68: Embracing Midlife Transformation: Jo Pybus on Menopause Advocacy and Nostalgic Music

Welcome to the Dear Menopause podcast, where we discuss the menopause transition to help make everyday life a little easier for women. My name is Sonya Lovell. I am the host Dear Menopause and boy do I love a good chat, and today you are going to hear me doing exactly that with my guest, Jo Pybus. Jo is many things. She refers to a self as a late onset writer, a feminist and a podcaster, but Jo is also whip smart and she loves sharing observations from her life in what she calls the middle ages. Jo and I traverse many topics in this episode. It's just really heartwarming conversation between two women that are passionate about women and midlife and pivots. Enjoy our conversation, jo. Welcome to Dear Menopause.

Thank you, sonya. I am so delighted to be here. I'm a big fan. Thank you for everything you're doing on your podcast. You're a super, duper menopause woman.

Oh, my goodness, thank you. Oh, I love that's a great way to start, but, jo, I am equally delighted to have you on the show today. I think that it would be really cool if you gave us all a middle intro as to who you are and a little bit of insight as to why you have come onto the show today.

Well, I know that you and I, sonya, have been connected through Sandy Lowrys, who's another podcaster and very much a woman who is an advocating for midlife women. But look, I'm a writer. That's who I am now. Funnily enough, 10 years ago I was not a writer, I would not have introduced myself as such. My journey in the messaging that you're delivering through Dare Menopause comes from my own experience in going through perimenopause and intermenopause my own, I guess the hurdles that I came across and had to, the mountains I had to climb and some of those were ridiculous, because there are things I should have known in a country such as Australia and so I guess my time going through that change. I became an advocate myself in the menopause space. I found myself writing about it. I found myself on SBS Insight with Dr Ginny Mansberg. I found myself a part of a Break the Taboo campaign of women trying to make sure that the next generation doesn't have the same experience that we did. And that is just information, simple information. It is. Yes, it's a gap that could be easily filled, but it actually seems to be very hard for us to get that messaging across. And then, of course, I guess, covid brought around another change in my life, and that is I'm also a podcaster, so I'm a new person, and I'm in menopause, so there's life in the old girl.

Yet there is always life in the old girl. Golly gosh, I don't know where to start. Probably the end of all of that about the whole podcaster thing, because we have had the divine Sandy Lowries on the podcast. We talked to her predominantly about her podcast, the Good Girl Confessional, but we did touch on podcasts that the two of you co-host together, which is called Alex the Seal. Talk to us about that for anyone that is not familiar with Alex the Seal.

Give us a little intro. Okay, so Alex the Seal is a podcast. We're now into our sixth season and our byline is it's all the music that got us hooked up, knocked up and broken up, and so it is co-hosted by Sandy Lowries, of course, who you've mentioned. Sandy's got her own podcast, the Good Girl Confessional, but she comes and joins me on Alex the Seal and we just reminisce about the music that we grew up with and shaped our lives from the 70s and 80s. This baby, I guess, was conceived during COVID, at a time where the world, basically, was rolled up in a fetal position, rocking back and forth, wondering what is going to happen to us all, and I thought Is this the end? Absolutely Exactly, I think that people sought out something that bought them joy. They didn't want any more jarringness in their lives.

Joy and comfort, I think.

Yeah, absolutely so. You know, having a drink at night, comfort food you know everyone was baking their own bread. I was listening. I was listening to all my nostalgic music and having a good old laugh at how I'd stuff up the lyrics all the time, and that's where the genesis of the podcast came. It wouldn't be lovely to share these beautiful memories with people like me who really do? Music takes you back to a place I'm always listening to what my husband unkindly calls bland FM. You know where they play the oldies. I said, but these are my music, this is my music. And so you know, whilst we started watching Ted Lasso because that bought us joy and just kindness and loveliness, and you know it was nothing jarring or challenging you could also listen to Alex the seal, because Sandy and I got it up and running and it is just a hell of a lot of fun. And just trigger warning for everyone, sandy and I do sing along to a couple lines of the songs Our kids call us cringy AF. I'll let you work out what the AF stands for. And they're right and we own it.

It's wonderful and you own it, I love it, yeah, thanks.

