Vibrant Midlife

For years I thought I was just bad at handling pressure. Anxious, exhausted, forgetful, snapping at people I love and I called all of it burnout.

Nobody ever handed me a perimenopause checklist next to the burnout one. So I never thought to compare them.

Turns out a lot of what I was carrying had a different name.

This isn't about replacing one label with another. It's about knowing there's a second list worth checking one most of us were never shown.

Swipe through. If anything on here feels familiar, you're not alone, and you're not imagining it.

👉 Join our community, link in bio.

This is your invitation to exhale. To be understood without explaining. To laugh again and be part of midlife women who just get it

It’s not just you. And you don’t have to do this alone anymore. 💜

Join our Vibrantmidlife Wellness Community today! Link via bio

April 2022. Missenden Abbey. South Bucks.
Our very first workshop. Fully booked. 🙌🏾

I still look at that flyer and feel everything.

The nerves of not knowing if anyone would come.
The joy when they did.

The moment the room filled with women who had never had a space like that before.

Women who had been carrying menopause quietly alone, confused, sometimes frightened finally sitting together. Talking. Laughing. Exhaling.

That day planted something.

And four years later here is what has grown:

✨ A sold-out summit in Bradford
✨ A sold-out summit in London
✨ A national NHS menopause workforce programme
✨ UCL co-authored research
✨ A community of thousands of women
✨ Vibrant Midlife Wellness CIC

None of that was visible from that room in 2022.

But the seed was there.

In the women who showed up.

In the conversations that happened.

In the courage it took to speak about something our communities had been silent about for generations.
Progress is not always loud.

Sometimes it looks like a small room.

A first workshop.

A flyer that says fully booked.

A woman finally feels seen. 🙏🏾

We are not done. Not even close.

This is why we started. This is why we continue.💜

Were you at one of our early events? Drop a comment and tell me what it meant to you 👇🏾
WomensHealth VibrantVoices Grateful ThrowbackThursday Progress

Most workplaces don't know this is happening. 👇🏾
There's a conversation the menopause space is only beginning to have and it's overdue.

ADHD and perimenopause.
A 2025 study published in European Psychiatry found that perimenopause begins up to 10 years earlier in women with ADHD with the most severe symptoms peaking between ages 35 and 39, not 45 to 49.

More than half of women with ADHD experience debilitating perimenopause symptoms. Compared to one in three women without.

Here's why it hits so hard.
Falling estrogen disrupts dopamine, serotonin, and the brain systems that support attention, memory, and emotional regulation intensifying ADHD symptoms at the same time the body is already under pressure.

Some women receive their first ADHD diagnosis during perimenopause. Not because it's new. Because the coping strategies that carried them for years have finally stopped working.

Now picture that woman at work.
Late thirties. High-performing. Reliable. Suddenly struggling and being performance-managed instead of supported.

This is not a personal failing.

This is a biology meeting a system that was never built to see her.

What needs to change:
→ Menopause awareness that includes neuro divergence

→ Managers who ask questions before drawing a conclusion.

→ Flexible working that is genuinely accessible not just on paper.

The women navigating ADHD and perimenopause simultaneously need workplaces that see the whole person.

Not just the output. The person. 🙏🏾

📖 Source: Jakobsdóttir Smári et al., European Psychiatry, 2025 — via ADDitude Magazine

🔗 Search: "perimenopausal symptoms women ADHD" additudemag.com

💬 Were you aware of this connection? Has it shown up in your workplace or your own experience?

Menopause isn’t just hot flushes and missed periods.

Your tongue can feel burned for no reason.

You can get electric zaps before a flush.
You can feel bugs crawling on skin that looks perfectly fine.

These are real symptoms. They’re caused by hormone shifts hitting your nervous system.
You deserve to be heard, not dismissed.

Share it with a woman who thinks she’s losing her mind.
Get support via link in bio.

What “weird” symptom do you wish doctors understood? Comment below.