's useful for is when I want to talk about sexual health or vulvo-vaginal health, the British accent just sort of softens it a little bit. It's like Mary Poppins opening her bag and talking about vulvas and vaginas. Yeah. So I ended up connecting with a foundation in the US who were just observing that there was nothing really available in the US which was free to access information about perimenopause and menopause. No specific NGOs at that time focusing on that. And they were interested in setting something up and asked if, you know, if it was in line with what I would want to do. And I had said yes. But my learning at the time was actually we need to have this conversation earlier. It needs to start far before perimenopause and menopause. And I think the thing that I've definitely learned working in women's health for the last sort of decade is really there's limited spaces where you're looking at a life course approach. So really thinking between first period and post-menopause, what is going to happen? You know, often when you think about what you learnt at school, actually, I don't know. Tell me, what did you learn at school in in if you had sex ed of any kind? I mean, practically nothing.

Kristin 14:31

I yeah, you know, I'm from Texas and it's a conservative place, and I don't remember learning much.

Lauren 14:38

Yeah, and I think that's and and often the experience is either that, I didn't learn anything, or it was how not to get pregnant, how not to get an STI. And I think the things that we're interested in, well, what happens, you know, around how to recognize when this is too much bleeding or what symptoms, you know, really thinking about your health in that way. So hormonally really came about, we were a fiscally sponsored project of a separate foundation called Parsimus Foundation. And we launched in February 2023. Um just because we're just about to have our two-year birthday uh next month. So we're still very new, yes, thank you. And after we launched, the conversation was really look, I think there's a need for this, and could we get an independent 501c3 status? Which we managed somehow. Sorry, I don't know how much I can say on this podcast about it. Oh, you can pull our thing from. Yeah, but that was very exciting. In fact, our attorney that supported us at the time to put to put this through, uh, a board one of our board members said, I don't know who you got, but that or why this got approved, but it got approved, which is wonderful. So um, yeah, so we got our 501c3 status last year. Our core program is our website, hormonally.org. And on that, we have over 40 evidence-based resources that really span that life course approach. Um, and the idea is that it gives you the education that you never had, something that breaks down those topics that can often feel inaccessible or overwhelming and presents it in a way that's fun, engaging, and very visual, something I didn't realize. So I have ADHD, as I feel like everyone does now, but also a very visual learning-based style. And somebody said to me, God, this is like really built with accessibility in mind. And I never even thought about it until after the fact of recognizing, yeah, of course, because you know, so we're really thinking about in the heart of what we do, how do we bake accessibility into this to mean that it feels like learning about your body doesn't feel like an onerous task. It feels like something you want to do and engage in and have, you know, resources you might want to send to a friend or say, hey, I read this and I think this might be helpful for you as well. So so yeah, that's how we kind of came about. But we are US-based. Uh, we're a US-based nonprofit. We are sort of also doing work globally as well, but our core home is in the US. Yeah.

Kristin 16:42

You, as the founding executive director, probably have to wear a lot of hats and you probably have to fundraise. Um, and I'm wondering what that's like right now. Two-pronged. One, donors that are like interested in this topic. But two, I'm finding working in global philanthropy in a US-based nonprofit, funders don't really want to move money to the US.

Lauren 17:06

I'm really glad that you are so. So I always say, or a friend of mine actually said this, and I was like, oh, that's me. He always said, um, naive enough to start, stubborn enough to finish. And I think that was me when it came to thinking about the process of starting your own nonprofit. I was like, it can't be that complicated. Uh it turns out funding any educational nonprofit is not easy. I think there's a perception or understanding that education should be free, that people should not be donating, when actually what we know is really any health outcome starts with education and good education that's free and accessible for everyone. So I think that is one of the first things that I I always love the opportunity to kind of query from people and actually just really push that a little bit to say, I'm aware that the education space is difficult to fundraise for, but it shouldn't be because I think it potentially has the biggest impact for these other outcomes as well. For us, I mean, our long-term goal was to get our 501c3 status and then obviously look at NIH funding. And that has been really challenging because women's health is now considered a diversity and inclusion initiative. So even if we wanted to look at endometriosis, if we wanted to look at fibroids, these very specific chronic health conditions, you know, with fibroids, we know two in three people will at some point have developed fibroids, um, non-cancerous uterine growths. But even if I wanted to fund that, it's considered a diversity and inclusion initiative or funding in that area as soon as you have something on there that says women or women's health, or if you didn't even want to use gendered language, you know, there's still so many barriers in that sense. So that was a big blow for us because obviously our area is looking at how we can fund research and development. Um, and I think that's been very interesting to see other nonprofits that have been affected by that. My hope was with these shifts, we would see people really coming together and sort of collaboratively going in on pitches and bids and funds. That hasn't been my experience. I think there's fear right now, there's fear about longevity, there's fear about future, and I think everybody is just at that point of not really being sure the landscape looks uncertain. So how you sort of rally with that uncertainty is a bit challenging. And in terms of the private donor, it's interesting. I think obviously the actual economy in the US and what we're seeing, this instability of the dollar, I think is making that really challenging for other people that may be wanting internationally to come in and support. But I'd actually love to learn more on your experience with that as well. Or thought, yeah.