Look it is. And I'll tell you the other thing it is too, sonia, and you would have experienced yourself with a podcast. I don't know about you, but I have kept up with technology to a certain degree, but it challenged me in my 50s to how do you record a podcast, how do you edit it, how do you publish it? And it's been fantastic. I love every moment I do it and I will keep doing it until it doesn't bring me that joy. But I just love the challenge and it's really given me a little bit of a pep in my step, I must say. And Alex the seal, why is it called Alex the seal? Why are those two women in the picture dressed in towels? Well, for anyone that grew up in Australia particularly, we all loved the go-go's in the late 70s, early 80s, the old girl band from the US, and they had a song called Our Lips Are Sealed and we used to love singing Alex the seal, so it's a misheard lyric and us being dressed in towels in our logo. For anyone that looks us up is that that particular song came off the go-go's album called Beauty and the Beat and the girls in the band are dressed similarly, so that became the name of the podcast. Of course, we talk about a lot more than just misheard lyrics and a lot more about the songs from the go-go. So yes so thank you, but it was born in COVID from a time where we needed comfort food and comfort TV and comfort podcasts.

Yeah, and a whole lot of joy. I love that so much Beautiful. Okay, so now let's dive back into what was the journey for you through your menopause. So you've talked a lot about how it was a real pivot point for you. There was a lot of change that has come about for you as a result of going through your own experience of perimenopause and menopause. Take us right back to what your first experience that made you realise that things were changing and you needed to find out why?

Yeah, yeah, you know. Like you, Sonja, I know that you've been married with your husband. For what? Over 30?

years, 532 years, I think it is now yes yeah, yeah, likewise.

We were both pulled up in the Jurassic era Excellent. And it was pretty normal for me, you know, having kids, my husband blah, blah, blah. But when I got to my 40s, all of a sudden I became fitter than I'd been in my life. So here I was, well into my adulthood husband, kids, mortgage, dropping kids up at school, living a very normal domestic life. However, I decided I'd become sporty spice. It's not something that, when I was in my 20s, I ever imagined I would do. I was not a sporty kid, not a sporty young mum, but I just got myself involved in triathlon and then Okay, so you didn't choose, you know, just a spot of tennis in the afternoon.

No, no, no, I decided the one.

Yeah, you've got to train for three disciplines to even do one race. Yes, that's right and it was sort of. You know, that's an interesting story in itself how that evolved. But that's what I was doing and my beautiful husband and family, they supported me. I had to go out and train in the nights, swimming, and all that. And what transpired from that that you know. In my early 40s I represented Australia three times as an age group competitor, because there's a whole obviously wasn't the Olympics, but Olympics for old people, that's okay, and you know I found this side of myself that was very rewarding and I loved doing it. But then in my late 40s my periods got much heavier and came much more frequently and at the time here I was 48 years old, I was taking on my next endurance event, because I'd then morphed into doing much longer events like Ironman, you know, 13, 11, 12, whatever hours to do. And my next big thing I was training for was an ultra-distance trail run and this was a very big event. This was over 100 kilometres and that's when the wheel started falling off. Now, because I guess in my 40s I felt fitter and stronger and more alive physically than I'd been my whole life didn't in my mind equate to the fact that my body was changing because of my age, because I just felt so vibrant and young, I suppose, and yeah, that's when, uh-oh, something's going on here. And you know, with those periods I you know, on every, they were becoming every 21 days I was. So that would equate to three extra periods a year, that's a lot of time for a woman to be used.

It is yeah. And also on top of, if you were doing endurance races and you were doing those, those really long distances in the training for that, you were potentially a bit ironed, depleted anyway, um, from the foot strike.

Yeah, and I know that you would know that because you are in that space. You're absolutely spot on, sonia. I was always on the edge and having to make sure that I kept that in check, but this was now becoming out of my control and I just, I just didn't, you know, I didn't think I'd never, I didn't even know there was a word perimen of pause. In fact, you know my signature story that I tell everyone Sonia, um is and this demonstrates my utter lack of awareness um, as to why these periods were so heavy. Is it at that stage, for the first time in my life, I had to start wearing overnight maxi pads, you know, and um, because they were that heavy and the particular brand I was buying had the strip away, you know the, the, the tear away strip, and on that strip, well, you could have put a small novel on them. They were pretty big and they went and um printed uh, trivia. And one of the bits of trivia that I learned while thinking, gee, this is weird, why am I now having to use overnight maxi pads? Was the turtles can breathe out their butts. So I knew that turtles can breathe out their butts before I knew what. Perimenopause was. Yeah, and so that was my big like.

All right, what a wasted piece of space of educational marketing, absolutely, absolutely.

And so, yeah, I was so telling of my lack of education, being bought up in a country that made sure that in high school I knew not how to get knocked up you know, they're pretty quick to tell us about that and then, as a newly married woman, there was access to anything to get you knocked up and help you have the child. But when it come to this stuff just crickets, you know, and I realized I've missed something here, there's something amiss. So I guess it was my, you know, first visit to the GP that got me started on a journey, and even that wasn't informative, but that got me thinking hang on, there's something else going on here.

