When I founded The Sattva Collective, it came from a deeply personal space, a need to build a home for South Asian women navigating midlife, perimenopause, and menopause. For generations, our stories, our symptoms, and our changing bodies were met with silence, brushed under the rug, or carried quietly behind closed doors.

I wanted to change that. I wanted us to have a space where we could be seen, heard, and completely supported without judgment.

To have our work acknowledged on a national level as Platform of the Year is such a beautiful validation of this mission. But more than anything, it is a testament to you — this incredible community. Every time you read a post, share your story, attend an event, or simply nod along knowing you’re no longer alone, you are helping to break that cycle of silence.

We aren’t shrinking, and we certainly aren’t staying quiet anymore.

Thank you for walking this path with me, for trusting The Sattva Collective, and for being part of this movement. This award belongs to all of us.

Here’s to rewriting the narrative, together.

With love and gratitude,

Kiran x

For generations across South Asian households, menopause has been wrapped in silence, duty, and endurance. Women have been taught that midlife is a quiet descent into background roles — a time to defer, to carry the mental load of extended families, to manage the cultural expectations of elders and children, and to endure physical symptoms silently as “just getting older”. We have been conditioned to view our changing bodies through the lens of sacrifice, our shifting moods as failures of patience, and our declining tolerance for overfunctioning as a betrayal of tradition.

It is time to dismantle that narrative entirely.

Published by The Sattva Collective in celebration of Menopause Awareness Month, this post is an invitation to break the silence, raise vital clinical awareness, and reclaim the narrative around South Asian women’s health, autonomy, and power.

Menopause is not a medical crisis, nor is it the end of your vitality, purpose, or voice. It is a profound neuroendocrine and psychological transition — a period of adaptation that asks us to turn our attention inward after decades of directing it outward. It is the threshold where the “fog of oestrogen” and the unspoken cultural compulsion to constantly please and accommodate others finally begin to lift, pulling back the curtain on years of accumulated emotional labour, unexpressed limits, and forgotten desires.

This feature is one continuous, practical conversation designed to guide you through the five core landscapes of midlife. Bringing together medical doctors, pelvic health specialists, psychologists, neuroscientists, somatic coaches, and lived-experience experts, this guide addresses the physical realities of hormone shifts alongside the psychological shift of becoming your own anchor.

Managing menopause in our community is not about returning to the woman you were at thirty-five, nor is it about fading into the background. It is about having the clinical clarity, self-compassion, and cultural boundaries to design the life you actually want to live now.

1. Personality & Self-Discovery: “Who am I becoming?”

The psychological experience of perimenopause and menopause is rarely a straight line. Many women describe a jarring sense of feeling unlike themselves, struggling with word retrieval mid-sentence, experiencing unexpected anxiety, or feeling an overwhelming urge to withdraw from social environments.

According to Ivan Rose, Cognitive Hypnotherapist and creator of the CHaNT™ Method, a critical step during this transition is separating what you are experiencing from what you conclude it means about you. When brain fog or fatigue occurs, women frequently translate temporary physiological shifts into permanent self-beliefs, telling themselves “I’m losing my mind” or “I’m no longer capable.” Rose emphasises that midlife is not about getting back to the woman you were, but about recognising that feelings are not facts and deciding who you want to become next.

This identity shift often stems from changes in how the brain processes information under fluctuating hormone levels. Dr Connie McReynolds, Licensed Psychologist and author of Solving the ADHD Riddle, points out that changes in attention, memory, and executive function mean that tasks once performed automatically now require conscious effort. A capable woman who spent decades being organised may suddenly feel she is failing, when in reality her brain is taking in information differently and requires updated working conditions, reduced sensory load, and more recovery time.

The emotional turmoil of this chapter also involves unacknowledged grief. We grieve the bodies we had, the predictability of our energy, and the identities we constructed around being constantly dependable. Yet, as personal trainer and menopause specialist Neema Sempebwa notes, releasing the obsession with “getting your old life back” is where true liberation begins. Recreating a younger version of yourself is an exhausting, impossible metric; meeting yourself where you are today allows you to build forward from a foundation of genuine self-respect.

2. Health & Overall Well-being: “The body that is asking me to listen.”

Navigating the physical realities of menopause requires cutting through systemic dismissal, clinical misunderstandings, and commercial “Menowashing”, the marketing trend that turns midlife health into an overwhelming, expensive project.

Understanding the Hormonal Engine

The physical transition is driven by shifting oestrogen dynamics. Dr Ellen Siobhan Mitchell, Chief Scientific Officer at MitoQ, explains that oestrogen is not merely a reproductive hormone; it is a master regulator of cellular energy and metabolism. During perimenopause, erratic spikes and sudden drops in oestrogen alter how mitochondria (our cellular powerhouses) function, causing nutrients to be shunted inefficiently. These symptoms, from belly fat redistribution to sudden fatigue, are evidence of a biological adaptation, not a failure of willpower or lifestyle discipline.

Dr Dawn Ericsson, Chief Medical Director at AgeRejuvenation, emphasises that while hormonal shifts explain many symptoms, clinicians must rule out overlapping medical issues. Thyroid dysfunction, nutrient deficiencies (such as Vitamin D or B12), anaemia, autoimmune conditions, and sleep disorders frequently mimic or exacerbate menopausal symptoms and require comprehensive laboratory evaluations rather than being dismissed as “just ageing.”

When considering Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), safety profiles and delivery routes matter immensely. Dr Namrata Wadhwa, Healthcare Industry Expert at GreyB, highlights clinical data showing that transdermal oestrogen (patches or gels) maintains an adjusted odds ratio for blood clots of 0.96, mirroring baseline risk, whereas oral oestrogen carries a ratio of 1.58. For women unable or choosing not to use systemic HRT, non-hormonal options such as NK3 receptor antagonists (fezolitenant) and low-dose vaginal oestrogen offer targeted relief for vasomotor and genitourinary symptoms without systemic exposure.

• Vasomotor Symptoms (VMS): Hot flushes last an average of 7.4 years and, when severe, correlate with cardiovascular risk.

• HRT Safety & Delivery: Transdermal oestrogen (patch/gel) carries significantly lower clot risk than oral formulations.

• Non-Hormonal Options: NK3 receptor antagonists reduce VMS by 7+ episodes/day, performing comparably to systemic HRT.

• Post-Menopausal Ovary Function: Landmark research shows ovaries shift into active immune-signalling organs post-menopause.

Flagship Theme: Chronic Pain at Midlife

The 2026 World Menopause Day theme, Chronic Pain at Midlife, addresses a widely neglected aspect of women’s health. Recent systematic reviews indicate that musculoskeletal pain affects approximately 57% of perimenopausal and 59% of postmenopausal women, compared to 40% of premenopausal women. Despite this prevalence, clinical development continues to prioritise hot flushes while leaving midlife joint and muscle pain under-researched.

Dr Bruce Dorr, Senior Medical Advisor at Biote, notes that declining oestrogen leads to a loss of collagen protection, increasing joint inflammation and susceptibility to conditions like frozen shoulder and tendonitis. Furthermore, pelvic health physiotherapist Helen Ryder emphasises that pain is rarely driven by structural damage alone; it is an interplay between the nervous system, movement habits, sleep, and historical stress.

Dr Caroline Packard, founder of Connect Pelvic Floor Fitness, cautions against treating joint or pelvic pain by isolating single muscles or defaulting to “endless Kegels.” An overworked, hypertonic pelvic floor causes persistent lower back, hip, and tailbone pain. Recovery requires coordinating the diaphragm with the pelvic floor through breathwork before introducing progressive strength training.

Whole-Body Medicine & Pain Management at Midlife

As Dr Arora highlights, one of the biggest clinical systemic failures is how siloed midlife care remains. A woman routinely sees orthopaedics for shoulder pain, rheumatology for joint aches, her primary care doctor for fatigue, and a gynaecologist for hot flushes, without anyone asking the unifying question: Where is she in her menopause transition?

Declining estrogen directly alters inflammation, cartilage maintenance, and nervous-system pain processing. When we build care around the whole woman, addressing hormones, sleep, strength, inflammation, aesthetics, and self-recognition together, outcomes improve dramatically. Optimisation isn’t about exhausting wellness protocols or supplement stacks; it’s about doing the right few fundamentals consistently:

• Prioritise Strength & Muscle Mass: Resistance training two to three times a week supports metabolism, bones, joints, and long-term independence.

• Treat Sleep as Medical Care: Sleep disruption affects pain, mood, and cognition; it is a treatable medical issue, not a character flaw.

• Individualise Hormone Therapy: HRT is neither a miracle nor a menace; it is an individualised medical decision. Modern transdermal delivery carries a vastly different safety profile than outdated historical perception suggests.

• Acknowledge Quality of Life & Self-Recognition: Recognising yourself in the mirror as your body changes is part of feeling like yourself, and that is a legitimate, essential component of midlife health care.

3. Relationships & Connections: “The way we love, connect and belong.”

As internal capacity shifts, the relational dynamics that sustained your earlier adult life undergo unavoidable renegotiation.

Somatic sex coach Irene Fehr describes how the decline of what she terms the “fog of oestrogen” changes relational tolerance. For decades, women are biologically and socially incentivised to maintain harmony, manage emotional temperatures, and accommodate others. When hormone levels settle, the instinct to appease dissipates. Women begin evaluating their relationships through a clearer lens, asking: Is this dynamic reciprocal, or is it sustained entirely by my effort?

This boundary shift often causes friction in partnerships and families accustomed to an overfunctioning woman. LMFT Abby Volk Neuberg points out that when a woman steps back from being the default organiser, crisis manager, and emotional anchor, the surrounding system feels uncomfortable. Family members may misinterpret her newfound limits as coldness or selfishness. However, setting limits is not a failure of love; it is an essential recalibration that allows relationships to become balanced and sustainable.

Intimacy and sexual health also require open, non-judgemental communication. Changes in vaginal tissue, lubrication, sensitivity, and desire are common clinical realities of declining oestrogen and testosterone. Dr Dawn Ericsson notes that painful intercourse should never be quietly endured or accepted as an inevitable trade-off of ageing. Address tissue health medically with localised oestrogen or systemic therapies, while shifting the conversation with your partner away from performance and obligation toward comfort, slowness, and mutual pleasure.

4. Money & Purpose / Business & Finances: “My work, my money and my future.”

The workplace impact of perimenopause is a significant economic and career development issue.

When sleep disruption, brain fog, fatigue, and anxiety peak simultaneously, highly accomplished women often experience a crisis of confidence. Dr. Dawn Ericsson highlights that many women silently reduce their working hours, step down from leadership roles, or leave the workforce entirely during their peak earning years because they believe their cognitive abilities are permanently failing. This loss of workplace participation impacts long-term financial security, pension contributions, and independence.

Professional Wing Woman Jen Anderson advocates viewing your physical health as the “fitness of your business.” Cognitive fatigue and anxiety thrive when movement stops, and exhaustion takes over. Regular physical activity, structured recovery, and medical self-advocacy preserve brain health, restore strategic clarity, and rebuild the confidence required to lead, pivot, or negotiate in the workplace.

Progressive organisations are recognising that menopausal health is a workplace equity priority. Dr Namrata Wadhwa notes that the introduction of international standards, such as the ISO guidelines for menstruation and menopause workplace policies, offers organisations practical frameworks to implement flexible working arrangements, temperature controls, and supportive cultures that retain experienced female talent.

5. Quality of Life: “The life I actually want to live.”

Quality of life in midlife is not merely the absence of clinical symptoms; it is the presence of room to enjoy your existence.

Health coach Mara Seidman and somatic practitioners emphasise rejecting the pressure to turn midlife into another self-improvement project. The wellness industry frequently demands that women track every biomarker, adhere to rigid protocols, and optimise every hour of the day. When your nervous system is already running on empty, adding an elaborate list of health rules creates additional stress and maintains a state of fight-or-flight.

Instead of asking “What else should I add?”, the more useful question is “What can I put down?” Quality of life improves through editing: paring down commitments, protecting quiet mornings, engaging in movement that feels good, and cultivating pleasure for its own sake.

True quality of life emerges when you stop treating your current daily existence as a waiting room for a future version of yourself. It is found in taking up space, trusting your body, honouring your energy, and recognising that you have already given enough, done enough, and earned the right to live a life that feels genuinely yours.

The Midlife Edit: Core Rules for Curating Your Next Chapter

• 1. Prioritise Foundations Over Optimisation: Ignore complex, unproven wellness trends. Focus on consistent sleep, progressive strength training, protein-rich nutrition, nervous system regulation, and medical support.

• 2. Differentiate Capability From Capacity: A drop in immediate energy or stress tolerance is not a loss of intelligence or competence. Protect your capacity by setting firm boundaries without guilt.

• 3. Investigate Persistent Pain Early: Do not accept chronic joint, back, or pelvic pain as inevitable ageing. Rule out underlying structural issues and address systemic inflammation through both medical and somatic approaches.

• 4. Separate Feelings From Facts: Recognise that brain fog, anxiety, and low confidence are temporary physiological symptoms driven by hormone fluctuations, not permanent reflections of your worth or future potential.

• 5. Shift From Becoming to Belonging: Stop trying to recreate the body, energy, or life you had at thirty-five. Release self-abandonment, put yourself back at the centre of your choices, and fully inhabit the life you have built.

Your Menopause Library

Understanding Menopause & Your Hormones

• Ending the Shame Around Menopause: Embracing Midlife with Confidence and Power

• When Your Hormones Rewrite Your Life

• Navigating the Midlife Shift: A Comprehensive Guide to Perimenopause & Menopause

• The Ultimate Guide to Oestrogen, Perimenopause & Menopause

• Hormones: What You Need to Know During Perimenopause & Menopause

• Understanding Your Monthly Cycle During the Transition to Menopause

Brain, Mood & Mental Well-being

• Menopause Brain Fog: A Comprehensive Guide to Regaining Focus and Mental Clarity

• Perimenopause, Menopause & Mental Health

• Feeling Like a Stranger in Your Own Skin

Nutrition, Weight, Metabolism & Physical Health

• Navigating Weight Gain During Perimenopause & Menopause

• Perimenopause, Menopause & Blood Sugar

• Perimenopause, Menopause & Cholesterol

• Electrolytes & Midlife

• Hip Pain in Perimenopause

• The Power of Protein: Why Midlife Women Need More During Menopause

• The Power of Collagen in Menopause: A Comprehensive Guide

Everyday Support & Self-Care

• Create Your Own Perimenopause & Menopause Apothecary at Home

• Menopause & You: How to Ease Symptoms, Boost Vitality & Embrace This New Chapter

• The Ultimate Guide to Managing Hot Flashes & Night Sweats During Menopause

• Menopause Is Just One Part of Your Midlife Story – Here’s What Else Matters

HRT, Treatment & Informed Choices

• The Comprehensive Guide to HRT for Menopause

Relationships, Support & Shared Understanding

• How Family & Friends Can Offer Support

• World Menopause Day: Experts Share Their Top Tips

Expert Voices

• Interview with Dr Farah Ahmed

• Interview with Dr Vikram Talaulikar, Hon Associate Professor in Women's Health

• Interview with Anushka Chaudhry, Consultant Oncoplastic Breast Surgeon

• Interview with Dr Supatra Tovar, founder of ANEW

• Interview with Tafiq Akhir, Mr Menopause

• Interview with Shireen Noor, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and Licensed Couple’s Therapist

For Srividya Gowri, that realisation became personal. After studying Nutrition and Dietetics and spending years helping women with weight management and lifestyle change, she found herself experiencing the very changes she had been helping other women navigate. Her energy, body composition and recovery were changing, and so was her relationship with her body. Instead of trying to make herself smaller, she began asking a different question: How can I become stronger?

That shift sits at the heart of Srividya’s work today as a midlife and menopause coach. Her approach moves beyond restrictive diets and endless cardio to look at the whole woman: nutrition, protein, muscle and bone health, sleep, stress, emotional wellbeing and the realities of everyday life. And for South Asian women in particular, she believes healthy living should never require us to leave our culture at the dinner table.

In this conversation, Srividya and I talk about why eat less and move more is such an incomplete message for women in midlife, why strength training matters far beyond the gym, and how we can nourish our changing bodies without giving up the foods, traditions, and celebrations that connect us to who we are.

We also talk about emotional eating, the invisible labour so many South Asian women carry, the impact of poor sleep and chronic stress, and what it really means to build a relationship with food based on freedom rather than fear.

Because perhaps the deeper question of midlife isn’t: How do I get my old body back? Perhaps it is: How do I learn to take care of the body I have now, so I can feel strong, capable, and fully alive for the life ahead?

Let’s talk to Srividya.

What was happening in your own body and life that pulled you towards strength training and menopause-specific nutrition?

My journey into this work became personal before it became professional.

Although I had studied Nutrition and Dietetics and spent years helping women with weight management and lifestyle change, I eventually began experiencing changes in my own body that made me realize that the strategies we often give women are not always designed for the bodies they have at different stages of life.

As I entered my forties, I started noticing changes in my energy, body composition, recovery, and overall relationship with my body. It made me ask a different question. Instead of constantly asking, “How can I lose weight?”, I began asking, “How can I become stronger?”

Strength training became a turning point for me. It shifted my focus from making my body smaller to making it more capable.

That experience led me deeper into understanding perimenopause and menopause. I realized that women in this phase need far more than generic weight-loss advice. They need support that considers their changing body, strength, muscle and bone health, sleep, stress, emotional wellbeing and, most importantly, the realities of their everyday lives.

Why can “eat less and move more” be unhelpful during perimenopause and menopause?

The problem with “eat less and move more” is not that nutrition and movement don’t matter. They absolutely do.

