Becca Williams | Photograph by Adam Williams
Overview: Becca Williams wears many hats in the tech world these days, including being the founder of the startup Menopausey, which, as the name suggests, is related to perimenopause and menopause. But she’s also been a newspaper and magazine photojournalist and owned a wedding photography business. She’s been a high school Spanish teacher and a middle school art teacher. She’s traveled in the world extensively and was an HIV/AIDS educator in the Peace Corps in Malawi, in Africa. She was a ski instructor at the National Sports Center for the Disabled in Winter Park, many years ago, too. She’s an artist. … She’s been and done many things.
With those stories in mind, she and Adam Williams talk about the seasons of life, including the midlife stage and perimenopause. As founder of Menopausey, Becca is working on an area of women’s health and education that seems to be rising in public awareness right now. But the information that’s out there often is not accurate, not to mention the myths of menopause that are perpetuated in pop culture, makes this a topic that is in need of attention.
Becca shares some of the dozens of symptoms of perimenopause and other information that many of you – and those around you – will find relevant, sooner or later. This stage of life affects us all in one way or another, men included.
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SHOW NOTES, LINKS, CREDITS & TRANSCRIPT
The We Are Chaffee podcast is supported by Chaffee County Public Health.
Along with being distributed on podcast listening platforms (e.g. Spotify, Apple), We Are Chaffee is broadcast weekly at 2 p.m. on Tuesdays, on KHEN 106.9 community radio FM in Salida, Colo.
Becca Williams | Menopausey
Website: menopausey.com
Menopausey Guide: menopausey.ai
Menopausey on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/menopausey
We Are Chaffee Podcast
Website: wearechaffeepod.com
Instagram: instagram.com/wearechaffeepod
CREDITS
We Are Chaffee Host, Producer & Photographer: Adam Williams
We Are Chaffee Engineer: Jon Pray
We Are Chaffee Community Advocacy Coordinator: Lisa Martin
Director of Chaffee County Public Health and Environment: Andrea Carlstrom
TRANSCRIPT
Note: Transcripts are produced using an automated transcription app. Although it is largely accurate, minor errors inevitably exist.
[Intro music, guitar instrumental]
[00:00:11] Adam Williams: Welcome to the We Are Chaffee Podcast where we connect through conversations of community, humanness and well being in Chaffee County, Colorado. I’m Adam Williams.
Today I’m talking with Becca Williams, founder of Menopausey. This conversation is a different one for me, and I guess that that means it’s going to be a different one for you. As a listener, virtually every guest I’ve had on the podcast has been a stranger to me. When I reached out to them to take a microphone and tell me their story this time. I’ve known the guest for more than 20 years.
Becca and I met in grad school. We would end up getting married and having a family and building a life together. Naturally, that means I know a lot about her, and it led me to the idea of a theme for this conversation in a more explicit way than I have viewed it with previous guests. I’m talking about the seasons of life.
Becca wears many hats in the tech world these days, including being the founder of the startup Menopausey, which as the name suggests, is related to perimenopause and menopause. But she’s also been a newspaper and magazine photojournalist and owned a wedding photography business. She’s an artist. She’s been a high school Spanish teacher and a middle school art teacher. She’s traveled in the world extensively and once upon a time was an HIV AIDS educator in the Peace Corps in Malawi, in Africa. She was a ski instructor at the National Sports center for the Disabled in Winter park many years ago too. She’s been and done many things, as have many guests who have been on this show.
So I started thinking about the seasons or chapters of life that she and any of us have lived, which I think dovetails well enough into the primary reason that I asked Becca to be on the show to begin with. As founder of Menopausey, she’s working on an area of women’s health and education that we’ve not touched on with this podcast before. It’s a topic that seems to be rising in public awareness right now. But the information that’s out there, which often is not altogether accurate and there’s a myth that is perpetuated through pop culture especially, makes this a topic that is in need of attention.
So Becca and I are attending to it here and now, along with talking a little about her story. We talk about the philosophical complications of her Peace Corps experience. We talk about her photography project with mothers and their children who lived together in a prison in Lucknow, India. We talk about the insatiable curiosity that led Becca to all these experiences and others, and to become an entrepreneur focused on perimenopause.
With that, we define what menopause actually is, because it seems that almost everyone gets it wrong, including many medical professionals. Becca shares some of the dozens of symptoms of perimenopause and other information that many of you and those around you will find relevant. Sooner or later, this stage of life affects us all in one way or another, men included.
The We Are Chaffee Podcast is supported by Chaffee County Public Health. Go to wearchafeypod.com for all things related to this podcast, including transcripts, links and photos related to this episode and nearly 100 others that are in the archive.
Okay, here we go with Becca Williams.
[Transition music, instrumental guitar]
Adam Williams: You’re the founder of Menopause, and we’re going to talk about what that is and why that is as we go along here. But what it’s bringing to mind for me is this bigger picture idea of the seasons of life that can be the seasons of your life, but also our life. And so I’m curious that that phrase or concept, when I say that what comes up for you?
[00:03:54] Becca Williams: Perimenopause feels like a perpetual season and some chaos and storms and a lot of weather to navigate.
[00:04:06] Adam Williams: How about in a bigger sense, in a bigger sense of seasons of life? Because I think of you as well. You were a school teacher for some years, You’ve been in tech for many years. You’ve been a photojournalist like there are.
And that’s all professional, personally speaking. Obviously. You have kids, you’ve been a mother, you’ve been pre-mother. There’s all these different aspects of who you are professionally and personally. And so I’m curious, in that larger sense, what do you think about with the idea of seasons of your life, the chapters or phases, whatever word suits you.