That's really disappointing, then, that you even found that the visit to your GP wasn't particularly helpful at that point.

No, no, and look, I went there with a purpose in mind. So I was a very driven woman wanting to do fairly extreme things with my body at an age where not many women do this. So I was a little bit unusual with my request. But my first visit to the GP was simply listen, buddy, you need to solve the problems of my heavy periods because I want to go running without having a double bed dune or shoved in my knickers. So that was pretty much where I was at, and he just sort of went oh well, let's send you to a gynecologist, which was fair enough. And then the discussion still was around. You know, there was no point where they sit down and say well, let's just sit down, joe, and have a little talk. You're 48. Your body's doing this, you know. Do you know what?

So there's no kind of unpacking of the whole.

Yeah, that's right. And so the discussion went straight to then Sonia, to yeah, have a marina. But I sort of thought you know what? I've been on the pills, haven't been on the pills since I had kids. My husband's had a vasectomy, I don't need contraception. So I thought I'm not really keen on doing another hormonal therapy. You know if I can avoid it. So then there was the chemical ablation. So, and a friend of mine had had an ablation and I guess, for those of you listeners that don't know it's and be aware I'm not a medical professional but it is a chemically burning the lining of your uterus. It's not, you know, petrol and a box of matches to be concerned. It's, you know, and it's about not thinning that lining out so your blood collection can't become a stick and heavy is my very novice idea of what happens. And for women that have it it's a real game changer because it means that the periods are sometimes so light that they actually don't even come at all, like it's a panty liner sort of situation and changes things for them, and I thought that excellent, that's for me, signed up for it. But it was a couple of weeks then until there was a surgery date on office. So you had to wait to buy, and that was my, my saving grace, I guess in many ways, because it gave me time to think about my situation and to look up and understand hey, I found out about perimenopause and hey, this stuff's happening to my body because of this. And so I had a really good think about okay, joe, you're still getting your work done, you can you work from home. If you need an afternoon nap, you're all good, you can still go walking with your friends, you still can look after your family, and the only thing that you're really doing this for is so that you can go and run 100 kilometers. Is that worth having a medical procedure for when this is a phase of your life that, when I get to the stage they will eventually stop that, maybe I can pick that up if that and for me that wasn't reason enough. And so when they did ring, I said actually, you know what I'm not doing it. And that's when I started on my quest of finding what the Frick Frack's going on here. You know what the hell is happening to my body, and where do I find the best information?

So mind blowing that you'd seen a GP, you'd seen a gynecologist, and yet it was you that was left to play detective in that two week grace that you ended up having. And it was only through that you know self detective work that you came across Perry menopause.

Yeah, it's. It's funny how, I think. How did that term allude me? Because I understand Perry meaning before? So soon as I heard the word I went, ah, missing here. There's something happens before you hit menopause. My idea of menopause never discussed with me by mum, aunts, whatever in my life, as we all know that never happened was your period stopped and then you started getting hot flashes and you got old, you know that's. That's when I thought your period stopped and I sort of naively thought well, leading up to that, your periods probably become, you know, lighter and further apart, not close to the other, not close to together and heavier yeah. Yeah, and then of course, every GP visit thereafter, because then I'd be showing up with all sorts of things happening, right, because there's so much that can happen. I've got bruxism, itchy skin, poor sleep, aching joints, brain fog, dizziness, cranky as all fudge. You know I was like the seven dwarves itchy, scratchy, sleepy, cranky, the whole shebang. And every time I'd run up with the GP. You know just something I should worry about, because of course you start catastrophising it, your brain's not doing its best job and every time you pull out the prescription pad, let's have some HRT. Now, I have no problem with HRT. I need to make that very, very clear. I know the scaremongering tactics around HRT earlier in the piece have been debunked and it's helping a lot of women. But what I didn't like was that I felt like I was a woman who's gone to the GP to find out she's pregnant and they say yes, you're pregnant, ms Pibus, congratulations. Now let's talk about your caesarean. You know, it was like from here to here and I'm thinking hang on a sec, where's the anti-natal clinic equivalence? Where's the birth in class equivalence? I need a menopause doler or coach to help me understand. This is what you're going to experience. What can you put up with and what can't you put up with?

Yeah, yeah. Where are the lifestyle adjustments?

Yeah, Where's the bit where it goes over the threshold of what you can deal with in your lifestyle and you can deal with physically. That then we can help medically. There was none of that. There was just here. Take a prescription and I really I bucked up against that. In fact, there was probably a period there that HRT would have really helped me, but I got so cranky thinking I don't trust you, and that's not right either. I should try my positions.

