Leaving Her Dream Job for Menopause Advocacy: Tamsen Fadal on HRT & Purpose After 50

What happens when a news anchor loses her words on live television and discovers it's not stress, but menopause? Emmy Award-winning journalist Tamsen Fadal joins Dr. Mary Claire Haver to share why she walked away from her dream job in pursuit of changing the conversation around women's health, the powerful story behind her New York Times bestselling book How to Menopause, and her groundbreaking PBS documentary The M Factor. Tamsen spent 30 years in broadcast journalism without saying the word "menopause" on air—not once. Then perimenopause hit. Brain fog made her skip words on the teleprompter. A hot flash so severe during a live newscast left her sweating and pale, eventually forcing her off the set entirely. Despite erratic bleeding, insomnia, and mounting symptoms, doctor after doctor missed the diagnosis. But once she understood what was happening, she couldn't stop talking about it. She co-produced The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause with three other women, self-funding the documentary after she was told there was no audience. The trailer went viral. PBS picked it up. Over 1,000 community screenings followed in 43 countries. Dr. Haver and Tamsen reflect on meeting at their first menopause conference, the moment they both realized how little training doctors receive, and why this work feels like a calling. Guest links: Tamsen Fadal https://www.tamsenfadal.com/ The Tamsen Show https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tamsen-show/id1799976761 “The (M) Factor” Documentary https://themfactorfilm.com/ Tamsen Fadal https://www.facebook.com/tamsenfadal/ (Facebook) Tamsen Fadal https://www.youtube.com/@TamsenFadalTV (YouTube) Tamsen Fadal https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamsenfadal/ (LinkedIn) Tamsen Fadal https://www.instagram.com/tamsenfadal/?hl=en (Instagram) Tamsen Fadal https://www.tiktok.com/@tamsenfadal?lang=en (TikTok) Books “How to Menopause,” https://www.tamsenfadal.com/how-to-menopause/how-to-menopause by Tamsen Fadal “The New Menopause,” https://thepauselife.com/pages/the-new-menopause-book?srsltid=AfmBOoooX8wBNYUUvlcBElv7K2AzUJ7eAgi7oM1fcfVyCKWTBUpquJKM by Dr. Mary Claire Haver “The Galveston Diet,” https://thepauselife.com/pages/the-galveston-diet-book?srsltid=AfmBOoqnume7Nt2Yoqbqux3rjhnNDgOIXPsiU8Acj5UiPUWgj6maCHu9 by Dr. Mary Claire Haver “The Wisdom of Menopause,” https://www.drnorthrup.com/book/the-wisdom-of-menopause-4th-edition/ by Dr. Christiane Northrup “The Menopause Manifesto,” https://drjengunter.com/the-menopause-manifesto/ by Dr. Jen Gunter “The New Perimenopause,”⁠ https://thepauselife.com/pages/the-new-perimenopause-book by Dr. Mary Claire Haver ⁠"The ...

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

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• 0:42Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

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• 1:08Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You're on TV, documentary, book publishing. Which of those felt the most vulnerable for you?

• 1:15Speaker 01

  That's a great question.

• 1:16Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Because you're a journalist, you've been on TV forever, but you're talking about a taboo subject, you know?

• 1:21Speaker 01

  But I told other people's stories on TV. I didn't tell my own. And so I think that's a, that was a big difference for me of like the, that it came back to my story. So when I first went on social, you know, I mean, I've told you this. I went to TikTok first because I was like, I know a lot of people on Instagram and I don't know if I went and had them hear me talk about this subject because I don't know what their opinion is going to be of me. That's how ingrained it was in my brain of like the ageism. Because, you know, I grew up in TV.

• 1:52Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And there's a shelf life, right?

• 1:53Speaker 01

  There's a shelf life, baby.

• 1:54Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  There's no Driving Miss Daisy in journalism.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 2:07Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  The views and opinions expressed on UnPaused are those of the talent and guests alone and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. No part of this podcast or any related materials are intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. When I first met our next guest, Emmy Award-winning journalist and advocate, Tamsen Fidel, we were at a menopause conference, actually, my very first menopause conference, where I was on a panel, she was moderating. And as you've heard me say, that day was life-changing for me. I met so many people who continue to be important parts of my world, and several

• 2:48Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  of them you'll hear on this podcast, including Naomi Watts, Dr. Sharon Malone, Dr. Carol Taveras, and Dr. Avram Bloming. In the lead-up to the event, Tamsen and I exchanged emails, just ideas flowing back and forth, and I felt an immediate connection. When we finally met in person on the day of the conference, I knew she was someone really special right away. At the time, she was already a well-known broadcaster, and she shared a powerful, very personal menopause story that really resonated with me. She was also in the middle of writing what would go on to be her New York Times bestselling book, How to Menopause. From that moment on, I fell in love with her. Since then, we've shared multiple stages together and

• 3:32Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  navigated this menopause space as a pair. I had the privilege of being featured in her documentary, The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause, as well as in her book. What I've come to know about Tamsen is this: she's loyal and generous, and she's one of the fiercest champions for women in midlife that I know. I'm so excited to sit down with her today and talk about her journey, her advocacy, and the work she's doing to change the conversation around menopause. I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist and certified menopause practitioner. I'm also an adjunct professor of obstetrics and gynecology at

• 4:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  the University of Texas Medical Branch. Welcome to UnPaused, the podcast where we cut through the silence and talk about what it really takes for women to thrive in the second half of life.

• 4:26Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Tamsen, welcome to UnPaused.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

• 4:30Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So for those of you out there listening, I want you to tell them your menopause story. That to me is one of the best things about our relationship is you telling me about being on air and what happened to you.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I didn't even know it was a menopause story at the time, which is the crazy part of it. So I was a news anchor for 30 years and I had been having some issues over time with all sorts of things that I later learned were symptoms of menopause. But the one in particular was a brain fog and I didn't have a word for it. I just knew that I'd look at the teleprompter, which you'd read every night, which I did for 30 years. I'd look at words and I'd be like, I know that word, but oh my gosh, I can't think of it. And I would just like panic and then skip the word. So if you were listening too closely, you'd be like, what, what did you just say? Like that, that didn't make any sense. But this one particular night, it was November of 2019 and I remember it very well because I'd never left a live broadcast and not finished it.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  And this particular night that happened, we were, I was feeling a little off at the beginning of the show. There had been a word on the teleprompter, subpoena that I knew and didn't know, and I skipped it. And I was just feeling like not myself. In the middle of the commercial break, we were, we were just going into the business report. And I just remember it because when you, you do the newscast, you remember like what you're going to do in each section of the hour. And we're in a commercial break and all of a sudden I got this, this feeling like of eruption of heat that went everywhere. Like my boobs got sweat, my underarms got sweat, my hair got sweat. And then my heart was racing out of control. And I thought like, I don't know if I'm going to fall over, throw up, faint. I don't know what's, what's happening. I just, I need to get off the set.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  So I said out loud and to a studio of all men, if I fall over, someone catch me. Half jokingly, half like, I don't really know what to do, but I got to finish the show. And one of the, um, my co-anchors said, I think you need to get off the set. He said that I was sweaty, like I'd broke out sweaty and like pale. So he brought me to the bathroom and I just laid down on the bathroom floor and just tried to cool off the cold tile, like my head pressed. I'm like, I was staring at the bottom of the toilet, you know, where like you see the bottom of the toilet. And I'm like, what am I, in my right mind would never have done that in a dress. About 15, 20 minutes later, I got up and I was like, I think I'm okay. But what the hell? What was that?

• 6:42Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  And that moved me into the next stage. I think I need to figure out if there's something going on with me. I don't know what's happening. And that set me into motion of going one doctor to another doctor, figuring it out. I had my therapist say that it was stress. I got Lexapro, you know, anxiety.

