Perimenopause WTF?

“I was having a hard time finishing sentences. I was having a hard time looking people in the eye. I was not understanding what was going on with my body.”
Alison Gary knew something had changed. She was experiencing sleepless nights, brain fog, joint pain, and difficulties in her relationship. But when she sought help, she was met with advice to lose weight, try couples therapy, and read a book about assertive communication.
In this episode of Perimenopause WTF?!, part of our Seen & Heard series, Alison, creator of Wardrobe Oxygen, joins women’s psychiatrist and Menopause Society Certified Practitioner Dr. Harita Raja, Founder and Medical Director of Bethesda Women's Mental Health to talk about finding answers, navigating mental health in midlife, and getting care that considers the whole person.
In this conversation:
Brain fog, difficulty focusing, and questions around ADHD in perimenopause.

How symptoms can affect work, parenting, confidence, and relationships.

Navigating grief while your body is changing.

Alison’s experience with hormone therapy, medication, and therapy.

Weight bias and the frustration of having symptoms treated in isolation.

The difference it makes when a health professional takes the time to listen.

From the conversation
“It just seemed to clear the air a little bit so that I could be myself again.” — Alison Gary
“We really need to have that primary care of perimenopause seen as the gold standard, as opposed to the care only women who seek out get.” — Dr. Harita Raja
Find the right care with Perry
Finding someone who understands perimenopause shouldn’t be this hard. Discover health professionals across specialties and build the care team that’s right for you, near you or online, at heyperry.com.
Health professionals: become part of the future of perimenopause care
Deepen your expertise with expert-led education and the Perimenopause Certificate® at Perry Academy, and be part of Perry’s perimenopause care navigator, helping women find their way to professionals like you.
Follow Perimenopause WTF?!, leave a rating or review, and share this episode with someone who needs to feel seen and heard.

What happens when breast cancer treatment ends, but you’re still navigating everything it changed?
In this episode of Seen & Heard, Trish Michelle, Patient Advocate & Public Speaker, Founder of Reclaim October + COO of The Breasties, joins Dr. Kameelah Phillips, board-certified OB-GYN, menopause specialist, and founder of Evolve Gyn, for an honest conversation about breast cancer, menopause, and life after treatment.
Trish shares the physical and emotional impact of her experience, what she wishes her healthcare team had understood, and why survivorship deserves more attention.
Together, they discuss:
Navigating menopause after breast cancer.

The impact of losing breasts and ovaries.

Holding grief and gratitude at the same time.

Feeling unheard in healthcare and learning to trust your instincts.

Finding support and rebuilding a full life after treatment.

About our guests
Trish Michelle
Patient Advocate & Public Speaker
Founder, Reclaim October + COO, The Breasties
Dr. Kameelah Phillips
Board-certified OB-GYN, menopause specialist, and founder of Evolve Gyn, a practice focused on gynecology and midlife care in New York City. She is also the author of The Empowered Hysterectomy: Your Complete Handbook to Diagnosis, Decision, and Treatment.
Resources
Explore Dr. Phillips’ practice: Evolve Gyn.
Find her book: The Empowered Hysterectomy.
Healthcare professionals: deepen your knowledge of perimenopause and menopause care with multidisciplinary CME/CE education at Perry Academy.
About Seen & Heard
Seen & Heard is a series from Perry’s Perimenopause WTF? podcast, where women share their stories and healthcare professionals listen, respond, and bring clinical perspective.
Learn more at heyperry.com.

From Postpartum to Perimenopause: Pamela Brown & Dr. Sharon Malone on Women’s Changing Bodies
Women go through so many changes, yet we’re often left to connect the dots ourselves.
In this episode of SEEN & HEARD, CNN’s Pamela Brown, joins Dr. Sharon Malone for an honest conversation about motherhood, perimenopause, and understanding your body when things start to feel different.
Pamela shares her personal experience with postpartum OCD and brings that openness to a broader conversation about women’s health. At 43, she reflects on a stage of life familiar to many women: raising children while trying to understand changes in your own body, often with more questions than answers.
Dr. Malone brings her clinical perspective to the transition from the reproductive years into perimenopause. Together, they make space for the questions women don’t always know when, where, or how to ask.
How do you recognize a new chapter when you’re still in the middle of another? Where do you turn for clear information? And how do you make sure your concerns are heard?
This is a conversation about the experiences behind those questions. About sharing what we’ve been through, learning what may come next, and feeling more confident asking for the care and support we need.
About our guests
Pamela Brown is a CNN anchor and chief investigative correspondent and the host of Body Language by CNN. Through her reporting and willingness to share her own experiences, she brings attention to women’s health stories that too often go unspoken.
Dr. Sharon Malone is a women’s health physician and author of Grown Woman Talk. She helps women better understand their bodies, navigate healthcare, and advocate for themselves throughout their lives.
Explore more from Pamela and Sharon
• Watch Body Language by CNN, hosted by Pamela Brown, for more candid stories about women’s health.
• Read Grown Woman Talk by Dr. Sharon Malone for guidance on understanding your health and taking an active role in your care.
Continue learning with Perry Academy
Women’s experiences are at the heart of better perimenopause care. Perry Academy helps health professionals build the knowledge to recognize perimenopause, ask better questions, and support the whole person.
Through the Perimenopause Certificate® and ongoing multidisciplinary education, Perry Academy brings together expert perspectives from across specialties to support more informed, patient-driven care.
Explore the certificate, membership options, and CME/CE opportunities at Perry Academy.
Looking for community? Visit heyperry.com.
SEEN & HEARD by Perry brings lived experience and expert perspectives together for honest conversations about women’s health.

