Ep.102 The Menopause Support Group: A Network of Support, Natural Alternatives and a Thriving Sisterhood

If you think back, even two years ago, the menopause conversation was still really stifled, and worse yet, resources and information were minimal. 

Enter our next guests to the podcast. Menopause pioneer, Gwen Harris, saw the need as far back as 2013 with the start of the Menopause Support Group. The organization grew organically to 11,000 members by 2018, and then Tina McDermott, a wellness coach, joined forces with Gwen.

The Menopause Support Group now spans the globe with well over 140,000 members in 120 countries, and out of this Menowave was born, an online, integrated care model for women in menopause.

Early menopause and perimenopause can ambush the unexpecting, leading to a storm of questions and concerns. Gwen and Tina join me in shining a beacon of hope for those navigating these tumultuous waters, detailing how their comprehensive health assessment bridges the gap between confusion and taking action. 

Pack your bags for a journey to Sedona, where 'Menopalooza' promises an oasis of self-discovery and sisterhood. These retreats offer members and care providers an opportunity to connect in a more intimate setting. Life-long bonds are made between the attendees through the profound impact of community and support, rewriting the narrative of menopause, one story at a time. 

Menopause Support Group Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/439232282854798

Menowave integrated care model
https://www.menowave.org/

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Transcript

Michele Folan: 0:00

If you are a midlife woman who's frustrated because you're trying to lose body fat, but what you've done in the past is no longer touching that muffin top Perhaps you're struggling to manage your sugar cravings or evening snacking. You want to build muscle, stay active and be mobile well into your later years? Well, listen, I have been in your shoes and can share a program with coaching and accountability to keep you on track, with daily at-home workouts and macro-based meal plans that produce sustainable results. All you need to do is decide that you are worth it and that you want to control the narrative. And how do I know this will work for you? I was a client and loved my results so much that I became a coach. Just go to the show notes of this episode and let's connect. I'd love to tell you more and work with you as your certified coach.

Michele Folan: 0:56

Now on to the show Health, wellness, fitness, health wellness, fitness, relationships and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. I'm your host, Michele Folan, and this is Asking for a Friend. Even two years ago, the menopause conversation was still really stifled and, worse yet, resources and information were really limited. Enter our next guest. Menopause pioneer Gwen Harris saw the need as far back as 2013, with the start of the Menopause Support Group on Facebook. The group grew organically to about 11,000 members by 2018, and then Tina McDermott, a wellness coach, joined forces with Gwen. The menopause support group now spans the globe to well over 140,000 members in 120 countries, and out of this, Menowave was born, which is an online integrative care model for women in menopause.

Michele Folan: 2:10

Welcome to Asking for a Friend, Tina McDermott and Gwen Harris. Hi, hi, it's really nice to meet you both. Hello, hi, I have to say I got on the menopause support group Facebook page and I was floored. The conversations that women are having and the support of all your members is astounding. Congratulations, thank you. Yeah, I mean I, after doing this podcast for the last two years, I have seen such holes in the whole menopause conversation and we are starting to see some changes right. We're starting to see it becoming a little more mainstream. But you, you all, were way ahead of your time, so it's really congratulations, thank you, thank you. I would love for you to share, first of all, how you got Menowave started. But first of all, how did you two meet, gwen? You take that one away.

Gwen Harris: 3:22

Okay, I'll take that one away. Okay, I'll take that one away. As you said, Michele, I started the menopause support group back in 2013, 2013 out of my own need, because I was hit with a ton of bricks by these horrible symptoms and I happened to be a crazy health nut and all that good stuff and couldn't understand what I was going through. So, just out of my need for community to find out if I was alone in this journey or if someone else was feeling this, I started the group After Good Morning America found me and featured me on their show.

Gwen Harris: 3:54

In January of 2018, the group exploded and is continuing to explode, and I came up with this idea because women were reaching out to me from all over the world saying we need to get together and do something fun, because girls love to get together and have fun.

Gwen Harris: 4:10

So I decided to form my own cruise company and start doing cruises around the world for women, and what I did was in order to find professionals like Tina, who are women, that offer a solution to women. Unlike me, I didn't have any expertise in menopause at the time, I put a post in the group and I asked women to reach out to me if they had a solution to women in menopause. Tina was one of those women that reached out to me back in 2018. And as we started collaborating and working together very quickly, we developed a trusting, close friendship. And then, as Menoway was birthed in my brain during COVID and I was sharing with her all this divine inspiration that was coming to me, I'll never forget the day that I called her up and said I have a name, and she said Gwen, you, you got to do something with this. And I said okay, girl, are you willing to put your money and your efforts where your mouth is and join me on this venture? And that's how it all happened.