• 6:57Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So that, that first time happened, were you starting to have similar situations happen? Or this is all from that, that one lightning bolt?

• 7:06Speaker 01

  That was my big moment of like, what's going on with me? But what had been happening, and this had been leading up to this for over a year. I was having massive bleeding. So I'd bleed for a month.

• 7:15Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Okay.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  And then nothing for three months. And then I'd bleed for like a month, crazy, and nothing. And I didn't know what was going on. I had endometrial polyps. So they'd say, like, oh, your polyps, it's okay. Never. And I got polyps removed.

• 7:28Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  I have, I have fibroids. No one ever said perimenopause. None in any of the, any of the rooms I'd ever been in, ever. And so that, when I look back at that, that's, I think, the shocking part to me is that everybody had the opportunity. It wasn't like I was doing these one-off visits to the gyno. And, you know, maybe they didn't know what was going on. And the other symptoms were like sleep and, and I'd had those for a few, you know, years leading up to that. But this scared me in a big way. And that was my, not aha moment, but my, you know, oh, my gosh, moment of what's happening with me.

• 8:00Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  How was this playing out in your relationships, getting this diagnosis of stress and anxiety?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you know, I had gone through a divorce years earlier. And I had hair falling out all over the floor, and I had weight loss, then tons of weight gain, and then not sleeping. And, and so, you know, I think that I went to a couple of different places. This relationship that I was in was with Ira, who I'm, I'm married to now. And it was scary because it was like anxiety and there was frustration and there was a lot of moodiness. And I had dark, dark days and I didn't know what they were from. And I'm like, Is it my relationship? Is it my job? Is it my not knowing what I'm doing? Like, what was going on? So I, I think that, you know, lucky for me, he was very patient through a lot of the roller coaster, because there was a lot of the roller coaster. There was times even, you know, when I was still getting my, my period, I'm like, am I pregnant? What's going on?

• 8:50Speaker 01

  You know, what, what is happening? Or if I wasn't getting it for three months, you know, am I pregnant?

• 8:54Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right, am I pregnant?

• 8:54Speaker 01

  There was, there are some weird things that happened during that time that I think we have definitely done such, and you know this better than anybody, a disservice to women who just feel confused.

• 9:04Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  When did someone first say the word perimenopause or menopause?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was menopause. That's what they said. I went to those doctors after this, and I finally went to an OB that did my blood work, like I went to a full blood work panel, and I got a note in my patient portal that was typed out, and it said, "In menopause, dot, dot, dot, any questions?" The doctor's signature, you know, or his name. And I went, "How could I be in menopause? What? Like, I'm, I'm in my 40s still. Like, I can't be in menopause." But I had no idea that I was pretty not far from the average age in the US of menopause. And that was the first time I heard the word. And I actually called the office, and I was like, "This is, I'm in menopause. Am I in menopause? Like, I can't, are you telling me I can't have children? What, what's going on?" And I had already made the decision I wasn't having children, but that is very emotional. It is emotional,

• 9:52Speaker 01

  even if you've made that decision.

• 9:54Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Especially when it's not on your radar.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Radar? It wasn't in my universe. It wasn't in my universe, menopause. And I think I've had a mix of a lot of emotions, like, am I old? Is it over? Am I unsexy? Am I gonna have sex anymore? And, and then I was like, "What? How did this happen without me knowing?" But I still didn't understand perimenopause had been all those years. And that, looking back, was really the confusing part.

• 10:24Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So let's go back to your diagnosis of, you know, someone trying to hand you antidepressants to help.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Did hand me Lexapro, yeah.

• 10:30Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Lexapro. They, you know, SSRIs, they're in the category of this serotonin reuptake inhibitor. And there is some data that says not Lexapro specifically, but they can help with hot flashes. So a lot of women, if they're listening, your doctors, because of this lack of training, which we'll get into in a minute, you know, that is one of the drugs that is quite often recommended. Actually, you're five times more likely to be recommended an antidepressant for your hot flashes than the gold standard of hormone therapy. When did hormone therapy become in your vocabulary?

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Well, so I got that diagnosis from that doctor and I was like, any questions? Like, how about any, what am I, what does this mean? Like, because I really didn't know. I didn't even think about symptoms.

• 11:15Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Did you Google it?

• 11:15Speaker 01

  I just didn't. Of course I did. And then I'm like, huh. And, you know, back then, I'm back then, you know, back then, five, six year, whatever it was now, there was a lot of medical stuff and there was a lot of like not fun pictures at all.

• 11:29Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right, like Golden Girls right now.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Right, it was awful. And I'm like, this is it, this is it. And then I realized, I started looking at some of the symptoms and I came across that number back then, that was, I think it was like 1 billion women, it didn't even have 1.1 at that point. It said 1 billion women will be in menopause by the year 2025. I remember that and I went, what? How is that possible? And that's sort of how it started. But what I did also do is I went back, I kept paper files for a very long time of all my medical stuff. And I went back and I found something from an endocrinologist years before, for my blood work that I'd done, and it said complaining of weight gain, not sleeping. That was it. No one had said Barry Menopause then. No one, it was, it was like a written out, you know, I guess when you write it out and I had the copy of it.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  And I thought, wow, I've been dealing with this for a long time and I had no idea. So I looked at the symptoms and I'm like, oh my God, I had that, I had that, I had that, I had that. And here's where I am now.

• 12:27Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  But hormone therapy, you know, was scary to me.

• 12:29Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah, well, let's talk about your mom. We're gonna go there.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:32Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  If you're okay with it.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 12:33Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So your mom didn't get a chance to go through menopause?

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Well, I don't even know what she did, you know? That's the unbelievable part. She was diagnosed with breast cancer at 44, so she had a mastectomy. And then she had a recurrence. And so she had another mastectomy. So I was, when she was 44, I was 14 years old. Then she had another mastectomy. And she went through radiation. She went through Goldseed implants, where they implant Goldseed for radiation.

• 13:02Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Radiation.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  She went through chemotherapy, like maybe two, maybe more times. And I remembered it. Once I, once I started understanding more about menopause, I didn't even know there was a medical or surgical menopause. But I remember we would go to Lake George or any restaurant, but we'd go to Lake George in the summertime. And she would walk into a restaurant and she would be pouring sweat and she'd be like, I can't stand here. I'm too, I can't, I can't. It's just too, I'm too hot. I'm uncomfortable. She'd be throwing water on herself to like cool herself off. She was gaining weight. She had a stomach and where we'd be like, oh, my gosh, you're, you know, you're getting fat. I know, I had no idea what she was going through. I had no idea. And I got really sad like a few years ago and I went, oh, my God, she was, when we use the word suffering, like she didn't talk to anybody about it.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  I don't even know if she knew, Mary Claire. I don't even know if she knew.

• 13:49Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Probably not back then. And, and, and if you dare complain, well, you're lucky to be alive.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, I'm sure that's what she was told.

• 13:57Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  That's kind of the response a lot of survivors hear is you're complaining about sweating and vaginal dryness. You're not dead.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:04Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You know, you're not allowed to like live your fullest life possible.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  You should be happy you're going through that and you're still here. And it's funny, you know, my dad's 85 years old. You know, I talk about him a lot. We were sitting in his apartment in Florida about a year and a half ago when he, you know, I was writing the book and, you know, doing the documentary. I made my poor father read my, my manuscript, you know, poor guy, like 11 chapters of what? He said, I was thinking, do you think your mom went through all this? Do you think that's why she was feeling like she did all the time? And I said, did she ever mention it to you? I don't know. And he said, never heard the word from her. Isn't that unbelievable? Yeah, and this is all these years later, like years later.

• 14:42Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah, he's reading it. I'm sure he's putting two and two together.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 14:45Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Saying, wait a minute. That was probably what she was dealing with and, you know, chemotherapy, all of the treatments she went through and probably took her ovaries took a hit.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  I'm sure.