Kristin 19:20

I mean, first of all, the NIH, like that goal makes so much sense. And now it's just kind of decimated and ugh, it's so sad. And I have lots of thoughts about the funding landscape and donors not wanting to move money into the US, especially when it's around like women or or queer people, like that feels dangerous almost. Yeah. Which leads me to another question that is a bit of a pivot here. If you don't mind me saying that you are a queer person. Oh no, you've outed me as a lesbian. How dare you? Is that okay? Yes, of course. No, no, no. So you're queer. And this is coming from some assumptions that I have around reproductive health work feeling like not a queer space.

Lauren 20:00

How do you navigate that? I'm so glad you asked that question. It's such a core tenant behind hormonally. So when I started having these conversations, I was living in the US with my girlfriend at the time and forever boring her with everything I was doing around menopause, perimenopause, and it was actually knocking on the door of perimenopause, but I was not going to say that at the time. So would often sort of say, What do you think of this? or how do you feel about this? And, you know, one day she said to me, you know, it's great. It's just that I don't feel welcome here. And, you know, meant that specifically in a couple of different ways. Not just the traditional branding of, you know, women running on the beach with Labradors, um, but also, you know, just feeling like it wasn't inclusive. It just didn't feel open. And that was very, very important to me when we started working with developing hormonally's visual identity was how do we make this feel like a space that is welcoming for everyone? And also when we launched this, you hear this all the time now, hormonal health everywhere as shorthand. When we launched this, we actually were approached by a number of people that said it's not a real term, it's not a real word. Usually you'd say reproductive or sexual health, but we wanted to focus on hormonal health because if you can move the needle away from women's health, then you start to position this as health. It's just health. And interestingly, you know, we we worked on a campaign in the run-up to the election with another nonprofit that were touring the US with a giant IUD to raise awareness about risks to contraception. And we joined them because one of the things I had said was I think focusing just on pregnancy prevention, you're missing a big piece of this, which is contraception is essential healthcare. These are essential health conditions if you live with endometriosis, if you live with fibroids, if you live with PMDD, if you live with PCOS, these are chronic conditions, but framing them as women's health somehow it dilutes that and it takes away the relevance from it. So that's a big part of what we're also trying to do and make this more accessible to all people. So we always say we serve women and all those affected by hormones, however you identify, because I think we're more of a sort of yes and. But it's essential to be able to create those spaces that feel safe and inclusive. We know that year-on-year screenings go down, perhaps measures are always down. And one of the things I'm always conscious and curious of is those spaces can be incredibly dysphoric for people. It can be very overwhelming. Like the actual space of reproductive health is not built with accessibility and inclusivity in mind. So that's something that we're really trying to champion in the work that we do. But it's also a really hard time to do it. I don't think of our work as radical. I really, really don't. And I am consistently reminded by people that we are. I mean, we do have a we do have a massive vulva map on our website, which was created to support clinical practice for those with vulvo-vaginal pain disorders. But again, also the clinicians we worked with on that, they do a lot of gender-affirming care and they had no, you know, images they could pull upon or visual aids that were not highly gendered. So even things like that, that we're thinking about how do we present this information in a way that doesn't push people out of the room but brings them into the space.

Kristin 22:57

I think it's so important. And I actually love that you're you, a queer person, are the one leading this work because it's necessary to have that perspective. And it's just easy to kind of fall into a binary very quickly and think about reproductive health means reproduction in a very like heterosexual way. So anyway, it's yeah, it's beautiful to see you navigate that. And I I think I told you before over coffee, like my partner is trans masked and has said if when I was a teenager, I knew about things like IUDs or like menstrual cups, these are the kinds of things that like might have helped, might have like taken away some of the dysphoria that happens.