Michele Folan: 5:12

Wow, Tina, you have anything to add.

Tina McDermott: 5:16

I love this group that we've nurtured over the years and we've grown at 146,000. I think when I met you, where were we when we met you at 18,000? I'm trying to remember. It was low and we just exploded over these years. It is an honor to be in business with you and especially to wrap our arms around as many women as we can to help them go through menopause. It's not fun to do this alone. I remember my mom not having anyone to talk to. She's an immigrant and she didn't like my mother-in-law that much and didn't have siblings and she was alone and I feel that pain of hers. And as I'm going through menopause and I'm just so blessed I'm so blessed to have Gwen in my life I'm so blessed blessed to have all of these women in our group and all of our care providers who will help us wrap our arms around these women and offer this love and this support to, to let them know that, a we hear you, b you're not alone and C you are loved.

Michele Folan: 6:27

Yeah, you know, I had a guest recently on the podcast and we were talking about our mothers and how it was just one of those things. Right, it was just, hey, you know, menopause is menopause and no one really talked about it and we found that sweeping it under the rug obviously wasn't doing anyone ever any favors. But I was curious, like what aha moments have you had in regards to the gaps in information and care out there?

Gwen Harris: 7:02

Oh, wow. That's a very loaded question and I can tell you some aha moments that really get to me Now that we do what we do and now that we have this global reach. It actually brings me to tears every time. I think about it and as I interview potential new care providers and I tell them this story every time, I think this is why we do what we do.

Gwen Harris: 7:27

We send out newsletters at least once a week and, of course, have our own podcast, but with these newsletters I get lots of responses to hear back from women in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand, Africa, India, countries around the world where they do not have care, and they thank us for what we're doing because they take our information in the newsletters and they've said we take it to our villages and we give this to women that they have hope. There is not enough money on the planet to get a gift back like that. Knowing we have this global reach into the villages of these indigenous countries across the world, that, to me, is my biggest aha in what we do and, frankly, keeps me going when the going gets rough.

Michele Folan: 8:14

You know, I was even going to ask you if you would share, you know, a couple stories that you know keep you getting out of bed in the morning, and I'm not sure you can top that one.

Tina McDermott: 8:27

Gwen can probably top that one. And I want to add something to what Gwen said is that and I hope I'm not disclosing too much, but I know many people know that you were brought up in Africa yeah, barefoot, and you know so you have a heart for these women who are in these indigenous tribes and really you've experienced it, you've been there and for them to be. I just got chills, gwen, because I it really just had. I had my aha, wow. That is what, why it really gets to your soul and into your cells when we send these newsletters out.

Michele Folan: 9:10

You know there is a population that I think another population I should say that gets overlooked, and I think that is women who have gone through cancer because they feel that their resources are super limited, because not all of them are candidates for HRT even, maybe even, vaginal estrogen. Have you found women in that realm to be clients of yours as well?

Gwen Harris: 9:39

We have, and that's what the great thing is about Menowave and our team of care providers. We have a wide range of care providers all professionals that are experts at what they do, to include functional medicine doctors that don't believe in HRT, that believe in lifestyle change, habit change, that give the women the information, as an expert, on how they can balance their hormones naturally, without any help at all other than change of a lifestyle or something like that. And so at Menowave we really take care of the total woman, you know mind, body, soul and spirit. It's the whole thing. And to have this wonderful range of over 40 care providers now we have from around the world that understand our vision, understand our mission, which our mission is to inspire women to cruise the mental wave with grace, gratitude, confidence and ease. And, yes, you can go at it without HR team, and we are really blessed to have these experts on our team.

Tina McDermott: 10:39

And I'd like to add to that, if I may, just to pick up on the cancer talk. My sister passed away from breast cancer some 11 years ago. She had metastatic breast cancer. She was diagnosed at the age of 23, passed away at the age of 48. And there's no way in the world that I would do HRT, the world that I would do HRT. I'm just, I'm not a candidate and I've done everything naturally and literally have pretty much cruised through. I'm not without my hills and valleys and all of that, but I really figured out a way, naturally, of how to be healthy through menopause and even how to lose weight. In menopause you can lose weight, you can control your thyroid, you can, even if without HRT, there are natural ways to be at ease deities through all of this, yeah.