• 14:55Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And we weren't probably using some of the, you know, estrogen blockers like we are now at the time, um, which really kind of ramp up. Now you're in chemical menopause from the estrogen blockers.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:06Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Some of the modern treatments. So, yeah, that's amazing. Your dad was like, huh.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  It was a moment for both of us where we were like, okay. And I said, it makes me really sad. And he goes, yeah, it makes me sad too. It's one of those things, you know, you'll never know. I assume, I assume that that's what she went through. It was a, a medical menopause surgical. And she went through so much though with breast cancer. And so when I heard hormone therapy, all I knew in the back of my head.

• 15:33Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Was estrogens bad? Don't have anything to do with estrogen because your mom had breast cancer.

• 15:38Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  I've gone through the BRCA test. I've done all, I mean, I've had male parents since I was 35, or 34, actually.

• 15:43Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Of course.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  10 years, you know, before your mom is diagnosed. So I had a constant fear in my, my mind about this, over fear.

• 15:52Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What made you change your mind?

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Uh, I'd gone to several doctors. I was prescribed, um, hormone therapy. One, the one doctor had, um, pulled out a little calculator. And she's like, let me see if you're okay to do it. And I'm like, you're testing whether I can do hormone therapy on a calculator? Like what? That, that doesn't seem, you know, and I guess there's a, there's a score. And she called my, uh, general practitioner. You think it's okay if I put her in? I'm like, I'm out of here. Like if you don't know, then I don't know. Obviously I started doing research. I'm a journalist and I'm like, I have to figure out what's going on. I feel all, I was a mess for a long time.

• 16:23Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  And the brain fog was the worst. It was very hard for me at work. You know, I had no confidence. No confidence, uh, no confidence to ad lib and talk, no confidence to retain information. When you sit down in front of the cameras there, you don't ever know what's going to go on. So, um, you could be talking without a teleprompter for. An hour, you know, on the news.

• 16:43Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  It could just stop, but you have to keep going.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Yes, or there's a breaking news story and you have to remember what's going on. And I had none of that confidence. So I was suffering there and so I did have this conversation about hormone therapy. And it took me about a year and a half or two years before I was convinced that like I would do it. And I, I would fill the prescription, get the patches, get the progesterone. The progesterone would sit in my closet and like would be there forever. And then finally I talked to a doctor that was a certified menopause practitioner. And we really walked through like, here's what this is. Here's what's going on. Here's what it can do to help you. You know, we're not talking about, you know, trying to make your skin younger or feel it. These are real things that you are dealing with right now that could potentially help. And you need to get sleep. And that was the big one. I was on the couch every night for like months trying to fall asleep.

• 17:28Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  So I started hormone therapy and I will be honest that every time I put the patch on for a year or two, I was scared. Yeah, of course. I was scared.

• 17:38Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Do you know, I did not know about the Women's Health Initiative and all the walk backs. I just knew the headlines. I knew what the guidelines said, you know, lowest dose for the shortest time possible. I didn't even know the Menopause Society existed.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:54Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  That was not on my radar at all.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  When did, was this when we all started talking?

• 17:58Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  My first menopause conference with you. When I heard Sharon and Abram.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, it just gave me such chills.

• 18:04Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And Carol speaking. And I sat in that audience in LA and Santa Monica and cried. That wasn't like sobbing hysterically, but I had, I sat there and I thought, how did I not know this? You know, and I was just talking about weight gain and menopause at the time. This was gals and diet days. You know, this is how far I've come in this evolution, you know? And I learned more that day between them and Lisa Moscone. And.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  I'll never forget that day.

• 18:30Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I thought. I'm the expert. I'm board certified. I recertify every year and no one has talked to me about this. And suddenly, and I was on HRT reluctantly. But I thought, I cannot live with all these symptoms. I'm just gonna take the gamble and if I get cancer, I get it. Because I have a huge, you know, I've lost two brothers to cancer.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  I know you have. I know. I think you and I have a lot of that shared life experience, right? Of fear.

• 18:58Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  And it hangs over your head like every day. I mean, I mean, I don't know about you, but I, it's there. It's always there, right?

• 19:04Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  It's built into the system. And even now, I have a patient who's higher risk or has a family history. And as I'm counseling, I have to put that 20 years of training like in a closet. So I can talk about the modern studies. But I get it that, you know, it's just built into everything you've learned, everything you've heard. And then you hear the new information and you're like, oh, my God, this is amazing. And I'm gonna give him a therapy.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  I know. I'm telling you, I put the patch and I'd be like this, as I was rubbing it on, you know, as I was.

• 19:36Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Like you're doing something selfish for yourself.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Like I was doing something selfish and I'm taking a chance. And that is, that is where we have to get away from. And you know, it's funny, as a journalist, because those headlines and the media did a lot of that disservice, right? I think in the back of my mind.

• 19:52Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  It was, it was viral before there was viral.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Right?

• 19:56Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You know, and they were selling newspapers. It was selling magazine. It was Time Magazine was selling because of this story.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  When we did the documentary, I didn't understand the, the depth and like the tentacles that had the, the antenna, you know, where it went. How, how, how it infiltrated the, the system. Like that study, it was, it was just so awful. And it wasn't just, just, just anybody. It was everything together. It was the media, it was the headlines, it was a press conference. It was, you know, how it was presented. It was all that. And so I think as a journalist, I kept going, how do I play my part to undo? That message because I'm a real woman, I'm not a doctor, I'm a real woman that I understand that fear and, um, and the media was part of it and I'm part of the media.

• 20:40Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  And so I think that that's where I have felt I stand in this and I couldn't stop talking about it. I would sit on that news set at night after I realized all this. I'm like, okay, I've got to talk about this. I was so not focused on anything except this message because I could not believe, I could not believe what this has done to women.

• 20:59Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  And my mom, I think about.

• 21:00Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So you've said, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you didn't say the word menopause on air for 30 years.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  No, we didn't talk about this.

• 21:08Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I mean, how many health stories had you done?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. We did. So we used to do health segments, you know, like it would be a health segment.

• 21:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Breast cancer awareness month.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  All the time. My, my face was on every billboard for breast cancer awareness because of my mom and to raise money and make sure we were talking about it. And then we'd do whatever months it was. We did diet stories. We did cholesterol stories. We did nutrition stories. We did anything, you know, blood pressure stories, whatever, Alzheimer's. We never talked about menopause. And when I started to bring it to the forefront, because I was at that point anchoring five hours of newscasts every day. So I had 25 hours on live television to be able to talk. I'm like, let's do a story about menopause. And they'd go, stop with the menopause, like a stop. And that was scary to do because I thought, oh, my gosh, I am, I'm aging myself out fast. But then I realized, oh, my gosh,

• 21:59Speaker 01

  if I'm not talking about it, who's going to?

• 22:01Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  As I started pushing it into every news, every way I could find. I'm like, but we can also do this story and also do, you know, and then my algorithm changed. So all I was getting was menopause news.

• 22:11Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  And so I pushed it and pushed it and you know, I brought us on television and did a lot of different things because I really believe if people, wherever we can reach people, we have to reach people.

• 22:21Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  And that's one of the places.

• 22:23Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Do you think it surprised your bosses in the network how much, because these stories hit hard.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:31Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Like, women were into it. They're like, whoa, someone said, that's what happened with me. You know, someone said the word menopause on air. And instead of like their eyes rolling back, I think women were like leaning in to the conversation.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Oh, 100%. So when I first brought it on, I think there was, there was all the eye rolling, right? And then I remember I sat down with Elizabeth Fargus.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Who had come from ABC and was working at the network where I was at. And I said, we need to do this story. And she was like, explain to me, explain this to me. I got into the news business at like, in 1994. I used to sit in the edit bay and just stare at her. I used to just stare at Elizabeth and be like, I want to be her one day. She is, she's everything, you know, she was just like my idol. And now she's working at the network where I am. So it was like, it was like all this full circle moment. And I went to her and I said, we need to talk about this. We've, we've got to talk about this. I've got to tell you, I've got to show you these people. I've got to show you these doctors and show you the study. And we put, I sat down, I was like, I need your help to go in there and like, really make this a bigger, bigger thing.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  And, and she did, and we, we sat there together, but we pushed, we, both of us to push that story to, you know, to the network.