Lauren 23:33

Well, I've had it, I've had that conversation on a number of occasions with a few different people that identify as non-binary. Uh, so menstrual cups for me is so interesting because I immediately think about, oh, that sounds uncomfortable, that feels uncomfortable, and I find how's uncomfortable, I find that, but also interesting that even just bringing that into the perspective of obviously being able to be as removed from that being really important. Um, but I'd also had a conversation in which I was explaining what happened hormone in a 28-day cycle. I could just see the lights going off and being like, can you pay attention? And actually, they explained actually it was quite triggering because they were saying, you know, I really remember this in school or remember that feeling of being in school, being in these lessons, having to listen to this and just feeling so overwhelmed by the fact that I didn't want to be in that lesson. I didn't want to learn about my body doing those things because of the way that it was positioned linguistically, just all of those things that just really sometimes pulls me up short to recognize that I don't experience gender dysphoria. And I think that it's so essential for us to be considering when we're delivering education, how are we delivering education to be inclusive and non-dysphoric for people? Because what's happening is we're seeing people disengage with their health as a consequence of that for sure. Thank you for that.

Kristin 24:42

Let's switch gears and do the lightning round. What was the very first job that you had and what did it teach you about work?

Lauren 24:48

Uh, my very first job was cleaning caravans or uh mobile homes. Yeah, it was like a holiday park that it was near and I would have to clean them. And the guy would come and inspect the work. And if it wasn't done properly, then we did it again. So it really did teach me that I have very high standards. Um, my team don't throw around the word control freak in the way that they probably should. But I definitely have that um attention to detail, which I think is really essential. And it also taught me just people are gross as well in some ways. A little perspective for life.

Kristin 25:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lauren 25:20

Yeah.

Kristin 25:21

What's the best or worst piece of advice you've ever received?

Lauren 25:24

I had a wonderful manager as a charity in the UK called Brooke, it's a Young People's Sexual Health Charity, and had a wonderful manager at the time. And I was doing the thing that I think is quite common where you stay as long as you can to show your dedication. And she said to me, No, but I'm gonna tell you this now that nobody professionally will police your boundaries. And if you want to do that, then that is not something that anybody is going to step in to stop you from doing, but it will have an impact over time. And I at the time it really didn't resonate the kind of profound impact of that, that now in a senior leadership role, when you are constantly feeling that need to do a bit more or take on a bit more, that piece of, you know, recognizing that there is going to be nobody that steps in and says, I think you've done enough except yourself. And I think that's something I try and think of a lot, that you have to be your own advocate when it comes to those professional boundaries, definitely. That is good advice.

Kristin 26:15

And like really well-worded. I love it.

Lauren 26:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kristin 26:19

What's your most embarrassing work story?

Lauren 26:21

Oh God, do you want PG 13 or sex shop uh story? Sex shop. Okay. I remember that was so specifically, but we would sometimes get people that would call, they would phone in, like prank calls. And there was this one call I got every day for about a week from this guy. We had a particular product called an Asperry, and it was a raspberry-shaped butt plug. And he called every day to ask if it was in stock. And after this had happened for about five or six days, I just said, Look, it's here. I'm keeping it behind the till. If you want this, then come in and get it today. Or if you don't, you know, I thought he was completely messing with me. And he came in later that day. He came up to the counter and was like, Do you have my Asperry? And I had to be like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. Yes, I do. You are a real person. I realize you were just embarrassed. Um and that was very embarrassing for me.

Kristin 27:03

So I'm glad he got it.

Lauren 27:06

Yeah, me too. I mean, honestly.

Kristin 27:07

God speaking so sorry.

Lauren 27:10

What is your socially acceptable work vice? Drinking on calls, like tea, coffee. I will, I will have a tea or a coffee on a call. Is that a work vice? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I not eating. I like to have something in my hands. Yeah, me too. I think, yeah. But but not eating. I I do not like eating on calls when people eat on a call. That for me is too much, I think. Yeah. I I don't need people to see me like shoveling food into my mouth.

Kristin 27:34

But drinks, on the other hand, I do need something to like have. So great answer. I love it. Yeah. What is something about your job that sounds impressive, but actually isn't that glamorous?