[00:04:43] Becca Williams: I think it has to do with transformation and change and becoming someone new or someone different or evolving from where you are. So just like the leaves falling off the trees in the fall, it’s what parts of myself am I shedding as I become this next version of myself?
[00:05:07] Adam Williams: I feel like we don’t spend enough time necessarily reflecting on these ideas on how we got to where we are, any one of us. If you can describe this season that you’re in. You mentioned perimenopause, but let’s start with where we are now. And it can include that again, of course, but maybe a more encompassing idea of how you view who you are, where you are in your life at this age, this stage.
[00:05:37] Becca Williams: I Think the word contradictions is coming to mind. There’s this on one hand, this sense of upheaval, you know, within, within self, within world. And there’s also, I think, a desire to find some sort of equilibrium within self, within world. So it’s balancing all of these different kinds of fluctuations and learning how to navigate that.
[00:06:09] Adam Williams: How do you feel about these things, these challenges to navigate this? We’re supposed to be the grownups in our household, right. I mean, we have kids, they’re teenagers. And while they probably don’t want to believe any of the answers that we can provide, there’s an awful lot of answers we still cannot.
So I find this time in life to be challenging because we have learned a lot and yet we’ve also learned that there’s so much we still don’t know.
[00:06:37] Becca Williams: Yeah.
[00:06:39] Adam Williams: So how do you navigate maybe some of those challenges or feel about the existence of these challenges at this point in our lives?
[00:06:47] Becca Williams: I think it’s hard. You know, you and I are always self reflecting, we’re always learning, we’re incredibly curious and that that means we’re always changing and that can create pressure. That self awareness can bring some heaviness at times because we what’s happening in the world and we want things to be better. So it’s a challenge and an opportunity.
[00:07:13] Adam Williams: I want to look at how you got to this place as an individual. I want to highlight you and what you have to share as an individual, just as any other guest who has been on this show. Obviously we’re already alluding to the relationship between us. We have 20 plus years attached. We’re married, we have kids, we have this life that we’ve built together which then can include these chapters or seasons. But I think there’s also the individualized piece of that within the bigger picture of our shared life. So if we step back, there was a time we didn’t know each other. You know, there, there were chapters of life before that. We were in our mid to late twenties when we met in grad school.
So let’s talk about say your whatever years you want before that. But I’m thinking in particular the twenties that I know about, where there was adventure and there was travel and there was Peace Corps and whoever and however you were in the world prior to us meeting.
[00:08:15] Becca Williams: Yeah, a lot of that was curiosity driven. Just like all of life, you know, I think that’s something that we have the kinds of careers on paper that don’t make sense, but the underlying thread there is curiosity and that has been a through line for not only career, but also life. The travels that you mentioned. I’ve always wanted to know more than my own current circumstance. So I think that’s part of it. And also just trying to figure out my place in the world. The. That’s something that has also continued from then to now.
[00:08:56] Adam Williams: I suspect that talking about curiosity for that time is with hindsight of. Of all that you’ve accrued to this point and with the wisdom you have and to be able to look back at yourself. I wonder what you saw then. You’re 20 years old, you’re 22, you’re 23, 25. I can’t remember exactly how old you were when we met. I might be getting into that area at this point, but I wonder how you saw yourself, saw the world, what you wanted out of life when you were at this very beginning, early, early adult stage.
[00:09:30] Becca Williams: Yeah, I’m thinking about that. You’re right in that the way I use the label curiosity is in retrospect. So at that time, I don’t know how much I would have recognized, like, oh, I’m a curious person.
This is why I’m doing it. I think to some degree it was a discomfort with self and with anything that was static. So I always wanted to be moving. I always needed a plan for something in the future, something to look forward to, Wanted to learn more about other places. But I also just always needed to be moving. I wasn’t comfortable with sitting still.
[00:10:13] Adam Williams: You were in the Peace Corps for a period of time. You also traveled other than that.
[00:10:17] Becca Williams: Yeah.
[00:10:18] Adam Williams: What role did that play, do you think, in satisfying something you were looking for at that age? And maybe that also includes this hindsight where you can look back and see maybe something that. That fulfilled in who you would become and who you are now.
[00:10:36] Becca Williams: I think making positive impact out in the world has always been important to me. I can trace it back to at least middle school, if not earlier. And so Peace Corps was definitely driven by that. You know, there’s this idea now, it sounds cliche and naive and I don’t even know what other words to describe it, but the idea of saving the world, you know, want to save the world, it sounds ridiculous now at this point, but I think that was a motivation back in time and ended up learning quite a bit during Peace Corps just about sustainability and why that view isn’t. Isn’t the way to go.
[00:11:17] Adam Williams: You did that in Malawi, and I know that you specifically wanted an opportunity like that because you also were offered, I think, Moldova and did not want that so what was it you were looking for in terms of that even if we say save the world, sort of, you know, ambition, naivete, everything that gets mixed into that when we’re young and we believe that going into the Peace Corps and going to Malawi is going to be this significant thing. And I’m sure it still is, of course. Right. But you specifically chose that over an Eastern European country.
[00:11:53] Becca Williams: Yeah. I wanted a uniquely different and new experience. And when I thought about joining the Peace Corps, I wanted to live in a place that was just everything that I didn’t already know in my life. And Malawi felt like that would be more of the case.
[00:12:14] Adam Williams: Tell me what happened there. Tell me what you have taken away from making that shift to something that is so different than growing up in suburbs and going to a huge high school where mostly it’s, you know, kids with far more privilege than what you would find in Malawi.
[00:12:34] Becca Williams: Right. I think my history with that experience is complicated. You know, Peace Corps is interesting. It’s a really amazing opportunity for so many people. And one of, while you mentioned, I was there for three months, Peace Corps is a two year deal. So I quit.