• 23:41Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And what was the reception, like once you got on air?

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Well, we were like, let's do a three part to five part series. You know, we were really going all in and the documentary had not come out yet. I was starting to interview all of you for the documentary, but it had not come out yet. And it was like, all right, let's start here. What, what exactly is it? What are we doing? And we got one across the, we got one across the board and it was a big, long series. And we sat there from the beginning of it to the end of it and put it on the air. And the, the reaction was incredible. And I remember I walked away and one of the cameramen came running after me. And he said, I think that my wife is going through some of this. Is there a way I can get ahold of you or somebody so she can talk to them? Yeah. So I went, okay, we've begun that conversation in traditional media.

• 24:28Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  All right, let's go to the documentary.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:30Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  The M Factor. And what on earth were you thinking?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 24:37Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You just wake up one day and like, I'm going to make a documentary. Like what do you, how do you even do that?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  I don't, you know, it's so funny. I've, well, first I've never even been asked that.

• 24:44Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  It's not like, you make money making a documentary, right? It's not like a big moneymaker.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  No, but it has more value than anything in the world, right?

• 24:52Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  So my husband works in the TV world and one of the people that work with him, I became friendly with. And I was saying to her all the time, like, I can't believe this. All these women in menopause and did you know this? And did you know that? And she knows this. And she's like, yeah, I, I already went through that, Tams. I'm like, yeah, I, I already went through that. And so I said, oh, and she goes, but. There's a good friend of mine that talks to me about it like you do, and I'm so sick of talking to you about it. You guys should meet each other. And so her name is Joanne Lamarcus, and Joanne came from the Today Show. She watched Hodin and Kathy, and she was at the Today Show for a very, very long time. And I got an introduction to her, and I sat on the phone with her for an hour and a half the first time. And I said, we've just got to get this out there. Like, I don't know what to do. I'm in news. They don't want to talk about it every day. And we said, what if we put something together, put a

• 25:37Speaker 01

  film together, something, a longer version of something together for YouTube? And she said, I think so. And I said, what if it's a doc? She's like, what if it's a doc? I said, I don't know. Can we, we've never even done a documentary. You know, news, you interview somebody for 20 minutes, and it's a two-minute piece. That's how news works. So we started thinking like, we need to do this. And we went out to Times Square with our iPhones and said, let's see if there's any kind of appetite for women willing to talk about it, or what they're going through. And we had masks on at the time. Everyone was wearing masks. So we're like, can you talk about, you know, menopause? Did you go through it? No, yeah, no, I didn't go through that. I don't want to talk about it. I don't. And then, one by one, we probably tried to interview 30 people, and maybe four of them talked to us. And I said, I don't know, maybe there's just nothing to it. But I just really, I

• 26:22Speaker 01

  feel like there is. She felt like there was. And we, we started saying to a couple of different doctors at that time, Sharon Malone was somebody that I knew, Dr. Sharon Malone. And I said, I'd like to, to talk to you. I was a little scared because I didn't really know her very well, but I'd like to see if we could talk to you about a documentary. At the time, I met the other two producers that I have from LA, which is Denise Pines and Kobe Atlas, and both of them had done documentaries before. And I said, I don't know what I'm doing, but I do know that we need to do it. And they said, well, we've done documentaries, and we wanted to do this one, too. So let's all partner. So four women partnered together on the both, both coasts. And we said, we're going to figure this out. And the first interview we did was Dr. Sharon Malone in my living room on her birthday.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  She she came in and I sat down with her and we kind of like set the stage of what we didn't know. And then we said, all right, we're gonna lean in and we're gonna, we're gonna do this documentary. And we had no support, no, no money.

• 27:16Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  And no clarity of exactly where we were, what we were doing with it.

• 27:20Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Where does the money come from? Did you get people going, I'm not gonna invest in this. I'm not gonna.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  We had, there's no audience for it. I'm not giving you any money for this. And who wants to watch a documentary? Because, you know, the documentary was, at that time, teamed boring. You know, there wasn't like all the cool documentaries quite yet. There was some. It was like, who wants to watch a documentary about menopause? No. There's no audience. There's no place. And no one wants to air it. And no one wants to, and no one's giving you money for it. Unless my, whatever can be in it. And we're like, that's not a documentary. We can't do that. So we pushed and pushed. We put a lot of our own money into it. We funded, we self-funded this thing on all ends of it. And then finally, it started to take root when we started to put together a trailer. The trailer went insane. Then we had people step up and say, hey, you know, a couple of different nonprofits, like I will, will fund this because we really believe in it. And we had some people funding it, but we funded most of the first one ourselves, like

• 28:09Speaker 01

  from the very, very beginning, put it together. And by the time we released that trailer, which was maybe September of last year, we had such an influx, because remember, it was just the four of us. We had such an influx into our inbox of people wanting to watch it, air it, see it, be part of it, whatever it was, that we had to hire people to come in and help field all these requests. And so we wound up giving it to women to view in their communities. And to date, we've had over 1,004 screenings up in cities across the US. And in, I think we're at 43 or 45 countries. Isn't that crazy?

• 28:48Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So you got PBS. So you, you make this documentary and then you have to shop it around.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:54Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Like, it doesn't just magically make its way onto, you know, your computer or whatever. What was the conversation like with PBS? Probably the biggest place you could launch a documentary.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  For the credibility of it, too.

• 29:05Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  I just felt really strongly that we needed to have that credibility factor. Simply because we'd had so much pushback, so much pushback of trying to do anything like this. And I also thought it was a really critical message. It was really the first of its kind of this kind of documentary at this magnitude with this time in our lives. And so I felt an immense pressure of it needing to be right place, right time, right partners. And Denise and Kobe have done a lot of different things with PBS. They'd already had the trust factor there. And so we went in and they said, okay, we need to view it though, too, you know, to see. And they did. And we got on for October of last year, which was the weekend of World Menopause Day weekend. That's when it aired.

• 29:49Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  That was perfect.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  So it was amazing. It was amazing.

• 29:52Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Were the, were the producers in the, you know, were they female?

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Some female. Yeah, yeah, of course, of course.

• 29:58Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I really feel like we have to have.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  We have to.

• 30:01Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You know, in this whole process of this podcast, and you may have had the same with your podcast. We always do better when there's a menopausal woman in the room, on the production team, and that, you know, because you just don't get it.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  When, you know, I launched my podcast in March, but before that, it was over a year of trying to figure it out. And constantly what I heard was, you know, the podcast audience is young. Nobody's going to want to talk about that. So what else are you going to talk about? And I was like, that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about a lot, but that is what we're going to talk about. There's a lot of that conversation is going to be the root of this whole thing. Yes, women in the room, but I will say this, with the documentary, even in rooms with menopausal women, there was not always the response you would expect when we went out to shop it, to, to the different streamers and stuff. So I would say that it, it has now come a long way, baby, right? But back then, when we were going around doing that, it was not quite as, uh, cool,

• 30:59Speaker 01

  hot.

• 31:00Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Accepted then to say, hey, you know, because I know what it's like in the TV world to go in and say, hey, I want to do something about menopause. What? Because you feel like you're being judged as, why would you be interested in that? And so, because that is an industry that is very, you know, youth is very regarded.

• 31:19Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Youth is very, you know, that's what you want. It's a double fight. There's a double edged sword there.

