Commusings: In Menopause . . . Any Questions? by Tamsen Fadal

Dear Commune Community,

On Wednesday, I had the honor of interviewing today’s featured essayist, Tasmen Fadal, the author of the new book How to Menopause for the Commune podcast. You might wonder why anyone rucking a Y chromosome would be so interested in menopause. Well, I have three daughters, whom I lovingly dub my estrogen footprint. 

At the conclusion of my conversation with Tasmen, the tables were turned and I became the interviewee. She asked, “Why is it important for men to educate themselves about women’s health?”

This query spontaneously triggered a memory – one of my proudest moments. A few years back, I picked up my youngest daughter, Micah, from dance. She hopped into the passenger seat with her dance bag in tow. As I maneuvered out of the crowded parking lot, Micah said, with complete nonchalance, “Dad, I got my period.”

My heart swelled but I kept my composure. “Should we go to CVS?” I rejoined calmly.

“No,” she said. “I got it. I just wanted you to know.”

I don’t need to analyze this for you. The ease with which she confided in me says it all. 

Women’s health should never be taboo. All women should feel as safe and unjudged as Micah. 

Tasmen’s book is an honest and beautifully crafted guide for women in mid-life (and for the men who love them). I am thrilled to feature an excerpt here.

In love, include me,
Jeff

P.S. I also recently told this story on video. Please consider sharing it!

P.P.S. I’d be so appreciative if you picked up a copy of my new book GOOD STRESS. Purchase it here and we’ll throw in a bunch of bonus goodies including Commune courses from Dr. Gabor Mate, Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Zach Bush, and my better three-quarters, Schuyler.

 • • •

In Menopause . . . Any Questions?

This is an excerpt from How to Menopause by Tamsen Fadal

On November 19, 2019, at 10:30 p.m., I heard myself saying those words out loud. A minute earlier, delivering the evening news on television as I’d done for nearly thirty years, I could not remember how to pronounce the word subpoena. As a prime-time news anchor with a very public job, this was obviously a problem.

It had been happening more and more often in recent weeks. I would read the news from the teleprompter, but then I would get to an ordinary word and ask myself, “What is that word?” I couldn’t get it from my brain to my mouth, so I had to skip it. I knew that if you were listening closely, a lot of my sentences didn’t make total sense. Understandably, I’d begun feeling nervous on the air, something that had not happened for years.

Tonight, though, was different. My heart started beating very hard against my chest. As I broke for a commercial, I felt a hot blast from inside—an epic eruption that instantly superheated the surface of my skin. Sweat began to trickle down my hairline and darken the armholes of my sheath dress, as if I had just run a 5K. I had no idea how intense some hot flashes can be, or even that I was experiencing one, but I knew I was not going to be okay on the air.

That’s when I heard myself saying, “If I fall over, somebody catch me.”

In a studio full of men, only the sports anchor turned and looked at me.

“Tamsen,” he frowned, “you okay?”

“Sort of,” I told him. My voice sounded very far away. My heart was racing out of control. Sweat was dripping down my neck, between my breasts.

And then I felt him taking me by the arm, and we were walking out of the studio, down the hall to the women’s restroom. I felt as if I were going to pass out or be sick. Once inside, I did something I would never do if I were in my right mind. I lay down on the cool floor—germs be damned—and closed my eyes. I tried to breathe. I had been an anchor for three decades, and this was the first time I would not finish a show.

That night, riding home in a taxi, I watched the city pass by in a blur of lighted buildings and thought about the last few months. That word recall had become a consistent problem. And there had been more strange things happening, including restlessness, insomnia, anxiety, and weight gain. Could it be my thyroid? My heart? Or worse—my brain?

When I went to the doctor, he told me it was stress. “Why don’t you meditate?” he’d asked with a condescending smile. “Try being more mindful.”

Mindful of what? I thought. I hadn’t been anxious that night. I had been happy. It was Friday, and I was looking forward to the weekend. Then this—was it a panic attack?—had come on like a storm.

I felt a deep sense of shame and embarrassment. What was wrong with me?