I had around two months of training with a host family and that was a really incredible experience. And then I went off to the village where I was on my own. And I think throughout that time we talk about building sustainability in programs like that. Peace Corps has been in Malawi since the 60s, so pretty early days of Peace Corps history. And the fact that it’s probably still there, I’m not sure. I haven’t looked into that recently. But you know, how, how are those programs sustainable if Peace Corps still exists? In theory, you should be working yourself out of a job.
But, but I found, so I was a college graduate, I had a degree in psychology and that qualified me, I can air quote, qualified me to be an HIV and AIDS educator. And I found that there were so many incredible local people doing that important work. Who was I to come in and be that person? I had no experience in HIV and AIDS education other than some basic training when I got there. And so I just, I had this conflict in my head of this doesn’t feel like a sustainable program.
I don’t think this is the right approach for this kind of education. It’s how can we build up the local programs and support that and not come in from the west with some sort of savior mentality. So I really struggled with that and ultimately it wasn’t the right fit for me.
[00:14:28] Adam Williams: I think that you have looked at this idea of dropping out or quitting as a negative. I think that’s something that we could explore. But I will point out one very big difference in your life is that we met because you would quit. We would meet. It’d be a little more than a year later, but had you stayed in then, you would have still been over there.
[00:14:48] Becca Williams: Yeah.
[00:14:48] Adam Williams: We would not have met in graduate school for journalism and all kinds of other things that would unfold.
[00:14:53] Becca Williams: Right.
[00:14:55] Adam Williams: If we keep walking this forward, then. And again, thinking about seasons of life. And I don’t. I don’t see this as being necessarily something we need to define by time, including the decades of our ages. Like, oh, in our 20s, in our 30s, I was this. And I don’t think it’s so clean. I think it’s fluid, it’s individualized.
And I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking this through, but I also have this vague idea in my mind. There could be a Venn diagram of multiple seasons, co occurring, moving in motion. Maybe something else falls in as something else falls out. Because again, you have these different roles. You have the professional role. You are wife, you are mother, you are whoever, all you see yourself to be and want to be in this world.
So whatever you think is as we kind of walk ourselves toward where we are now again, because we will get into menopause and talk about perimenopause and those things. What’s next after Peace Corps? Travel, adventure time on your own time that we meet, life moves forward.
[00:16:01] Becca Williams: That’s a big question. I’m not sure where to go with it. When I think about the overlapping Venn diagram stuff, I think about themes, I guess, things. Things that have come in and out to your point. And that makes me think about just our willingness to make unconventional choices. And that’s something that comes up and has come up a number of times over the last 20 years together.
[00:16:27] Adam Williams: When you were a photojournalist, I imagine. I don’t recall. We probably talked about this many years ago, but I don’t remember. So this is going to be new for both of us. Did you have, do you think, some of that storytelling version of Save the World? Did you have ambitions like that? Did you want to go out into the world and do those things?
[00:16:48] Becca Williams: Yeah, I would lean towards picking harder topics to cover in grad school and wanted to challenge myself again to put myself in environments that were really different from my daily life. So I’m not sure how much of that was save the world mentality versus just understand other people out in the world and understand their experiences.
[00:17:14] Adam Williams: You’ve had a big thread of curiosity about multiculturalism, I think have studied languages. You and I spent several weeks, must have been 20 years ago, ish. Somewhere around there in India. And you had a photography project there. What was that?
[00:17:32] Becca Williams: I was photographing mothers and children inside of a park prison in Lucknow, India. And that was an interesting scenario. So I was fortunate to travel to India the year before on business. And I was on the plane reading an article and I learned about what was called Lucknow Model Jail. And it was an open system where people were able to leave during the day for work and go back. And I thought that was incredibly fascinating. And so over a series of weeks, I don’t know if you remember all of the effort it took to finally get permission to photograph inside of this facility, but even when we were there, it still took another several conversations and rounds of convincing to get access.
[00:18:19] Adam Williams: We were doing that together, which was strange to me. But if we bring in this idea of being western and maybe how we or you were perceived in looking at this project.
As I recall it, you and I were having sit downs with people who were the head of prisons police in this massive city. We would never go to New York and have the commissioner of the NYPD say, I want to talk to you about your creative project. Come sit with me.
[00:18:46] Becca Williams: Right?
[00:18:47] Adam Williams: And that’s the access that we had. It’s not like we had National Geographic magazine behind you for this or anything. And then there was also the gender component where I was seen as a necessary piece for permission of some kind because I was the man, right. We weren’t married, it wasn’t my project, and that was not how we viewed ourselves.
Do you remember those pieces of the experience and how you felt about that or how you might look upon that in reflection now, what it was like to go through that experience?
[00:19:22] Becca Williams: I don’t remember how I felt at the time. I think in retrospect, I accept that as part of the process. You know, you want to respect local traditions in order to open up that access. Being early 20s and being just a feisty human in general, I probably had some feelings about it, but I haven’t kept that history with me.
[00:19:51] Adam Williams: Do you feel like you do not necessarily reflect on, reminisce or whatever word you want there for these kinds of experiences? Like maybe I said earlier, we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the seasons of life, which is an even more abstract concept. I feel like I spend so much time living in the past that it’s almost problematic as I process these things. It might also be worth noting you are the only person and this is at home, I talk all the time, but nobody else in the world knows me that way.
[00:20:25] Becca Williams: Right.
[00:20:26] Adam Williams: And you are the one who tends to be quieter. And so I know that I’m kind of maybe stunning you with some of the questions in a double way there. It’s like, “oh, it’s your turn to talk, not mine.” And these are about things that, do you not reflect on them much?