Lauren 27:46

My entire bloody job saying to somebody, I run a women's health nonprofit, sounds really glamorous. And the realities of it are incredibly long hours wearing multiple hats, constantly being on the verge of an emotional breakdown of the state of the world. That I mean highly rewarding, but I think it sounds a lot more glamorous than the sort of day-to-day uh lived realities of working in the NGO sector, which I also feel like sometimes gets a bad rap. And I'm not here to say any of that because I, you know, I've worked in nonprofits my entire career, and there's that place in my heart of recognizing that it probably wouldn't be anywhere else. But um, I think it sounds sometimes more glamorous than the realities of it actually are. But I would like to hear your thoughts. Yeah, okay, yeah.

Kristin 28:26

No, it's that like it sounds glamorous. But I also know you probably feel a little isolated because you're remote and you don't have a lot of like staff or colleagues. Yes.

Lauren 28:36

That's tough. I think I think that's a really great observation generally. The one thing I would say, I am a big advocate for digital. I mentioned that. I think that we can do huge amounts, particularly in healthcare space digitally. And I think we are really recognizing and and leveraging hormonely, you know, of understanding that we are a digital health nonprofit. That's, you know, specifically what we do. I think that remote working environment that was born post-pandemic, I think there are pros and cons to it. I, you know, I connect internationally. I have colleagues uh in the US, in Greece, in England, uh, in, you know, Portugal, all these different places that I can say this is really wonderful. But yeah, there is that sense of it's quite basically isolating for sure, of not having that community and team around you.

Kristin 29:19

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

Lauren 29:21

Do you feel the same way? Yes.

Kristin 29:23

And I have coworkers, but I'm remote. And so I'm remote and I'm like in my house doing my thing. Yes. But I do have coworkers and I do have staff. And I imagine that with like fewer in-house support systems, that's even harder. Do you fix typos and casual communication?

Lauren 29:42

I do. But again, this comes down to my issues with attention to detail. So I actually kind of love it when I get an email from somebody that just is like off the bat, but I am a typo fixer, I think. I mean, often I don't, and then I'm embarrassed. So I would have to say yes, yeah.

Kristin 29:59

All right. Well then yeah, you are. You're a typo fixer. They made it the typo fixer.

Lauren 30:04

Yeah, exactly.

Kristin 30:05

Can't even get around.

Lauren 30:07

I mean, they try and write your emails for you now, which is crazy. At the bottom, it will be like, is this what you want to say? And I'm like, absolutely not.

Kristin 30:14

No, that's not what I want to say. No. Ever.

Lauren 30:16

And it'll often miss it completely, being like, no.

Kristin 30:20

Yeah, I mean, ridiculous. Two final questions. What would your advice be to someone who feels off track right now?

Lauren 30:27

There have been so many moments in my life where I've thought, what the heck am I doing? And so many like moments where it's felt very random. And then later down the line, you look back and think all of those pieces were needed in order for this to come together. So I guess a that feeling of feeling off track. I think it's always that piece of the race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself. So the biggest piece for me is just stop holding yourself next to another person. I went through a stage where it took me seven years to get through a PhD. And I say that because in the UK, often it's three years. You need to be finished within three years. And it took me twice the amount of time and then some. Um and I was interrupting that process to do various research projects as well, which you can do when they came up. But I was at a weird point in my life where I was watching the people that I did my undergraduate degree with or friends from school, you know, really reaching a point in their careers where I felt so behind and I just felt like I got to the age of my 30s and was still studying. And it just felt like I'm nowhere near where I need to be. And then the acceleration after that has been sort of much quicker in that way. And I think there's always that piece where you want to compare your life and your progress to someone else and say, but I don't have that. But your journey is your journey to walk and it's unique to you. And every step along the way, even if that feels totally unrelated, will teach you something about yourself that you didn't know that you'll be able to bring forward into what you do in the future. And the other piece is taking care of yourself, your mind, and your body is so essential. So I feel like if you're feeling off track because actually you're burnt out or you're feeling like you can't do that anymore, that is not being off track. That is your body stabilizing you to say it's, you know, it's not sustainable and you need to put yourself first in order to get back to that place of feeling like you're thriving. And I just say that as someone who is terrible at recognizing those signals and symptoms of needing to take a break. Yeah.

Kristin 32:19

Just say it out loud as much as you can. No, that's yeah, that's beautiful advice. And truly the spirit of this podcast is that it's that, you know, even in moments where you're not sure that this matters or is gonna like get you to the next step, it you're gonna look back and that's gonna make sense.