Michele Folan: 11:39

So, Tina, I am first of all very sorry about your sister. That's sad and just you know my heart goes out to you and your family to lose someone that young. Another guest on my podcast we just recorded recently, we talked about this, about using diet and exercise and meditation and stress relief, sleep all these things that we may overlook. You know, hrt may not always be the answer and to be, you know, very transparent, I am on HRT, I had a hysterectomy years ago and it's it's been great for me, but again, it's not for everyone and not everyone wants to take something. So I think the fact that you're offering some alternatives is is fantastic and I am curious how you find I mean, you have a. Actually, when I, when I looked at the Menowave website, you have a whole host of experts and resources for women. How do you find your experts?

Tina McDermott: 12:52

They find us, michelle, they find you, they find us, just like I found she put out a post and I found her. But for the most part they reach out to us and and we connect. And yeah, gwen, for the most part does all of that okay, that's.

Gwen Harris: 13:11

That's interesting, because they want to be part of your program, because they're that passionate about it yeah, yeah, menopause is being talked about now, know, and, as you said earlier in the conversation, Michele, we started talking about it way before Oprah did, and now that the word is out there on the street, so to speak, people are really open to it and I frankly think it, in an odd way, is being celebrated, way is being celebrated, and so it's just kind of neat to see how the transition has taken since 2013, when I started that group, to where we are now. The trend has definitely changed and it's wonderful to be a part of it and it's wonderful to be offering solutions to women and being a friend, nothing else, knowing you're not alone and that you are being heard, and women know, when they come to our group, that they've found their tribe, and that's a big deal.

Michele Folan: 14:07

Yeah, I definitely saw that on the private Facebook page. I was, you know, scrolling through today and I mean it's just so fun to see a woman ask about midlife weight gain and people chiming in support and advice. And you know, you, we, I think in midlife we're all. We're all very in tune with other women and we have this support. That's just that maybe men don't necessarily have in their midlife years, so I think we're very lucky. There's one thing that I did notice, though there are a lot of young women and when I say young, 29, 30, 35 years old who are either in perimenopause or menopause. That can be certainly very scary to go through this that early, particularly if you haven't even had children yet, right? How are you able to help some of these women find resources that will help them manage this?

Gwen Harris: 15:17

Well, with environmental toxicity and surgically induced menopause, you know, cancer is so prevalent, all that sort of stuff. That's why we have women in the group that are young like that, and it is scary, it's really scary. And so the way it works I mean we continue to add hundreds of women a day to our group ever since we were on Good Morning America and what we do with Menowave is, although Menowave is a separate entity from the Menopause Support Group, the way it works together is, when a woman joins our group, we welcome her and then direct her back to our website to fill out our very comprehensive online health assessment. That health assessment, then, is availed to our care providers. The only people that have access to that information are our vetted care providers that can then, in turn, reach out to these women and offer them care.

Gwen Harris: 16:06

It's a big job. We will never get it done. We don't have enough care providers, obviously, to service the need, but all we can do is what we can do day in and day out, and so, earlier as I said, we take care of the total woman, and that has nothing to do with age. It has to do with your mind, body, soul and spirit. What are you going through, and that's where we are, and that's where our focus is.

Michele Folan: 16:32

So is there an actual coaching process? So you sign up, you do the care assessment? I'm kind of curious what that looks like.

Tina McDermott: 16:42

I can take that on if you'd like one. Yeah, so a woman joins our group and they can take the assessment if they would like. Right? Our care providers see these assessments and then they assess. Is this in my realm? Is this about? I'm about anxiety, for example, not me. I'm about weight loss, right? And if it's about weight loss, then I will follow up with them. I will send them an email, send them a video, a little video of me, a welcoming video, and then I will get them on the phone and talk to them. How can? What's going on with you? They want to be heard. They need to be heard. They haven't been heard most of their life.

Tina McDermott: 17:29

So, as a coach, I listen and I ask the appropriate questions and if they are a candidate for one of my programs, I will lead them into one of my programs. If they're not a candidate for one of my programs, I will lead them into one of my programs. If they're not a candidate for one of my programs and they really are a candidate for another, one of our care providers say they really need to work on their anxiety and I'm not an expert in anxiety I will send them to one of the other care providers, and that's the way it works. We have a whole system I don't know how a database that Gwen and I oh my gosh we've been developing. We've been fingers to the bone working on creating this huge program to be able to filter these women through to our care provider. So I hope that answers your question.

Michele Folan: 18:21

Yeah, it does, and I think a lot of women feel that their symptoms have been dismissed, that it's in their head or here, here's some Prozac and why don't you go play pickleball? I just don't think women are getting the answers, which is why they are reaching out to you, because they are at that point where you know they're, they're frustrated. So the fact that they know this is a safe space and that they're going to get listened to, um, you know, it's what a fabulous resource, thank you. I would love for you to share a couple of client success stories, because I'm sure you have many.