[00:20:45] Becca Williams: I spend a lot of time reflecting, I think after a thing has happened, after an event, after a trip, after a hiccup, after a confrontation. So I’m incredibly self reflective from that perspective and always looking at how can I do better next time, what was my role in that scenario? And that’s a lot of the growth I think that we’ve had together is what is our part in X.
But I think I move on quickly. And I definitely do not live in the past. I don’t reminisce a whole lot. I feel like, you know, things that have happened since then to displace what happens in my brain. And I am trying to do better about living in the present.
But I still think there’s a part of me that is very future focused most of the time. So yes, and. But reminiscing in the past occupies a much smaller part of who I am in general. I think I’m tend to be moving forward most of the time.
[00:21:48] Adam Williams: I think maybe we’ve touched on some of this as we’ve gone. But I’ll ask you explicitly now, is there a sense of wisdom of any kind? Are there learnings that you feel like at this age this is what I’ve brought forward with me from the last, say 25 plus years of adulthood and through these varied experiences.
[00:22:11] Becca Williams: Yeah, I think we talk about and this came up in conversation with someone the other day. The older you get or the more you know, the less you know, you just tend to question everything even more. So I think in some spaces, you know, I recognize, oh, I do bring wisdom to this table, you know, especially working in tech. I’m 47, I tend to be one of the older people working in tech in many circumstances and I recognize that. So that’s an interesting awareness.
You know, I’ve obviously done a lot of research on perimenopause and other topics. I’m always researching something and that that has been my history for the last several years. So I recognize this body of wisdom. And then I also recognize that there’s so much I Don’t know.
You know, there are so many versions or stories of things or perceptions of things. There are often many right answers or many right paths. And so I’m maybe in some ways less self righteous than in the past and in other ways more self righteous. So contradictions.
[00:23:22] Adam Williams: Yeah, I think that’s probably true for both of us. We’re less likely in some regards to maybe get up on a soapbox for whatever we think is right and principle. Then it goes back to that, that age and time when you’re in Malawi and you feel like I’m part of the Peace Corps and I have something good to bring to the world, but what you instead walked away with was learning about the imperfections of such a process and an experience. And who am I as this, this young, you know, by our standard at that point, with a bachelor’s degree, reasonably educated white girl from the suburbs of the Midwest in America.
What could I possibly know about your life and what it means, you know, to live your daily life and to have me here?
[00:24:02] Becca Williams: Right.
[00:24:03] Adam Williams: Did you ever. Let’s go back to that for a moment. Did you ever have any sort of instance where you remember trying to assert an answer, Maybe you were a little full of yourself, Maybe somebody called you out on it and said, oh, you’re trying to give me answers here, but you don’t know what you’re talking about?
[00:24:22] Becca Williams: I don’t think so. I think I was aware even at that time of, of my place and what was happening and my limitations and the circumstances of what was around me. I think I brought that modesty and not necessarily the arrogance, some self awareness.
[00:24:41] Adam Williams: At that age even?
[00:24:41] Becca Williams: Yeah, I think so.
[00:24:42] Adam Williams: They say girls and young women develop faster than men.
[00:24:47] Becca Williams: I remember being concerned, you know, I ended up with my own two bedroom house at the health center, my final location. And I remember being concerned that I had displaced someone who deserved to be there. So I think I did have some self awareness at the time.
[00:25:06] Adam Williams: I think something that I am aware of with you these days that might also be part of growth has to do with gratitude. I know that that’s part of your, I mean, it’s not just daily, it’s throughout each day sort of practice. But I also wonder if you had that wherewithal many years ago. I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t using that word. You didn’t walk around the house saying, hey, I want to let you know I’m grateful for this thing that happened today, which happens all the time. Now do you remember, you know, when that practice began? Or if you have had that sort of positive take on things maybe all along.
[00:25:44] Becca Williams: I don’t think so. I think that is probably more. Maybe our last 15 years or so together. I’m not sure. You know, we both went through yoga teacher training through Rooted in the Springs, not at the same time, but I think gratitude emerged as a big result of going through that program that’s become a core practice for us. I don’t know how much gratitude was part of my earlier life.
I feel like because I was always so focused on the future, I didn’t really pause to think about the good things that were. I was just always moving toward another target.
[00:26:26] Adam Williams: We can look at our sons now, both teenagers, and we’ve tried to instill this in them. Just the value of a practice of gratitude. What are you grateful for today? What are three things that happened at school that you’re grateful for today?
And most days, they are resistant because they’re not getting the concept right. They’re not understanding. It doesn’t matter if we explain it to them right. They don’t understand why. So I think there’s something inherent in that younger self.
[00:26:49] Becca Williams: Yeah.
[00:26:50] Adam Williams: That. In the learning and developmental process.
Yeah. We just aren’t inclined to. To think about, oh, what is it? In this moment, we’re always looking ahead. I imagine that has to be extremely common for people that we always think what we’re doing is the thing now is to get us to the next thing.
[00:27:10] Becca Williams: Right.
[00:27:11] Adam Williams: Actually, I was listening to the podcast Soul Boom. You know, I listen to a lot of them. Yes, we have Rainn Wilson and Ed Helms. They both were on the Office, and they were talking about, at the time, for as amazing as that experience was, everybody there was still trying to capitalize. What does this get me next? On the next hiatus from shooting episodes of this show, what movie can I fit in? What commercials can I fit in? I think it’s so inherent in. I don’t know if it’s human nature. Maybe it’s in our society and our culture as we are shaped by. We’re socialized by.
[00:27:42] Becca Williams: Right.
