My Story

AN HONEST INSIGHT

My Story

Melanie Clarkson · April 2026 ·  6 min read

I was fit, confident and in control. I had built a career I loved, a life I was proud of, and a resilience I relied on. Then menopause arrived and quietly, gradually, it took almost all of that away. This is my story, and the reason I do what I do today.

I spent years working in the fitness industry, living an active, busy life. I handled stress well. I was the person who coped, who got on with things, who always found a way through.

Then, seemingly overnight, that person disappeared.

| I was told I was too young

I first noticed something was not right when I was 39. I was experiencing sporadic hot flushes and something just felt off. I went to my doctor, then another, then another. Each one said the same thing, you are too young for menopause.

I know now, from my training, that I was not too young. I believe I was already in perimenopause. But at the time I accepted what I was told, and when the hot flushes eventually settled after a couple of years, I assumed they must have been something else entirely and got on with my life.

| Then in 2022, I lost myself

When I was 46, I lost myself. Not gradually this time. It felt like overnight.

I did not connect it to menopause. Why would I? I had been told years earlier that I was too young, the hot flushes had stopped, and if I am honest, like most women I thought menopause just meant hot flushes anyway. So I had no framework for what was happening to me. I just knew that I was not myself, and I did not know how to get back.

The anxiety came first. Then the low mood. Then a strange, hollow feeling where my personality used to be. When I laughed, it did not feel real. When I was with people I loved, I felt disconnected. I had no zest for anything. I was going through the motions of my life without actually feeling present in it.

The joint pain took away my running, something I had always relied on to clear my head and regulate my mood. The night sweats disturbed what little sleep I was getting. The brain fog made me feel like I was disappearing from the inside. I forgot appointments. I forgot words. There were moments when I could not remember the names of people I knew well, and the shame of that was almost unbearable.

I could not cope with small everyday things that had never challenged me before. I reached a point where I could not face life feeling like this anymore. I knew something had to change.

Eventually, I made the heart-breaking decision to leave a job I loved, because even after reaching out, I did not get the support I needed to be able to stay.

| A holiday, a book, and a moment of clarity

It was on a holiday in Dorset that everything began to shift. I spotted an advertisement for Davina McCall's book, Menopausing. Something made me stop. I bought it, sat down with it, and for the first time in years, things started to make sense.

It did not fix me. But it gave me a language for what I was experiencing and helped me understand how to go back to my doctor and actually be heard this time.

With the right medical support, I began to feel some improvement. But I still needed more. I needed someone who understood not just the clinical side but what it actually feels like to live with this day to day. That is when I found a menopause coach, and that is when I truly began to get my life back.

| Why I do this work

I became a qualified menopause coach and deepened my knowledge of supporting women through this stage of life. But the longer I worked in this space, the more I saw the same patterns repeating.

Women being dismissed by their doctors. Women not recognising their own symptoms because nobody had ever properly explained what menopause can look like. Women leaving jobs they loved because their employers were not willing to make even the smallest of adjustments. Partners who desperately wanted to help but had no idea what was happening or what to say.

I lived every one of those experiences. And that is why my work now reaches beyond one-to-one coaching with women. I work with organisations to help them understand and properly support their employees through menopause. And I work with men, because I have seen first-hand what changes when the people around a woman actually understand what she is going through.

Menopause does not just affect women. It affects everyone around them. And the more people who understand that, the fewer women will have to go through it feeling as alone as I once did.

| You do not have to figure this out alone

If any part of my story sounds familiar, I want you to know that what you are feeling is real, it is valid, and there is a way through it.

Whether you are a woman navigating this yourself, a partner trying to understand, or an employer looking to support your team, I am here.