The problem is that the advice is often too simplistic for a complex stage of life.

During perimenopause and menopause, women may experience changes in body composition, appetite, sleep, recovery, and energy. At the same time, maintaining muscle and bone health becomes increasingly important.

So when a woman responds to weight gain by eating less and less or doing excessive cardio, she may find herself trapped in an approach that is difficult to sustain and does not adequately support strength, recovery, or overall well-being.

I encourage women to move away from asking, “How little can I eat?” and instead ask:

“How can I nourish, strengthen, and support the body I have now? How can I eat as much/as well as I can to support my changing body’s needs while going after my goals?”

For many women, that means adequate nutrition, sufficient protein and fiber, strength training, regular movement, good sleep, stress management, and habits that can be maintained for years — not just until the weight comes off.

Why is lifting weights so critical for women in midlife?

The goal in midlife should not simply be to weigh less. It should also be to remain strong, capable, and independent for the decades ahead.

Strength training can help women focus on building and maintaining physical capacity. I often tell my clients that strength gives you options — the ability to move confidently, carry things, travel, play with children and grandchildren, and continue participating fully in life.

There is also a powerful psychological shift that happens when a woman realizes she can do something she previously thought was impossible.

She lifts a heavier weight.

She performs her first push-up.

She feels her body becoming stronger.

And suddenly, she begins to see herself differently.

That is why strength training, in my work, is not just about exercise. It is also about rebuilding confidence and self-trust.

What does realistic, sustainable nutrition look like for South Asian women?

It has to look like real life.

Many South Asian women are cooking for an entire household while managing careers, children, ageing parents, and countless other responsibilities. Giving them a separate diet with unfamiliar foods and expecting them to prepare multiple meals every day is rarely sustainable.

I prefer to help women work with the foods and traditions they already have.

That might mean learning how to build more balanced meals, understanding portions, increasing protein and fiber, planning ahead, and developing the skills to navigate travel, restaurants, festivals, and family celebrations.

There is room for rice. There is room for dosa. There is room for biryani and celebration.

The goal is not to remove culture from food. The goal is to help women enjoy food without fear, guilt, or the feeling that they have lost control.

How connected is emotional and stress eating to the pressures South Asian women carry?

In my experience, they can be deeply connected.

Many South Asian women have spent years being caregivers, putting the needs of children, partners, parents, families, and work ahead of their own. There can be a tremendous amount of invisible labour and very little space left for themselves.

Food can then become comfort, reward, relief, or sometimes simply a moment of escape.

That is why telling someone to simply “stop emotional eating” rarely addresses the real issue.

We need to understand what food is doing for that person.

Is it comfort? Relief? A break? Pleasure? A way of coping with stress?

When women develop other ways to regulate stress and emotions and begin giving themselves permission to have needs of their own, their relationship with food can begin to change.

How do PCOS, thyroid issues, and blood pressure complicate midlife health?

Many women enter midlife already managing conditions such as PCOS, thyroid disorders, hypertension, or other metabolic concerns. At the same time, they may also be experiencing the changes associated with perimenopause and menopause.

This can create a confusing picture, with symptoms such as changes in weight or body composition, fatigue, disrupted sleep, mood changes, and altered energy levels.

One of the challenges is that women are sometimes given fragmented advice — one approach for weight, another for menopause, and another for an existing health condition.

I believe the woman needs to be seen as a whole person.

My role as a midlife and menopause coach is to help women build the knowledge, skills, and sustainable habits to better support their health alongside appropriate medical care. That includes learning how to nourish themselves, move and build strength appropriately, prioritise sleep and recovery, manage stress, and adapt their habits to their changing body and real-life environment.

Ultimately, my goal is not to give a woman another plan she has to depend on forever. It is to help her develop the skills and self-trust to take care of herself for life so she can move through midlife with greater health, strength, energy, confidence, and the capacity to thrive in every role she chooses to play.

What would you say to a woman who believes midlife weight gain is simply her new normal?

I would tell her: you don’t have to panic, but you don’t have to resign yourself either.

Your body changing does not mean you have failed. And it does not mean you are powerless.

What may have worked in your 20s or 30s may no longer be the best approach for the body you have now. Repeated dieting, extreme restriction, skipping meals, or excessive exercise may simply leave you exhausted and frustrated.

Sometimes the answer is not to try harder. It is to try differently.

Instead of focusing only on becoming smaller, I encourage women to focus on becoming stronger, better nourished, more rested, and more capable.

When we stop constantly fighting the body and start learning how to support it, meaningful change can become possible.

How do you help women rebuild their relationship with food without losing its cultural meaning?

Food is never just food.

For many South Asian families, it represents love, celebration, hospitality, memories, and connection.

I would never want a woman to feel that she has to reject her culture in order to become healthy.

The work is about moving away from fear and restriction and towards awareness and choice.

• Can you enjoy a celebration without believing you have “ruined everything”?

• Can you eat your favourite foods without feeling the need to punish yourself the next day?

• Can you recognise whether you are physically hungry or emotionally overwhelmed?

• Can you make conscious choices rather than reacting automatically?

That is what food freedom means to me. Not eating perfectly, but being able to enjoy food without food controlling your life.

Why are sleep and stress management so important?

Many women focus entirely on food and exercise while overlooking the fact that poor sleep and chronic stress can affect their energy, appetite, food choices, motivation, and ability to recover. Health behaviours don’t exist in isolation.

A woman who is exhausted is not necessarily lazy or lacking discipline. She may simply be depleted.

When women begin to prioritise sleep, recovery, and stress regulation, they often find they have more capacity to make and sustain the choices they were previously struggling with.

You cannot always solve an exhausted life by prescribing another diet or another workout.

Sometimes, the first step is to understand what the body and mind are asking for.

What is the first thing you’d want a woman who has tried every diet to understand?

I would want her to understand one thing:

You are not the problem.

If you have lost and regained weight repeatedly, it does not automatically mean you lack discipline, motivation, or willpower.

Many women have simply spent years following approaches that were never designed to be sustainable.

Before trying again, stop asking: “What is wrong with me?” Start asking: “What do I need to understand about the body and life I have now?”

You don’t need another cycle of restriction, guilt, and starting over.

You need skills.

You need an approach that works in your real life.

And perhaps most importantly, you need to rebuild trust in yourself.

Because the goal is not perfection. The goal is to become capable of taking care of yourself for the rest of your life.

For me, that is the deeper transformation: when a woman stops trying to shrink herself and starts building the strength, confidence, and self-trust to fully step into the next chapter of her life.

What I love about my conversation with Srividya is that she doesn’t ask women to wage war against their bodies.

She asks us to understand them.

To recognise that the body we have at 45 may need something different from the body we had at 25. To understand that nourishment isn’t punishment, movement isn’t a debt we owe ourselves after eating, and strength isn’t simply about how much weight we can lift. It is about having the physical capacity, confidence, and self-trust to participate fully in our own lives.

And I think her message to women who have spent years dieting is particularly powerful: you are not the problem.

Maybe you don’t need another diet. Maybe you don’t need to try harder. Maybe you need to stop starting over and begin learning how to care for yourself in a way that actually works for the woman you are today.

For South Asian women, there is another important layer to this conversation. Our food carries memory. It carries family, love, hospitality, celebration, and culture. Health doesn’t have to mean turning our backs on that. There is room for the rice, the dosa, the biryani and the celebrations. There is room for pleasure. There is room for culture. And there can also be room for greater awareness, nourishment and choice.

Because food freedom isn’t about eating perfectly. It is about being able to enjoy food without guilt, recognise what our bodies and emotions are asking for, and make choices without feeling that one meal has undone everything.

And perhaps that is the real transformation Srividya is inviting women into: moving from restriction to nourishment, from shrinking to strengthening, and from constantly questioning ourselves to trusting ourselves again.

Midlife doesn’t have to be the beginning of decline. It can be the beginning of a very different relationship with ourselves.

One where we stop asking, How do I become smaller?

And start asking, How do I become stronger for the life I still want to live?

More about Srividiya Gowri and her work here.

Here is a look back at everything we’ve brought into the light this month.

A Heartfelt Thank You: Community Generosity

We are endlessly grateful for the people who believe in our mission and keep this work moving forward. A huge, warm thank you to the lovely Punam Verma Saxena, who generously sent us our second £50 donation this month! Community support like this directly powers our ability to hold space, share vital health information, and build meaningful resources for us all.

Breaking Silences on Women’s Health

This month, we tackled crucial health topics that directly impact South Asian women, yet so often get brushed under the carpet:

• PCOS & Perimenopause: What South Asian Women Need to Know: We delved into the complex intersection of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and perimenopause, breaking down how hormone fluctuations uniquely affect our bodies and what steps we can take to advocate for our health.

• Five Cancers Every South Asian Woman Needs to Know About: Knowledge is power, protection, and early intervention. We highlighted five critical cancers affecting our community, shedding light on symptoms, cultural taboos, and the importance of screening early.

In Conversation: Expert Insights & Powerful Perspectives

Our expert interviews and essays continue to offer clinical clarity grounded in deep cultural understanding:

• Interview with Dr. Vikram Talaulikar: We were honoured to sit down with Dr. Vikram Talaulikar, Hon. Associate Professor in Women’s Health. He shared invaluable insights into midlife health, hormonal wellness, and how healthcare providers can better serve South Asian women.

• “The Baby Factory Is Closed: When Menopause Becomes Rebellion”: A fiery, refreshing essay examining how stepping out of reproductive years isn’t an ending; it’s an act of reclaiming our autonomy, our bodies, and our freedom + a Q&A with Deepa Mann-Kler.

MY SATTVA STORY & Community Voices

Our stories are our legacy. This month, we were privileged to share incredible personal journeys from within our community:

• MY SATTVA STORY: Zohrain Jetha: Zohrain shared her powerful narrative of resilience, identity, and finding her footing through midlife.

• Interview with Janisha Parmar: An inspiring conversation exploring personal growth, health advocacy, and what it truly means to navigate cultural expectations while staying true to oneself.

Expanding Our Horizon: Launch of the Ambassador Programme

We reached an exciting milestone this month with the official Launch of the Ambassador Programme! To ensure the Sattva message reaches every corner where it is needed, we are bringing together dedicated community voices to help lead, represent, and grow our mission. We can’t wait to introduce you to our ambassadors in the coming months!

Thank you to every single one of you, whether you donated, read an article, shared a post, or shared your story. We are building this together, step by step.

With love and gratitude,

Kiran & The Sattva Collective Team x

Today’s guest understands that exhaustion is in her bones and in her nervous system.

Janisha Parmar is a Mental Fitness & Clarity Coach who works with high-functioning adults and teens carrying the long-term weight of work, caregiving, quiet grief, and unspoken trauma. She’s a Certified Performance Coach, a Level 4 Psychotherapy Pranic Energy Healer, a breathwork facilitator, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and, before all of that, a Specialist Optometrist. It’s an unusual combination, and it’s exactly what makes her approach so effective. Janisha bridges science, psychology, and deeper healing, helping people move from survival mode into real calm, clarity, and self-trust, not by managing symptoms, but by getting to the root of what’s actually happening in the body.

In this conversation, we talk about what it means to carry an invisible weight as a South Asian woman, why so many of us mistake chronic stress for “just being busy,” and what it actually feels like, in the body, to finally exhale.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re holding everything together while quietly falling apart, this one’s for you.

You describe your clients as high-functioning people carrying an invisible weight. For South Asian women in midlife, how does that weight tend to show up differently, and why does it so often go unaddressed for so long?

For South Asian women, this invisible weight isn’t just a heavy to-do list; it is a tapestry of cultural expectations, generational conditioning, and deep familial loyalty. We are often raised on the concept of Seva (selfless service) and a quiet expectation of self-sacrifice.

In midlife, this weight shows up as the “sandwich generation” pressure. A South Asian woman is often simultaneously caring for ageing parents or in-laws, supporting her own children transitioning into adulthood, and managing her own career — all while navigating the hormonal chaos of perimenopause.

It goes unaddressed for so long because we have normalised suffering. We look at our mothers and grandmothers, who carried immense loads without complaining, and we tell ourselves: “If they did it, I should be able to do it too.” There is also a deep-seated fear of “Log kya kahenge?” (What will people say?), which breeds a culture of silent endurance. Emotional distress is frequently masked as physical ailments: chronic body aches, migraines, digestive issues, or chronic fatigue, because complaining about the mental load feels like a betrayal of our roles.

The mental load is something many women carry without even having a name for it. How do you help a woman recognise that what she’s experiencing isn’t just stress; it’s a nervous system under sustained pressure?

Stress is situational. It’s the adrenaline spike you feel when you have a deadline, but once the deadline passes, your body returns to baseline. A dysregulated nervous system under sustained pressure is entirely different: your body has forgotten how to return to baseline.

I help women recognise this by looking at their physical and emotional patterns. If you are “tired but wired”, meaning you are utterly exhausted, but your mind is racing at 2:00 AM, that is a nervous system response. If you are constantly hypervigilant, waiting for the next ball to drop, or if you feel a flash of intense irritation over something minor (like a spilt glass of milk), that is a sign that your cup is already full. Your system is stuck in a low-grade fight-or-flight survival state because it has been running on high alert for years.

Your 4 Rs framework (Regulate, Release, Rewire, Realign) is at the heart of your work. Can you walk us through what that journey feels like from the inside, particularly for a woman who has spent decades putting everyone else first?

For a woman who has lived her life as a chronic people-pleaser, the 4 Rs journey feels like a homecoming:

• Regulate: This is the first deep breath. It is shifting the body out of survival mode. From the inside, it feels like the physical tension in your jaw and shoulders is finally softening. It’s the moment you realise you can sit still for five minutes without the urge to jump up and fix something.

• Release: This is often the emotional part. When the nervous system feels safe enough to regulate, the body finally releases the stored tension and grief of carrying everything for everyone else. It can feel like hot tears, a heavy sigh, or a physical shaking off of old energy. It is letting go of the guilt of saying “no.”

• Rewire: This is where we change the default mental pathways. From the inside, it feels like reclaiming your voice. It’s learning to pause before saying “yes” to a request and recognising that setting a boundary is not an act of selfishness but an act of self-preservation.

• Realign: This is the final integration. It feels like clarity. You are no longer living your life based on who you should be for everyone else, but on who you actually are today. It is stepping into your midlife with agency, purpose, and a deep sense of peace.

Breathwork is often misunderstood or underestimated. What happens in the body and mind during a conscious breathwork session that makes it such a powerful tool for nervous system regulation?

As a former clinician, I love the science of this. The breath is the only function of our autonomic nervous system that we can control consciously. It is our direct remote control to the brain.

When we are stressed, our breathing becomes shallow and rapid, signalling the brain that we are in danger. During a conscious, slow, and deep breathwork session, we stimulate the vagus nerve (the main highway of our parasympathetic, or “rest and digest,” nervous system).

This stimulation instantly tells the brain: “We are safe.” It slows the heart rate, lowers blood pressure, and decreases the production of stress hormones like cortisol. Mentally, consciously connected breathing slows down the analytical mind (the prefrontal cortex), allowing us to bypass the endless mental chatter and access stored emotional memories in the body, releasing them safely without having to endlessly talk through them.

Many South Asian women have been raised in cultures where emotional expression is discouraged and where stoicism is equated with strength. How does that cultural conditioning affect the nervous system over time, and how do you work with it rather than against it?

When emotional expression is discouraged, those emotions don’t just disappear; they get stored in the physical tissues of the body. Over decades, this chronic emotional suppression keeps the sympathetic nervous system continuously active. This manifests as chronic pain, high blood pressure, inflammatory conditions, sleep disturbances, and a profound sense of numbness or dissociation from our own bodies.

I never push against this conditioning aggressively. If a woman has used stoicism as her shield for forty years, that shield has kept her safe, and we must respect it.

Instead, we work with it through somatic (body-based) tracking. I don’t start by asking a client to share her deepest, most vulnerable emotions if she isn’t ready. Instead, I ask: “Where do you feel the tightness in your body right now?” We focus on the physical sensations - a flutter in the chest, a knot in the stomach. By working with the physical body first, we bypass the cultural shame associated with “complaining” or showing vulnerability, and the nervous system slowly begins to feel safe enough to let the shield down.

You use Pranic Healing alongside breathwork and mental fitness coaching. For women who are new to energy therapy, how do you explain what it is and why it works?

I like to explain it through a very simple lens: just as we have a physical body with blood vessels, we also have an energy body (our aura and energy centres, or chakras) through which life force, or Prana, flows.

When we experience stress, trauma, or emotional blockages, this energy flow becomes congested or depleted, which eventually manifests as physical exhaustion or emotional burnout. Pranic Healing is a science-based, non-touch therapy that acts like a gentle cleanser for your energy system.

Think of it like clearing the static from a radio channel. We clean away the “congested” energy of stress and worry, and we replenish your system with fresh energy. When combined with breathwork and mental fitness, it allows the body and mind to heal and recharge at a much deeper, vibrational level.

Midlife often brings a particular kind of exhaustion, not just physical, but a deep depletion of identity and purpose. How do you support women who arrive at your door not quite knowing who they are anymore?

I start by reassuring them that this identity crisis is not a failure — it is a sacred transition. For decades, their identity was wrapped up in external labels: mother, daughter, wife, professional, protector. When those roles naturally shift in midlife, the silence that is left behind can feel incredibly disorienting and empty. This is a big part of what I do.

I support this transition by giving them space to grieve the old roles first. Then, we begin the gentle work of curiosity. I ask them: “What do you love when nobody is watching?” or “What did the younger version of you, before the world told you who to be, love to do?” It’s about stripping away the layers of expectations to uncover the woman who has been quietly waiting under there the entire time.