[00:27:44] Adam Williams: If we go ahead and bring this back to the present. So you are the founder of menopause, and I want to learn what that is. The how, the why, you know, why it is is always of interest to me. But also, if we. If we look at, for a moment, in a broader sense, entrepreneurship, you as an entrepreneur, I wonder what you see in yourself as that piece of yourself, which I think has been going for many years. So it’s not just with the start of menopause. So if we talk about Venn diagram of seasons, this is a season that has been running for a long time and evolving and developing too. So who are you as an entrepreneur? Why does this matter to you?
[00:28:34] Becca Williams: That goes way back. I think if, you know, we talk to my parents, they probably have examples from when I was five of just being that ambitious little kid who tried to persuade to get her way. So that that has deep, deep roots. As a early teen it was distributing hand drawn flyers around the neighborhood to get babysitting gigs. And that that has just persisted through a few different small business and startup adventures, mostly on the side. I think that’s closely tied to curiosity as well. Just wanting new challenges, wanting to solve problems. Creative problem solving runs through my blood too. Wanting to make things better, wanting to solve meaningful problems.
So the latest, the latest instance of that is menopause. I’ve been working on that as a nights and weekends startup for the last couple of years. But it is rooted in coming into this life phase and even as a well researched, insatiably curious, well educated person, not having any idea of what I was headed into and just the nature of so data privacy is something that’s really important to me. As you know, we’ve got an interesting confluence of circumstances.
I think the narrative is changing now. You know, a lot of celebrities and influencers are opening up conversations around menopause and that’s amazing. Even a couple of years ago that wasn’t so much the case. So for me personally it came down to I need to be able to track my data. It doesn’t feel safe to do that in existing platforms. Tracking my data turned out to be a big part of my own realization of being in this life phase and then wanting to create that ability for others. So that is the motivation is enabling people to safely and securely track their symptoms, understand what’s happening to their bodies and minds, connect with other people in this life phase and get better, more informed care in the healthcare system and be able to have more empowered conversations. Because medical gaslighting is something that is a too common experience for people.
[00:31:09] Adam Williams: When you talk about medical gaslighting, I wonder what specifically you might be referring to because what I’m also aware of, just proximity to you, I’m learning about these things, is that there’s an awful lot of people in the medical profession who are not very specifically or at length in depth trained related to perimenopause. In fact, peri is not part of the word as it’s used. I See, and I point out to you all the time, whether it’s in news articles or it’s in pop culture, references on a TV show, a movie, a commercial. Commercial or whatever, they really boil it down to one, they only call it menopause, and two, they don’t define it well. And three, it is entirely encompassed in hot flashes.
[00:31:56] Becca Williams: Yes.
[00:31:58] Adam Williams: So how about we get. I know, I’m loading this up here with multiple thoughts, as is my way. What is the definition of menopause, or let’s say, quote, menopause as it’s portrayed out in the world and talked about subsequently? And then what are you seeing related to medical gaslighting and some of the issues around this?
[00:32:19] Becca Williams: Yeah, we talk about in pop culture a lot of times. Menopause is this life phase. Menopause is actually a finite point on the timeline. It’s 12 months after someone has had their last period, and you don’t know until 12 months later which one is your last. So by definition, one point on the timeline 12 months after your last period. Or it can be surgically or medically induced as well.
Perimenopause is actually the menopause transition. So it’s all the years leading up to that finite point on the timeline. And when we think about hot flashes, those can start in perimenopause, they can continue past menopause, at which point you are post menopausal. And so we get a lot of that wrong. We’re often talking about menopause as, again, this period of years. It’s not just one point on the timeline. And we– You’re right. We also don’t talk about perimenopause.
[00:33:15] Adam Williams: Let me check something. I just heard you say, unless I misheard what you said, you said the symptoms can continue after that finite point on the timeline.
[00:33:26] Becca Williams: Yeah, some of them.
[00:33:27] Adam Williams: Okay, so we have this. You gave the definition for what menopause is. It’s a point on the timeline that is one year after the last period.
[00:33:34] Becca Williams: Right.
[00:33:35] Adam Williams: But the symptoms of perimenopause kind of seems like it’s supposed to be perimenopause, menopause or post menopause, because the symptoms continue. Like, when does this end?
[00:33:48] Becca Williams: I’d have to go back and look at the data. I think it depends on the person. It depends on their course of treatment. You know, some of the symptoms might dissipate once you hit menopause. Yeah. People’s experiences of this can look so differently.
[00:34:04] Adam Williams: Are we talking about, it’s a number of years. Can we put a ballpark on the number of years?
[00:34:10] Becca Williams: Yeah, it depends on what you read. So I’ve seen. I’ve seen some things that say four to 10 years. Four to 14 years, I think, is the most I’ve seen for that menopause transition. I’m also seeing more research lately just highlighting that it can start in one’s 30s, so it’s most common to start in one’s 40s. The. The average age of menopause in the west is around 51, but it can be a long period of years before that.
[00:34:39] Adam Williams: Are those years all contained before that point of time, that is menopause, or does that also include that it can continue postmenopausally?
[00:34:49] Becca Williams: Perimenopause can last for more than 10.
[00:34:53] Adam Williams: Years, and then how many years after. Is this indefinite?
[00:34:58] Becca Williams: The symptoms, you mean? Yeah, I don’t have a good answer for that. And I want to make sure. I’m sure sharing credible information. So not indefinite. I mean, there is a point.
So, you know, our hormones are changing, estrogen is decreasing. There is a point, I think, at which I don’t want to say point. You know, our bodies adapt over time, and so the symptoms change, some of them go away.