What does it feel like to face breast cancer at 19—and experience menopause symptoms while your friends are in a completely different stage of life?
In this episode of Seen & Heard, actress, content creator and women’s health advocate Miranda McKeon shares her experience of being diagnosed with stage 3 hormone-positive breast cancer at just 19. Now 24 and almost five years cancer-free, she speaks about symptoms that can be difficult to explain, feeling isolated from her peers, and the emotional weight of a cancer diagnosis.
Joining Miranda is her own oncologist, Eleonora Teplinsky, MD, author of Beyond The Pink, a board-certified medical oncologist specializing in breast and gynecologic cancers. Together, they talk about the grief, trauma and everyday experiences that survival statistics don’t capture.
This conversation explores:
Facing breast cancer as a young adult.

Experiencing menopause symptoms when no one expects them.

Feeling out of step with your peers.

Making room for grief and emotion.

Life between diagnosis, treatment and survivorship.

About our guests
Miranda McKeon is an actress, content creator and women’s health advocate, founder of Fill Your Tank, and creator of #PINK365 the podcast.
Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky is Head of Breast and Gynecologic Medical Oncology at Valley Health System in Paramus, NJ, and Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She hosts Interlude – Women’s Cancer Stories with Dr. Teplinsky and is the author of Beyond the Pink: Navigating Life, Health, and Breast Cancer.
Connect with Dr. Teplinsky:
Instagram: @drteplinsky

Website: drteplinsky.com

Book: Beyond the Pink

About Seen & Heard
The soul of Seen & Heard is simple: the woman’s story comes first. Each episode brings lived experience into conversation with the professionals who provide care. It’s a space to speak openly, ask difficult questions and feel understood—because women deserve care that listens to their whole story.
Created by Perry, Seen & Heard is a series from Perimenopause WTF? and part of our work to close the gap in women’s healthcare. Through Perry Academy, we bring that same commitment into provider education, helping healthcare professionals better understand and support women through perimenopause and menopause.
Explore Perry Academy: perry.academy

Breast Cancer at 38, Menopause, and My One Chance at Motherhood
What changes in healthcare when we stop starting with the expert and start with the woman who lived it?
Seen & Heard is built around lived experience. Real women tell their health stories in their own words: what happened, what it felt like, where care worked, where it fell short, and what they wish their healthcare professionals had understood. Healthcare professionals join the conversation not to explain away those experiences, but to listen, reflect and explore what we can learn from them.
In this episode, Sarrah Strimel Bentley sits down with clinical psychologist Dr. Rachel L. Goldman for an extraordinarily personal conversation about breast cancer, treatment-induced menopause, fertility loss, surrogacy, motherhood and the emotional reality of having your life and body change almost overnight.
Sarrah was 38 when she found a lump in her breast. After initially being reassured that she was young, had no family history and was low risk, she trusted what she knew about her own body and kept pushing for answers. She was ultimately diagnosed with stage 2 invasive ductal carcinoma and underwent a double mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation.
But cancer affected far more than her breasts.
Treatment forced Sarrah into menopause and eventually left her without ovarian function. Before chemotherapy, she and her now-husband went through IVF and created one viable embryo. They called him Chance: their one chance at having a genetically related child.
That embryo ultimately became their son through surrogacy.
Sarrah and Dr. Goldman unpack the parts of these experiences that rarely fit neatly into a medical chart: grief and joy existing at the same time, the loss of control, the pressure to be “brave,” fertility decisions made in the middle of a cancer diagnosis, navigating surrogacy, and the importance of healthcare professionals seeing the individual rather than simply the diagnosis.
They also talk about something at the heart of Seen & Heard: using your voice. When Sarrah encountered healthcare professionals who understood her story, she felt held as a whole person. When she didn’t feel seen or heard, she learned to speak up, ask questions and make herself part of the conversation.
Because lived experience isn’t an anecdote sitting outside of healthcare. It is information healthcare professionals can learn from.
Sarrah Strimel Bentley is a former Broadway showgirl, motivational speaker, women’s health advocate and toddler mom. She is the founder of A Chance For Life Foundation and Damn Good & Co.
Follow Sarrah on Instagram and TikTok at @sarrahstrimelbentley.
Rachel L. Goldman, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, author of When Life Happens, and Clinical Assistant Professor in Psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
Her work focuses on helping people navigate the moments in life they cannot control and developing practical tools to respond to stress, uncertainty and change.
Learn more about When Life Happens: When Life Happens
Seen & Heard is a Perry podcast built around a simple belief: better care starts with listening.
Each episode begins with a woman’s lived experience. Healthcare professionals are invited into that story to listen, ask questions and reflect on what her experience can teach us about delivering better care.
These aren't conversations about the “perfect patient journey.” They are about what healthcare actually feels like from the other side of the exam room.
Seen & Heard is brought to you by Perry, with this episode created in partnership with Bonafide.
For healthcare professionals who want to take these lessons further, Perry Academy provides multidisciplinary education in perimenopause and menopause care, helping professionals translate women’s lived experiences and the latest clinical knowledge into better everyday care.
Learn more at Perry Academy and the Perimenopause Certificate.