Yeah, yeah, and it's a shame, isn't it? Because we're a situation that has been created that's not necessarily related to the hangover from the Women's Health Initiative. That is more related to poor communication, poor clinician practices and, I'm going to say, a little bit of medical misogyny, and that is that the way women are treated when they present at a doctor's appointment and, unfortunately, the Australian medical system, where we have these ridiculous 15-minute appointment slots if you're lucky to get 15 minutes and it's like a woman's health history and now I'm talking short-term history, like what's just gone on in the last month literally cannot be unpacked in seven to eight minutes, and so, therefore, the outcome becomes okay, pull out the prescription pad here, take this antidepressant or take this HRT or take this. They do this, this overprescription, before the conversations around. Okay, well, let's look at what's going on in your life, what's in your environment, what's going on at home, how are the kids? How are you sleeping? Those conversations just don't happen.

Yeah, yeah. Do you have space in your life to start work a little bit later? If you find the morning's hard, Do you have space in your life to maybe have a break in the afternoon and have a little kip? The things that revive you. Is there room in your workplace, Is there room in your home life to be able to do that? That might be just the thing that kicks you over. That little 20-minute lights outnap in the afternoon might get you three day. But no, none of that talk, no, none of that. The interesting thing as I reflect upon that, Sonia, is that I remember going with my mum as a 16-year-old to the GP to go on the pill. I wanted to go on the pill. I was going, decided I was going to become sexually active and that might be shocking for people. But hey, come on, girls, we all did it. For heaven's sakes, don't judge me.

But, anyway.

But I thought I'd be fine. 16 sounds totally age appropriate to me and. But I went there understanding the pill. I went there as a 16-year-old know what I was talking about. I understood my periods. I told him what my cycle was. I knew what questions I would be asked that would determine the type of pill I would go on. I knew about condoms and all that stuff. But here I was, 48 years old, going there saying my appearance are really heavy and they come really frequently, yeah, and I just was like dopey about it and there's something wrong there, there is something very wrong there, yep.

And that brings us back to something that we touched on before we hit record, which is why is this not taught as part of the school curriculum?

Yes, yeah, very, very true and I guess I've seen a lot over the last few years and I know you had Zali Stegalon recently in P talking about this initiative up at Parliament House of Coming Together and discussing menopause, particularly in the workplace, and how we keep women in the workplace, keep that brains trust in there and support them through this time of life, because they're just walking away, they can't cope and as a result.

not only is it that loss of brains trust in the workplace, there's the loss of burnings, the loss of superannuation. There is so much loss by women leaving the workplace, yeah.

That's right and leading to women becoming homeless in old age? Exactly, yeah, and we can do it better and we can help women through this phase. It's only a phase. It's not a disease. Yeah, this is not long-term. No, we give women time off when they have a baby and we acknowledge that's the time we still want to keep them engaged in the workplace. And men, we give them both that opportunity to raise their families and still be relevant in their careers and their workplaces. And so that's happening. And I'm linked on LinkedIn to many people women who run whole consultancies around it. So they go into businesses and they talk to them how you can do this from a HR perspective. But, yeah, it's the schools. And look, I know we've talked briefly Sonja Offair, of course about the brilliant Diane Danza Brink, who's a woman in the UK who, quite a few years ago now, started a campaign called hashtag make menopause matter because she herself, well, her menopause was dreadful. She became and please, there's a trigger warning here but she became suicidal and that is the length that this time in life can take a woman to that, to that brink, and she bravely fought back and thought part of her journey would have been helped had she at least had been taught about menopause, because it's a part of that whole gaslighting of A you weren't told in the first place and B no one's saying anything. So therefore, I must be crazy. Now your hormones are absolutely kicking you in the guts. You are not crazy and it will not go on forever. But of course, diane then turned around and she's a hero. She's a national hero because she's now gotten menopause on the school curriculum, because she, like me, felt, hang on a second, why, why didn't we plug it in there? So yeah, when Mrs Kofootz in, you know, in our science class, bought out the picture of the uterus and the, the penis and the sperm and the whole thing and you know, kids don't do that, we don't want you getting knocked up they and they talked about birth and you know that part of a woman and all that. They then stopped and they, they didn't then do the full cycle of a woman's you know for a journey and and the other end, and they don't do, and it's so wrong, and so I had a Zoom. Sorry, sorry go ahead.

Yeah, which no, no, no, I'm really keen to hear about your Zoom with Diane, because I'm quite envious of that and and I'm really keen to hear what she had to say. But what I was just going to touch on was that that getting in the UK getting menopause on these high school curriculum as a result of the hashtag make menopause matters campaign actually happened quite quickly. That I think there was only like a two year turnaround from when they proposed it to when it actually went onto the curriculum. Is that right?