Tina McDermott: 19:07

I will share a success story of a woman going through menopause, not realizing that it was she was gaining weight. She knew she was gaining weight. She blamed it on thyroid issues, she blamed it on Lyme disease, she blamed it on menopause. Then she had menopause to blame it on right, and it was okay for her to gain five pounds a year. That's fine. I'm blaming it on this. It's just a phase that I'm going through, or that she's going through.

Tina McDermott: 19:44

Well, if you haven't already guessed, it's me. I'm telling you about me. This is my journey. Buying all larger clothes just to fit the menopausal body and this is coming from a health professional, right. And I lost 20 pounds over the last several months and I did it sustainably. I did it, um, very easy and it came off a lot in the beginning, but then it's like one or two pounds every other week, right. And I'm telling you the success story because I have Hashimoto's, I have suffered through Lyme, I've suffered through all of that and I can't do HRT. Oh, poor me, right? No, it's not for me.

Tina McDermott: 20:33

And I made a decision Gwen helped me make this decision, by the way I made a decision that I'm going to be the healthiest version of me and then I made it happen. And it's the same with the women in the group we have had through our care providers because, look, I've had many of my clients lose weight. Right, it's not just me, many of my clients just turn their entire life around, get rid of migraines, fit into their clothes that they've never fit into before and wow, like I was wowed at myself once I made the decision that it's not that difficult to lose weight and it can happen. And there's many, many, many stories within our group that people were just floored, working with our care providers, of how they can turn their health around by working with one of our doctors, our nurses, our coaches. So it's what gets me up in the morning with grace and gratitude and appreciation and love and want to get back to work and continue.

Gwen Harris: 21:47

I have a pretty cool story about someone in our group. She has been a member of our group for quite some time and because the group is so big, it is impossible unless they reach out to us specifically to know what's going on. This woman worked for a long time for the United Nations she is not an ambassador but might as well be and has lived all over the world. She was a very confident woman, basically worked on boards with men and she said her words were I could own these men because I have that confidence to own these men working for the UN. When she did not know she was in menopause. She thought she had Alzheimer's because, she said, I started very quickly to digress to the place that I could no longer write the reports or even understand the reports, that I could no longer write the reports or even understand the reports that I would print out. She said I developed such a fear of being around people and got to the place that I knew I could not even attend one of these board meetings again. I couldn't be in the presence of those men because I had no confidence. Obviously, then her anxiety went through the roof. Do you know? It was all menopause brain. She actually had to quit her job. She could no longer function on the job.

Gwen Harris: 23:06

She went on her own journey around the world in different places. She said I visited monks. She said I went to shaman, I went to all this kind of stuff, found the menopause support group and she said, through seeing and reading in the menopause support group first of all, that she's not alone and reading the stories of anxiety and brain fog and brain issues, that gave her the courage to say I don't have alzheimer's. She ultimately then became a menopause coach. Ah, and she actually reached out to me because she was a member of our group, saw the work that we did, realized she was not alone, said oh my gosh, this. Or saw the stories of other people, um, and one of our care providers that does quite a few lives in there said oh my gosh. So she went on her own trajectory to take care of herself and now is a menopause coach herself.

Michele Folan: 23:59

Talk about redefining yourself and jumping into a new chapter of life. I mean, that's phenomenal.

Gwen Harris: 24:07

Yeah, pretty amazing. Yes, absolutely, you just never know, with a group this size, who you're reaching. It can be that person in that village in an indigenous country, or it could be someone that works for the UN.

Michele Folan: 24:18

Yeah, yeah, but when people are at their wits end and they're not getting answers from their medical providers, they'll find you right, they do. So. You have a newsletter and you also offer girlfriend getaway retreats, and I'd love to hear a little bit more about these retreats and what your, what your goal is with them. I, we call them. We call them menopaloozas, menopaloozas.

Tina McDermott: 24:52

I love it. We love it. We call them menopaloozas because we want to have fun and we also want to embrace these women and we want to wrap our arms around their necks, as Gwen would say in person, and give them the support, the education, with our seminars. Our care providers are going to be there offering seminars and they're going to come away with a workbook that we're creating a workbook for and sections for each of our care providers so that they can come away with their own blueprint of how they can be supported through menopause, through this journey in their life. We are beyond excited. Gwen and I are heading out to Sedona in a couple of days and our retreat is going to be this November in Sedona, one of the energy hotspots of the world, one of them, and that is where we're going to do our retreat, so women can can come to them and literally retreat and be with a sisterhood of people who understand who they are, what they're going through and support them throughout. Beyond excited, beyond excited. Gwen, anything else you want to say?

