Perimenopause can feel like a 10–15 year hormonal remix, but why is it so much harder for women in 2025?. Dr. Jessica Drummond busts myths, challenges outdated narratives, and explains the overlaps nobody talks about: long COVID, autoimmune flare-ups, endometriosis, stress overload, digital overwhelm, and why so many women enter midlife already running on fumes.

🔥 The Big Myth That Needs to Die
Perimenopause is NOT:
✨ “Menopause-lite”
✨ A single moment in time
✨ A sudden cliff-drop hormonal event
✨ A one-size-fits-all hormone prescription
✨ Something you can fix with a supplement stack from Instagram

💥 Why Perimenopause Feels Harder Now
Women today face extra layers:
• long COVID risk
• autoimmune triggers
• endometriosis
• digital overstimulation
• constant work-life overlap
• the “3–5 full-time jobs” workload
• modern toxic load
• stress culture
• chronic under-resting

🚨 The Overlap Nobody Talks About
Fatigue, brain fog, pain, mood swings aren’t just hormones — they can be:
• viral injury
• metabolic dysfunction
• autoimmune activation
• chronic stress fallout
• endo flare-ups
• nervous system dysregulation

🌡️ HRV: The Underrated Biomarker
Heart Rate Variability shows stress resilience — and many women in their 40s have HRV scores of someone in their 90s. Rest isn’t optional; it’s vital.

💆‍♀️ Skincare = Self-care
Gua sha, facial massages, and skincare rituals aren’t just vanity — they support the vagus nerve, lymphatic system, and nervous system. Ten minutes a night can do more for your hormones than you think.

🧠 Integrative Medicine, Demystified
Not woo. Not extreme. Not pills or plants. Science + lifestyle + nervous system + personalized care — because every transition is unique.

💬 What You’ll Walk Away With:
• How hormones ACTUALLY change in midlife
• Why symptoms feel inconsistent or contradictory
• Why one-size-fits-all prescriptions fail
• How viral load, toxins, and stress complicate perimenopause
• What HRV reveals about resilience
• Why rest matters
• How integrative care supports the whole woman
• Practical strategies for real resilience

🌙 There Is Light on the Other Side
Stable moods, better sleep, grounded energy, and a deeper sense of self — it’s possible, and worth it.

📲 Connect with Dr Jessica Drummond:

Website: https://integrativewomenshealthinstitute.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/integrativewomenshealth

Sally's Links:

[Free Guide] Healing The Trauma Underlying Your Menopause Symptom Severity: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/healingtraumatheguide

[On-Demand Masterclass] How To Heal The Trauma Underlying Your Menopause Symptom Severity [£17]: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/healingtrauma

[On-Demand Workshop] Redefine Your Values at Menopause and Live Life in Alignment With Them [£27]: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/redefine

[Online Practitioners Diploma - Self Paced] Menopause Wellbeing Practitioner [£127]: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/meno

[One to One] Transformational 30 Day Rewire (Includes RTT) [£497]:

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💥 THE DISRUPTION

Forget the pastel “self-care” nonsense. This episode gets raw about perimenopause, womb work, and what it actually means to reclaim your creative power from the inside out.

Sally sits down with Melanie Swan, a true rebel priestess of womb wisdom, healer, author, and embodiment guide, currently thriving (and sweating) her way through perimenopause in Northern Thailand.

They dive deep into the real feminine: the kind that doesn’t float in flower crowns but breathes fire, bleeds with purpose, and knows when to pull the curtains, strip off the bra, and waft.

⚡️ WHAT WE EXPLORE:

• Why Melanie left the chaos behind to do “absolutely nothing” and how that saved her sanity
• The radical beauty of perimenopause as a pause from men, noise, and overdoing
• The misunderstood magic of womb work and why it’s not just woo-woo poetry
• What the womb actually represents (spoiler: it’s way more than baby-making)
• How our cycles are ancient maps for creation, rest, and power if we’d only listen
• Why “the feminine” isn’t all softness and how divine masculine energy lives inside us too
• Melanie’s unfiltered take on Instagram spirituality and “the feminine is flowy” clichés

If you’ve ever felt the urge to burn everything down just to breathe, this conversation is your permission slip.