Look, I think that's how, when it's a few years ago since I engaged with it, I do remember that thinking so she, she got some female politicians involved and they stood up in parliament and talked about how hard it was for a woman and all the men you know, you know imagine in their seats and constantly you know, building in the UK and these stuffy suited men. You know they were recoiling up and I think that it probably got through because they were just too scared to challenge it.

Just make them stop, just put it through.

Just make them stop Give them what they want. So I think that probably helped. But she did, she pushed and I think that's what's going to happen here, because I had a Zoom with her. I wanted to dial in. It took me four months to get her on a Zoom because, yes, she's so busy and she's now. She's actually now campaigning to actually have GPs learn about menopause when they go through their training, which is a global issue. Yeah, unbelievable. You talked about it when I was on SBS Insight with Ginni Mansberg. I know you've interviewed Ginni. Ginni openly said GPs do not get trained, they don't have a specific unit on menopause, yet 50% of the population are going to be going through this. You know it's so wrong. So any wonder my GP you know with credit didn't know what was going on. But yeah, so I had this lovely Zoom with her and she said look, really, she had to do it by petition and then get female politicians involved. And I so I said, great, thank you, it was lovely talking to you and you know, and you know we just it aligned. What was happening there is what's happening here. I then sort of went down this rabbit hole because, of course, australia is made up of federated states and so there's a lot of governing on their own. Yeah, each of them draw their curriculum, some of them join their draw their curriculum from sort of one central point, others do their own thing, others do a hybrid. So you literally have to go and speak to every one of them and say, can you please put it on there? So I thought, all right, I'll just start here in the ACT where I live, and they were very kind to have a Zoom meeting with me. But really the ice glazed over and I thought this is not going to work. I just thought I should be able to fill out a form saying please put menopause on the curriculum. It's easy, just add a couple of paragraphs at the end, just alert the kids to it. They're going to go home and realize mum's going through it anyway, and then they can have the conversation. Good, say the words, say the word perimenopause, you know, just plant the seed and of course it's. Oh, kids, they might be interested. Of course they're not going to be interested, but they're not stupid. They're at school to learn. There's lots of stuff at school. I learned that was irrelevant and I thought it was stupid, but I, you know it was learning, so just start somewhere. Anyway, that just fell dead and I can see that it's going to have to be something that is pushed through petition and through, you know, getting politicians like Zali up in Parliament and creeping all the guys out. It's yeah it's just the way it's going to be, unfortunately, because it's just common sense to me.

And why. And it is just going to be that the matter of being the squeaky wheels and the chipping away and just being consistent with that constant, just making as much noise as we can, yeah, yeah.

So next time you're speaking to Zali I know she's your local member there she is Say.

Joe Seth I will, don't you worry, I will next time I pass her down the street. All right, so amazing that you are doing all of that advocacy work, which I'm incredibly grateful, and you know, for everybody that has come before us and everybody that will come after us. You know this is such important work and you know there is we always need to acknowledge. You know there are. There are movers and shakers that you know get a lot more publicity, I guess because they may already have celebrity based platforms. Yeah, but you know it's always so good to know that there are movers and shakers every day out there doing work that aren't as well known and don't have platforms, don't even necessarily want the recognition. You know they're a bit more like the old silent monk. They're just out there doing their work and we need to remember that this work is being done because it's it's the collaborative effect is what will make the changes down the track. So, yeah, and look.

It's taken us hundreds of years to start talking about it. Let's not stop. Exactly.

Yeah, and also not feel. You know, I have had conversations with women that, on the surface, feel that nothing's changing and nothing's being done and it's a mystic about everything, and I always kind of want to say, no, please don't feel like that, because things are shifting and things are changing and you know there is a lot of work being done. It's just you just can't see it, it's just below the surface. But yeah, one day something will happen and it'll splash across the headlines and everybody will realize that you know yeah, very true, well said. So, Joe, I also want to touch a little bit on some of your other work that you do. So you've touched on the fact that you're an author. You do some writing. What else does Joe Pivis get up to?

