After a milestone birthday this year, I’ve found myself thinking more intentionally about many things: the work I take on, the kind of travel I engage in, the ways we show up in community, and the institutional knowledge we quietly pass along to one another.
And honestly? Nothing says institutional knowledge quite like hormones.
From pregnancy to postpartum to perimenopause and menopause, 100% of women go through profound physiological shifts. Around 77% of us, depending on the study, experience symptoms significant enough to feel like an extreme sport. Brain fog. Sleep disruption. Anxiety. Mood changes. Unexpected climate events at deeply inconvenient moments. Fun.
Yet somehow, in professions dominated by women, we rarely make space to talk about the ways these realities shape everyday wellbeing, leadership, confidence, cognition, or the very real experience of being caught between launching children and supporting aging parents while still showing up to care for our students, our teams, and everyone else.
Can you imagine sitting in your one-on-one with Mr. Renfro explaining why you’ve felt foggy lately? Is there even room in our professional lives to be less than our perfectly composed, unweepy, unsweaty selves?
There should be.
I recently wrote about this very thing for Edutopia. Read more here.
I’m also beginning conversations with schools and organizations through a new offering, Midlife Teaching: The Silent Factor in Educator Wellness, because this journey often begins in our 30s, not just later in life, and maybe it’s time we stopped whispering.