It’s not about hormones or hot flashes; it’s about coming home to your body’s wisdom and reclaiming your sovereignty as a creator.

🔥 ABOUT MELANIE SWAN

Melanie helps women heal the physical and metaphysical womb, restoring the divine balance of masculine and feminine energy. Currently writing her first book, The Sacred Womb, she lives in Northern Thailand, where she swims, writes poetry, and celebrates the art of doing absolutely nothing.

📲 Connect with Melanie:

Website: https://www.thesacredwomb.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_sacred_womb

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredwombmswan

Sally's Links:

[Free Guide] Healing The Trauma Underlying Your Menopause Symptom Severity: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/healingtraumatheguide

[On-Demand Masterclass] How To Heal The Trauma Underlying Your Menopause Symptom Severity [£17]: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/healingtrauma

[On-Demand Workshop] Redefine Your Values at Menopause and Live Life in Alignment With Them [£27]: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/redefine

[Online Practitioners Diploma - Self Paced] Menopause Wellbeing Practitioner [£127]: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/meno

[One to One] Transformational 30 Day Rewire (Includes RTT) [£497]: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/redefine

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sallygarozzomindmentor

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallygarozzo/

Send me a voice clip via WhatsApp: https://wa.me/message/FTARBMO7CRLEL1

Send me a direct message

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Forget everything you think you know about periods. This conversation blows the lid off the cultural conditioning, shame, and linear thinking we’ve been fed, and replaces it with a radical new paradigm: menstruality as a source of power, creativity, leadership, and spiritual awakening.

In this episode, Sally sits down with Alexandra Pope & Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, the visionary co-founders of Red School and co-authors of Wild Power and Wise Power. With over 60 years of combined experience, they’re not just talking about women’s health; they’re pioneering a whole new language and leadership model rooted in the menstrual cycle.

🔍 What We Explore

• The Calling Within – Alexandra shares how deep menstrual pain cracked her open to a deeper intelligence, triggering a spiritual awakening that’s governed her life’s work. Menopause, she says, didn’t slow her; it unleashed her.
• Creativity Flowing Through the Cycle – Sjanie describes how regaining her cycle post-contraception reconnected her to intuition, emotional truths, and her life’s purpose. The menstrual cycle became a living conduit for creativity and confidence.
• Four Inner Seasons = Four Powers – How menstruation (inner winter), pre-ovulation (spring), ovulation (summer), and pre-menstruum (autumn) mirror nature, and how honoring these phases restores your inner ecology and breaks the burnout cycle of “more is better.”
• Death, Rebirth & the Menopause Initiation – The transition into menopause is a profound psychological death. Surrendering to it allows a rebirth into your most powerful, purpose-filled chapter.
• From Inner to Outer Evolution – When you reclaim your cyclical nature, you deepen empathy, reorient your relationship with nature, and become a catalyst for collective change. It’s not just personal, it’s planetary.

🎯 Why This Conversation Is a Must-Listen

If you’ve ever felt pressure to hide, suppress, or push through your cycle, this episode flips that paradigm. Alexandra and Sjanie are not simply reframing menstruation; they’re inviting you into a radical new way of living, leading, and creating, one that is cyclical, embodied, and in harmony with nature.

This is not about coping.
This is about activating the wild, wise power that’s always been inside you.

🔗 Want to Go Deeper?

If this conversation lights something in you and you’re ready to step into more understanding, embodiment, and power around menopause and the cycle, I invite you to explore Menopause: The Great Awakener by Red School. Use this link (affiliate) to learn more or sign up:
👉 Menopause: The Great Awakener

📲 Connect with Alexandra and Sjanie:

Website: www.redschool.net

Instagram: www.instagram.com/red.school/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redschoolonline

Sally's Links:

[Free Guide] Healing The Trauma Underlying Your Menopause Symptom Severity: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/healingtraumatheguide

[On-Demand Masterclass] How To Heal The Trauma Underlying Your Menopause Symptom Severity [£17]: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/healingtrauma

[On-Deman

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