Oh my God. Well, you know it's funny because I guess this is where Perry menopause and menopause has taken me, and this is, I guess, sharing what I'm up to. And what's happened now is, I think, a really important part of what I want to share with your audience, sonia, and that is the sort of what happens the other side, what happens, you know, to all those aspirations you had, like I, physically, you know, my body said no, you can't keep doing this at the moment. Maybe one day you'll come back and you know, but you're not doing this now. And so it was. It was like whoa, okay, I've, I still got so much drive. Where do I channel that? How do I get that out of my system? And so that's where you know, I guess I became a writer, and that happened because I call myself late onset to everything I was. I was late onset as an athlete, I was late onset as a writer, late onset as a podcaster, and I was even late onset to menopause, really, because 55 was when I hit me.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, but I guess that you know the writing came about because I guess around the mid 40s I really started dialing into some podcasts aimed at midlife women and really that's where I discovered podcasting at all. You know, true crime and all that stuff Love that all, love that all. Great for road trips, and. But the midlife women podcasts I was listening to really echoed something that also happened to me and that is a pivotal point when you also lose your parents, so your hormones are changing. My mum died and and that's a point when which they did XYZ and that was something to do. This is a real phenomenon here and that's what happened to me, and so there was so much to deal with at that time. My hormones were raging, my periods were coming thick and fast and all the other symptoms were happening. I had three teenagers. Their hormones were ranging, symptoms were coming thick and fast and then, you know, my mum died. I had two dads, a biological dad and a stepdad that both had their needs that I needed to address. Yeah, on top of dealing with my own grief, and you know, I was just, you know, swimming, swimming in this sort of Petri dish of lair and I entered that very long trial run and I did it. I, you know, forced myself through it.

Oh, you did do it, wow yeah.

Yeah, but after it I went right you know that's it we're. We're shutting down for a while, we're going to see what's, what's, what's next for me. But my first hurdle was finding that new drug, because you know, when you train and compete like that, it becomes intoxicating. You know, you're a personal trainer. You can see that moment when a woman goes from begrudgingly showing up for a training to just can't. She's there before you. You know what I mean. That that point, and it's a beautiful point, as long as you don't, you don't go silly. But it is lovely to know that it might be hard to start the session, but how you feel at the end of it is so fabulous that that's what keeps you coming back. It took a lot of walking, a lot of self-talk to pivot and line up. I guess, for me, what, what's going to be my new endurance events, what, what can I now aim for? Because I love to finish line. There had to be a finish line, you know. And so the first goal was right I'm going to get to menopause without being locked up for insanity or homicide. That's the first one.

Become your own true crime story.

That's right, because you know, by and large, I felt very unhinged and my second goal was hey, I'm going to write a book and you know, as you do, and I it was more I'm going to write an entire book. Because I'd looked up online, just some stats, and apparently the internet tells me that 97% of manuscripts that people start, they start to write a book, they never finish. 97% of them, only 3% get finished, actually get finished. So I'm like, yeah, bring it. The only problem is is that I had no idea how to write a book and so, but the death of my mother Took me down this amazing, weird path of nostalgia in my life and I would go out walking because I couldn't really run so well, and I would use that time to reminisce, and these characters from my life, the charming people that I grew up and around in my community, came to me as characters that could be in a book. And this plot started developing my head. It was like I couldn't get it to. You know, it's like bugger off. I'm trying to walk, I'm trying to listen to Sonia's podcast, but you shut the hell up and I couldn't. And so I got to a stage where I'd pull my phone out on a right notes while I was walking all the time, and this created the genesis of the book. And then I thought right, okay, how long's the book? I pulled a novel off my shelf at home and thought, oh, that felt feels nice in my fingers and looked it up 84,000 words. Okay, I'll write an 84,000. How many chapters is it got? Oh, 20. All right, I'll make it 20. So I did exactly that and I wrote this book and I joined the local writer's center and was like I was like silly puppy showing up. Joe, I'm a writer. Now you and everyone's like, oh God, who the hell is this? And did a couple of workshops and in those workshops they impressed upon me. When you do have a finished manuscript, if you want anyone to look at it, they're going to look you up online and they want to see that you're a writer. Oh shit, I'm stuck now. So that's when I started writing articles and I was told to get your portfolio up. So you've got something to show, that something's being published, right, what you know? And I'm thinking I am sitting here with a surfboard in my knickers. I know exactly what I'm going to write about. And that's when I wrote my first article, which I actually initially called, when my mojo became a joe moe, you know, obviously alluding to the upper public area of the one and two things, okay, but then we changed it to Perry Menopause, buckle Up Girls, and that just went viral.

Who was that published by? Did you publish that yourself?