The word “exhale” appears throughout your work as both a programme name and a philosophy. What does it mean to you, and what does it mean for a woman to finally, truly exhale?

To me, an “exhale” is the ultimate act of surrender and trust. When you inhale, you are taking in life, but when you exhale, you are letting go. You are trusting that the next breath will be there for you.

For a South Asian woman who has been holding her breath, holding her stomach in, holding her family together, and holding back her tears for decades, to finally, truly exhale means: “It is safe for me to let go. The world will not fall apart if I stop holding it up.” It is the moment she drops her shoulders, releases the physical tension in her chest, and realises that her worth is not defined by her constant productivity.

9. What does nervous system regulation look like in daily life? Not in a session, not in a retreat, but on an ordinary Tuesday morning when life is full and loud and demanding?

This is the most important part of my work in Mental Fitness coaching: to have longevity in the practices that work for my clients. True regulation isn’t always escaping to a spa or retreat to get respite. On a loud Tuesday morning, it looks like:

• Micro-moments of awareness: Pausing at the kitchen counter for 30 seconds while the kettle boils, feeling the soles of your feet flat on the cold floor, and taking three slow, deep belly breaths.

• Physical softening: Noticing that you are gripping the steering wheel too tightly during the school run or clenching your jaw while reading a stressful email, and consciously choosing to relax those muscles.

• Setting a boundary in real-time: Taking five seconds to breathe before answering a family member’s urgent request, responding from a place of calm choice rather than an anxious reaction.

• Sensory grounding: When the noise in the house gets too loud, pause to notice three things you can see, two things you can hear, and one thing you can physically touch to bring your mind back into the present moment.

If you could say one thing to a South Asian woman in midlife who has been holding it all together for everyone else and quietly falling apart, what would it be?

I would look her in the eyes and tell her: You are allowed to pause and breathe and choose to live differently.

Your exhaustion is not a sign of weakness, and your struggle is not a failure. It is simply your beautiful, resilient body telling you that you have been carrying things that were never meant for one person to carry alone. You have taken care of everyone else; now, it is time to permit yourself to come home to you. It is safe to put the heavy bags down. It is safe to exhale.

If anything Janisha shared here landed with you — that flicker of recognition, that small exhale — sit with it for a moment before you carry on with your day.

Because that’s really what this conversation comes back to. So many of us were raised to equate silence with strength and self-sacrifice with love. But strength isn’t the absence of feeling. Sometimes it’s the courage to finally stop, breathe, and put the bags down.

You are allowed to pause. You are allowed to feel tired without it being a failure. And you are allowed to come home to yourself, not the version everyone else needs, but the one who’s been quietly waiting underneath it all.

Thank you, Janisha, for such an honest and generous conversation.

And if this piece stayed with you, share it with a woman who needs to read it. She might not ask for help, but she may just need permission.

I’m 45 and currently navigating perimenopause. I first began noticing changes around 40, so the past five years have been a journey of getting to know my changing body. Some days are definitely harder than others, and I by no means have everything figured out. But I’ve learned to listen more closely to what my body needs, and investing time in my own health and wellbeing has become a fundamental part of understanding and supporting myself through this stage of life.

Where are you based?

Ipswich, Suffolk.

Tell us your Sattva Story.

I turned 40 during COVID, and that was when I first started noticing changes in myself. At the time, I didn’t think for a million years that they could be connected to perimenopause.

I was becoming more irritable. I started gaining a little weight around my tummy that hadn’t been there before — although, being in lockdown, I genuinely wondered whether all the banana bread might have had something to do with it! I also began struggling to retain information. I could read something five times and still be unable to tell you what I’d just read.

I knew something wasn’t quite right, so I started doing my own research.

And that’s really where the seed for Nourish Her was planted.

I remember thinking: Where are the answers? Where are the other women having these conversations? Where is the practical help I’m so desperately searching for?

There was clinical information available, but I wanted to know what I could actually do. What tools could I use to support myself? How could nutrition help? How could I manage the stress and anxiety I was experiencing? And where were the communities where I could meet other women going through the same thing and simply hear, “Me too”?

Like many women desperately looking for answers, I also fell into the trap of buying things that promised to “fix” my menopause symptoms. I tried the lotions, the potions, and the pills! At one point, I remember looking at a supplement I was taking three times a day that claimed to help with sleep, bloating, and weight management and thinking, “Hang on... really?”

That was a turning point for me.

I realised I needed to stop looking for something that promised to fix me and start understanding what was actually happening to me.

And if I wanted to help other women, I knew I needed to educate myself properly too. With my background in nutrition, my instinct was already to strip everything back to basics — no complicated plans and no ingredients or nutrients you need a science degree to pronounce! But I wanted a deeper understanding of menopause itself, so I trained with Menopause Experts Group and continued developing my menopause knowledge.

I was also looking for ways to support the stress and anxiety I was experiencing personally, which led me to EFT. I began using it myself, felt the benefits of having a practical tool to help me manage how I was feeling, and eventually decided to qualify in EFT too. I also studied menopause further because I wanted to better understand the reasons behind so many of the changes I had been experiencing.

Over time, all of those pieces came together and helped shape what Nourish Her is today: education, nutrition, nervous system regulation, and community.

But perhaps the most important thing is that I don’t stand outside the woman I’m trying to help.

I am my own client. I am the woman I’m trying to help not feel so alone.

I’m 45 now and still navigating perimenopause myself. I don’t have everything figured out, and I don’t pretend to. But every day I become more convinced of how needed these conversations are.

Menopause doesn’t care where you come from, what your background is, whether you’ve had children, or what your life looks like. Women across every community can find themselves reaching this stage wondering, “What is happening to me?”

That’s why education is so important to me. When we understand what’s happening in our bodies, we are in a much stronger position to make informed choices about how we support ourselves.

I want another woman who is searching for the answers I was searching for at 40 to find knowledge, practical tools, community, and somebody willing to say, “I get it. Me too.”

Because sometimes knowing you’re not the only one is where everything begins.

Is there one thing you wish someone had told you earlier about midlife?

I can put my hand on my heart and say that at 40, I knew virtually nothing about perimenopause or menopause. I knew that at some point, probably in my 50s, my periods would stop — and honestly, that was about it.

I had no idea about the transition that could come before that. I didn’t know about the range of symptoms women could experience or how deeply some of those symptoms could affect your confidence, relationships, family life, and ability to function day to day.

So if there is one thing I wish someone had told me earlier, it would simply be: understand menopause before you find yourself in the middle of it.

And actually, I don’t think that education should only be for women.

Imagine how different this stage of life could feel if husbands and partners understood what she was experiencing. If children understood why Mum might not quite feel like herself some days. If workplaces understood that a woman forgetting a word halfway through a sentence doesn’t suddenly erase the years of knowledge, experience and dedication she brings to her role.

Women can reach midlife having spent decades building careers, raising children, doing school runs, running homes, caring for parents and looking after everybody around them. Then they can find themselves experiencing changes they don’t understand, perhaps struggling at work or losing confidence and wondering where the woman they used to know has gone.

That’s why understanding matters.

Menopause may happen in a woman’s body, but its impact doesn’t necessarily stop with her. It can touch relationships, families, workplaces, and communities.

I wish I’d understood that at 40. But even more than that, I wish we lived in a world where understanding menopause was simply part of growing up — for women and for the people who will live, love, and work alongside them.

Because imagine how much less alone a woman might feel if the people around her understood too.

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This is not one of them.

Imagine putting on a virtual reality headset and suddenly finding yourself inside someone else’s body. You can hear her thoughts. Feel her tension. Move with her. Experience the world through her eyes. Except this isn’t simply someone else’s body. It is Zoraan’s: a British-born Asian woman navigating menopause while the world around her is collapsing under the weight of climate crisis, digital surveillance, and the lingering legacies of colonial medicine.

You are not watching her story.

You are inside it.

That is the radical premise behind The Baby Factory Is Closed, the 20-minute single-player immersive VR experience written and directed by artist and filmmaker Deepa Mann-Kler and produced by Eva Robinson of Aura Digital Studios. The work places menopause firmly in the realm of rebellion rather than decline, using dark humour, surrealism and the cinematic energy of Bollywood to explore what happens when a woman’s body becomes a battleground for much bigger questions about power, identity and control.

The title itself is deliberately provocative. The Baby Factory Is Closed takes the language of fertility and turns it on its head, asking what happens when the part of a woman’s life that society has historically placed enormous value on comes to an end. What remains when reproduction is no longer the organising principle of a woman’s identity?

Quite possibly, everything.

On the project’s website, Zoraan is described not simply as the protagonist but as the world itself: her body, mind, muscles and memory becoming a living landscape that is monitored, medicated and overwritten by colonial, patriarchal and climate-driven systems of control.

And that is what makes this work particularly compelling for South Asian women.

For many of us, conversations about our bodies have never been entirely ours. There are the expectations around motherhood, marriage, appearance, ageing and respectability. There are the things we were taught not to say, the discomforts we learned to minimise and the bodily changes we were expected to simply endure.

The Baby Factory Is Closed asks what might happen if we stopped enduring quietly.

Meet Deepa Mann-Kler

Deepa Mann-Kler is a multi-award-winning artist, creative technologist and thought leader working at the intersection of storytelling, digital transformation, technical innovation, inclusion, ethics and creativity. She is CEO of Neon, StoryFutures Inclusion Executive Producer for CoSTAR and CDT AI, the UK Government-funded £75.6 million research network for creative technology, and a member of the UK Government Creative Industries Council. She is also Director of the Belfast XR Festival and Visiting Professor of Inclusive Innovation at Ulster University, as well as serving on the Euromersive Board and IDA XR Studio, and as a BAFTA Connect member.

Her work is driven by a belief that technology should not simply shape our futures, but that people, identity and community voice should have a say in what those futures look like. Her globally recognised XR work includes The Baby Factory Is Closed, which had its world premiere at SXSW 2026, alongside The Metaverse & Me and Discover ME, projects that explore identity, justice and the role of community in shaping immersive futures. Through her work, Deepa drives strategic XR projects designed to deliver social impact at scale.

A TEDx speaker whose talk, Being Human, explores some of these questions, Deepa regularly delivers keynotes on the intersection of storytelling, digital transformation, technical innovation, leadership, inclusion, ethics, bias, data, AI, design and creativity. Her work has received recognition across film, technology and immersive media, including selections and awards from the Royal Television Society, WinTech Series, Digital DNA, Global Shorts, Best Shorts Competition, Pinewood Lift Off Global Network, Delta International Film Festival, European XR Award, FIVARS, Indie Cine Tube Awards, Cornwall Film Festival and Dreamz Catcher International Film Festival.

And now, with The Baby Factory Is Closed, she is bringing many of those questions directly into the body of a menopausal South Asian woman, asking us to consider what happens when technology, culture, politics, identity and bodily autonomy collide.

Explore Deepa’s work: Neon | Deepa Mann-Kler | Belfast XR Festival

With The Baby Factory Is Closed, she turns that lens towards menopause, creating an experience that is deliberately visceral, political and deeply embodied.

The project premiered at SXSW in Austin in March 2026 and has since continued its journey through the immersive arts world.

Now, it is coming to London.

Menopause, but make it immersive

The technology is an important part of the story because this isn’t VR being used simply as a visual gimmick. Built in Unreal Engine 5, the experience combines real-time cinematic environments with motion capture, gesture-based interaction, biometric sensing, voice recognition and bio-haptic feedback. Original music and spatial sound design by Northern Irish composer Katie Richardson add another layer to the experience.

The result is deliberately multi-sensory. You don’t simply hear about Zoraan’s body. The intention is that you experience something of it.

The project’s own language is strikingly simple: you are not just in a game; you are inside a body.

And perhaps that is exactly what menopause needs more of: experiences that don’t ask women to stand outside themselves and clinically observe what is happening, but invite us to inhabit the experience, question it, and reclaim it.

An interview with Deepa Mann-Kler

We asked Deepa about rage, South Asian identity, fertility, bodily autonomy, and what she hopes women will take with them when they step back out of Zoraan’s world.

You describe The Baby Factory Is Closed as a story of menopause as rebellion, rather than menopause as decline. Why did you feel rage, rather than acceptance, was the right emotional language for this story?

Deepa: I was interested in rage because we are so often encouraged to accept what happens to our bodies quietly. Menopause is still framed through loss, a loss of fertility, youth, desirability and even relevance. I wanted to completely disrupt that narrative. Zoraan’s rage is not destructive; it is clarifying. She begins to recognise the systems that have told her how to behave, how to age, and how to understand her own body, and she refuses to comply. There is something incredibly powerful about that refusal. For me, the menopause became the perfect metaphor for rupture, the moment when acceptance ends, and rebellion becomes possible. Also in researching the work, I became fascinated by how different cultures understand the transition that the menopause brings. In Japan, konenki can be understood as a period of renewal and an alternative stage of life, rather than simply decline. By contrast, the Western narratives can over-medicalise the menopause, reinforcing a stigma around ageing, fertility and women’s bodies.

Zoraan is a British-born Asian woman navigating menopause against a backdrop of climate collapse, digital surveillance and the lingering legacies of colonial medicine. What does it mean to place a South Asian woman’s menopausal body at the centre of these much bigger political and cultural questions?

Deepa: It was really important to me that Zoraan was a British-born South Asian woman because our bodies are rarely placed at the centre of speculative futures. Too often we are peripheral to these stories, rather than the person through whom the world is understood. Zoraan’s menopausal body becomes a battleground where much bigger systems collide: patriarchy, colonial medicine, AI surveillance, climate collapse and cultural expectations around women and ageing. There is also something very specific about being a South Asian woman negotiating Western medicine, alongside inherited cultural ideas about the body, duty, shame and silence. I wanted to make those tensions visible, but not make Zoraan a victim of them. She is funny, angry, contradictory and powerful. Her body becomes the place from which she questions those systems and ultimately refuses to comply.

The choice of Zoraan matters. This isn’t a generic story about menopause detached from culture, history or identity. The project’s framing is explicitly rooted in a South Asian feminist perspective, bringing together dark humour, surrealism and Bollywood energy with questions around control, autonomy and resistance.

For many South Asian women, the body has never entirely belonged to us. There are expectations around how we look, behave, mother, age, and even how loudly we are allowed to express discomfort. What are you hoping women will recognise, question or reclaim when they step inside Zoraan’s body?

Deepa: I hope women recognise something of themselves in Zoraan, but also question who taught us the rules we live by. For many of us South Asian women, the body can become communal territory, shaped by family, culture, religion, medicine and expectations around respectability, motherhood and ageing. Even discomfort can become something we are expected to carry quietly. By literally placing the audience inside Zoraan’s body, I wanted to disrupt that. Her body is being monitored, judged, and controlled, but it is also where resistance begins. We also have an AI character called Aunty Intelligence, who is acerbic, cutting, and always ready to offer advice, particularly when it hasn’t been asked for. This is also an example of how women can sometimes reinforce and perpetuate the very patriarchal systems that constrain them. Ultimately, I hope women come away thinking about what belongs to them: their anger, pleasure, choices, voice, and body. Zoraan does not ask permission to reclaim herself. That refusal is central to the work.

Menopause has been one of the most liberating experiences of my life. I am now 57; I love my life, and I am far less willing to put up with nonsense. I speak out more; I am braver. There is an extraordinary freedom that comes with this stage of life. For me, the menopause has not been about becoming less; it has been about becoming more fully myself.

This question feels particularly important because the experience doesn’t present Zoraan as passive. She is described as volatile, funny, and furious; her body becomes both battlefield and birthplace for resistance.

There is something powerful about that shift in language. The menopausal body isn’t presented as something broken that needs fixing. It is a body in transition, a body with history, a body that has been controlled and scrutinised, but also a body capable of pushing back.

There is something wonderfully provocative about calling it The Baby Factory Is Closed. Beyond the humour, what does that title say about the way women are often valued through fertility and motherhood, and what happens to a woman’s sense of identity when that chapter closes?

Deepa: The title is deliberately provocative and funny, but beneath that humour lies a serious question about how women’s value has historically been linked to fertility, motherhood, and reproduction. The phrase “baby factory” reduces the female body to its biological function, which is precisely what the work is pushing against. When that function ends, what happens next? I wanted the answer to be freedom rather than loss. Zoraan is not disappearing because her reproductive years are over; she is becoming more powerful, more vocal, and less willing to conform. There is something wonderfully disruptive about saying, the baby factory is closed, but I am still here. My body is not redundant. It belongs to me, and perhaps for the first time, I get to decide what happens next.

Buddhism teaches us that change is constant, and I really believe that. We go through significant transitions throughout our lives: periods, pregnancy, childbirth, menopause. For me, what matters is our mindset and how we choose to look after ourselves through those changes. During menopause, I gave up alcohol and meat, cut out sugar, and started exercising more. Those changes had an immediate and profound impact on how I felt. Menopause made me think differently about my relationship with my body and what it needed from me at this stage of my life.

The title is funny until you sit with it for a moment, then it becomes uncomfortable. And perhaps that is exactly the point.

What happens when the biological function around which so much of a woman’s social value has historically been constructed is no longer available? Does something disappear?

Or does the woman finally get to ask who she is when she is no longer being measured through what her body can produce?

Your work tells women who have been told to calm down, smile more, or stay quiet: this experience is for you. If a woman walks out of the VR experience feeling angry, liberated, uncomfortable, or even seen in a way she hasn’t felt seen before, what would you hope that feeling makes possible in her own life?