[00:35:23] Adam Williams: How is a woman, let’s say, she’s in her early 40s, she’s starting to experience some of these symptoms. But I think right now my understanding of this is that she could be experiencing a lot of these things and have no way or reason at this point to attribute it to perimenopause. Did it occur to you, for example, like, what did it take to get to that place where you’re saying, there’s gotta be an answer for this?
[00:35:51] Becca Williams: Yeah, I mean, for me, my cycles changed, so my periods doubled in length, and that was consistent over a period of two years. And now the doctor I saw said, no, you still have a period, so you’re not in perimenopause, or it’s regular. It didn’t matter to that person in that conversation that it had doubled in length. So that’s when we went down the path of, you know, all the other blood tests and medical tests to try to eliminate more severe things. But for me, it was tracking my data and starting to suspect based on my age and then starting to do more research.
But back to the medical gaslighting piece. Perimenopause and menopause are sometimes covered very little in medical and nursing school curricula, and we expect our medical professionals to know all the things. And so it’s not their fault.
You know, they’re. They’re making judgments and giving guidance based on what they know to be true. But there’s so much more to this. And so people might get told, oh, you’re too young for perimenopause. If someone thinks, only thinks. Well, menopause is at 51, so if you’re in your early 40s, no, no, no, you’re too young. Or I was told headaches aren’t part of perimenopause, when I knew better based on my research. But some of the symptoms can be really scary and overlapping with much more serious conditions.
So doctors are trained to weed out the serious things that could be life threatening. Understandably, that’s where we get into the whole sick care versus healthcare, I think. But for me, based on what was happening last year, that ended up going down a path, as you know, to eliminate multiple sclerosis because of the symptoms that I was, I was bringing. Fortunately, everything turned out positively and you know, we ended up with a, it must be hormonal conversation. But that was after around 40 different blood tests, an MRI, a pelvic ultrasound.
We’re fortunate to have good insurance, but, you know, we still paid quite a bit out of pocket. And for the people who aren’t fortunate to have good insurance, those can be bankrupting kinds of things.
[00:38:12] Adam Williams: What are some of the symptoms? If we maybe more clearly list those out here. Again, thinking of someone who thinks that they’re way too young, maybe, or maybe that. No, no, no. This is just.
I’m feeling things that are a little different right now. I have a mood that’s a little different right now, but they’re just in. No, no way in the realm of, wow, I’m in this part of my life now.
[00:38:37] Becca Williams: Yeah, I mean, there are 30 something different symptoms. I’ve seen as many as 80 listed. Again, depending on the resource. It’s hard to make sense of the information that’s out there. You brought up hot flashes earlier, so that’s a primary one. Night sweats are another one. You know, irregular periods, migraines, anxiety.
You know, it’s great that we’re starting to hear so much dialogue around menopause and more around perimenopause. But I think something that is still largely not discussed is just the mental health impact of this. So anxiety can be part of it. Depression, dizziness, dry parts, decreased libido. It’s a pretty long list.
[00:39:23] Adam Williams: What are some of the challenges that you are trying to address with Menopausey?
[00:39:30] Becca Williams: One of the questions that comes up or points of conversation, I’ve talked with more than 80 people at this point.
Is. Is this normal? What’s normal? Is my experience normal? So I think gathering data around that, helping people to feel more confident in who they are, less lonely. That’s another thing that comes up often in conversation. You know, this is still pretty taboo as a topic. And there’s this almost suck it up mentality.
Just deal with it, suffer in silence, and people don’t need that. And also finding the care, finding perimenopause and menopause, informed care, all the kinds of care. You know, not just medical professionals, but physical therapists, nutritionists, yoga, anyone who can help us thrive during this life phase. I want to make it easier for.
[00:40:26] Adam Williams: People to find mental health care.
[00:40:29] Becca Williams: Mental health and physical health.
[00:40:30] Adam Williams: Yeah, I just keep thinking of the people who don’t know what they’re experiencing and they don’t have the education or the knowledge that. Meaning because it’s been taboo. It’s not like previous generations in their family maybe are passing down knowledge because maybe they didn’t know. Maybe those women who are now, let’s say, baby boomer age, maybe they didn’t know because how could they? The education and the knowledge wasn’t out there.
And maybe it’s taboo within the family, even between mother and daughter, to talk about. How are you supposed to learn? Where is the information?
[00:41:10] Becca Williams: Yeah, I mean, you are supposed to learn from your medical provider, if not from your family, if not from your friends, maybe people, you know, we’ve talked about in our house. It’s hard to make friends as adults. So if people don’t have friend groups where they’re having these open conversations, if they’re not having these conversations with their medical providers, then it’s popular media and.
[00:41:33] Adam Williams: Influencers, which go back to popular media. Now what we have are ideas that the entirety of menopause, again, no, Perry, there’s no distinction.
[00:41:44] Becca Williams: Right.
[00:41:44] Adam Williams: No real definition. And it’s all hot flashes. Yeah, I. I think that I can’t remember the name of this cognitive phenomenon, but I am so aware of this stuff in all of these spaces now because of you and because of my proximity to you and the conversations and the work that you’re doing with menopause.
So I think I send some of them to you in messages. Hey, look at this. Or here’s a link or whatever. And you just saw the Walgreens commercial that I’ve been seeing, it feels like for months, with the employee there showing a customer to the spot in the store where the cold air return can blow on her. Because again, hot flashes, right.
[00:42:24] Becca Williams: Yeah, well, and now we’re raising our boys to know perimenopause and menopause. They are part of the household conversation, even with our teenage boys. But yeah, it’s going to take time, I think. If you don’t know the right questions to ask, then you are suffering in silence.