• 31:24Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  We're going to get to the next documentary, which I'm super excited about.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Which we were not expecting.

• 31:29Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  But not everybody was happy once it came out.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  No. I will say that I was surprised because I think that when you're inside of it, and a documentary is not go out, do interviews and then just edit it. A documentary is 30 to 50 plus hours of a video. You know how long we were there with you, or how long our crews were there with you. You know how many interviews that we had in that documentary, how many women's stories, how many different areas we wanted to cover and push into that one thing. So I'm aware going forward now, not everyone will ever be happy with, with everything that we talk about. But I'm not happy where we were before this.

• 32:07Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  I'm not happy as a real woman that we didn't feel comfortable talking about it. I'm not happy as a real woman that my mother suffered and so many women did, you know. So we did the documentary and the, the tagline was shredding the silence on menopause. The reason for that documentary was to open the conversation. So I'm okay if not everybody's happy. Our intention as journalists, and a documentary is not my opinion. A documentary is experts coming together to talk about what they're experts in. That's what that was, and real women's stories. So I would only say that I'm so damn proud of the documentary and I

• 32:43Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You should be.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  want, thank you, and I want all voices to be heard. So I am happy to hear any pushback on anything. But at the end of the day, the most important thing to me is when a woman stops me in the street and says, I watched the documentary with 10 of my friends, or with my husband, or with my daughter, and I found a doctor and it's changed my life. That's all the difference in the world. Because our only intention as journalists is to shed light, and that's what we did.

• 33:09Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So why a second documentary?

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Well, that wasn't expected, you know. I was like, I love it.

• 33:16Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I love it.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  I'm glad.

• 33:17Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I feel like we're on this like path because like, why another book about menopause?

• 33:21Speaker 01

  I know.

• 33:21Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  But we're talking about perimenopause.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  We were not expecting to do that in all, in all truth. Like, I, I still think we're all like, wait, are we doing this really? Even though we're, we're in edit now. As we saw this rollout happen over the course of the past year, about six months ago, maybe a little bit more, we realized that there were so many other parts of the documentary we couldn't fit in. And one, you know, one important was for me is talking about women that are dealing with breast cancer and our friend, Dr. Corinne Men, and who had breast cancer herself, treats women that are very left out of that conversation. Another part that has been left out is really understanding how, you know, we talked about the timeline in the first one, but we didn't really explain everything that happens. You know, we weren't

• 34:08Speaker 01

  able to have conversations about hormonal households. We weren't able to have conversations about all these different things that were very, very important. And so we decided, okay, menopause is that one day, right? And everything else afterwards, but what happens before the pause? And that's what this documentary is called, Before the Pause. And it will lead up to menopause for those younger women and for any, you know, not even younger women, just women that don't understand, like I didn't. I never heard the word perimenopause, and I want to make sure they do.

• 34:38Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So what is a hormonal household? For our listeners, you may not know what that is. I know what it is.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  So a hormonal household is when you've got like a young, you know, a young one, a teenager, a, you know, I don't know, 12, 13, 14, going through their hormonal journey. And then you've got mom that's probably at the same time experiencing perimenopausal symptoms and menopause and having those two, and I don't want to ever say collide, but live under the same roof in dealing with that because there's a lot that goes there. And I, at first I thought it was like a little catchphrase that was cute. And then I realized it's a real thing. And especially as women are having children a little bit later sometimes, or just where realizing this a little bit earlier.

• 35:19Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  It was really important for us to include.

• 35:20Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I'm finding that the millennials are way more open to this conversation. It's like Gen X kicked the door in and started the conversation. And these, these younger women coming through are like, okay, what do I need to know to get ready? How do I need to prepare myself? They don't want to hide it. There's no shame. Like this is inevitable. This is a natural part of life, but I don't want to go into this blindsided. So what I'm seeing is millennials are a lot more accepting of what's coming. They're curious. There's no shame. They want to learn more. They're asking. To be a part of the conversation.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  And I'm encouraged by that. Like, I love the fact that millennials are like, tell me what's going on. Tell me what I need to know and I'm gonna, I'm gonna go through this. And so I do, I agree with you. Gen X kicked open the door. Millennials are like, here we are. And now we're going to use that information to be better, longer. And I think that's, it's incredible. Because I, I think back to my, you know, when I was 30s. I wasn't thinking about, I didn't even know the word perimenopause.

• 36:18Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I, I was taking, I was a medical expert and I was like, ugh, menopause. Literally, I was like, oh, menopausal patient, no. And that's just bias and paternalism and how I trained and my own ageism. And now I'm like, yay, like, it's all I do now. And it's like, the best part of my medical practice ever is that, you know, taking care of these women.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Well, there's such an appreciation too, because I think that these women have been overlooked, dismissed, thought, felt invisible themselves. And the truth of the matter is, is that that is very much not what's going on. And they've not been given an opportunity to be able to be seen, feel better, not have to beg for help. And so I'm so happy for, for all of us. And then I'm really happy for millennials who walk in and say like, hey, I'm gonna probably fix most of it myself outside the doctor's office. Maybe I need to go to you and get my hormone therapy or, or some other form of treatment.

• 37:15Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  But I'm gonna be okay. This isn't gonna define me. And I think that that's exciting. Cause then when we get to the next generation, what does that mean for them?

• 37:23Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  So when I look at what we've done so far with the first documentary, Shredding the Silence, with Now Before the Pause, I can't wait to see the reaction to that, because I think it's going to just, you know, make that change even quicker, even faster. And with, you know, books that we have out there, where we have films out there, we have celebrities talking about it. Many of our friends talking about it. Incredible doctors like yourself talking about it. There's no way that this conver, it's not a trend, it's not a moment, it's not a, you know, it's not a fleeting, you know, thought in anybody's mind. And hopefully we get to a place where it doesn't have to be a thing, that it's a part of our lives.

• 38:01Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right. And nothing to be ashamed of or to hide from.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, nothing to be ashamed of.

• 38:10Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So you get this idea, I'm gonna write a book.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Another idea in the shower.

• 38:15Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Because you've written books before.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  I have.

• 38:17Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You've had bestsellers before. So did you go to your agent? Because now this is because they were on matchmaking and.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, divorce, dating.

• 38:25Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah. So this is, what was that like? That conversation with your agent, I guess, was first.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny. I had gone to the original agent I had and she's like, I don't think that there's gonna be an audience for this book. I said, okay, I think I need to find an agent that believes that there is.

• 38:42Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I got pushed back too.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:44Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So I had done Galveston Diet and it had done very well.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:47Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  But immediately, the minute the manuscript was in, I was letting my friends read it and getting the reaction. I talked a lot about menopause in the Galveston Diet. And that was what, not how much protein you need or how many hours you need to work out a week. Everyone was like, this menopause part, like more, more, more. And so I go to my agent, my agent was in from the beginning. The editors were kind of like.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh, me too. Yeah.

• 39:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I mean, there was the wisdom of menopause and menopause manifesto. But you know, do you really feel, I'm like, I'm telling you what people are asking me. I'm in my DMs. I know exactly what people want. And they are begging for this information. But did you get pushed back?

