I knew something had to change when my partner found me
crumpled on the floor next to the bed, sobbing.
Here's what I wish someone had told me in at 43.
For all of my thirties and into my early forties, my body worked. I ate mostly well, I moved most days, I went to bed when I was tired, I woke when the alarm went off. I wasn't thinking about any of it. None of it was a system; it was just how my body was.
Then somewhere around 43, it stopped. Not all at once. A bad night here, a stubborn ten pounds there. Random feelings of rage popping up out of nowhere. Nightsweats I thought were anxiety. Brain fog I thought was exhaustion. Chronic pain in my shoulders and back. A flat, gray feeling I had never known before, in a life I was supposed to love.
I went to my doctor. She ran labs. The labs came back "normal." He suggested journaling and sent me to therapy.
I started therapy. She offered me an antidepressant. I turned it down.
After multiple shoulder surgeries to fix what we thought was wrong, I still had pain. MRI's showed nothing. The doctor gently asked if it could be in my head.
I went home and cried in my closet, so no one would hear, because I knew — the way you know — that whatever was happening was not just in my head, and that handing me a prescription was not the answer to it.
The night I remember most clearly,
I had been awake since 3am. I made it through my workday and dinner. My partner was watching tv. I went into the bedroom and checked my email. I had received a typical message from my ex-husband and it sent me down a rabbit hole of despair. My partner found me crumpled on the floor next to the bed, sobbing. Where had this come from?
After that night, and a very loving pep-talk, I stopped believing I was broken. I wasn't broken. I was doing everything right - eating, exercising, stretching, therapy, trying to sleep enough - but something was still affecting every system in my body.
I was in perimenopause - in a body that had changed, in a system that hadn't caught up to what that meant, with a life that required me to keep showing up for everyone while privately struggling with pain and brain fog.
Nobody told me. My mother didn't talk about it. My friends weren't talking about it yet. My doctors hadn't been trained in it. There were no posts on socials or influencers talking about it yet. So I just struggled through.
I wasn't broken. I was in perimenopause - in a body that had changed, in a system that hadn't caught up.
Along the way, something else happened.
Years later, after I had started HRT, towards the end of perimenopause, I saw an ad on Instagram that had been liked by a high school friend. From there, I did a deep dive into perimenopause and menopause. It explained so much of what was happening to me.
I also started noticing a pattern in my female coaching clients. In most cases they were informed of perimenopause but not educated. They all had the same missing piece: they had the information (from the books), they had the prescriptions (from the telehealth services), they had the validation (from the Reddit threads and Facebook groups). What they didn't have was someone walking with them for the six months it actually takes to change sleep, strength, energy, and how you feel in your own skin.
So I built that. With my background as a National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach, then as an ACSM Certified Exercise Physiologist - I built a method specifically for perimenopausal women, drawn from the research of Dr. Mary Claire Haver, Stacy Sims, and Dr. Vonda Wright, and filtered through my own experience of doing the work on myself first.
That's the work I do now. I'm a coach because I had to become my own first — and because no woman should have to rebuild in the dark the way I did.
Credentials
National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach
The clinical standard in health coaching. Requires an approved training program, a minimum of 50 supervised coaching sessions, and a national board exam. Held by a small fraction of working health coaches.
ACSM Certified Exercise Physiologist
Not a personal training certification — exercise physiology. The clinical science of how the body responds to exercise, including across hormonal changes. Means I don't write workouts, I program them.
Experience
My clinical coaching practice includes work with Spring Health and the Calm App, where I've coached professionals navigating stress, burnout, and life transitions — which means I've spent years working with the exact demographic The Rebuild is built for, in a clinical mental health setting.
Continuing education
I've focused my continuing education on menopause — attending menopause-specific classes, weekend-long women's longevity conferences, and menopause-specialist coaching training. Because the standard health coaching curriculum doesn't cover what this stage of life actually requires, and someone has to do the work of bridging that gap.
What I work on with my clients
My method is built on four pillars: sleep, nutrition, exercise, and stress management. They're not revolutionary on their own — what's different is how they're applied to a perimenopausal body.
Sleep comes first, because nothing else works without it. Nutrition is built around protein, fiber, and blood sugar stability. Exercise is strength training, programmed properly, because muscle is the most important organ for longevity, metabolic health, and bone density in women our age. Stress management is nervous system regulation — the practical work of getting out of fight-or-flight so the body can heal.
The pillars are the what. The deeper work — and the work I care about most — is the why. Why you're doing what you're doing. Whether it aligns with what you value. What you want your real, finite, precious energy to go toward. When we answer those questions first, the pillars have something to serve. That's when they hold.
The rest of me
I'm a mother of three. My youngest has special needs, which means I've spent more than a decade navigating the healthcare system as an advocate for someone else, and more than a decade learning how to hold a life together when parts of it are genuinely hard.
A lot of what I know about boundaries, pacing, nervous system regulation, and asking the right questions in a medical appointment, I learned there first. It's why I don't believe in one-size-fits-all advice. No one's life looks like the stock photo.
I have an amazing partner. He's a good man who has been patient with the version of me that was figuring this out, and honest with the version of me that is now on the other side. He is supportive and pushes me when I doubt myself.
I have a small circle of women friends who have been doing this alongside me — some a few years ahead, some a few years behind. None of us is doing this alone, by design.
I live in Northern California. I read more than I should and sleep more than I used to. I lift heavy things three times a week. I drink less than I once did and eat more protein than I thought possible.
I'm a former collegiate athlete and triathlete. I did my most recent sprint triathlon at the age of 52.
I still have hard days. I still have nights when my sleep goes sideways. The difference now is that I know what to do about them, and I'm not scared or frustrated anymore.
That's the person you'd be working with.
Why I do this work
Because too many women, for too long, have been suffering quietly through a phase of life that nobody warned them about and nobody taught them to navigate.
They show up at work. They show up for their kids. They show up for everyone. And they stop showing up for themselves — because nobody taught them that this version of showing up requires a different kind of plan.
They are not broken. They are not lazy. They are not crazy. They are women whose bodies have changed, in a system that hasn't caught up to what that means. They deserve a coach who knows the difference.
That's who I try to be.