[00:42:39] Adam Williams: I encountered this concept the other day in something I was reading that I’m going to assume here is more familiar to you than me. And that is the idea that women in general tend to be more dismissed in the medical office, whether that’s doctor, nurse, whoever, in general, physical care, all of the things, not just with this topic, that may be seen more as hypochondriac complaining. Yeah, things of that nature.
[00:43:06] Becca Williams: “Hysterical,” air quotes.
[00:43:09] Adam Williams: Have you had that experience? Is that something you feel like contributes to some of this? Like when you, you had a not great experience in trying to take what you believed were possible ideas about your health and you were rejected by female nurse practitioner physicians, I can’t remember who all saw you when they were trying to lead you down paths that said, no, it can’t be that.
[00:43:32] Becca Williams: Right. Yeah, I was dismissed. I definitely experienced that. I know it’s a thing. I don’t know why it’s a gendered thing except that women are underrepresented in medical research in general. So when we’re interacting with any healthcare professional, if we are less included in the education piece, we’re less included in the research, then that’s going to have a trickle down effect. And I know that women of color experience medical gaslighting at even higher rates.
[00:44:02] Adam Williams: If we look at entrepreneurship as a concept again, I feel like there’s something in the spirit of an entrepreneur that kind of goes beyond say your typical small business owner.
And I have my thoughts on that. But before I share those, I’m curious what to you maybe defines entrepreneur and how that suits you and how you suit that idea of I’m going to be this person who has this innovative idea and starts a company and tries to improve things in the world.
[00:44:34] Becca Williams: I don’t know if I draw a line between small business owner and entrepreneur. I think small business owners are entrepreneurs where there might be a lioness between small businesses and startups and startups are intended to scale. Small businesses might not scale. I lost the question.
[00:44:53] Adam Williams: Well, it’s about the qualities of entrepreneurship.
[00:44:55] Becca Williams: Yeah.
[00:44:56] Adam Williams: And how you, how you see what I would consider a spirit of entrepreneurship and then how you maybe identify that within yourself and how that helps to further fuel what you are doing with menopause.
[00:45:06] Becca Williams: Yeah, well, I mean, obviously I’ve brought up curiosity a number of times. So that’s part of it, just being a problem solver, wanting to make things better, wanting to understand how things work and fix them. I think those are all core traits of entrepreneurs. There’s a lot of challenging of the status quo because there are so many nos that come your way. I think you have to build up, just perseverance to keep going. That’s another strong trait of entrepreneurs.
[00:45:39] Adam Williams: I feel like there’s a creativity for innovation, transformation and it’s a great distinction you make for startup. And I take from that too, the idea that you’re starting with a new idea. Maybe you’re not the first person to have thought of a business in this lane, but it still isn’t your average five and dime to use a really old idea of a small family business. Right. Where you could find that, you know, however many of them in every town and city across the country, you know, there’s only one menopause and there are only so many businesses that are even focusing in this space.
[00:46:16] Becca Williams: Yeah.
[00:46:17] Adam Williams: What are some positives that you’re seeing out there in this space? Again, taboo. But we’re having this conversation.
[00:46:26] Becca Williams: Right.
[00:46:27] Adam Williams: And so are some others out there. I feel like I am encountering it in various media articles again, even TV commercials. It’s becoming a thing, even if they’re doing it imperfectly.
[00:46:37] Becca Williams: Yep, it is becoming a thing. I’m seeing more companies who are solving for. I mean, there’s an endless list of pain points and opportunities in this space. I have multiple slides full of pain points. And so I think there is a lot of activity. The doors are opening around narratives. I’m also finding that when I share my story, whether in small spaces or group settings, people want to talk about this. You know, when I, when I went through an accelerator program earlier this year with menopause, part of that was doing customer research.
And it was not hard for me to get people to spend an hour sharing very intimate details of their lives because they want to share stories and they are grateful to hear stories. So I’m really, really encouraged by that. And it’s not just women, you know, partners of people in this life phase want to learn more, want to support their wives, their girlfriends as well.
I think something that I’m not hearing enough about is a lot of the existing solutions are focused only on women. So they’re leaving out others who were assigned female at birth, but who may not identify as women who are navigating this life transition as well, and I think serving people in a much more inclusive way is really important to my mission at Menopausey, making sure we’re not just talking about women here.
[00:48:04] Adam Williams: You’ve mentioned the partner aspect of this before, and I have admitted to you I don’t know what my experience is as the partner of someone who is in perimenopause. Because honestly, I don’t know what’s the difference between what you might be feeling today.
I’m not going to jump to conclusion of, say, well, that’s somehow related to perimenopause. I’m just not going to jump to conclusions about any of it. I probably need you to point out to me and tell me what are the things you’re feeling, what are you going to do through today, what might be an added challenge in your day, and probably to lead me to know what you need from me as a partner. So when you are having, and I know you’ve had at least one, if not more partners come to you and say, hey, I could use some help with this too. When you’re talking about being of service to those people, what are you. What are you saying? What does that include? What does it mean? What are partners asking you for?
[00:49:00] Becca Williams: I think it’s education and safe spaces for conversation. You know, I don’t. There’s no singular test for perimenopause, so it’s not like I can even say, oh, how I’m feeling today, that must be perimenopause. I know that there are more fluctuations in my mood. I know that my anxiety has spiked higher than it’s ever been, you know, and navigating that for the last 30 years.
But it’s hard to know on any given day what’s perimenopause, what’s life, what’s parenting, what’s work, what’s the state of the world, what truly is affecting me. But I think just educating partners around symptoms and how things change over time, giving partners safe spaces to have open conversation as well is really important.