Gwen Harris: 26:12

Yeah, I'm just going to say the name, menopalooza. Also, we want to keep it fun and we have a lot of care providers as well that showcase wonderful products as well, as there's global companies that we have campaigned with, our most recent being Cozy Earth. They offer bamboo sheets and jammies and all that kind of stuff. Kendra is one of them, menowell is one of them. I mean, these companies find us and reach out to us is one of them, menowell is one of them. These companies find us and reach out to us. So we want to make our event kind of like a mini trade show too, where they can showcase their products, so the women benefit from the products as well as the seminars, and then just have a time of rejuvenation. And what better place than Sedona.

Michele Folan: 26:51

Well, and I bet these women get to meet in person and they form lifelong friendships.

Gwen Harris: 26:56

Oh, yeah, that is yes, it's something to be, you know, seeing each other virtually. It's very different when you're looking eyeball to eyeball.

Michele Folan: 27:06

Absolutely. I ask all my guests about their pillars of self-care and I was wondering if you would each share something that is important to you in regard to your own self-care. And I was wondering if you would each share something that is important to you in regard to your own self-care.

Tina McDermott: 27:20

I have many pillars of my self-care. I'm going to tell you what is my most, most most important pillar of self-care, and that is exercise. One of the things that I do almost every single morning is I take the dogs for a walk, getting sunshine on my face the morning sunshine, especially the seeing the sunrise. When it's dark out, I actually sleep a little later and wait for the sun to come out so I can go walk and see the sun for a minute. I mean, we walk for almost an hour, but it's amazing the way that my day gets set up differently when I do my walk, versus it's a pouring out rain that day and I don't get to go outside. It's a whole different feel to my cells and my cells in my body.

Tina McDermott: 28:10

And I'm also a cyclist. So exercise has always been a priority in my life because I've always been hyperactive, since I was a kid and suffered a lot of anxiety and in depression. And it was the bicycle, it was exercise that pulled me through. And as I'm maturing, yes, I do vigorous exercise, just not every day like I used to, but walking is a staple. Walking is a staple, it's just something very natural and it feels like, yes, this is what my human body is supposed to be doing every single morning, one foot in front of the other, breathing fresh air, seeing the sunshine and, of course, being with my, the loves of my life, my dogs and my husband.

Michele Folan: 28:55

Husband, he doesn't come walking with and he's working, but shout out to the husband don't want him to feel forgotten how about you, gwen?

Gwen Harris: 29:06

well, that's easy for me. Um, I, before I even get out of bed, I I have another facebook group that I started called the gratitude group, and the very, very first thing I do before I do anything is post something in the gratitude group to set my mind, my spirit, everything up for gratitude, because that's just what I believe in. The second thing I do right away is, after I get up and open the blinds. I literally look into the heavens and just say you know what, dear God, I can do the next 12 hours with you, and I choose to live life very intentionally, and when you do that, it nourishes your soul in a way that nothing else does. You notice the little, tiny things around you. When you live life with intention and you dumb it down that you don't have to worry about tomorrow, it's just today that you're living, and I have to say that I've been practicing that now specifically for almost a year. And then I'm also a mountain climber, and here in the Pacific Northwest, where I live, we have lots of beautiful mountains.

Gwen Harris: 30:11

And so that is yes.

Michele Folan: 30:14

Yes, You're very fortunate. I'm sure it's lovely. It is lovely. I would also like for you to tell the listeners how they can find you, your podcast, your website and the private Facebook group.

Tina McDermott: 30:32

Okay, so the website is menowaveorg M-E-n-o-w-a-v-eorg, and they can also find us on menowaveretreatscom. You can get there from menowaveorg. They can find us on the menowave menopause support group on facebook. If you want links, I can send them to you, and we're also on Instagram and what else. What was the other question that you asked? We guys have a podcast. Yeah, it's Hot Flashes and Cool Conversations, right, it's called the MetaWave Lounge. The MetaWave Lounge. The tagline is Hot Flashes and Cool Conversations.

Michele Folan: 31:17

The tagline is hot flashes and cool conversations. I will put all of that in the show notes. Ladies Tina McDermott, gwen Harris, thank you so much for being a guest on Asking for a Friend. Thank you.

Tina McDermott: 31:32

Thank you, Michelle. Thank you, Michelle. We're honored to be here.

Michele Folan: 31:39

Thank you, Michelle. Thank you, Michelle. We're honored to be here. Thank you so much. Follow Asking for a Friend on social media outlets and provide a review and share this show wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews and sharing help us grow.