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Massive pushback. And it's interesting. I struggle with my title. Remember that? I said to you, I am struggling now because the original title I went in there with to pitch. Because when you go to write a book, as we know, you have to go in there and you have to present your case essentially and say, here's what the book should be. Here's your proposal. Here's what the book should be. Here's why it should be. Here's the audience. And I promise you, a lot of people are gonna help me say they love it. And so I went in with one because I'm like, what is a journalist doing? Writing a medical book? But it wasn't a medical book. It was a guide with all of these expert voices coming together of what a real woman didn't know. It wasn't me as a medical expert. It was me bringing together all of the people that I had learned from, including yourself,

• 40:13Speaker 01

  to say, look, these are the people to listen to. These are the voices. This is how I got to feel better, know myself, you know, move on to the, to be able to talk about it. So it was originally called Meno Talk. That was the book. So it was like, menopause conversations. I went in there and my first agent was like, and so I talked to another agent. And she said, you know, I'm going through this right now and I want to sell this book. I want to see if there's an audience for it. And we got down to going out there and you go to the different publishers and two came back and said, we think there's an audience for this because we're both going through it. And that was the reason that it was picked up because there were, to your point earlier, menopausal women going, I need more now. One said to me like, I haven't had sex

• 40:58Speaker 01

  in I don't know how long. And the other one was like, I think I'm going through this. I can't, I'm reading all these simple, when are you going to finish writing it? Because you know, you just write a one chapter and an outline. And so my, my pressure was, I did 42 interviews with, you know, 42 different experts and I think even more, but like that was, those were the big interviews and really used what I had done my whole life with this interview is to try to pull it together and, and simplify. I was like, I don't know, we just need a how to book. And that's how I came up with How to Menopause. Finally, like literally, I was, I was under pressure to get a title done because I think I saw you right before it was due. And I said, I still have a title for this book. And, and then I finally had, thank you. I finally had, you know, under pressure, but

• 41:42Speaker 01

  it wound up being the right title for the book.

• 41:45Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And it was a New York Times bestseller.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  It was. When was yours out?

• 41:49Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  April.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  And then mine was the next March, a year later. And I said to you, what did you do the day that you were going to find out what was going on with the New York Times?

• 41:59Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I went to Mexico. I told my husband, I don't want to be in the country. I was so nervous. And because we hadn't made the list with Galveston Diet. I didn't understand at the time with Galveston Diet, how it worked. I just thought if you sell X amount of books and you, you outsell everybody else, you'll make a list. And I didn't realize that, you know, the New York Times bestseller list is editorialized. Meaning you have to sell a certain amount to be considered, but they decide which books, you know, and for whatever reason, Galveston Diet didn't make it. I look back and I just kind of laugh. I'm a straight A student.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  I remember.

• 42:33Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I passed everything. I was blindsided. I did not know that could happen. And you know, you tell Mary Claire, sell, you know, a thousand books. I'll sell 2,000. You know, I was in Boston doing press at a local Boston affiliate for, I think NBC, one of the first, besides you, one of the first TV stations that had asked me to come and speak. And I was all excited. And then that night, that afternoon, the list was coming out and it just kind of seemed inevitable that, you know, we had sold a lot of books and whatever. And then. My agent called me and said we didn't make it. And I couldn't even process what that meant. And I went back to the hotel and we crashed the many bar. And I remember drinking these pre-made Bloody Marys or something out of the fridge. And then, and I think I cried on social media about it.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  You did, I remember.

• 43:17Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You know.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  I did Instagram Live with you and I was, and that was when we, I think we had already been together in LA. And then I did the Instagram Live with you on the book, because the book was, was it, had just come out? Or it was gonna come out? I can't remember where it was.

• 43:32Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  It was right in there.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  It was right in there.

• 43:33Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  We were, you know, we were full court press.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  We were like together quite a bit there. And so I remember doing the Instagram, and then I remember seeing your video and I was like, how is that possible? Like, that's crazy.

• 43:42Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  It's editorial. So the whole push for the next book, for the new Menopause, I was like, I don't want to hear about the list. Because everything, as you know, everything's like, the list, the list, the list. We have to do this, the list. And I was like, I'm not doing it. I don't want to hear it. You say it and I'm leaving. I'm gonna not publish the book. And they're like, you know, so, because pre-sales were going incredibly well. And we had sold almost 80,000 books by the time, you know. And so I told my husband, I don't want to be in the country when the list comes out. I don't care. I turned off my phone. We went to Mexico. We were sitting in Playa del Carmen on a beach at an all-inclusive.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 44:17Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Drinking margaritas and, and just meeting people in the pool and chatting and having fun. And then my friend, Kim Holderness, from the Holderness family, our books came out the same day. And she texted me and I had, I checked my phone because it was Kim. And she's like, girl, did you see? And so it was so sweet.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  That's a cool way to get it.

• 44:36Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Because they were number two and I had happened to hit number one. And I just, I have chills thinking about it, you know? And then all of a sudden, like, I was like, tell the world!

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 44:45Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So excited.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  I took your advice because you told me what you had done. And I was like, what am I gonna do? I can't go to Mexico. Like, I don't know. I mean, we were, because remember, we were in the middle of like, all the other stuff. We were still doing doc. We're still, and so I went to LA. I went to the Ivy, the restaurant there where I'm like, the Ivy makes me happy. I'm gonna get some champagne. I'm just gonna sit there. And my team was with me. And they lied to me about what time it came out. So they- We're like, oh, it's not going to be till like five o'clock today. And I go, really? Gonna wait that long? And I'm like, I'm sitting there and we're like, ate french fries. Like, I was like self-soothing just in case. Oh, we got a call. Hold on, we'll be right back. And one of them, and then they came back and they were, put it on speaker.

• 45:25Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  They videoed it.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, they videoed it. They videoed it. I think they put it on speaker or they, or they had called. They, they had them call my, my phone and I picked it up and they videoed it. And I was like, oh my gosh, because I had never expected that. The New York Times to me is like such, like, you know, I've, I've grown up in New York. It's just like the, ah, you know, I'm not a doctor. And so I never, I never, I never even thought that would be a possibility. But the special part of it, I think, out of everything was after that happened, getting to go around and meet all of the women that read it or talked about it or shared it. And that was really cool.

• 45:59Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Like I had been, I went to all these different cities around the country. And that was really, really super special.

• 46:05Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I felt like, you know, menopause has spoken. But I just felt like there is no denying that menopause is important and that women want to read about this, you know, and are willing to educate themselves.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. I think that we've put that onus on women. Women, we have said to women, all of us, you need to know all this because your doctors might not.

• 46:30Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  And you have to almost interview your doctors to make sure that they feel comfortable with it or ask them why they aren't.

• 46:37Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Right? And so we've given women so much responsibility that that is why that they have, they need this information. It's why they need these type of resources.

• 46:45Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And it's funny, our generation is so upset about that.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 46:48Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You know, they are like, no, no, no, the doctors should know. And I'm like, listen, we weren't taught, we weren't trained, this wasn't prioritized. And we are working on that point. But it's like the millennials are like, okay, they don't know. I'm gonna educate myself. And they feel like they are CEOs in their own healthcare. And I feel like our generation and forward are more used to the medical system telling them what to do. And this is a huge blind spot in medicine and that. You know, we still have to continue the message of educate yourself, advocate for yourself. You know, and that's what I loved about your book is that it laid out these really clear plans on how to do that.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 47:25Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  For themselves. So you, you know, you're on TV, documentary, book publishing. Which of those felt the most vulnerable for you?

• 47:35Speaker 01

  That's a great question.

• 47:36Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Sure, journalist, you've been on TV forever, but you're talking about a taboo subject, you know?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  But I told other people's stories on TV. I didn't tell my own. And so I think that's a, that was a big difference for me of like the, that it came back to my story. So when I first went on social, you know, I mean, I've told you this, I went to TikTok first because I was like, I know a lot of people on Instagram and I don't know if I want to have them hear me talk about this subject because I don't know what their opinion is going to be on me. That's how ingrained it was in my brain of like the ageism, because you know, I grew up in TV.

• 48:11Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And there's a shelf life, right?

• 48:13Speaker 01

  There's a shelf life, baby.