Just talking. Encouraging partners to talk with their partners about what’s happening and support them however they can, not just dismissing what the person might be feeling. That’s really important because we already feel so dismissed. As we’ve already talked about, this is a time when people are leaving the workforce. Maybe they don’t know how to navigate their symptoms in the workplace, especially if they’re working in person.
Brain fog. We didn’t talk about brain fog earlier, but that is another symptom that often comes up. You know, there Are lots of cliches and memes around putting your keys in the fridge or for me, I forgot the last number of our garage code after living in our house for four years. Or occasionally it’s like, what’s Adam’s phone number again? You know, just random things like that where, like, am I losing my mind? Who. Who am I? Who have I become just losing connection with, I think, sense of self and sense of body and pretty existential things. So helping partners to understand that kind of stuff.
[00:51:00] Adam Williams: There also is a male version of this. I don’t know what that means and I don’t know how, how, how familiar you are with manopause.
[00:51:09] Becca Williams: Andropause? Mandropause? Andropause.
[00:51:12] Adam Williams: Okay.
[00:51:13] Becca Williams: Yeah, I can’t, I can’t speak much to that. I need to do more research.
[00:51:17] Adam Williams: I think it still is revelatory, probably for most men that that’s even a thing that we have our own version of whatever changes that we also are going through at this certain time of life.
[00:51:28] Becca Williams: Yeah.
[00:51:30] Adam Williams: If people are now listening to this and saying, okay, I’ve got some questions, I’ve got some curiosity myself, I would love a resource.
What do you want them to do? What is the clear, concise, I guess takeaway for them from this conversation is not just that we’re talking about it, but again, you started a company based on trying to help solve some challenges here.
[00:51:57] Becca Williams: Right.
[00:51:59] Adam Williams: So what is menopause in that sense of what you would like people to know they should go to Menopausey.com for?
[00:52:07] Becca Williams: Yeah, eventually. I want it to be a credible, medically vetted home for information and making sense of the experience. I am still early days, so there’s a little bit of content on the website and some resources and a wait list to join.
But I mentioned earlier, it’s really hard to make sense of the information that’s out there, you know, so we have a lack of data in general, but there’s a lot of mis and disinformation. We talked about menopause as one example, but there’s a lot more that people get wrong. So I think just figuring out what are the credible resources, who can I trust, especially when it comes to treatments. Some of the treatments that are promoted are unregulated.
So just I want Menopausey to be a home for credible information that people can trust. They can get a baseline understanding and find the resources, other resources and support that they need.
[00:53:10] Adam Williams: I’ll include the link in the show notes. Let’s end with this. We’ve talked about seasons of life. There are some lying ahead for us, assuming we stay healthy and. And we have, you know, some decades to go. Do you have visions of future seasons which you hope lies ahead?
[00:53:31] Becca Williams: Yeah, I think that underlying thread of contribution and impact is always going to be present for us, and that will probably take many different forms into the future, but that’s something that’s going to stick.
[00:53:50] Adam Williams: You know, what occurs to me is that we started or early on, we’re talking about kind of a naivete about wanting to change the world and that’s why you went to the Peace Corps. But then we actually brought up. I brought up multiple times the ways that you still try to contribute. Yeah, right. I don’t think that mentality has completely left.
[00:54:08] Becca Williams: No, no, I. Yeah, we’ve had a lot of conversations about do we stay in the U.S. do we go based on what’s happening, the unraveling of everything, how much do we fight?
Fight or flee kinds of things. And I’m realizing that it’s important perimenopause. You know, we talked about seasons or phases. I almost see it as a form of resistance in a positive way or the need for that.
[00:54:41] Adam Williams: So the spirit stays.
[00:54:42] Becca Williams: The spirit stays.
[00:54:43] Adam Williams: We called it naive before. What is it now? A wiser naivete. A wiser spirit to still try to have positive impact in the world, to serve our community, serve our family, serve the world.
[00:54:57] Becca Williams: It’s a more informed spirit and a more humble spirit.
[00:55:03] Adam Williams: I hope you’ve had fun with this conversation. On some level. On some level, I’ve appreciated getting to talk with you about this. And yes, we’re married. And this podcast has been ostensibly a public health podcast ultimately, with the undercurrent being the things that, you know, affect our. Our well being in the world and as a community here in Chaffee county.
And with menopause being what you do, I feel like we would have been remiss to not at least take the opportunity to talk about this topic. I’m not sure I was the best suited host for the conversation, but I think it was important that we do it.
[00:55:47] Becca Williams: Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity.
[00:55:50] Adam Williams: Well, thanks for doing it. Thanks for sharing what you do. Thank you contributing what you do.
[00:55:53] Becca Williams: I love you.
[00:55:55] Adam Williams: You’re gonna make me say that on the mic?
[00:55:57] Becca Williams: No, you don’t have to. That’s for you.
[Transition music, instrumental guitar]
[00:56:04] Adam Williams: Thank you for listening to the We Are Chaffee Podcast. You can learn more about this episode and others in the show notes@wearechaffeepod.com and on Instagram at We Are Chaffeepod I invite you to rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I also welcome your telling others about the We Are Chaffee Podcast. Help us to keep growing community and connection through conversation.
The We Are Chaffee Podcast is supported by Chaffee County Public Health. Thank you to Andrea Carlstrom, Director of Chaffee County Public Health and Environment, and to Lisa Martin, Community Advocacy Coordinator for the larger We Are Chaffee Storytelling initiative.
Once again, I’m Adam Williams, host, producer and photographer for the We Are Chaffee Podcast. Till the next episode, as we say at We Are Chaffee, “share stories, make changes.”
[Outro music, instrumental horns and guitar]