So, no, no, I so her Canberra are an online media company here in Canberra, obviously, are very well known in Canberra and they're the go-to place for anyone wanting to know about Canberra life. And I sent it to them and said, hey, here, do you want to publish this? I don't know if I'm your demographic, because I thought they were more the yummy mummy, you know younger, you know 20s, 30s, early 40s, and they went hell, yeah, we'll have it. And I went well, I'm published. So, yeah, and they've been wonderful. The ladies are beautiful, very supportive women, you know, lifting other women love it. And, yeah, they've published a lot of my articles since and I just I found I had this style and this humor that came out through my writing. They'd edit all the bits and you know the commas and everything that would bug it up, and so, yeah, and so that's that's where it all started Perry, menopause, buckle Up Girls. And that's what got brought attention to SPS and how I got invited onto SPS Insight when they did a great panel of people talking about menopause, and so began my writing journey and I then, you know, went and I worked through my book with a beautiful editor called Nadine Davidoff, and it's currently with an agent at the moment and I'm working on another book and I just love it. For the first time in my life when I started writing and I really got stuck into the book even though I had been collecting my thoughts on it, when my eldest child finally went to university and moved to Melbourne and went into residential college down there and I finally had this sort of freedom of space and I really had spent so many years being a short order chef for my family that finally this was for me and I found myself, you know, typing way at my computer and all of a sudden it'd be 5.30 and I'd forgotten to defrost something for dinner. Yay, Look at me being the imperfect mother and housewife. You know, I just loved it. I just, you know, I have two middle fingers to you all. Let's get take away. This is my time, yeah, yeah. And it was so freeing and liberating and I thought well, there you go, there's something nice. There's something nice is coming out of this. This is new, creative part of me that I love. I love her and adore her, and you know, yep, I'm sometimes critical of her. She can be annoying, but I don't care anymore. I'm not a crowd pleaser anymore. I'm pleasing myself. I'm putting on my own oxygen mask. I love that.

I love that and I love hearing that from other women. You know I've talked and you know you've listened to the podcast. You know plenty of women have heard me say so many times that I honestly believe that there is this freedom that comes this you know you run out of fucks to give, which is you know the way that I always describe it, because this is a message to a friend of mine today. So I really think I should have a degree in f bombs. You know I come up with so many variations of ways that you can use the word fuck and you know, collaboratively with other words, but I truly A potty mouth is definitely a symptom.

being a potty mouth, that's not a symptom of perimenopause girls.

I think I've always had one, but mine is much freer these days but I truly believe that we run out of fucks to give. As you know, we enter these postmenopause years and, and you know, a much, much more delicate way to put it is that we just don't really care as much about what other people think about us. And there is so much freedom in that there really is, and I love when other women reflect that back to me about how they feel about themselves and you know, it just really warms me up and makes me feel so proud of women postmenopause or because we have so much to give, so much to give, and when we find that space and we we can sit in that space and and be really proud of the women that we've become as a result. I think that that is when we can do our best work.

Yeah, absolutely, and I think we're given, we give ourselves such a hard time and I really believe a part of that hard time is the fact that we didn't understand what would happen to us during the perimenopause phase, like, I think, if Diane Danza bring you know in the UK and she got to it a very, very bad place in depression that caused her to you know, pretend to be a bad person and potentially end her life. Now I really think that if she had understood that it's actually that you're not your thoughts, diane, this is your body, the chemical change in your body. There's a science behind this, there's a biology behind this and it we're going to get through it. I think that when you're in it because we've had such silence our whole lives, the whole system, the whole system of schooling, of the health system, has let us down and gaslighted us our whole lives that we get here and we think, oh, that's it, I'm mad. I am mad and that breaks my heart. You know the suicide rates in women between 45 and 55 go up. We know that. Yep, and if that is because they didn't know or understand, that's a travesty, it is. You know, when we're a smart country we should have got that nailed a long time ago and women ourselves to look like. You know, I've got a lovely group of middle aged women who are my close friends and for many years, but when I got I was the younger, the youngest of them and then got to menopause late when I started finding out what I said. What the hell, girls, you've said nothing. You know what were you thinking. And so now there's this constant dialogue and you know I found one had tried HRT and it didn't work out, and one had done this and one had done that, but there was such silence and they were walking around, have be hearted a lot of the time. That breaks my heart. That is unacceptable and, yeah, we need to fix that.

We do, we do. There is a lot of work to be done in all the areas that we have talked about here today. Some of those are big areas where we need to work collaboratively, and some of those are as simple as checking in with our girlfriends and having those open conversations. Absolutely, jo, I have loved our conversations so much. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing so much of your story. Everything that you have done, that you continue to do and that I know that you will go on to do in the future. I cannot wait for your book to be out and about. That is very exciting. Thank you, jo. I'm going to wrap everything up by asking you a question that I ask many of my guests, and that is what are you reading, watching or listening to right now that is bringing you joy?