Little did I know, there was nothing wrong with me. I was not imagining things. I was not sick. I did not have an anxiety disorder. What had happened was that I had run smack-dab into the best-kept secret out there.
 

I’ll tell you one word I never saw on the teleprompter: menopause. But that’s the one I saw staring back at me from my patient portal a few months later.

After weeks of going from doctor to doctor, I finally learned the truth. My gynecologist, whom I’d been seeing for twenty years, dropped a bomb on me in a curt, four-word message to my patient portal:

“In menopause . . . any questions?”

It arrived as my boyfriend (now husband) Ira and I were boarding a plane back to New York City after a weekend away.

I stared at my phone. Those four words stared back.

“In menopause.” How could that be? Even though my previously regular periods had become pretty erratic over the last several years, I was shocked. I thought my cycles had just been thrown off by work stress, anxiety from my divorce, a new relationship, an aging parent, and everything else that had been preoccupying me.

I turned to Ira and said, “I’m in menopause.” I’m not sure that any man knows how to respond to that. Our row was called, and as we got in line to board the plane, I felt the tears coming.

As our plane flew us home, I flashed back to some super odd times over the past several years. One time, I had bled for an entire month. At work during newscasts, I’d craftily hide a tampon in my cleavage and run to the bathroom in the commercial breaks, constantly battling the heavy bleeding that soaked through everything. (In my case, I’d also had endometrial polyps—overgrowths of the lining of the uterus that can be either benign, precancerous, or cancerous [mine were benign]—that can contribute to irregular bleeding, which I assumed had caused the bleeding. I’d get the polyps removed, and then start bleeding erratically again, which explains why I hadn’t realized that I had experienced that hallmark of menopause—going a full twelve months without a period.)

And there was more: My sleep had been off for years. The woman who used to fall asleep the minute her head hit the pillow spent a lot of time sleeping on the couch in hopes that a change of environment would bring on a good night’s rest. I had started losing my hair. My arms were changing, and so was my waist (without any alterations to my eating or exercise). And then there were the times my body felt like an inferno, and I was sure I was coming down with something.

Turns out I already had it: menopause.

I didn’t recognize the changes as being hormonally related because no one was talking about what women’s hormones go through in midlife—least of all my doctor. Even though millions upon millions of women were experiencing the exact same thing. We were all feeling lost, alone, confused, less confident, and self-conscious about the fact that we no longer recognized our bodies or ourselves.

And we had no idea how to menopause.

At the time—just a few short years ago—menopause was never a word any of us spoke aloud, much less perimenopause. I certainly never mentioned them, either in private or in all my years on television. We reported on lots of studies on heart disease, how to make sure you get enough sleep, and the best foods to eat. And, being an ’80s girl, I’m an expert on every diet under the sun.

But I didn’t know a damn thing about menopause.

If I thought about it at all, I believed it was something that happened just before you die, and hoped I wouldn’t be around for it.

Little did I know menopause would completely change the direction of my life and give it a purpose. After spending thirty years as a journalist chasing stories and hurricanes from the mountains of Afghanistan to the coast of Florida, now all anyone wants to talk to me about when I show up to a house party or a night out with friends is . . . menopause.

Even though we’re talking about menopause more than we ever have before, we’ve still only scratched the surface.

Tamsen Fadal is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, author, documentary filmmaker, and social media’s “midlife mentor.” After more than three decades as a news anchor, Tamsen pivoted her career towards women’s advocacy, guiding her audience of 4+ million (50+ million monthly views) through midlife and beyond. She is the creator and executive producer of the PBS documentary, The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause, which has been viewed by over 1 million women across 350+ cities and 42 countries, and the author of her new book, How To Menopause: Take Charge of Your Health, Reclaim Your Life, and Feel Even Better than Before (Hachette 2025).

Excerpted from How to Menopause by Tamsen Fadal. Copyright © 2025 by Tamsen Fadal. Reprinted with permission of Balance Publishing, an imprint of Hachette Book Group. All rights reserved.