Welcome!
I’m Madeleine Collins, a journalist and former senior magazine editor of 20+ years, a busy mom of two daughters, a wife, and a (currently) 54-year-old woman.
I’ve created this health and wellness platform for women in midlife by combining my professional background with my own personal experiences, to help others demystify the physical and emotional challenges we face during this hugely significant time of our lives.
I was inspired to start the website because for the past 9 or so years it feels like one confusing physical and/or emotional change after another has occurred including:
- debilitating hormonal migraines
- shifting teeth and severe gum recession
- Morton’s neuroma in both feet
- a crackling knee that’s never gone away
- foggy brain and weird anxiety
- lingering family issues that still bother me (aren’t we supposed to have all that worked out by now?)
- recurrent neck pain
- and of course, the bewildering onset of perimenopause and menopause.
This website is for all women navigating their 40s and 50s, because while it’s easy to attribute a lot of the physical changes to getting older, the symptoms of perimenopause can be life-changing for so many of us, especially when we’re not armed with knowledge about what’s happening to us.
Some articles are inspired by my own questions and challenges, many come from conversations with friends, while others are instigated by news stories that I dig deeper into.
I’ll be focusing on both physical and emotional aspects of women’s health in addition to menopause issues, including parenting, spirituality, relationships, caring for ageing parents, and more. With the advice of board-certified medical professionals and other wellness experts, I’ll break down challenges and offer answers, support and solutions that can hopefully help you.
And while we all experience midlife with different challenges, women are often more interconnected than we think. The words of strangers can be so powerful when they resonate, so that’s why a special part of the website is dedicated to your own personal stories for the Your Stories page, if you would like to share. Not just about what the doctors tell us, but how you’ve met with a challenge and found a way to deal with and/or overcome it.
If you’d asked me years ago what life would look like at 54, I’d probably have thought I’d be well on my way to having all the answers. But that’s not the beauty of this journey of twists and turns that we call life!
And I would love to hear from you. What stories would you like covered? What are you struggling with that I can help find answers for? Do you have a personal story you would like to share? If you’re not comfortable writing it, I can interview you, write it up and you get full editorial approval. It’s your story! Please contact me here any time. And please do leave comments at the end of articles in case your advice or experience on the subject can help others.
Thanks so much for being here,
Maddy x