Deepa: I hope it gives her permission. Permission to be angry, to take up space, to question what she has been told about her body, her value, and how she should behave. We spend so much of our lives being conditioned to accommodate other people, to make ourselves smaller, quieter, and easier. I would love a woman to leave The Baby Factory Is Closed feeling that she does not have to do that anymore. Feeling seen matters, but for me the next question is, what do you do with that feeling? Maybe you speak up when you would previously have stayed silent. Maybe you say no. Maybe you make a different choice. Liberation does not have to be dramatic. Sometimes it begins with simply deciding that your life and your body belong to you. Anything is possible. We do not have to be defined by who we were when deciding who we want to become. There is enormous freedom in caring less about what other people think and becoming more confident in your own choices. But I also believe community is incredibly important. Liberation is not just an individual act; it comes from finding people who support you, challenge you, and allow you to be fully yourself. For me, this stage of life is about possibility, being braver, letting go of expectations that no longer serve us, and recognising that we still have the power to reinvent ourselves.

And sometimes the most radical act of freedom is simply to dance, in your own body, on your own terms.

That invitation to feel something matters. Because perhaps we have become so accustomed to talking about menopause through symptoms, treatment and management that we have forgotten there is another conversation underneath it all.

Who gets to define our bodies? Who gets to decide what ageing means? Who gets to tell us how we should feel about becoming older? And what might happen if women stopped apologising for the answers?

See The Baby Factory Is Closed at the V&A

The Baby Factory Is Closed will be presented at the V&A South Kensington as part of Digital Design Weekend 2026, which runs from Friday 18 to Sunday 20 September 2026. The weekend brings together artists and designers exploring the intersection of art, design and technology, with this year’s programme looking particularly at how creative technologies are reshaping our relationships with ecology, care and community.

The experience is included among the V&A’s Show & Tell and installations programme alongside a range of contemporary digital artworks. The event is free and operates on a drop-in basis, although places are first come, first served and individual activations may reach capacity.

The experience itself comes with accessibility and sensory guidance, including information around VR, haptic feedback, scent, flashing lights, enclosed spaces and motion sensitivity. A seated version is also available for people with restricted leg movement.

Find out more about The Baby Factory Is Closed | See the V&A Digital Design Weekend programme

The factory may be closed. The conversation is only beginning.

There is something deliciously subversive about taking a life stage so often framed through loss and asking us to look at it through another lens.

Not decline, invisibility, or the end of relevance, but rebellion.

The Baby Factory Is Closed doesn’t promise a comfortable journey. In fact, it seems determined to do the opposite. It asks us to enter the discomfort, inhabit the body, confront the systems that have shaped it, and perhaps come out the other side asking better questions.

Because menopause isn’t simply something that happens to women’s bodies; it happens within cultures, families, healthcare systems, workplaces, relationships, and histories.

And sometimes, reclaiming the conversation begins with refusing to whisper.

The baby factory is closed. But perhaps this is where the real story begins.

Dr Vikram Sinai Talaulikar is a Consultant Gynaecologist and subspecialist in Reproductive Medicine at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, one of the UK’s leading tertiary centres for women’s health. He trained in India before building a distinguished career in the UK, holds multiple specialist qualifications in reproductive medicine and menopause, and is a certified British Menopause Society Menopause Specialist who trains other clinicians in menopause care. He has published research on the underrepresentation of South Asian women in reproductive medicine research, a gap whose consequences, as he explains in this interview, are both clinical and deeply personal.

He also speaks Hindi, Marathi, and Konkani. That last detail is not incidental; it is central. Because when Dr Vikram speaks to a South Asian woman in her own language, something shifts in the consultation room. The appointment becomes more open. More honest. More emotional. Symptoms that have gone unnamed for years, genitourinary concerns, sexual health changes, the particular grief of a body that has been carrying too much for too long, finally find their way into the conversation. Language, as he says, changes everything.

This interview is one of the most clinically detailed and culturally specific conversations The Sattva Collective has published. Dr Vikram covers the earlier age of menopause onset in South Asian women, the non-classical symptoms that go unrecognised for years, the intersection of PCOS, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease with hormonal transition, the truth about HRT and the myths that keep women suffering unnecessarily, and the particular urgency of premature ovarian insufficiency in South Asian communities.

He also says something that we want every South Asian woman reading this to carry with them.

“You do not have to deal with the transition alone.”

You trained in India and have built a distinguished career in women’s health in the UK, specialising in menopause and reproductive medicine. How has that journey, straddling two cultures and two healthcare systems, shaped how you understand and approach the menopause experience of South Asian women specifically?

I consider myself lucky to have trained in India and then continued learning while practising in the UK. There is significant variation in menopause experiences across cultures and different geographical landscapes, and in how healthcare systems approach and provide services and support to women. In South Asia, women’s health conversations have traditionally focused on fertility, pregnancy, and family responsibilities, and menopause has often been seen as something women are simply expected to endure quietly as a natural part of ageing, even when it may be challenging for many women.

Menopausal symptoms like anxiety, sleep disturbance, joint pain, low mood, or even sexual health concerns may not be openly discussed or even recognised as menopause-related. Changes to bone and heart health that take place with menopause transition are not talked about enough, and opportunities are often missed to make lifestyle changes or consider treatment options that could improve quality of life and long-term health.

There remain myths and misconceptions about hormone replacement therapy for menopause, and there is a huge need for public awareness campaigns as well as healthcare professional education on menopause management.

In the UK, while menopause awareness and access to evidence-based treatment have improved significantly, I still see barriers to access among South Asian women. Even within a resourced healthcare system, cultural stigma, language barriers, intergenerational silence, and a tendency to normalise suffering can delay women seeking help. For many South Asian women, experiences around fertility, miscarriage, Gynaecological conditions, or family expectations around motherhood deeply shape how they experience the menopause transition. So it is important to be culturally sensitive when discussing menopause, considering the woman’s beliefs and perceptions, and involving the woman in decision-making about her health.

You have published research on the low participation rates of Asian women in reproductive medicine research. What did that research reveal about why South Asian women are so underrepresented, and what are the real consequences of that absence for the quality of care they receive?

It is true that South Asian women are not represented in sufficient numbers, especially when it comes to reproductive health research. There are both system and patient factors at play here. Researchers have been unable to reach these women due to communication gaps, the lack of involvement of community representatives, and language barriers. Women have faced barriers such as a lack of confidence in research processes, historical negative narratives about research, language/cultural barriers to participation, poor awareness of research opportunities and the fact that studies are not always designed or explained in ways that feel accessible to South Asian women. This needs to change. If South Asian women are underrepresented in research, then the evidence guiding treatment may not fully reflect their biology/physiology, benefit/risk profiles, beliefs, or unique lived experiences. That means their healthcare can become less personalised and less equitable.

As a certified menopause specialist and a trainer of other clinicians through the BMS and FSRH, you are shaping how the next generation of healthcare professionals approaches menopause care. What do you wish more GPs and gynaecologists understood about the specific needs, risk factors, and cultural context of South Asian women in midlife?

There are many things that are different about the midlife and menopause transition in South Asian women. These need to be factored in when assessing women who present for help or support during this transition. For example, their background medical risks, such as Polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS, also previously known as PCOS) or diabetes, could be high. This may impact their cardiovascular health in addition to the menopausal hormone changes.

They may reach menopause about 5 years earlier, on average, than the Caucasian population. They may present with non-classical non-vasomotor symptoms of menopause rather than hot flushes or night sweats (fatigue, poor sleep, joint pains, low mood, anxiety, weight changes, or loss of confidence, often after years of putting family needs before their own).

They may be more hesitant to talk about genitourinary symptoms or sexual problems. The prevalence of premature ovarian insufficiency or early menopause is higher in these women, and they may be at risk of osteoporosis. All these considerations and more will shape how we address the symptoms each woman presents with and what solutions best fit the person in front of us, rather than applying universal guidance, which may not always be appropriate for this group of women.

South Asian women have higher rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis, all conditions that intersect significantly with the hormonal changes of menopause. How does this change the clinical conversation around menopause care for South Asian women, and is the mainstream healthcare system currently equipped to have that conversation?

For South Asian women, menopause is not just a hormonal transition; it intersects significantly with metabolic and bone health. Increased risks of PCOM, insulin resistance, diabetes, premature or early menopause, and cardiovascular disease during menopause need discussion in South Asian women, and menopause consultation is the ideal time to address these risks and put in place measures to prevent future ill health. Clinical consultation should cover: blood pressure measurement, diabetes risk assessment, cholesterol check, weight/BMI/waist circumference, healthy diet, protein/vitamin D and calcium intake, weight-bearing exercise, sleep hygiene, and psychological well-being.

A healthy lifestyle is key to future good health, and women need to be supported in looking after themselves and prioritising their own health. Currently, I do not think the mainstream health systems across the world are always equipped to have those conversations and provide support and regular follow-up during the menopause transition. Consultations are often too short, and cultural context is easily missed. We need a more proactive, preventative, and culturally informed approach.

Many South Asian women arrive in your clinic having minimised their symptoms for years, told by GPs, and sometimes by their own families, that what they are experiencing is stress, or anxiety, or simply part of getting older. What does it mean clinically when a woman’s menopause goes unrecognised and unsupported for that long?

When menopause symptoms are unrecognised for years, women can lose confidence in their own bodies and in the healthcare system. They may suffer from vasomotor symptoms, anxiety, depression, insomnia, pains, and vaginal/bladder problems for a long time without anyone joining the dots. This will mean they suffer from a poor quality of life and may face problems at work or in their relationships without help and support. Women who have medically or surgically induced menopause have an even more challenging time due to the sudden stopping of hormones. There are a number of lifestyle, non-hormonal, and hormonal interventions that can improve quality of life and preserve long-term health during menopause. When it comes to lifestyle and HRT interventions, the earlier these are instituted, the more the long-term benefits! Delay in interventions could mean that various body systems experience menopausal hormone-related changes, which may not always be reversible in the long term.

HRT remains a source of significant fear and misinformation within South Asian communities; stories about cancer, strokes, and risk are passed between women without a medical context. What do you want South Asian women to understand about HRT, and how do you approach those fears in a clinical setting with a patient who arrives deeply reluctant?

I want South Asian women to know that HRT is not a rigid, single treatment and is not dangerous. There are various types of HRT with their individual benefits, side effects and risks, and for the majority of women who wish to take HRT for quality of life, the benefits outweigh the risks. The benefits and risks of HRT depend on the woman’s age, health history, type of HRT, route of administration, and timing. There are many fears and myths associated with the use of HRT, for example, the risk of blood clots and cancers, and many of these arise from some of the old studies that were published about 20 years ago.

However, the situation has changed over the past 2 decades with the availability of modern, safer HRT preparations, which can be individualised based on a woman’s unique circumstances to suit her best. For women with premature or early menopause, replacing hormones using HRT is the gold standard treatment to preserve their quality of life and future bone, heart, and cognitive health. When a patient is fearful, it is important never to dismiss that fear, to explore its origins, to explain the evidence clearly, and to personalise the discussion. Not all women need to take HRT or wish to take HRT, but it should certainly not be denied to those for whom the benefits outweigh the risks.

You speak Hindi, Marathi, and Konkani. Has being able to speak to patients in their own language changed what they tell you and what you can discuss? What does language access actually unlock in the context of menopause care?

Yes, language changes everything. Knowing different languages is a huge advantage in clinical settings. When I speak to women in Hindi, Marathi, or Konkani, the consultation often becomes more open, more emotional, and more honest. The connection and trust are immediate!

Patients will often describe symptoms, fears, and sensitive or intimate health concerns in their own language, which they may not otherwise do easily in another language. Also, explaining the benefits and risks of medical interventions becomes easier when speaking with women in their language of choice.

Premature ovarian insufficiency, menopause before the age of 40, affects South Asian women, and yet it is rarely discussed within South Asian communities. What should South Asian women and their families know about premature menopause, and why does early recognition matter so profoundly?

The prevalence of premature ovarian insufficiency (below 40) and early menopause (below 45) is higher in South Asian women. This not only causes symptoms and impacts quality of life but also causes infertility and increases the risks of osteoporosis, heart disease, diabetes, and cognitive problems in later life. Replacing hormones via HRT is key for most women, besides

lifestyle changes to protect bone and heart health. Risks from HRT, which are applicable to women who start after the age of 50 (such as a slight increased risk of breast cancer) do not apply to women with premature or early menopause until the age of 50 and hence benefits far outweigh any risks. Early recognition and treatment are important to prevent changes in the heart, blood vessels, and bones, which may become irreversible over time. Diagnoses such as premature menopause can be life-changing and challenging, and associated with stigma. Good psychological support is crucial in this situation.

The Sattva Collective was founded on the belief that South Asian women deserve menopause and midlife support that truly understands their cultural context, not just their hormones. As a clinician, what do you believe community-led organisations like ours can do that clinical settings simply cannot?

Given the barriers women from certain communities face in accessing support and evidence-based care or advice on menopause transition, community-led organisations can do something clinics often cannot. They can play a vital role by creating awareness, normalising conversations in a culturally sensitive way, challenging stigma, involving patients and families in supporting themselves, and speaking/conducting in culturally familiar ways. They can serve as a bridge between patients and healthcare systems, improving everyone’s access to the right treatments and support. Organisations like The Sattva Collective can build trust, provide education, and foster a sense of belonging, which often allows women to finally seek help when they need it.

If you could say one thing directly to the South Asian woman reading this who suspects she is in perimenopause, who has not yet sought help, who is managing alone, what would it be?

I would say that if you think you are in perimenopause, you are likely not imagining it, and there are so many options you could consider for symptom relief and protection of long-term health. You do not have to deal with the transition alone, as perimenopause, with its symptoms, can affect your body, mind, relationships, work, confidence, and sense of self. Also, it is not just about replacing hormones; there are many lifestyle and other non-hormonal alternatives that can help. Seeking help is not a sign of weakness, and it could make a huge difference to your quality of life and future health. So do not suffer in silence and take the next step to seek help if you wish to discuss your symptoms and consider interventions to support yourself.

Near the end of this conversation, Dr Vikram is asked what he would say to the South Asian woman who suspects she is in perimenopause, who has not yet sought help, and who is managing alone.

His answer is direct, warm, and clinically precise all at once.

“You are likely not imagining it.”

Four words. But for a South Asian woman who has spent years being told that her symptoms are stress, or anxiety, or simply ageing, who has minimised herself in consultation rooms, who has been reassured that her tests are normal when her experience was anything but, those four words carry the weight of every dismissed appointment, every symptom she talked herself out of naming, every time she went home from the GP and tried harder to cope.

You are not imagining it.

What Dr Vikram makes clear across this entire conversation is that South Asian women do not face a single barrier to menopause care. They face a system of interlocking barriers, cultural silence, language gaps, underrepresentation in research, clinicians who have not been trained in the cultural context, and consultations that are too short to hold the complexity of what these women carry.

And yet within all of that, there is something he returns to again and again: the possibility of change. Through community-led organisations that build trust before a woman ever enters a clinical setting. Through clinicians who speak the right language, literally and figuratively. Through women who finally allow themselves to seek the help they deserve.

“Seeking help is not a sign of weakness. It could make a huge difference to your quality of life and future health.”

If you have been managing alone, this conversation was written for you.

The next step is yours.

To find out more about Dr Vikram Sinai Talaulikar’s work:

Menopause Clinic London: menopausecliniclondon.co.uk
The Luna Clinic: thelunaclinic.com
UCLH: uclh.nhs.uk

This article is a simple, clear guide. Not to frighten. To prepare.

The five cancers and what to look out for

1. Womb cancer (uterine cancer) The most common gynaecological cancer in the UK. Symptoms include unusual vaginal bleeding, particularly bleeding after menopause, between periods, or heavier periods than usual. For South Asian women in midlife, any unexplained change in bleeding patterns deserves investigation, not assumption.

2. Ovarian cancer is the UK’s deadliest gynaecological disease, and in England, 40% of women diagnosed only found out after going to A&E, nearly half reaching the crisis point before getting answers. Symptoms are subtle: persistent bloating, feeling full quickly, abdominal or pelvic pain, and needing to urinate more frequently. Because these symptoms overlap with so many other conditions, they are frequently dismissed. They should not be.

3. Cervical cancer is the only gynaecological cancer with a national screening programme. Multiple sociocultural factors, including stigma, taboos, family dynamics, and religious beliefs, significantly impact cervical screening uptake in South Asian communities. If you are overdue for a smear test, book it. The discomfort lasts for minutes. The peace of mind is worth it.

4. Vaginal cancer Rare, but important to know about. Symptoms include bleeding between periods or after sex, a lump or growth, persistent discharge, or pelvic pain. Any persistent symptoms in this area should be discussed with a GP.

5. Vulval cancer Symptoms include persistent itching, burning, pain, a lump, and thickened or discoloured skin in the vulval area. Many women delay seeking help due to embarrassment. Please don’t.

Why are South Asian women less likely to be diagnosed early

Research consistently shows that Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic women in the UK face significant barriers to cancer screening uptake, including language barriers, cultural stigma around gynaecological examinations, and a lack of culturally appropriate information.

Bodies. Reproductive health. Cancer. These are not subjects that have historically been discussed openly in South Asian families. And that silence, however well-intentioned, costs lives.

Early diagnosis dramatically improves survival rates across all five gynaecological cancers. The barriers to screening are real and documented. But they are also changeable.

One thing to do this September

Check whether you are up to date with your cervical screening. If you are not, book it this month.

Tell one woman in your family, your sister, your daughter, your mother, your friend, about the symptoms of ovarian and womb cancer. Persistent bloating. Unusual bleeding. Pelvic pain. These are worth naming out loud.