• 48:14Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  There's no driving Miss Daisy in journalism.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  No, no. I remember I was in Philadelphia and there was a news anchor that was a little bit older than me. Maybe she was like the, a generation older than me, right? And she, when I were sitting there talking and I was kind of like, what do I need to know? Yeah, I was new to the station. What should I know next? I want to be like you when I grow up, you know, that kind of thing. And she said, well, I do want you to know this, you know, that there is this, this shelf life for women. So when you get to be in your 40s, like that's, that's that. Like, you know, you don't ever see an older woman sitting next to a younger man on television. You see an older man sitting next to a younger woman and she's, you know, and the guy's the distinguished guy that's been sitting there telling the news forever. And I'm like, huh. And so I always in the back of my mind had that, every time I'd put my key card up to get into the building,

• 49:00Speaker 01

  every time I would do the news, I'm like, oh, thank goodness they still want me here. I'm so grateful. That was my life for a very, very long time. I do want to say, when I walked away from my job as a news anchor, two, almost two years ago now, I, um, was the older woman sitting next to the younger guy by about 10 years. I know, isn't that crazy?

• 49:20Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  That's amazing.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  But the shelf life is a very real thing and it's very sad. And I think that a lot of people feel it. And I think that, uh, a lot of women of our generation really are aware of that. And especially the generations before, that that is a feeling that's in there. And I cannot wait for that to be gone. And I think we're chipping away at it in a very big way.

• 49:45Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Now for a midi pause, sponsored by Midi Health. Let's talk about something that's keeping millions of women awake at night. Literally. The girls are not sleeping. They're not sleeping well, not sleeping long, and waking up exhausted. And this is not just a part of getting older. This is a health crisis hiding in plain sight. In my clinical practice, I see it all the time. Women come in frustrated, convinced that something's wrong with them personally. But menopause-related sleep disruption isn't a personal failing. It's a legitimate, medical issue with real health consequences. Here's what the research shows. More than half of women in menopause experience disrupted sleep.

• 50:29Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Nearly 80% report poor sleep quality. And when night sweats strike, they can increase sleep disruption by over 80%. Hormonal changes play a big role. As estrogen and progesterone decline, they disrupt systems that regulate sleep, temperature, and even our stress response, leaving you feeling wired but tired. Add in caregiving stress and circadian rhythm shifts, it's no wonder women are lying awake at 3 a.m. Poor sleep isn't just about fatigue. It's linked to cardiovascular disease, the number one cause of death in women, and measurable cognitive changes like memory lapses, brain fog, and anxiety. But here is the good news.

• 51:14Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  We can treat this. Evidence-based strategies like improving sleep hygiene, managing stress with breathing techniques, and ensuring adequate magnesium L-theanine and melatonin support can all help. For some women, hormone therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia makes a profound difference. Here's the bottom line. You're not imagining it, and you can absolutely claim restorative sleep. Your sleep matters. Your health matters. And you deserve solutions that work.

• 51:53Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  All right. So 25 year old Tamsen.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:56Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What did she think that 54 year old Tamsen would be doing?

• 52:02Speaker 01

  25 year old Tamsen didn't know if she was going to see 54 because I lost my mom at 51.

• 52:07Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  And I didn't have a roadmap or a thought for anything that happened after that. I just was blank. 51 was the age that she was gone. So 54 was like, what? I don't know. But I do think that I always had this idea growing up, you know, retire, it's going to get older. It's like, I could never have imagined I'd be sitting here talking about any subject like this, first of all, or be looking at being looking forward to the next 40 years.

• 52:37Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  If you tell anybody that, I think they would say, what?

• 52:41Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Like that you would be writing books, producing documentaries.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  No, have a whole new community and group of friends in a, in a different purpose.

• 52:50Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right?

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Of life.

• 52:51Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Don't you feel like that?

• 52:52Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah. I turned 57 in August and this is the year I survive all of my brothers. So I've lost three.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  So you know what I mean?

• 53:00Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And two of them were in their 50s.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:02Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And so we were in Norway hiking with some good friends of ours. And it was one of the toughest hikes I've ever done in my life. As far as like elevation change and, and Norway is.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  I can't imagine.

• 53:12Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Coming out straight up out of the water for 10,000 feet. And so, you know, I just remember hiking that day and thinking my brothers didn't get here and they'd be so proud, you know, of everything that I've been able to accomplish. But like me at 25, I just, at 57 or at 60, you know, that was always grandbabies.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:31Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Being quiet. I just saw this old lady.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:34Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Not anyone in full glam, you know, with fake eyelashes doing a doc.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  And your eyelashes are very good, by the way.

• 53:41Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Thank you.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I survived my mom at 51. So it was three years ago.

• 53:44Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Tell me about that year, that day.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Because 50 wasn't hard for me. 50 wasn't a, a thing. It was just kind of went through. It was also during the pandemic. So it wasn't really.

• 53:53Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  You know, but 51, I remember thinking like, I can't believe this. Like this was my mom. And, and I think at that, when I was young, that seemed like an older age, you know, obviously. And when I think about all the stuff she went through in those younger years, starting at 44 years old, like she battled breast cancer for a long time. And um, yeah, I think I felt really sad and I felt. Real appreciative and I do feel like every day is kind of a dedication to what she was not able to do. And so I'm real appreciative that I'm here and I am hopeful that for all the remaining years that I'm here, that it helps, you know, other women that are coming

• 54:36Speaker 01

  up through this. I do, I do feel a very deep service to her, you know, and all other women, but really to her to, to do this next part, right?

• 54:46Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So in this journey, you know, we've, we've kind of covered what your publishers thought, what you're, you know, going to get podcasts. But talk about your community, like your friends. Did you get pushed back from any of that being like Tamsen?

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Yes. Did you? I mean, I totally did. Well, they knew you were a doctor. So you were probably talking about a lot of things that they were like.

• 55:06Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  But you know, walking away from the bread and butter of, you know, I was in academic practice. I had a very nice salary. I had the respect of my entire community. I delivered literally everyone's babies and walking away from that security. I had insurance. I had, you know.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Safety.

• 55:24Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  It was like, if they build it, they'll come. Like I did not know how to open a clinic. I had always been employed. I got a book, The Idiots Guide to like opening a medical practice and like had to read all the rules and how to do it. But I just like something in me knew I needed to do this. But I took my girlfriends out to dinner and this big table in Galveston. And I said, I'm thinking about opening this clinic all on my own. No, no academic institution behind me, like just hanging up a shingle and just doing menopause care. And I don't think I can afford to take insurance because by the way, they're not going to pay you to do menopause care. And, you know, so then it's a risk of will women, will women be able to afford this and come? And like we had a long conversation that night,

• 56:07Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  but every single one of them was like, you have to do this.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  That's amazing. That's what community does for you. Well, first, I think that they were, they thought I was crazy talking about menopause in general. But second, I walked away from my career. At a place that I had always wanted to get to. I always wanted to be a evening news anchor. I always wanted to be, you know, in that prime time spot delivering people the news of what happened that day and what was going to happen the next day to prepare them for the next day. And, you know, New York is in my soul and I love telling the stories of New York, but I knew that there was not a more important story for me to be telling than this one. And so when I made that decision, and it took me a long time, I remember Ira and I

• 56:50Speaker 01

  were, we were out of the country and I walked into the bathroom and we were like standing there and I said, I think I need to go. And he's like, you need to go, go where? Go back home? And I said, no, I think I need to leave my job. And was this ridiculous? Am I, like, but I can't do what I want to do and do this full time? I was doing five shows a day, a day, not a week, a day. And so he said, well, I mean, you have to prepare to do that. And I said, I know, and I needed to prepare myself, right? Because for me, I'd always worked for corporate. I've always worked for a news station and my identity was so wrapped up in my job, like I was the job, like I was the anchor, I was, that's all Tamsen was. Like I didn't know myself outside of that.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  So, um, yeah, people, a lot of people said like, are you, are you sure you want to do this? Why can't you just do that on the side and have fun with that and keep doing your job? And it took me about another year and then I made the decision, you know, I went to the head of the network, the CEO of the company, and I said, this is what I need to do. And he said, you know, a kiss or any way, can we figure this out? And so, um, they let me remove one of my shows, then I was only doing four shows. And I did that for about six months and then I finally said, no, it's, it's time for me to go. And so graciously, they let me out of my contract. I had a contract, I had all the things that I'd ever wanted, had all the things I'd ever wanted, but it was just so important for me to, to do that. And so I stepped away. Almost two years ago now.