Lauren 32:34

I had a conversation with someone recently who he's been through a couple of just life event things and he lost his job quite unexpectedly. He was in a quite high senior leadership position. And um, I was saying to him, you know, why not just take some time to do something that, you know, that is very unstressful. And he his main feedback was, because what will people think when I tell them that or that when they see that I was doing this and then I'm doing this? And I said, But were you happy when you were working at this other organization? He was like, No, I was the most miserable I'd ever been. And it was just really interesting that the status piece, you know, is sometimes it feels like it keeps us in these really unhealthy environments and spaces because we're so worried about looking like we're off track or looking like we're not there. And actually, sometimes it can be the thing that's needed to put you on the path that feels best for you, you know.

Kristin 33:18

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, last question. Where can people find you slash hormonally?

Lauren 33:24

Our website is hormonally.org and you can find us there. Our social media handle on Instagram is hormonally.us. And if you want to find me, I am, I think on Instagram as Lauren RedfernWrites. So you can find me there or on LinkedIn as well. Um, I think we're on LinkedIn as well. And also you can just find me bopping around. Please always come and say hello, as I've sort of uh explained. I will strong arm you into a coffee with me at some point um when you're, you know, at an event. A delightful coffee.

Kristin 33:53

Oh, make no mistake. I will include those links in the show notes so that folks can find you and find hormonally importantly, hopefully feel empowered and seen by the work that you're doing. I so appreciate you doing this with me. Thank you so much for your time.

Lauren 34:08

Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

Kristin 34:17

There's actually quite a few threads I want to pull on here because I think that embedded in a lot of this conversation that were several deep ideas. I agree that a lot of times when we hear women's health and hormones, uh, maybe we all want to shut down. I kind of like, you know, sit right at this intersection and I still am like, blah, I don't want to talk about it. And so what a fascinating place to be navigating her career and her organization. One of the thoughts really that I can't stop thinking about is that education alone isn't enough. Thinking about the idea that people need tools, they need confidence, how are they going to advocate for themselves is its own strategy. It's not just telling them the facts, but how are they going into a medical scenario, a doctor's office, and able to truly stand up for themselves and advocate for the things that they need. I think that that's something we probably all can identify with at least a little bit, being in a situation where maybe the education is there, we know something, but there's pushback in real time and we don't know how to sort of handle that and move it forward. I also want to talk about the tension between access and experience. We have a lot of access to information these days. I get so much information about hormones and perimenopause in my Instagram feed. And I don't want to hear that it's because of my age, because I know that, but I feel like I know a lot. That teaches me, teaches me a lot accidentally, whatever. I'm absorbing this information, but I'm not necessarily interacting with it and I don't necessarily have experience with it in knowing again what's really happening and how to put that into action in terms of advocating. So really holding those two things together. And then I would say my favorite, no, not my favorite, because there's lots of favorites, and this episode was truly delightful. One of the more important things that I'd like to sort of pull out of this is when she talks about women's health moving to hormone health and then moving to health. Because it is true that when we sort of like categorize something as like it's for women, it's women's health, then it's something else. It's something that so many people want to say doesn't matter as much. It's now categorized with sort of a subtitle. And at the end of the day, it is health. It is important, it is how we live our lives and you know, have the energy to do the things that we want to do and take care of the people we're taking care of and building the careers we want to build. And it's health. We all have hormones, no matter our gender, and we all need to have access to the care that empowers us. And then, of course, I would be remiss if I didn't touch on the nonlinear part of her path and the part that everyone has in common, which is those moments of going from working in a sex shop to academia to founding a nonprofit, everything sort of in between those moments, it probably didn't feel like it was making sense at the time. And that same idea that is the through line through all of these interviews, which is that feeling off track is sort of part of the deal, and that it usually just means that you're building something meaningful, but you just have yet to see it. As always. Oh my gosh, thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. I'm always delighted, I'm always proud. This one just made me so happy. It was such a fun conversation. I'm delighted for you to join us. Please come find us on LinkedIn or Instagram at Everything Counts Pod. Um, you can find me at Kristen Gardner. Check out our website, everythingcountspod.com. There you can get in touch with us, give us your feedback, leave us a review. So grateful. See you next time. Thanks for listening to everything counts, but nothing is real. Remember, even when nothing feels real, everything you do counts. Capitalism may be absurd, but so are we. And on that note, well, it's been real. Don't forget to subscribe. I'm Kristen. See you next time.