And if something feels wrong in your body, even if you can’t quite put it into words, please speak to your GP. You do not need to be certain. You just need to be heard.

For more information on gynaecological cancers, visit Target Ovarian Cancer, The Eve Appeal, or Macmillan Cancer Support.

Not because PCOS is rare in our community. Because it is startlingly common. And because the way it intersects with perimenopause creates a transition that is more complex, more confusing, and more likely to be missed by the very healthcare system that should be catching it.

September is PCOS Awareness Month. And for South Asian women in midlife, it arrives at exactly the right moment.

Why is PCOS so prevalent in South Asian women

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome is the most common hormonal condition affecting women of reproductive age. It affects 1 in 10 women in the UK.

PCOS is particularly common among women of South Asian origin, who have been shown to have more severe symptoms than their Caucasian counterparts. The reasons are complex, a combination of genetic predisposition, higher rates of insulin resistance, and metabolic factors that are already more prevalent in South Asian populations.

Many South Asian women were diagnosed with PCOS in their twenties and thirties, told to lose weight, perhaps given the contraceptive pill to regulate their cycles, and then largely left to manage alone. Some were never diagnosed at all, their symptoms attributed to stress or diet, or their body simply being difficult.

Now those same women are in their forties. And everything is shifting again.

When PCOS meets perimenopause

PCOS and perimenopause are both characterised by hormonal fluctuation; irregular periods, mood changes, weight redistribution, sleep disruption, fatigue, and brain fog. Which means that when they arrive together, distinguishing one from the other becomes genuinely difficult.

Research published in 2026 found that women with PCOS tend to experience a later menopausal transition and may have a lower prevalence of some menopausal symptoms at certain stages. But this does not mean the journey is easier; it means it is longer and more complex, and that the usual markers women and clinicians use to track the perimenopausal transition may not apply in the same way.

For South Asian women with PCOS, the elevated insulin resistance and metabolic risk that come with the condition compound the cardiovascular and metabolic changes that menopause already brings. The risks stack.

And yet the conversation is rarely had.

What to do if this is your story

If you have PCOS and you are in your forties, there are three things worth doing now:

1. Talk to your GP specifically about the PCOS-perimenopause intersection. This is a nuanced hormonal picture that requires more than a standard menopause consultation. Ask for a referral to a menopause specialist if needed.

2. Know your metabolic numbers. Blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure matter more, not less, as you move through perimenopause with PCOS. Get them checked regularly.

3. Trust your symptoms. If something feels different, name it. The overlap between PCOS and perimenopause is real and documented. You are not imagining it.

PCOS Awareness Month is a reminder that the hormonal story does not end at forty. For South Asian women, it often becomes more layered. More complex. More in need of culturally informed, properly supported care.

You deserve that care. Ask for it.

For support and information on PCOS, visit Verity — the UK PCOS charity or the NHS PCOS page.

And yet, looking at what this month actually produced — two expert interviews, two Summit speaker announcements, a new venue confirmed, a London collaboration underway, our first community drop-in session imminent, and a website rebuilt — the word quiet doesn’t quite cover it.

Here is what August looked like for The Sattva Collective.

Two new expert interviews, and they are among the most important we have published

The biweekly interview series continued in August with two conversations that, between them, address some of the most urgent and underserved dimensions of South Asian women’s health in midlife.

Anushka Chaudhry is a Consultant Oncoplastic Breast Surgeon, one of a very small number of female breast surgeons in the UK, and the first female general surgeon appointed to Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She is also the founder of Aurora Breast Cancer Wellbeing Charity, and she is passionate, with a particular, focused passion of someone who has spent years watching South Asian women arrive at her clinic with diagnoses that earlier intervention could have changed, about reaching the communities mainstream healthcare consistently fails to reach.

Her interview covers breast cancer screening barriers specific to South Asian women, the clinical truth about HRT and breast cancer risk, and the cultural silence around the body that causes so many women to arrive too late. It ends with a message that is both clinical and urgent: know your normal, and if something changes, get it checked. This conversation could save lives. We mean that without hyperbole.

Dr Farah Ahmed is a GP with a special interest in women’s health, working in a dedicated NHS menopause and women’s health clinic. She holds diplomas from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, is a certified member of the British Menopause Society, and has contributed to Vogue, Women’s Health, and Condé Nast, taking evidence-based medicine into the mainstream media where women actually are.

Her interview goes to the heart of something this organisation was founded precisely to address. Many South Asian women have not been absent from the healthcare system. They have sought help, repeatedly, for years. And still they have not received a diagnosis that connects their symptoms to perimenopause, not because the symptoms weren’t there, but because the system wasn’t designed to see them. Dr Farah names this directly, offers practical guidance for how South Asian women can advocate for themselves in a ten-minute GP appointment, and makes a structural argument that equitable care cannot be treated as an optional extra. It must be embedded into the design of services, education, research, and clinical practice from the outset.

Both interviews are freely available on our website and are written to serve multiple audiences simultaneously: the South Asian women who need this information, the healthcare professionals who need to understand these barriers, and the funders and commissioners who need evidence that this knowledge gap is real and that The Sattva Collective is actively closing it.

Dr Farah Ahmed and Nisha Harichandran confirmed as guest panellists at the Thrive Through Midlife & Menopause Summit

Following her interview, we are delighted to confirm that Dr Farah Ahmed has joined the Thrive Through Midlife & Menopause Summit as a guest panellist.

Nisha Harichandran draws on her South Asian cultural heritage, an 18-year international career, and happiness science to support women in redefining success on their own terms.

Both Dr Farah Ahmed and Nisha Harichandran join a panel and keynote line-up that now stands at five confirmed speakers: Sonia Shah (keynote), Sahir Ahmed-Evans (keynote), Janisha Parmar (keynote), Dr Farah Ahmed (guest panellist), and Dr Vikram Sinai Talaulikar (guest panellist).

Six voices. Six distinct areas of expertise: clinical pharmacology, women’s health advocacy, mental fitness and nervous system regulation, GP-led menopause care, and reproductive medicine. A programme that reflects the breadth and depth of what midlife actually demands of South Asian women.

The full announcement, including speaker biographies, is published here:

A new venue, and a significant one

The Thrive Through Midlife & Menopause Summit has a new home.

The Summit will now take place at The Bridge, 73–81 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 0NQ, a venue that reflects the scale and ambition of what we are building and that positions the Summit in a city where South Asian women across the UK can reasonably travel to reach it.

This is a significant development. It marks the moment the Thrive Through Midlife & Menopause Summit stepped from a Bedford community event into a national conversation. The date remains 14th May 2027, 5pm–9pm. Tickets and the full programme will be announced over the coming months. In the meantime, the Summit page holds everything you need to know.

Coming to London: Redefining Midlife & Menopause with The Bridge

The relationship with The Bridge extends beyond the Summit.

In November 2026, The Sattva Collective will be running Redefining Midlife & Menopause in collaboration with The Bridge in London. This is The Sattva Collective’s first facilitated programme outside Bedford, a pilot that opens the door to reaching South Asian women in one of the most diverse cities in the world, in a venue that is already home to community, connection, and purposeful work.

Full details here.

Our first community drop-in session: Bedford Central Library, 12th September

On Saturday 12th September, 2pm–4pm, The Sattva Collective will run its first 1-2-1 drop-in session at Bedford Central Library.

Thirty minutes. One South Asian woman at a time. No group setting. No pressure. Just space to talk about midlife and menopause, and something practical to leave with.

The Saturday timing is deliberate. It came directly from the women in our community, who told us clearly that weekday daytime sessions are inaccessible to them. Community feedback shapes how we programme. That principle matters, and it will continue to shape every decision we make about how, when, and where we show up.

This is a pilot. We are hoping to run these sessions weekly or biweekly going forward. Booking is via the Sattva Women’s Circle WhatsApp or by emailing hello@thesattvacollective.org.

For grant committees and funders reading this: the library drop-in represents The Sattva Collective’s first step into direct, in-person service delivery at a community venue; a form of outreach that digital platforms alone cannot replicate, and one that will generate evidence of need, engagement, and impact that strengthens future funding applications.

Our website has a new home and a new shape

August also brought a significant operational change.

The Sattva Collective’s original website and Substack publication have been merged into one unified platform, so that our community no longer needs to navigate between two separate places to find articles, interviews, podcast episodes, and updates. Everything is now in one place, more accessible, more coherent, and easier to share.

This is more than a technical change. It reflects an organisation that has grown to the point where its infrastructure needs to match its ambition. The website is the public face of The Sattva Collective for the community it serves, for the healthcare professionals and partner organisations it works with, and for the funders and grant committees assessing its reach and impact.

A cleaner, unified platform serves all of those audiences better.

What August tells us

In June, we launched. In July, we were recognised. In August, we expanded.

A new city. A new venue. A new community programme. A first drop-in session. A website rebuilt for the next stage of growth. And two of the most clinically significant interviews this organisation has published are conversations about breast cancer, menopause, and the healthcare barriers South Asian women face that are not incidental to TSC’s mission. They are the mission, made visible.

The Thrive Through Midlife & Menopause Summit, which in May was a confirmed date and a venue in Bedford, is now a nationally located event with five confirmed speakers, a London-based partner organisation, and a community programme running alongside it in the months leading up to it.

This is what organisational momentum looks like from the inside. Not a single dramatic moment. The accumulation of decisions, each one small, each one in the right direction, adds up to something that is unmistakably growing.

The silence around South Asian women’s midlife experience is not gone. But the infrastructure being built to dismantle it is more substantial now than it has ever been.

That is what August looked like.

Support our work

The Sattva Collective CIC is a registered not-for-profit Community Interest Company. Every article, interview, podcast episode, drop-in session, and resource we produce is free and accessible to the community we serve. None of it is funded by advertising. All of it depends on the generosity of people who believe this work matters.

If our work has reached you or a South Asian woman in your life, please consider supporting us.

Support The Sattva Collective →

The Sattva Collective CIC is the UK’s first community-led initiative dedicated to supporting South Asian women through midlife and menopause. Registered Community Interest Company No. 16450670. www.thesattvacollective.org

With love,

Kiran x

Founder & Director, The Sattva Collective CIC

A South Asian woman finally makes it to a dedicated menopause clinic. She has been to her GP multiple times over the years. She has been told her blood tests are normal. She has been treated for anxiety, iron deficiency, or depression. She has been reassured that there is no obvious medical explanation for how she feels.

And then, in this clinic, something shifts.

She is heard.

“By the time they reach a dedicated menopause clinic,” Dr Farah writes, “there is often a profound sense of relief, not only at receiving answers, but at finally feeling heard, understood, and having their experiences validated.”

That relief, the relief of a woman who has been carrying her symptoms for years, alone, largely unseen, is what this conversation is about.

Dr Farah Ahmed is a GP with a special interest in women’s health, working in a dedicated NHS menopause and women’s health clinic. She holds diplomas from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, is a certified member of the British Menopause Society, and has contributed to Vogue, Women’s Health, and Condé Nast, taking evidence-based medicine out of the consultation room and into the mainstream media where women actually are.

Her message to every healthcare professional working with South Asian women is clear, direct, and long overdue: equitable care is not achieved by treating everyone the same. It is achieved by understanding that different women face different barriers. And until those barriers are built into service design from the outset, not treated as an optional extra, health inequalities will persist.

This is a conversation that the South Asian women in our community have needed a clinician to have publicly, in their language, for a very long time.

Dr Farah is that clinician.

You work in a dedicated NHS menopause and women’s health clinic, which means you sit with the reality of what women are experiencing and what the healthcare system is and isn’t delivering for them, every single week. When South Asian women do finally make it into your consultation room, what are they most commonly carrying that has been unaddressed for far too long?

What strikes me most is how long many South Asian women have been carrying their symptoms alone before seeking help. By the time they reach my clinic, they are often exhausted, not just physically, but emotionally. Many have spent years normalising symptoms such as anxiety, low mood, sleep disturbance, joint pain, brain fog, heavy bleeding, loss of confidence, and low libido because they assumed these were simply part of getting older, stress, or something they should quietly tolerate.

I also see a profound lack of validation. Many women tell me that they have never discussed menopause openly with their mothers, sisters, or friends. In some families, there isn’t even a shared vocabulary for these experiences. As a result, women often arrive believing that what they are experiencing is unique to them or that they are somehow failing to cope.

Alongside the symptoms themselves, there is frequently an invisible burden of caregiving. Many South Asian women are simultaneously supporting children, ageing parents, extended family, and careers, while placing their own health at the bottom of the priority list. What has often gone unaddressed for far too long is not simply the menopause symptoms, but the woman’s belief that her wellbeing matters too.

What also stands out is that many women have not been absent from the healthcare system; they have often sought help repeatedly. Many have seen their GP several times over a number of years with symptoms such as fatigue, anxiety, low mood, poor sleep, brain fog, palpitations, or reduced confidence. Some have been treated for conditions such as iron deficiency or depression, which may well have been contributing factors, while others have been reassured that their tests are normal and that there is no obvious medical explanation for how they are feeling.

The challenge is that perimenopause remains a clinical diagnosis. There is no single blood test that can reliably confirm it, particularly in women in their forties whose hormone levels naturally fluctuate. As a result, many women can leave consultations feeling that their symptoms have not been fully explained or connected together as part of a broader hormonal transition. By the time they reach a dedicated menopause clinic, there is often a significant sense of relief, not only at receiving answers but also at finally feeling heard and understood and having their experiences validated.

You speak a lot about menopause through a cultural lens. What is the central message you want healthcare professionals in that room to leave with? And why is it still necessary to make this case in 2026?

My central message is that equitable care is not achieved by treating everyone the same; it is achieved by understanding that different women may face different barriers to accessing and benefiting from care.

We have made enormous progress in raising awareness of menopause, but awareness alone does not guarantee inclusion. Many of the resources, campaigns, educational materials, and even research studies that have shaped menopause conversations have historically centred on white, middle-class experiences. While these initiatives have been valuable, they have not always reflected the realities of women from ethnic minority communities.

In 2026, we still need to make this case because health inequalities persist. We know that South Asian women are less likely to access menopause support, less likely to receive evidence-based treatment, and more likely to encounter cultural, linguistic, and systemic barriers. If we genuinely want health for every woman, diversity cannot be an optional extra; it must be embedded into the design of services, education, research, and clinical practice from the outset.

South Asian women are significantly less likely to receive timely, appropriate menopause support. As a GP working at the frontline of that gap, what are the most significant barriers you see, and which ones do you believe are most within the healthcare system’s power to change?

The barriers exist at multiple levels.

At an individual level, many women do not recognise that their symptoms may be related to perimenopause or menopause. Cultural taboos, stigma around ageing, and limited opportunities for open discussion all contribute to delayed help-seeking.

At a healthcare level, I still see gaps in clinician confidence, variable menopause training, and a lack of culturally tailored resources. Too often, consultations rely on women already having the language and confidence to describe their experiences.

The encouraging thing is that many of these barriers are within our power to change. We can improve menopause education for healthcare professionals. We can ensure patient information is culturally relevant and accessible. We can engage communities directly rather than expecting women to find services on their own. We can diversify research participation and representation in public health campaigns.

Most importantly, we can create healthcare environments where women feel heard, respected, and understood from the moment they walk through the door.

Sexual health during and after menopause is one of the most significant and least discussed dimensions of this transition for South Asian women. What do you want South Asian women to know about their sexual health in midlife, and how do you create a consultation environment where these conversations become possible?

I want South Asian women to know that sexual health is a legitimate and important part of overall health. Vaginal dryness, discomfort during sex, recurrent urinary symptoms, changes in desire, and difficulties with intimacy are common during and after menopause, but they are not things women simply have to endure.

Many highly effective treatments are available, including vaginal oestrogen, lubricants, moisturisers, pelvic floor support, and broader menopause treatments where appropriate. The first step is recognising that these symptoms deserve attention.

In consultations, I try to create permission for the conversation. Rather than waiting for women to raise intimate concerns, I routinely ask about them in a matter-of-fact, non-judgmental way. Often, there is visible relief when women realise they are being asked because these symptoms are common and medically relevant, not because there is something unusual or embarrassing about them.

Trust is built through empathy, normalisation, and creating a space where women feel safe discussing topics that may have been considered taboo for much of their lives.

PMS and perimenopause share significant symptom overlap. How do you help women and their GPs distinguish between PMS, PMDD, and the early stages of perimenopause, particularly when women present with emotional symptoms rather than physical ones?

The key is understanding patterns.

PMS and PMDD symptoms typically occur during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle and improve shortly after a period starts. Women often describe a predictable cyclical pattern, even if the symptoms are severe.

Perimenopause is different. Symptoms may become less predictable and can occur throughout the month. Women often notice changes in their menstrual cycle, alongside symptoms such as sleep disturbance, hot flushes, brain fog, anxiety, and reduced resilience to stress.

The challenge is that emotional symptoms frequently appear before the more widely recognised physical symptoms. Many women present with anxiety, low mood, irritability, or loss of confidence and do not immediately connect these changes to hormonal fluctuations.

Careful history-taking remains one of our most valuable diagnostic tools. Understanding symptom timing, menstrual patterns, and the broader clinical picture often provides far more useful information than a blood test alone.

You have contributed to Vogue, Women’s Health, and Condé Nast, using mainstream platforms to make health information more accessible. What does reaching women through media that they actually read, rather than clinical leaflets they don’t, allow you to do that the consultation room cannot?

A consultation changes one woman’s experience. The media can change thousands.

The reality is that most women spend far more time engaging with magazines, websites, podcasts, social media and mainstream media than they do sitting in a GP surgery. Meeting women where they already are allows us to start conversations earlier and reach those who may never actively seek health information.