• 58:15Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah, I felt that way too. Like I had everything I wanted. I had gotten to what had always been my goal. Program director.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:23Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You know, respected in the community, but like this menopause thing was screaming, screaming, screaming.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 58:28Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  This is what you need to be doing.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  I was doing news and I was over here on the side like the 39 symptoms of, and I couldn't stop. I just couldn't stop.

• 58:37Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So what would you go back and tell yourself now that you have all this education and knowledge, you know, to that, that 40 something year old Tamsen, sitting in the chair, losing her words? If you would have been the anchor sitting next to her?

• 58:50Speaker 01

  I would, I would have stopped. I would have been like, listen, I know what's going on with you. And I don't want you to be alarmed. I want you to just hear me and not feel insulted or shamed by it. But this is what you need to go do. I would have already had a doctor ready. Here's a doctor. I just had to do the information and you need to go do this. And you know, I have done that when I have women that are coming and working with me or on my team. I'm like, I'm not telling you this just because this is what we're talking about all the time, but I think this is what's happening. I don't feel any kind of hesitation of saying it to another woman now. And I think that that's where we have to get. Is not feeling scared to insult somebody or, or they're going to take it the wrong way because this is our health. And they've got to get that help sooner rather than later.

• 59:30Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Do you think the needle's moving though? We're getting less resistance to this conversation?

• 59:34Speaker 01

  I do in some areas.

• 59:36Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I mean, I feel like the algorithm is just serving me this 24/7.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 59:39Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And my husband's like, I see none of what you're talking about.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  I know. So it sends it to me 24/7 too. And, but I do think that it's changing. And I do think that I hear the conversation from people that, you know, differently than I, than I did before, for sure. And I'm like, either they've caught it from me or they are really seeing it, you know, differently. And so I do, I think it's a big conversation. I think that we know it's in mainstream media. I think that there's no question about that. I think that I'm, I want, I want to be careful because when we hit this side of it, we want to be careful of people just being in the conversation for being in the conversation.

• 1:00:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  We want it to be that we're educating. We want it to be that it's helping and serving women constantly.

• 1:00:18Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  And I think as long as we're doing that, then that is the right thing.

• 1:00:21Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So you're, you know, kicked down some doors in, in media. Your social media presence is huge as well.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Your social media presence is huge, my friend.

• 1:00:28Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Thank you. Um, I had no idea that was going to happen, by the way.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  I don't think any of us did.

• 1:00:33Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You wake up and you have another, I remember like in the early days making a video and like running to my kids and saying, is this, is this mean viral? What is this? You know, like, how many views does it take? And like just seeing the response was just overwhelming. I do think a lot of what happened on social with me was being at the right place at the right time with the real message that was resonating. I was just validating people's symptoms. I said the word frozen shoulder one day and I got 10 million hits, you know, of women like blowing up my DMs, like what? So what's the next door you're going to kick in?

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  We're going to kick in the before, you know, before the pause door for sure. So I feel like that's the, that's the millennials and see where that goes from there because I think that's a really big one. And I'm really enjoying the podcast. I really love that because that gets me back to my journalism roots, which, you know, it allows me to combine the two worlds that I really do love. And then I think what, what's, what's exciting about this time is not knowing where it goes next. Like I could never have predicted in the two years that we're in where I would be even right this minute. And I don't think you could either. I don't think, if we go back and rewind, like where were Tamsen and Mary Claire two years ago? We'd have, I, I mean, I think we were in Vegas at a, at a, at a QVC thing. We've crisscrossed the country together. We, we meet up in different cities and like speak on a stage and then leave and then hug each

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  other and then get on Instagram, you know? And so I can't imagine, like I get excited thinking like, where am I going to be in a year?

• 1:01:57Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I know.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  It's, it's amazing.

• 1:01:58Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  It's awesome. Do you feel like menopause has given you purpose?

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  I know it's given me purpose. I also know that the community has given me purpose. And I think that that more than anything else has been really remarkable. And friends like you, quite frankly, you know?

• 1:02:12Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What's the favorite part of the community?

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  My favorite part of the community is being picked up the phone at any moment of any time of day and be like, hey, girl, I gotta say something to you. Can you, can you help me with this? Can you talk to me? You and I've done it to each other recently. That's my favorite part.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  That validates a couple of different things that women's really do support each other and also that we've always got somebody to lean on that really gets us. And I think I want everyone to have that.

• 1:02:37Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah, me too. For the women listening, there's so many out there who tell me they feel lost, that they feel like they're losing themselves. And you know, I do, like you, have people stopping me on the street. You've changed my life. And I feel like those women, the ones who are still struggling, they haven't found the community.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:56Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  They haven't found the right partner and a clinician. They haven't found, you know, what would you say to her?

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh. Tune in and stay in touch with all of us, first of all, because I do think there is something that is very sound with seeing more and more people going through this. But I would say that you have to find somebody that can help you with those symptoms. Because I think most of the time, those come from very physical things, right? They come from not being able to sleep, feeling like you're going crazy. And I know it. Bleeding and not knowing why, gaining weight, not being able to figure it out, brain fog. Between sleep and brain fog, just those two can make you feel so lost.

• 1:03:33Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  So I would say that's the first step. And I think the second step is really focusing on that provider. And if you have a to do list every day, put that on the top, put that on the top, put that on the top before anything else that you do. Because if you're not getting that help, you can't do the rest of that. And I do really realize how important that is now. I think before we'd be like, oh, maybe spend some time, you know, doing this or that, or you know,

• 1:03:57Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Do some yoga.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  Do some, yeah.

• 1:03:59Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I love yoga, but you know.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Me too. But like, lighting a candle is not going to help you get more sleep.

• 1:04:03Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Not going to resuscitate your ovaries.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  It's not going to do that. And so taking charge of that is so important. And I think that that's what you have to do before anything else.

• 1:04:10Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  Anything else.

• 1:04:11Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Menopause often feels like this, that society, that the world, it's time to slow down, it's time to become invisible, it's time to hit pause. What are you doing to focus on unpausing at this part of your life?

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Oh, traveling more, I think, being receptive to things that like, instead of having to always have a plan, like, I gotta do this, I gotta do that, I gotta do this. I think that that is a huge part of where I get my freedom and my peace right now.

• 1:04:36Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love it, actually.

• 1:04:38Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Well, I'm so happy you came on the podcast today.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  I'm so happy to be here!

• 1:04:41Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I love this journey with you.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  I love it with you. I really do.

• 1:04:44Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And I can't wait to see what you do next. I can't wait for the documentary.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Oh, I can't wait to see what you do next, my friend.

• 1:04:51Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  As a reminder to our audience, you can order Tamsen's book, How to Menopause, on Amazon. You can also listen to Tamsen's podcast, The Tamsen Show, wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on YouTube. And of course, you can follow her at Tamsen Fidel on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn. I'd love to hear from you about this topic or anything else that's on your mind. You can find me on Instagram at Dr. Mary Claire and get honest and accurate information on health, fitness, and navigating midlife at thepauselife.com. If you're loving this podcast, be sure to click Follow on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. While you're there, leave us a

• 1:05:34Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  review and be sure to share the show with the women you love. We would be so grateful. You can also find full episodes on YouTube at Dr. Mary Claire. UnPaused is presented by Odyssey in conjunction with Pod People. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Claire Haver. The views and opinions expressed on UnPaused are those of the talent and guests alone and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. No part of this podcast or any related materials are intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.