You think you're clever, don't you? Well, because I am a woman of a certain age, I know that all your listeners are going to go. Oh my God. Thank God she didn't ask me that, because I watch it, but I never remember. So I happen to listen to all your episodes, sonja, and I know that you asked this, so I'm just here for you listeners. Get a pen and paper and write this down. I am currently watching on Apple TV a sci-fi, dystopian thriller called Silo, which is really your name.

You're watching Silo, okay.

So, yes, there's this, I guess, community that live inside this huge concrete building that's silo-like in its shape and it's enormous, and they're told if they go outside, the outside is toxic. But is it toxic? Well, watching and find out. I'm also watching the six series on Netflix of Black Mirror. I don't know if you've seen any of the Black Mirror.

No, I've heard a lot about Black Mirror. I've never watched it.

Yeah, but for women from our era, we would remember when we were little watching the Twilight Zone, which was this sort of interesting. Every episode was a standalone sort of story and it was about sci-fi and weird things happening and what is in the world. And so Black Mirror is very much like that, and this particular season, season six, I absolutely loved. Probably my favorite episode the very first episode, which is called Joan, is Awful. So check that out everyone. And then on top of that, love Scanning Noir on SBS. So it's a great way of not sitting there looking at your phones because you've got to read the subtitles.

You've got to read the subtitles.

Yes, so I've watched the bridge Fortitude Foreigners Freezing and Brace and Occupied all the Scanning Noir stuff. They're so cool, they're very good at their murder mystery stuff and for an Aussie little comedy here that we really should support our Aussie stuff. If you ever liked the catering show, the two Cates that did, they're sort of in the younger group. I didn't really see their show but they have written a comedy thriller called Deadlock.

Oh my goodness.

And if you want to know about Pottie Mouse. Oh, how good is Deadlock. Oh, it's hilarious. Oh look, I love it. There's bits of it that I think, oh really, should you really.

Then I'd love my job so. I love it, but you know what I do, know what's killing me about Deadlock the weekly drops. I'm struggling with the weekly drops. I'm like. Especially I found that I found the first couple of episodes a little bit slower to get into, but now the episodes have evolved and the story has unraveled so much. Now I get to the end of it, the episode, and I'm like I need the next one right now. I need to know what happens next Right now. I cannot wait a week.

Who's your favorite character in it?

Sonia, oh my goodness, that's a tricky question. You know what I really, really disliked Eddie the cop that came down from Darwin when she first showed up. Yeah, yeah. She really drove me nuts and I was like you're brood and you're out of control, and then you learn why she's like that. Yeah, yeah, I really like her. Oh my. God she has really grown on me. I like her and I'm Dulcey. I really like Dulcey and the actress that is playing Dulcey, I think, is doing an outstanding job. I just think she's incredible.

Yeah, so yes, this character, Eddie. Yeah, I guess, for your listeners benefit, this is all based in Tassie and they bring down a detective.

She's a detective, yeah, yeah.

From Darwin and you know she shows up with shorts and it's freezing and all that. It's just a little bit of a stunt and she is hilarious and yeah, the character is obviously to be unliked until you find her.

You know her sadness, that story yeah.

But I just think the woman playing her, that is from an acting perspective. That's an award-winning performance. It is so good. So, anyway, go and see it everyone. It's on Amazon, isn't it?

It is on Amazon and, as you say, we should be supporting. There is a lot of incredible Australian content about at the moment that you know that, and then I've been watching catching up on some stuff on I View on ABC. There's some really good Australian content on there as well. Messenger, which is based off a book written by Marcus Susak, who's one of my favourite Australian writers, is brilliant, and there was also a short series on there called In Limbo, which, if you can deal with the topic of depression and suicide, is brilliant show.

Yeah, yeah, no, you're quite right. And aren't we lucky? And I do hit the weekly drops, but at least you don't have to be in front of your tally exactly at 8.30 on a Thursday night.

That's, that is true.

That is true. Look some kids out there. You've got no idea how it was, no idea.

But I do miss those parties to sit down and watch the next Friends episode, my girlfriends and a cheap bottle of shawty.

Anyway, thank you for asking that question, because I did do my research.

I know I'm the most prepped guest ever Wonderful. Thank you so much, Joe. It has been a delight.

You're welcome, Sonia. Keep up the good fight.

Thank you for listening today. I am so grateful to have these conversations with incredible women and experts and I'm grateful that you chose to hit play on this episode of Dare Menopause. If you have a minute of time today, please leave a rating or a review. I would love to hear from you, because you are my biggest driver for doing this work. If this chat went way too fast for you and you want more, head over to StellaWomencomau slash podcast for the show notes and, while you're there, take my midlife quiz to see why it feels like midlife is messing with your head.