The media also helps normalise experiences. When a woman reads about perimenopause, heavy periods, or vaginal symptoms in a publication she trusts, she often realises she is not alone. That recognition can be incredibly powerful.

My goal is always to translate evidence-based medicine into language that feels relatable, accessible, and relevant to everyday life. Good health communication should empower women, not overwhelm them.

Many South Asian women arrive at a GP appointment having already minimised their symptoms. As a GP, how do you draw out the full picture? And what would you say to South Asian women about how to advocate for themselves in that ten-minute window?

I often find that the symptom a woman mentions first is not necessarily the one affecting her most.

Creating space for the fuller story requires curiosity and active listening. I ask open questions, explore the impact symptoms are having on daily life, and pay attention to what is left unsaid. Often, once a woman feels heard, the consultation opens up considerably.

For South Asian women, my message would be simple: you do not need to earn the right to seek help. Your symptoms matter.

Before an appointment, write down your main concerns and prioritise the two or three issues having the greatest impact on your life. Be specific about how symptoms affect your work, relationships, sleep, mood, or ability to function. Those details help clinicians understand the true impact.

Most importantly, do not minimise your experience. If something is affecting your quality of life, it is worth discussing.

HRT remains one of the most misunderstood and feared interventions among South Asian women. What do you wish every GP in the UK understood about how to have the HRT conversation with South Asian women specifically?

Many South Asian women arrive carrying fears that have developed over years, sometimes decades. These concerns may stem from stories shared within families, experiences of serious illnesses such as cancer, misinformation online, or a broader cultural tendency to avoid medications unless absolutely necessary.

The starting point should not be persuasion; it should be understanding.

Before discussing treatment, I want to understand what the woman already knows, what concerns her, and where those concerns come from. Evidence-based reassurance is most effective when it addresses the individual’s specific fears rather than delivering generic information.

GPs should recognise that trust matters as much as knowledge. Women need time to ask questions, weigh risks and benefits, and make informed decisions that align with their values.

The goal is not to convince every woman to take HRT. The goal is to ensure every woman has access to accurate information and feels empowered to make a genuinely informed choice.

Your mission is to promote proactive, preventative care tailored to each woman’s needs. For South Asian women in their late thirties and early forties, what proactive steps would you encourage them to take right now?

My first recommendation is to start paying attention to your health before symptoms become disruptive.

Understand your menstrual cycle and notice changes. Prioritise regular physical activity, particularly strength training, which supports bone health, muscle mass, metabolic health, and long-term wellbeing. Focus on adequate protein intake, sleep, stress management, and cardiovascular health.

South Asian women already face increased risks of conditions such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, so midlife is an important opportunity to invest in preventative health.

I would also encourage women to become menopause-literate. You do not need to wait until symptoms become severe to learn about perimenopause. Understanding what lies ahead can make the transition far less confusing and far less frightening.

Perhaps most importantly, start viewing your health as an investment rather than an afterthought.

If you could change one thing about how the NHS approaches menopause care for South Asian and ethnic minority women, one structural, cultural or clinical shift that would make the biggest difference, what would it be and why?

I would embed culturally competent women’s health care throughout the system rather than treating it as a specialist interest.

Too often, culturally sensitive care depends on individual clinicians who have developed expertise or awareness on their own. Equity should not rely on luck.

Every woman, regardless of her ethnicity, language, postcode, or socioeconomic background, should have access to healthcare professionals who understand how culture, identity, family dynamics, and health beliefs can shape menopause experiences and healthcare decisions.

If we can build services that are designed with diverse communities rather than simply delivered to them, we will move much closer to achieving genuinely equitable menopause care.

Ultimately, the goal is not simply better menopause care. It is ensuring that every woman feels seen, heard, and valued within the healthcare system.

I want to return to something Dr Farah says early in this conversation, because it is the thing I keep coming back to.

“What has often gone unaddressed for far too long is not simply the menopause symptoms. It is the woman’s belief that her well-being matters too.”

Read that again.

Because that sentence describes something that is not clinical. It is cultural. It is the accumulated weight of decades of messaging, from families, from communities, from a culture that placed South Asian women at the centre of everyone else’s care and rarely, if ever, asked about their own.

The menopause symptoms can be treated. There are consultations, medications, and therapies. What is harder to treat, and what The Sattva Collective was founded precisely to address, is the belief that a South Asian woman’s suffering is too small, too private, too inconvenient to name.

Dr Farah’s message to South Asian women is both clinical and deeply personal:

“You do not need to earn the right to seek help. Your symptoms matter.”

And her message to the healthcare professionals treating them is equally direct: trust matters as much as knowledge. Understanding where a woman’s fears come from matters. Building services with diverse communities, not simply delivering to them, matters.

The goal, she says, is not simply better menopause care.

“It is ensuring that every woman feels seen, heard, and valued within the healthcare system.”

That is the whole point.

To find out more about Dr Farah Ahmed’s work:

LinkedIn: Dr Farah Ahmed Instagram: @drfarahwomenshealth

Stay connected

This is definitely the latter.

For a while now, we’ve been working behind the scenes on something very close to our hearts: the Thrive Through Midlife & Menopause Summit, taking place on 14th May 2027.

And today, we get to share the first of the experts who will help bring that room to life.

Our keynote speakers are Sonia Shah, Sahir Ahmed-Evans, and Janisha Parmar, joined by guest panellists Dr Farah Ahmed and Dr Vikram Talaulikar.

Five brilliant voices. Five different areas of expertise. Five different perspectives on what it means to navigate midlife, menopause, health, identity, and everything that comes with this particular chapter of a woman’s life.

And that diversity of perspective is exactly what we wanted.

Because the Thrive Through Midlife & Menopause Summit was never going to be another generic menopause event with a South Asian woman or two added to the programme.

We are building something for South Asian women, from the ground up.

For the women who have spent years wondering whether what they were experiencing was normal.

For the women whose symptoms went unnamed because nobody talked about menopause at home.

For the women navigating changing bodies alongside family expectations, caregiving, relationships, work, faith, identity, and the invisible emotional load that so often comes with midlife.

For the women who have learnt to keep going, even when something inside them is quietly asking for change.

And for the women who are simply ready to have a different conversation.

One where we can ask the questions we were never taught to ask.

One where our cultural context isn’t an afterthought.

One where evidence, lived experience, honest conversation, and community can sit in the same room.

That is what we are creating.

And these first five speakers already give you a glimpse of the breadth of that conversation.

Sonia Shah brings her expertise as a Clinical Pharmacist, British Menopause Society-trained Menopause Practitioner and Coach, with a strong focus on evidence-based menopause education and women’s wellbeing.

Sahir Ahmed-Evans, through her work in women’s health, education, and advocacy, brings both lived experience and a powerful mission to change the way we understand menopause and women’s health.

Janisha Parmar brings the world of mental fitness, nervous system regulation, energy, and the emotional realities of midlife, helping women move beyond simply surviving and towards feeling like themselves again.

And joining them on our panel, Dr Farah Ahmed, a GP and British Menopause Society Accredited Menopause Specialist, brings her passion for culturally competent and equitable menopause care.

Alongside her, Dr Vikram Talaulikar, Associate Specialist in Reproductive Medicine at UCLH and Hon. Associate Professor in Women’s Health at UCL, brings extensive expertise in women’s health and menopause.

And here’s the thing.

This is only the beginning.

There are more speakers to come. More conversations to announce. More pieces of the day are still being created.

The full programme is taking shape, and I honestly cannot wait to share it with you.

Because I have a feeling that when this room comes together on 14th May 2027, it is going to be about much more than menopause.

It will be about women finally having language for things they have carried quietly.

It will be about asking better questions.

It will be about learning from one another.

It will be about being seen.

And perhaps most importantly, it will be about remembering that midlife isn’t the end of anything.

It can be the beginning of something entirely different.

Something we actually get to design.

So, if you are a South Asian woman navigating perimenopause, menopause, or postmenopause, or you simply want to be part of a conversation that puts South Asian women’s experiences at the centre, put the date in your diary:

• 🗓️ 14th May 2027

• 🕔 5 PM–9 PM

• 📍 The Bridge, 73–81 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 0NQ

The summit is currently in development, so tickets and the full programme will be announced over the coming months.

If you want to be among the first to hear about new speakers, ticket releases, and programme updates, join our waitlist below.

Subscribe now

This room is already beginning to take shape.

And I cannot wait to fill it with you.

Kiran x

The Sattva Collective
Redefining Midlife & Menopause for South Asian Women

This is one of them.

Anushka Chaudhry is a Consultant Oncoplastic Breast Surgeon, one of a very small number of female breast surgeons in the UK, and the first female general surgeon appointed to Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She grew up in Wales as part of a South Asian minority community, rarely seeing anyone who looked like her in positions of leadership within medicine, let alone surgery. She trained, persisted, and arrived somewhere that, still, in 2026, not enough women who look like her have reached.

But what makes this interview exceptional is not the title. It is what sits beneath it.

Anushka founded Aurora Breast Cancer Wellbeing Charity because she recognised that excellent surgical care alone is not enough. She works with national and international faculty. She publishes, she educates, and she gives seminars to schools and businesses. And she is passionate, with the particular, focused passion of someone who has spent years watching South Asian women arrive at her clinic too late, with diagnoses that earlier intervention could have changed, about reaching the communities that mainstream healthcare consistently fails to reach.

South Asian women face specific and documented barriers to breast cancer screening. Language barriers. Cultural silence around the body. The fear of cancer is a taboo subject. Modesty concerns. Misconceptions about risk. And the particularly powerful myth that HRT causes breast cancer, a fear so pervasive that it is preventing women from seeking menopause support that could genuinely transform their quality of life.

Anushka does not shy away from any of it. She names it directly, addresses it with evidence, and asks South Asian women to do something that requires real courage in communities that have taught them to stay quiet about their bodies.

Get it checked. Know your normal.

This conversation could save lives. We mean that without hyperbole.

You are the first female general surgeon employed by Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, a milestone that carries particular weight for South Asian women watching you. What did it take to get there, and what does your presence in that role represent to you personally as a South Asian woman in surgical medicine?

Growing up in Wales as part of a South Asian minority community, I rarely saw people who looked like me in positions of leadership within medicine, let alone surgery. The journey to becoming a consultant surgeon required years of training, resilience, sacrifice, and a willingness to challenge societal and professional expectations. Surgery has traditionally been a male-dominated speciality, and for many women, particularly those from ethnic minority backgrounds, there can be an additional burden of feeling that they must constantly prove themselves. Fortunately, my parents always instilled in me a strong sense of self-belief and a fearless approach to everything I set my mind to. I feel so lucky to have such support.

Being the first female general surgeon appointed to Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is something I am proud of, but also something I view as a responsibility. Representation matters. When young South Asian women see someone who shares aspects of their background succeeding in a field that has historically lacked diversity, it helps expand their sense of what is possible. Personally, it represents progress, but it also reminds me that we still have work to do to ensure medicine and surgery reflect the communities we serve.

You are passionate about increasing breast cancer awareness, specifically among ethnic minority populations, and you are affiliated with national projects in this area. What are the most significant barriers you have identified that prevent South Asian women from engaging with breast cancer screening, and what does it cost them when those barriers are not addressed?

The barriers are often complex and interconnected. Language difficulties, limited access to culturally tailored health information, modesty concerns, fear of cancer, misconceptions about risk, and the belief that breast cancer is less common in South Asian women can all contribute to lower engagement with screening services.

There is also a tendency in some communities to avoid discussing breast health openly. When breast cancer is viewed as a taboo subject, women may delay seeking help when symptoms develop. The consequence is that cancers are often diagnosed at a later stage, when treatment can be more intensive, and outcomes may be poorer.

Early diagnosis saves lives. When barriers to screening are not addressed, women lose the opportunity for earlier treatment, less invasive surgery, and potentially better long-term outcomes. That is why community engagement, culturally sensitive education, and trusted conversations are so important.

Breast cancer risk changes at menopause, and yet the conversation about breast health and menopause is rarely had with South Asian women in a culturally grounded way. What do South Asian women in midlife need to understand about how their breast cancer risk evolves through the perimenopausal and postmenopausal transition?

One of the most important things women need to understand is that age itself is one of the strongest risk factors for breast cancer. The majority of breast cancers occur after the age of 50, which means risk naturally increases during and after the menopausal transition.

Many women assume that because their periods are becoming irregular or stopping, their focus should be solely on managing menopausal symptoms. While that is important, breast awareness should remain a priority. Women should continue attending screening appointments, understand what is normal for their breasts, and seek medical advice promptly if they notice changes.

At the same time, risk is influenced by many factors, including genetics, family history, weight, alcohol consumption, physical activity, and reproductive history. Menopause is therefore an opportunity to adopt a holistic approach to health, including breast, bone, and cardiovascular health, as well as emotional well-being.

HRT and breast cancer fear are perhaps the most significant barriers preventing South Asian women from seeking menopause support. Many women are refusing HRT because they believe it will give them breast cancer. As a consultant breast surgeon, what is the current clinical picture on HRT and breast cancer risk, and what do you want South Asian women to understand before making that decision from a place of fear?

The relationship between hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer is often misunderstood. Many women have heard simplified messages suggesting that HRT causes breast cancer, but the reality is much more nuanced.

For most healthy women under the age of 60, the benefits of HRT in managing significant menopausal symptoms often outweigh the risks. Different types of HRT carry different levels of risk. Combined oestrogen-progestogen HRT is associated with a small increase in breast cancer risk with longer-term use, whereas oestrogen-only HRT appears to carry a lower risk profile in appropriate women.

Importantly, the increased risk associated with some forms of HRT is relatively small and needs to be considered alongside other common risk factors such as obesity, alcohol consumption, and physical inactivity.

My message to South Asian women is simple: do not make decisions based on fear alone. Seek personalised medical advice, understand your individual risk profile, and make an informed decision based on evidence rather than myths. Untreated menopause symptoms can have profound effects on quality of life, relationships, work, sleep, and long-term health.

You founded Aurora Breast Cancer Wellbeing Charity, taking your work beyond the operating theatre into community and emotional support. What gap were you trying to fill, and how has that work shaped your understanding of what women, particularly South Asian women, actually need when they receive a breast cancer diagnosis?

I founded Aurora because I recognised that excellent surgical and medical treatment alone is not enough. A breast cancer diagnosis affects every aspect of a woman’s life: her family, relationships, confidence, mental health, sexuality, career, and identity.

Many women told us they felt unsupported once treatment ended. Others struggled to access practical information about exercise, nutrition, menopause, emotional well-being, and survivorship.

For South Asian women, there can be additional challenges. Some women feel isolated because cancer is not openly discussed within their communities. Others carry concerns about family responsibilities, body image, fertility, or cultural expectations.

Aurora was created to provide holistic support and to remind women that they are more than their diagnosis. Through this work, I have learned that women need information, but they also need connection, understanding, and a sense that they do not have to face cancer alone.

Oncoplastic surgery sits at the intersection of cancer treatment and reconstructive outcomes, preserving cosmetic and functional results wherever possible. For South Asian women, body image, modesty, and cultural attitudes to the body can make decisions around breast surgery particularly complex. How do you navigate those conversations with your patients?

Every woman’s priorities are different, and one of the most important parts of my role is listening. For some women, preserving breast shape is extremely important. For others, the priority is removing the cancer with the least possible future worry.

I ensure patients understand all available options, including breast-conserving surgery, mastectomy, and reconstruction where appropriate. We discuss the advantages, limitations, recovery, and expected outcomes of each approach.

Cultural sensitivity is vital. Discussions about breasts, body image, and sexuality can be difficult in some communities. It is also important for healthcare teams not to make assumptions based on people’s backgrounds, so I focus on educating colleagues. Creating a safe, non-judgmental environment allows women to express concerns they may never have voiced elsewhere. Ultimately, the goal is shared decision-making that respects both medical evidence and individual values.

South Asian women face specific challenges in breast cancer screening, including lower uptake of mammography, language barriers, cultural stigma around gynaecological and breast examinations, and a tendency to present later when symptoms are more advanced. What systemic changes would make the biggest difference in closing that gap?

We need healthcare systems to move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach. Community-based education delivered in multiple languages, partnerships with faith organisations and community leaders, culturally tailored awareness campaigns, and greater representation within the healthcare workforce would all help improve engagement.

We also need to improve health literacy and ensure information is accessible and relevant. Trust is crucial. When women hear health messages from people who understand their cultural context, they are more likely to engage. I have worked with a local charity called Changing Suits, set up by two sisters who do an excellent job of raising awareness of health issues in the South Asian community and working with local councils.

Most importantly, we need to bring conversations about breast health into everyday community spaces rather than expecting women to seek information independently.

You are also an educator, leading national and international faculty, giving educational seminars to businesses and schools, and publishing book chapters. What is the single most important message about breast health that you wish every South Asian woman, at every age, would hear?

Know your normal.

Breast awareness is not about checking your breasts in a particular way on a particular day every month. It is about understanding what is normal for your body and seeking medical advice if something changes.

Breast cancer can affect women of all backgrounds, all religions, and all communities. Early diagnosis remains one of the most powerful tools we have. Do not let fear, embarrassment, or cultural stigma prevent you from seeking help. If you notice a change, get it checked.

The Sattva Collective exists to ensure South Asian women in midlife are no longer invisible in the healthcare conversation. As a South Asian woman who has spent her career at the frontline of breast health, what gives you hope that the conversation is changing for our community, and what still needs to happen?

What gives me hope is that more South Asian women are speaking openly about health than ever before. Conversations about menopause, breast cancer, mental health, and wellbeing are becoming more visible, and organisations like Sattva Collective are helping to create spaces where women feel seen and heard.

