By HTE Founder, Erin Hughes.
That realisation would eventually send her travelling around Australia for 12 months, sitting down with experts, asking questions and trying to understand not simply what happens to women during perimenopause and menopause, but how we might move through it differently.
The result is The Modern Menopause Manual, a digital course Catherine created because she couldn’t find the resource she wanted for herself.
“I genuinely couldn’t find it,” she says. “I wanted a place to learn about perimenopause from someone who had no agenda to sell a book or a supplement.”
More importantly, she wanted the whole conversation.
“I wanted all sides of the conversation, both medical and holistic. Everywhere I looked, it felt like there were opinions rather than answers.”
And perhaps that is where the more interesting story begins.
Because for all the increasing conversation around menopause, there are still generations of women reaching perimenopause only to discover how little they were taught about what might happen to their bodies, minds and sense of self.
Catherine was one of them.
“I realised I knew nothing.”
There wasn’t a dramatic health crisis behind Catherine’s decision to begin researching menopause. Instead, there was a much quieter realisation.
She simply didn’t know enough.
Having spent more than ten years working within the health industry, that knowledge gap surprised her.
“I know how powerful preventative medicine, lifestyle and knowledge can be,” she says. “And I wanted this for myself.”
So she went looking for teachers.
Over the following year, Catherine travelled Australia meeting the people she describes as the mentors she wanted in her own life. Her criteria were as human as they were professional. She was looking for strong minds, healthy perspectives, women with wisdom and experts capable of helping her understand this chapter from different angles.
She sat down with specialists and mentors in person, filming cinematic interviews and gathering their knowledge into what would eventually become a collection of interviews, digital magazines and practical tools.
The idea was to create something women could return to when they needed it.
“Experts in your pocket,” as Catherine describes it.
But what she found during those conversations changed more than the course she was building.
It changed the way she thought about ageing.
What if menopause isn’t only about what we lose?
So much of the language surrounding menopause has traditionally centred on symptoms and decline.
Hot flushes. Brain fog. Hormonal changes. Sleep. Weight. Mood. Libido.
Those conversations matter. Women deserve honest information about what may happen to their bodies and the medical and holistic options available to them.
But Catherine became interested in another part of the story too: what might be gained.
“At MMM we focus on positivity and the opportunity of menopause,” she says.
“There is such a huge opportunity in how we can develop a robust mindset and even have a mindset shift.”
That doesn’t mean pretending the difficult parts don’t exist.
“There are gifts. There are also challenges,” Catherine says. “I feel so grateful to have a well-rounded perspective. It’s been pretty life-changing learning what I have.”
Perhaps that is the distinction missing from some conversations about menopause.
We don’t have to choose between describing it as terrible or declaring it empowering.
It can be complicated.
A woman can struggle with the physical reality of hormonal change while simultaneously discovering a different relationship with herself. She can miss parts of who she was and become curious about who she is becoming. She can seek medical help and make lifestyle changes. She can find some days extraordinarily difficult and still recognise possibility in the chapter ahead.
Knowledge doesn’t remove every challenge.
But it can remove some of the fear of not understanding what is happening.
Why are we waiting until women are struggling?
One of the strongest ideas to emerge from Catherine’s work is remarkably simple: women shouldn’t have to wait until they are in the thick of perimenopause to learn about it.
When asked what women could do earlier to prepare themselves physically, mentally and emotionally, Catherine doesn’t hesitate.
“There is so much that can be done,” she says. “The first thing is mindset. The second is nutrition and exercise. They are the big puzzle pieces.”
But there is another form of preparation she considers equally important.
Know your options.
“Know your holistic and medical options so you can be ready to make decisions.”
That ability to make informed decisions is important because there is no single menopause experience.
What works beautifully for one woman may not be appropriate for another. Personal circumstances, symptoms, medical history and preferences differ. Good information should therefore help women have better conversations with qualified health professionals, rather than tell every woman there is one correct path through menopause.
And sometimes, simply discovering that there are options can be powerful.
The invisible load doesn’t disappear at menopause
There is another reason this stage of life deserves a more nuanced conversation.
Perimenopause doesn’t arrive in isolation.
For many women, it intersects with demanding careers, teenagers or younger children, relationships, ageing parents, financial pressures and the enormous invisible workload that can accompany midlife.
Catherine knows that collision personally.
Asked what advice she would give women trying to juggle careers, relationships, motherhood and everything in between, she laughs at the idea that she has solved it.
“Right now I’m in week eight of solo parenting, so I’d love to hear if there’s a magic formula for this,” she says.
“It’s hard. I see you if this is you.”
It may be one of the most relatable things she says.
There is no perfectly optimised version of midlife.
Sometimes the person creating a resource to help other women navigate change is also standing in the kitchen wondering how she is going to get through the week.
Her relationship with ageing, confidence and identity?
“A work in progress,” she says.
And perhaps it always will be.
The gift of getting older
Of everything Catherine learned while creating The Modern Menopause Manual, one idea feels bigger than menopause itself.
It is the way we think about ageing.
“I wish that we lived in a society that honoured elders,” she says. “The campfire transfer of knowledge. The paving of the way.”
There is something beautiful in that image.
Women sitting together, passing knowledge from one generation to another. Not whispering about what happens to our bodies. Not arriving bewildered at a transition nobody properly explained. Not treating ageing as something to disguise or apologise for.
Instead, women ahead of us saying: Here is what I learned. Here is what surprised me. Here is what helped. Here are the questions you might want to ask.
Catherine wishes women could feel proud of reaching this stage of life.
“Proud to have been afforded the gift of ageing,” she says. “A gift that isn’t given to everyone.”
It is a perspective she didn’t have before beginning this work.
Before The Modern Menopause Manual, Catherine says she “honestly had no idea” what menopause would look like.
Today, the difference is “night and day”.
Learning from the experts who became the backbone of the project changed her understanding of the transition and, in turn, changed the way she thinks about her own future.
Which might ultimately be the most compelling argument for learning about menopause earlier.
Not because knowledge allows us to control every change our bodies will experience.
It doesn’t.
But because walking towards a new chapter knowing something about the terrain is very different from stumbling into it in the dark.
And maybe the modern menopause manual women need isn’t simply a manual at all.
Maybe it is the return of something women have always needed: informed voices, different perspectives, honest conversations and the knowledge of those who have walked ahead of us, passed back around the campfire.
Because ageing isn’t something women should have to fear in silence.
It is something we are fortunate enough to get to do.