I am also encouraged by the growing number of South Asian healthcare professionals, advocates, researchers, and community leaders who are championing change.

However, there is still much to do. We need more research that reflects the diversity of our population, more culturally competent healthcare services, and greater representation in leadership, policy, and education. Most importantly, we need to continue normalising conversations about women’s health.

No woman should feel invisible because of her ethnicity, culture, age, or background. If we continue to work together as communities, healthcare professionals, and advocates, I believe we can create a future in which every South Asian woman feels informed, empowered, and supported in making the best decisions for her health.

There is a phrase Anushka uses near the end of this conversation that I want to return to before we close.

No woman should feel invisible because of her ethnicity, culture, age, or background.

It sounds simple. It is not simple. For South Asian women in midlife, women who have spent decades navigating healthcare systems that were not designed with them in mind, carrying cultural silence around their bodies, managing the particular shame that many communities attach to the words cancer, menopause, and breast cancer, invisibility is not an abstract concept. It is the lived, daily reality.

What Anushka is doing, in the operating theatre, in the classroom, in the community halls, in the conversations she has with patients about things that are rarely discussed openly anywhere, is refusing to let that invisibility stand.

And what she is asking of South Asian women is deceptively simple and genuinely important.

Know your body. Attend your screenings. Do not let fear, embarrassment, or cultural stigma delay you from seeking help when something changes. Do not make decisions about HRT, or anything else, from a place of fear and misinformation when evidence-based, personalised advice is available.

And if you notice something, get it checked.

Early diagnosis remains one of the most powerful tools we have. And it is only possible when women show up.

To find out more about Anushka Chaudhry’s work:

Aurora Breast Cancer Wellbeing Charity, supporting women beyond their diagnosis with holistic care, community, and connection.

For breast health information and to find your local screening programme, visit breastcancernow.org or nhs.uk/conditions/breast-cancer

If you have noticed a change in your breast and are concerned, please contact your GP.

South Asian Heritage Month does that. It shifts something; quietly, but unmistakably. The conversations get a little braver. The stories get a little louder. And the work of this organisation, which can sometimes feel like swimming upstream, suddenly feels like it has a current behind it.

Here is what we built in it.

South Asian Heritage Month, and where TSC showed up

This month, we published Unity in Diversity: What South Asian Heritage Month Means for Women in Midlife, an essay about what this month actually holds for women who are navigating cultural identity and midlife change at the same time.

Not a celebration for its own sake, but a reflection with substance.

We were also proud to have the piece featured by the South Asian Heritage Month organisation itself at southasianheritage.org.uk, reaching an audience well beyond our own community, and planting TSC’s voice in a space that matters.

Two new expert interviews

The bi-weekly interview series continued in July with two conversations that, between them, cover a lot of ground.

Dr Shila Patel, M.D., brought the kind of clinical clarity that cuts through the noise. Her perspective on South Asian women’s health in midlife is both medically grounded and culturally informed, a combination that is rarer than it should be.

Dr Supatra Tovar, founder of ANEW, brought something equally important: a whole-person framework for how women approach health, identity, and reinvention in this season. Her work sits at the intersection of psychology and wellness, and the conversation reflects that.

Both interviews are on the website. Both are worth your time.

What self-care actually means

We published Not a Bubble Bath: What Self-Care Actually Means for South Asian Women in Midlife this month, because the word self-care has been so thoroughly hollowed out that it barely means anything anymore.

For South Asian women specifically, the barriers to genuine self-care are not just about time or money. They are cultural. They are relational. They are rooted in a lifetime of being told, in a hundred different ways, that your needs come last.

This piece tries to give that reality the honest treatment it deserves.

The podcast: Episode 2 is live

Episode 2: The Exhausted Woman Myth - Why You’re Running on Empty in Midlife is now live.

The exhaustion that so many women in midlife describe is not weakness. It is not a character flaw. It is the entirely predictable result of decades of invisible labour, hormonal change, and a culture that has never adequately named either of those things.

This episode names them.

You can listen below or on Spotify. And if it sounds like someone you know, please send it to them.

The Summit: two more keynote speakers confirmed

This is the news I have been waiting to share.

Sahir Ahmed-Evans and Janisha Parmar have both confirmed as keynote speakers for the Thrive Through Midlife & Menopause Summit on 14th May 2027.

They join Sonia Shah and Dr Vikram Sinai Talaulikar, confirmed in June. Four speakers. A stage that is beginning to look exactly like the room I imagined when this Summit was still just a date in a notebook.

There is more to come. Full details, including how to secure your place, are on the Summit page.

If 14th May 2027 is already in your diary: good. Keep it there.

Support our work

The Sattva Collective is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company. Everything we create is free, and freely given. If our work has meant something to you this month, or to a South Asian woman you love, please consider supporting us.

Support The Sattva Collective →

August is a quiet month for us; I’ll be out of the country, and the pace will reflect that. But September brings a return to full momentum, and there is a great deal already in motion.

Thank you for being here. For reading. For sharing. For being part of what this is becoming.

With love and Sattva,

Kiran x

Founder & Director, The Sattva Collective CIC

thesattvacollective.org

It isn’t a candle. It isn’t a face mask on a Sunday evening, photographed at just the right angle before it slides off your cheekbones. It isn’t a spa day you feel guilty about the second you book it, and it certainly isn’t something you earn only once everyone else in the house has been fed, ferried, and settled.

For most South Asian women I know, self-care has quietly become another item on the to-do list; something else to fail at.

International Self-Care Day falls on 24th July. The date itself is a small piece of poetry: 7/24, a reminder that looking after yourself isn’t meant to be a once-a-year event, or even a once-a-week one. It’s meant to happen every day, in ways so small they barely look like anything at all.

I think about my own mother’s version of rest. It was rare, and when it came, it came disguised, watching Khana Khazana and trying new recipes. Listening to Gurbani LIVE from Harmandir Sahib on low before anyone else woke. She never once used the word “self-care.” Watering and caring for her kitchen garden in the afternoon. She wouldn’t have known what to do with it. But I recognise it now, looking back; those were the moments she was quietly putting herself back together, in the only language her life allowed her.

We inherited that same instinct, many of us. The idea that rest has to be hidden. Earned. Squeezed into the gaps other people don’t want.

And in midlife, that instinct starts to cost us something we can’t always get back.

Why this hits differently after 40

Something shifts in perimenopause and menopause that makes the old way of coping, pushing through, running on empty, putting yourself last, genuinely harder to sustain. Not because we’ve become weaker. Because our bodies have started asking for something different, and they’re asking louder than before.

Cortisol sits differently in a perimenopausal body. Sleep, already fragile for so many of us, becomes something we chase rather than simply have. The nervous system that once absorbed everything – the caregiving, the career, the emotional weight of an entire extended family – starts to show its edges.

This is the part nobody warned us about. Self-care in midlife isn’t a treat anymore. It’s closer to maintenance. It’s the difference between a body that can keep meeting everyone’s needs and one that’s quietly running on fumes, smiling through it because that’s what we were taught a good woman does.

What self-care actually looks like, stripped of the marketing

Real self-care, the kind that holds up on an ordinary day and not just a curated Sunday, tends to look unglamorous.

It looks like saying no to the fourth family function of the month without an essay of justification attached. It looks like closing the WhatsApp group chat and not feeling like you owe anyone an explanation for the silence. It looks like eating a meal while sitting down, with a plate in front of you, before it goes cold. It looks like naming what you need out loud, in your own home, in your own language, without waiting to be given permission first.

None of this photographs well. All of it matters more than anything that does.

The permission piece

Here’s what I keep coming back to: so many of us were raised to believe that tending to ourselves is a kind of selfishness, that a good daughter, a good wife, a good mother puts everyone else first, every time, without exception. We absorbed that as a virtue. It so often becomes a slow erosion.

This is where the timing of this year’s Self-Care Day feels meaningful, sitting as it does inside South Asian Heritage Month. Because self-care, done honestly, isn’t a departure from our culture; it’s an act of reclaiming it. Rest, boundaries, softness towards ourselves – these things exist in our traditions too, even if they got buried under generations of “log kya kahenge.”

You are allowed to put the kettle on and drink the tea while it’s hot. You are allowed to let the phone ring out. You are allowed to rest before you’re depleted, not only after.

That’s not indulgence. That’s simply what taking care of yourself, honestly and daily, was always meant to look like.

With love and Sattva,

Kiran x

For South Asian women navigating perimenopause and menopause, that integrated understanding is not just helpful. It is often the first time someone has looked at the full picture of who they are and what they are carrying.

Because South Asian women in midlife are rarely just navigating hormonal changes. They are navigating the physical and emotional aftermath of decades of cultural conditioning around food, body size, and self-worth. They are navigating the physiological consequences of chronic stress, caregiving, and emotional self-suppression. They are navigating the particular grief of a body that is changing in ways they were never prepared for, and a culture that, for most of their lives, told them that a smaller, more controlled, more compliant body was the goal.

Dr Tovar works at the precise intersection of all of that.

Her message to women in midlife, delivered with warmth, clinical authority, and the kind of honesty that only comes from two decades of sitting with women in distress, is one that The Sattva Collective wants every South Asian woman to hear.

Your body is not betraying you. It is asking for a different kind of care.

You hold a doctorate in psychology, a Master’s degree in nutrition, and you’re a certified Pilates instructor, an almost uniquely integrated set of qualifications. When a woman comes to you in midlife feeling like her body has become a stranger to her, how does holding all three disciplines simultaneously change how you approach her?

I think one of the biggest differences is that I don’t see a woman’s body as something that needs to be fixed. I see a whole person whose hormones, stress, emotions, nervous system, lifestyle, relationship history, and beliefs about herself are all interacting at the same time. Midlife is incredibly layered.

My background in psychology helps me understand the emotional impact of body changes and the stories women attach to them. My nutrition training allows me to explain what is happening physiologically rather than reinforcing diet-culture myths. And my movement background helps women reconnect to their bodies in a supportive, compassionate way rather than through punishment or overexercise.

So when a woman says, “I don’t recognise myself anymore,” I don’t focus on weight loss. I become curious about what her body may be trying to communicate. Often, the body is not betraying her. It’s asking for a different kind of care.

Your work is rooted in deprogramming diet culture, the belief systems that tell women their bodies need to be fixed, controlled, and shrunk. For South Asian women in midlife, that programming often runs especially deep, shaped by cultural ideals of slimness, by comments at family gatherings, by decades of being told what their bodies should look like. How does that layer of cultural conditioning change the work of healing your relationship with food and your body?

For many South Asian women, these messages begin very early and become so normalised that they almost disappear into the background of daily life. Comments about weight, appearance, skin tone, eating habits, or marriageability are often framed as concern or care, but over time, they can deeply shape a woman’s relationship with her body and self-worth.

What makes healing more complex is that these beliefs are often intergenerational. Women may intellectually know that body shaming is harmful, but emotionally, those messages can still feel deeply ingrained because they came from family, culture, and community.

So part of the healing process is helping women recognise that many of these beliefs were inherited rather than chosen. We begin separating self-worth from body size and helping women understand that their value was never supposed to be tied to how small, controlled, or pleasing they could make themselves appear.

I also think it’s important to approach this with compassion. Many families passed these beliefs down out of fear, survival, or societal pressure. But even when intentions were loving, the impact can still be painful. Healing often begins when women finally give themselves permission to stop viewing their bodies as lifelong projects.

Perimenopause and menopause bring significant physical changes, weight redistribution, changes in metabolism, muscle loss, and increased fat storage that are hormonally driven, not the result of personal failure. And yet so many women in midlife blame themselves. What do you want women to understand about what is actually happening in their bodies during this transition, and why the usual tools, restrictions, more exercise, and pushing harder often backfire?

I want women to understand that these changes are biological, not moral. Midlife is a major hormonal transition that affects everything from sleep and stress response to insulin sensitivity, muscle mass, recovery, hunger cues, and fat distribution. The body is adapting to a completely different hormonal environment.

Unfortunately, many women respond by becoming more restrictive and more punishing with themselves. They start eating less, exercising harder, cutting out more foods, and criticising themselves more intensely because they think they’ve lost discipline. But the body in midlife generally does not respond well to chronic stress and deprivation.

Overrestriction and overexercise can increase cortisol levels, further disrupt metabolism, worsen inflammation, impair recovery, and intensify emotional burnout. The body often becomes more resistant the harder women push against it.

Midlife requires a different approach. The body tends to respond much better to nourishment, strength training, stress regulation, sleep support, blood sugar balance, recovery, and nervous system safety than to punishment. Many women have spent decades trying to dominate their bodies. Midlife often becomes the season where the body says, “I need partnership now, not war.”

You have written and spoken extensively about the psychological damage that dieting does, how chronic restriction disrupts both metabolism and mental health. For South Asian women who have spent decades cycling through restrictive eating, often linked to religious fasting, cultural food rules, or family expectations around weight, what is the first step towards healing that relationship?

The first step is helping women understand that their relationship with food did not develop because they lacked willpower. Most women who struggle with food have spent years trying very hard to control themselves. The problem is that chronic restriction disconnects people from their bodies and creates cycles of deprivation, guilt, obsession, and rebound eating.

For South Asian women, food can become emotionally very complicated because it is tied not only to nourishment but also to family, religion, identity, comfort, and belonging. At the same time, there may be shame attached to certain foods, body sizes, or eating behaviours.

Healing often begins by removing morality from food. Food is not “good” or “bad,” and eating is not a reflection of virtue or failure. I help women reconnect with their internal signals again: hunger, fullness, satisfaction, cravings, energy, emotional needs, and physical responses. Many women have spent so many years following external rules that they no longer trust themselves.

Rebuilding trust with the body is slow, but it is one of the most powerful forms of healing.

Movement in midlife is a topic filled with conflicting advice: do more cardio, lift heavy, don’t do too much, do yoga, rest more. As someone who integrates psychology, nutrition, and movement, what does your evidence-informed approach to exercise in midlife actually look like? And what are the biggest mistakes women in their 40s and 50s make with movement?

I believe movement in midlife should support the body, not punish it. Exercise should help women feel stronger, more energised, more mobile, more emotionally regulated, and more connected to themselves.

The evidence is very clear that resistance training is incredibly important in midlife for preserving muscle mass, bone density, metabolic health, cognition, and longevity. But I also think walking, mobility work, Pilates, balance training, restorative movement, and stress-regulating forms of exercise are essential.

One of the biggest mistakes I see is women staying trapped in the “burn more, shrink more” mindset. Many women are chronically overdoing cardio while undereating and under-recovering. Others avoid movement altogether because exercise has become associated with shame, punishment, or failure.

I want women to move because they respect their bodies, not because they are trying to earn food or erase themselves. That psychological shift completely changes the relationship with movement.

You founded ANEW, Advanced Nutrition and Emotional Wellness, on the premise that the mind, body, and nutrition are deeply interconnected. For South Asian women who have been conditioned to compartmentalise, treating their physical health separately from their emotional life, their hunger separately from their stress, what does it look and feel like to begin integrating those parts of themselves?

For many women, integration initially feels unfamiliar because they’ve spent years disconnecting from themselves to function. They may ignore exhaustion, override hunger, suppress emotions, or push through stress because that has become normalised.

Integration starts with slowing down enough to notice what is happening internally. A woman may suddenly realise that what she thought was “lack of discipline” around food is emotional exhaustion or chronic nervous system stress. She may notice that her digestion worsens during periods of anxiety or that her cravings intensify when she feels emotionally depleted.

At ANEW and in my private practice, we focus on reconnecting mind, body, and nutrition because they are never truly separate. Stress affects hormones. Trauma affects inflammation. Sleep affects hunger. Emotional suppression affects physical health.

When women begin understanding themselves more holistically, there is often a profound sense of relief. They stop feeling broken and begin recognising that their bodies have been responding intelligently to prolonged stress and disconnection.

Stress and cortisol are major factors in midlife health, affecting weight, sleep, immune function, and hormonal balance. South Asian women are often navigating an unusually high cortisol load: caregiving, multigenerational family demands, cultural expectations, and the hormonal shifts of perimenopause all arriving simultaneously. What does chronic stress do to the midlife body, and what are the most effective interventions that go beyond the generic advice to “stress less”?

Chronic stress affects virtually every system in the body. Elevated cortisol over time can impact sleep, blood sugar regulation, appetite, abdominal fat storage, inflammation, immune function, mood, memory, and hormone balance. But what many women don’t realise is that emotional stress affects the body physiologically just as much as physical stress.

Many South Asian women carry enormous emotional responsibility. They are often balancing caregiving, work, family expectations, cultural obligations, and perfectionism while also navigating hormonal shifts that already make the nervous system more sensitive. Many women have been in survival mode for so long that stress feels normal.

The solutions need to go far beyond telling women to “relax.” We need nervous system regulation, boundaries, social support, restorative sleep, blood sugar stability, movement that regulates instead of depletes, trauma-informed therapy when needed, and permission to stop equating self-sacrifice with worthiness.

Sometimes, the most healing intervention is helping women understand that they are allowed to take up space, have needs, rest, and care for themselves without guilt.

Your book ‘Deprogram Diet Culture‘ is about rebuilding trust with food and the body. For South Asian women, food is also deeply cultural; it is love, identity, memory, and community. How do you help women disentangle the nourishing, celebratory role of food from the shame and control that diet culture has layered over it?

I think it’s incredibly important to preserve the emotional and cultural beauty of food while removing the shame that diet culture attaches to it. Food is a connection. It is family, tradition, comfort, celebration, and identity.

Many South Asian women feel caught between honouring their culture and trying to conform to Western wellness ideals that often demonise cultural foods. That creates a painful internal conflict in which food becomes emotionally charged rather than nourishing and joyful.

Part of healing is helping women reclaim cultural foods without guilt. Instead of asking, “How do I avoid these foods?” we ask, “How do I reconnect with these foods in a grounded, nourishing, emotionally healthy way?”

Food can absolutely be pleasurable and supportive of health at the same time. Those things are not mutually exclusive. Healing often happens when women stop viewing cultural foods as something they need to control and begin experiencing them again with presence, permission, and connection.

You work with clients on trauma, anxiety, and depression alongside physical health, and you see these as inseparable. What is the relationship between unprocessed emotional experience and physical health in midlife? And how often do you find that what looks like a body problem is actually a grief, identity, or emotional problem that hasn’t yet found language?

I see this constantly. The body carries emotional experiences in very real physiological ways. Chronic stress, trauma, anxiety, grief, perfectionism, emotional suppression, and hypervigilance all affect inflammation, hormones, digestion, sleep, appetite, immune function, and nervous system regulation.

Midlife is often the stage where unresolved emotional experiences begin surfacing because women can no longer outrun them through productivity or caretaking. What initially appears to be a body issue is often layered with burnout, loneliness, identity shifts, grief, relationship pain, or years of emotional self-abandonment.

A woman may think she is distressed about weight gain, but underneath that may be fear of ageing, invisibility, changing family roles, or feeling disconnected from herself after decades of prioritising everyone else.

I think many women have spent years speaking to themselves in ways they would never speak to someone they love. Healing often begins when women stop viewing the body as the enemy and start listening to what their emotional and physical symptoms may actually be trying to communicate.

If you could give every South Asian woman in midlife one piece of advice, not about what to eat or how to exercise, but about how to relate to her body during this season of life, what would it be?

I would tell women that their bodies are not failing them during midlife. Your body is communicating with you.

This season of life is not an invitation to become smaller, more disciplined, or more perfect. It is an invitation to become more honest, more compassionate, and more connected to yourself. Your worth was never meant to be measured by how little space you take up.

Midlife often marks the first time women begin to question the pressures, expectations, and conditioning they have carried for decades. And while that can feel uncomfortable, it can also become incredibly freeing. When women stop fighting themselves and start building a relationship with their bodies based on respect rather than control, they often discover a level of peace and self-trust they never thought was possible.

There is a sentence near the beginning of this conversation that I keep returning to. Dr Tovar is describing what she does when a woman in midlife comes to her, saying she no longer recognises herself. She says, “I don’t focus on weight loss. I become curious about what her body may be trying to communicate.”

That reorientation, from fixing to listening, from controlling to communicating, is at the heart of everything Dr Tovar offers. And for South Asian women who have spent decades being given the opposite message, it is quietly radical.

The conditioning runs deep. Comments at family gatherings about weight and appearance. Cultural ideals around slimness and fairness. Religious fasting layered with shame. Decades of following external rules until the internal signals, hunger, fullness, exhaustion, and emotion, became impossible to hear. Dr Tovar names all of it, with care and without judgment.

But what she offers is not just a diagnosis. It is a way forward.

Stop fighting the body. Start listening to it. Remove morality from food. Move to feel better, not to earn your right to take up space. Recognise that the stress you are carrying is physiological, not a personal weakness. And understand, perhaps for the first time, that your body in midlife is not failing you. It is communicating with you. And it has been waiting a long time for you to hear what it is trying to say.

If you would like to explore Dr Supatra Tovar’s work further:

Website: www.drsupatratovar.com | www.anew-insight.com Book: Deprogram Diet Culture: Rethink Your Relationship with Food, Heal Your Mind, and Live a Diet-Free Life Podcast: ANEW Insight LinkedIn: Dr Supatra Tovar

This is what she does.

Dr Patel was born in India and became what she calls a global citizen, carrying her South Asian heritage through four countries and four very different cultural contexts, watching, in each, how women, particularly South Asian women, navigate the particular bind of midlife. The cultural conditioning to sacrifice. The decades of putting family before self. The gradual, quiet erosion of a woman’s own identity, her own dreams, her own bucket, which, as Dr Patel puts it with characteristic directness, is given away and given away until there is simply nothing left.

She calls it Empty Bucket Syndrome. And once you hear that phrase, you will not be able to unhear it.

This conversation covers the mental health dimension of menopause that most healthcare professionals still aren’t asking about. It covers the stigma that keeps South Asian women suffering in silence. It covers intergenerational patterns, inherited sacrifice, and the particular psychological weight of reaching midlife, having spent most of it attending to everyone else’s needs.

But more than anything, it is a conversation about personal responsibility. About the moment a South Asian woman decides, perhaps for the first time, that her happiness is not something she is waiting to be given. It is something she is responsible for creating.

Dr Patel is not here to be gentle about that. And in her directness, there is a kind of care that is harder to find and more lasting than comfort alone.

You have lived across India, Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, carrying your South Asian identity through each of those worlds. How did navigating so many different cultural contexts shape your understanding of what South Asian women silently carry, particularly as they move into midlife?

It all depends on what type of South Asian family the woman was raised in. If it were a very conservative and rigid family, the woman would remain subservient, taking care of family needs before her own. She spends all day cooking, cleaning, and tending to children or grandchildren. However, if the woman had been allowed to pursue a career, she might be more independent, but the family’s needs are almost at the forefront in midlife.

In your psychiatric practice, you have worked with both children and adults for more than 25 years. When South Asian women in midlife do come to you for support, which many resist for a long time, what are they most commonly carrying that has gone unnamed for years?

By the time these women reach midlife, they have missed out on learning how to be independent. They have been taken care of first by fathers, then by husbands, and they have poor skills in being truly independent. They also put their needs aside and do not know how to speak up or pursue their own dreams.

The Sattva Collective hears from South Asian women who describe a particular kind of emotional exhaustion in midlife, not just hormonal, but the accumulated weight of decades of cultural expectation, caregiving, and self-erasure. As a psychiatrist, how do you understand that kind of long-held, unspoken weight, and what does it do to a woman’s mental health over time?

It is a very significant weight to bear, always caring for others and putting yourself last. Not surprising that there is a low level of depression and even anxiety, realising that their whole life has been devoted to others, and now they do not have the skills or means to do things that they may have dreamt of. I call it an empty bucket syndrome. They give and give, while getting very little back to fill their own bucket.

Mental health stigma within South Asian communities is something many of our women know intimately: the fear of being labelled, of bringing shame to the family, of being seen as weak. How has that stigma shifted, if at all, in your experience, and what do you think it will take to genuinely change the conversation within South Asian families?

The stigma of shame and being made to feel weak has not decreased much in South Asian families. As women become more educated and are made aware of the balance between caring for family, which is so ingrained in women because of the culture they grow up in, and doing things that make them happy, they may seek this balance. Having a supportive spouse would go a long way in helping these women.

Perimenopause and menopause have a documented and significant impact on mental health, mood, anxiety, cognition, sleep, and emotional regulation. And yet so many South Asian women have these experiences dismissed as stress, nervousness, or “just how you are.” What do you want South Asian women and the healthcare professionals treating them to understand about the mental health dimension of menopause?

Menopause brings about hormonal changes that affect the mood of many women. Sleep deprivation in itself leads to an increase in irritability, anxiety, and fatigue. There are herbal and prescription medications that can help with different symptoms. Sexual activity can become painful, and women run the risk of getting more urinary infections due to dryness of the vaginal walls. Their Doctors can prescribe medications that help with these symptoms.

Your work explores the relationship between personal responsibility and change, individually and collectively. For South Asian women in midlife who have spent decades prioritising everyone else, how do you frame the act of finally seeking support for themselves? And how do you help women move past the guilt that so often comes with that?

Guilt never solves any problems. However, continuing down a path that keeps you unfulfilled, depressed, and anxious is not good for the woman or her family. The saying “Happy wife, happy family” is one where everyone benefits. Only when someone speaks up about what her needs are can she find the support she needs. People assume everything is okay and cannot read minds, even if they do suspect something is wrong.

You have written extensively about the intergenerational dynamics within South Asian families, the patterns that get passed down, often without anyone choosing them. When a South Asian woman reaches midlife and starts to question inherited patterns around silence, sacrifice, the body, and her own worth, what does that process look like psychologically? And how can she navigate it without losing her family relationships in the process?

It is a lost life if she does not start making changes. There is a choice: remain subdued or start speaking up slowly. Do things that bring her joy and contentment, but ask for help with household duties so she does not feel overwhelmed by the burden of taking care of others and herself. Have expectations of children, young and old, and spouse to help out.

You have spoken about the importance of leaving behind a positive legacy. The Sattva Collective was founded on that same impulse, a mother building something alongside her daughter, for the generation of South Asian women coming after them. What does legacy mean to you personally, as a South Asian woman who has lived and worked across four countries, and what do you hope the next generation of South Asian women inherits that yours did not?

Being a positive role model is something I advocate. Young South Asian women are forgetting their role as women in the family. Being a caretaker, learning to cook, sew, etc. However, show the daughters that pursuing careers and dreams is possible while also being central feminine figures in the family. The next generation will have the support to do things outside the family that the older generation did not have.

South Asian women in midlife are often managing the mental health of everyone around them, children, ageing parents, partners, while their own goes unattended. What is your message to the South Asian woman reading this who recognises herself in that description, who knows she is not coping, but cannot yet find the permission to ask for help?

As I said before, it is a choice. Speak up and get help, or carry on with what you are doing and feeling, and keep going down the same old path of self-destruction. No one is going to take care of you if you do not tell them how things are affecting you and whether you would like some things to change. Many men are oblivious as to what their wives need and are surprised when a woman wants a divorce in midlife or when the kids have left home.

If you could change one thing in healthcare, in South Asian culture, or in the way society treats women in midlife, what would it be, and why?

Do not take the woman for granted; talk to her. Allow her to explore and dream. She does not have to lose her identity. Speak up. Stop being fearful of retaliation. Get support from children, friends, and the community if the spouse is not understanding. You are responsible for your own happiness.

There is a moment near the end of this conversation where Dr Shila Patel says something that has stayed with me.

Not gently. Not with caveats or qualifications. Just plainly, as a psychiatrist who has spent over two decades watching what happens when South Asian women do not say it:

You are responsible for your own happiness.

For many South Asian women reading this, that sentence will land with complicated weight. Because it can sound, at first, like blame. Like the problem and the solution both belong to you, and no one else is accountable.

But that is not what Dr Patel means. What she means, and what her whole body of work points towards, is something far more empowering than blame. It is an agency. The recognition that waiting for your spouse, your children, your family, your community to notice what you need and give it to you without being asked is a long wait with an uncertain outcome. And that the only person who can begin to change the shape of your life is you.

That is not a small thing to ask of a South Asian woman in midlife who has spent decades being told, by culture, by family, by expectation, that her needs come last.

But it is, perhaps, the most important thing.

The empty bucket will not fill itself. And no one is coming to fill it for you.

You have to ask. You have to speak. You have to choose.

And as Dr Patel has shown across a lifetime of clinical practice, a life lived across four countries, and a career built on the belief that personal responsibility is the beginning of everything, it is never too late to start.

To find out more about Dr Shila Patel and her work: drshilapatel.com

These are the things South Asian women carry with them. Into their forties and fifties. Into the doctors’ offices and the HR departments and the family gatherings and the quiet rooms where they sit alone with a body that is changing, a self that is shifting, and a question that no one around them seems to be asking.

Who am I in this season of life? And does any of this, my heritage, my culture, my history, have anything to say to me here?

South Asian Heritage Month 2026 invites us to explore Unity in Diversity, a theme that celebrates the extraordinary breadth and richness of South Asian communities across eight countries, hundreds of languages, multiple faiths, and millennia of intertwined histories. It asks us what unites us across those differences. It asks us what we carry together that we might not always name.

At The Sattva Collective, we have been sitting with that question since before we had a name for it.

The diversity we celebrate, and the unity that holds it

South Asia is not one thing; it never has been.

The South Asian women who make up The Sattva Collective’s community come from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and the diaspora that has woven South Asian heritage into the fabric of British life over generations. They are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jain, and secular. They speak Punjabi, Gujarati, Urdu, Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, Konkani, and English. They are mothers and grandmothers and daughters and women who have built careers and businesses and families and lives in the UK, far from the places their families first called home.

They are not one community; they are many. And yet, when a South Asian woman in her forties sits down in a Sattva Women’s Circle, something happens that transcends every one of those differences. She recognises something in the woman sitting across from her. In the way she pauses before she speaks. In the particular silence she carries. In the way she holds her exhaustion, carefully, privately, as if it belongs only to her.

That recognition is the unity. Underneath all the diversity of faith, language, background, and generation, the shared experience of being a South Asian woman in midlife in the UK, navigating a transition that the culture has never quite learned to hold.

That is what unites us. And it is why The Sattva Collective exists.

What our heritage carries, and what it costs us

South Asian heritage is extraordinary in its richness: its food, its textiles, its music, its languages, its philosophies, its medicine, Ayurveda and Unani, centuries-old systems of healing that are only now beginning to receive the recognition they have always deserved in Western contexts. Its family structures are rooted in deep interdependence and collective care. Its festivals, its rituals, its architecture of belonging.

We carry all of this. And for South Asian women in midlife, it is both a gift and a burden.

The gift is community, connection, the understanding that you are not navigating life alone, that there are people who will show up, that the bonds of family and culture hold. The gift is food as love, celebration as healing, ritual as anchor. The gift is a philosophical heritage, from the Sanskrit concept of sattva, meaning clarity and balanced energy, to the Sufi traditions of many South Asian Muslim women, to the Sikh teaching of sewa, selfless service, that offers a depth of wisdom about what it means to age with grace, purpose, and surrender.

The burden is the expectation of endurance. The cultural conditioning that says South Asian women are strong, and strong women do not complain. The family structures that place women at the centre of care: for children, for ageing parents, for husbands, for in-laws, without always asking what those women need in return. The silence around the body, around health, around the changes of midlife and menopause leaves women navigating enormous physical and emotional upheaval entirely alone.

Unity in Diversity for South Asian women in midlife means holding both truths simultaneously. Honouring what our heritage gives us, and being honest about what it asks of us.

The healing that heritage offers

There is something happening across South Asian women’s communities that feels significant: women are returning. Not to everything, not to the expectations that diminished them, not to the silence that hurt them, not to the roles that left no room for their own needs. But to the wisdom, to the rituals, to the parts of their heritage that were always about nourishment, not performance.

Women in midlife are returning to Ayurveda, discovering in its ancient understanding of the body’s seasons and doshas a framework for the changes they are experiencing that Western medicine has never quite given them. They are returning to the practice of oil, coconut, sesame, mustard, not as something to be ashamed of, but as medicine. They are returning to the spices in their kitchens and beginning to understand them as anti-inflammatory, adaptogenic, and hormonally supportive. They are returning to the concept of rest as sacred, not lazy.

They are returning to each other, gathering in rooms, in circles, in WhatsApp groups, on Substack, and in community spaces, doing what South Asian women have always done when they gather without an audience: telling the truth.

At The Sattva Collective, we see this return every month. In the Sattva Women’s Circle, women arrive carrying everything: the hormonal shifts, the identity questions, the caregiving exhaustion, the grief of ageing parents and changing relationships and selves they no longer recognise. And they find, in a room full of other South Asian women, something they weren’t sure still existed. Understanding. That doesn’t require translation.

That is heritage. Not the version that asks women to be silent, but the version that has always known how to hold a woman when she is falling apart, and help her find her way back.

Unity in Diversity: What it means to us

The Sattva Collective was founded on the belief that South Asian women deserve a midlife and menopause conversation that truly understands them. Not a conversation that flattens our differences, that treats all South Asian women as the same, speaks to us as a monolith, ignores the profound distinctions of faith, language, generation, and experience that make us who we are.

But a conversation that holds us together in our diversity. That says: your specific experience matters, and so does hers, and so does the woman across the room whose background is nothing like yours but whose exhaustion feels exactly the same.

Unity in Diversity, for us, means building a community where a Punjabi grandmother navigating hot flushes in silence and a British-born Bangladeshi woman questioning her marriage and a Tamil professional burning out at work and a Pakistani woman caring for her mother while her own body changes, can all find themselves in the same room, recognised, not erased.

It means understanding that the silence around midlife and menopause is a shared inheritance, across South Asian communities, across faiths, languages and generations. And that breaking it is a shared act. One that belongs to all of us.

South Asian Heritage Month 2026: How to mark it

South Asian Heritage Month is observed throughout July 2026 under the theme “Unity in Diversity.” This year, it moves to a full calendar month, 1 to 31 July, making it easier than ever to participate, plan, and mark the month in a meaningful way.

Here is how The Sattva Collective community can engage:

• Submit your story to the SAHM National Heritage Archive: a personal reflection, a family memory, a community narrative. In any language, any format. Your story belongs there. Submit at southasianheritage.org.uk/how-to-submit-your-stories

• Find or list an event on the SAHM national calendar. If you are hosting a gathering, a talk, or a community event for South Asian women in July, list it for free. Events at southasianheritage.org.uk/events-list

• Join The Sattva Collective’s Sattva Women’s Circle: our monthly in-person gathering for South Asian women in midlife. July’s circle falls during South Asian Heritage Month, and we will be holding space for exactly this conversation: what our heritage gives us, what it asks of us, and what it means to navigate midlife as South Asian women in the UK today. Find out more →

• Share this article with a South Asian woman in midlife who needs to feel less alone. With your family WhatsApp group. With a colleague who doesn’t know this conversation is happening. Every share reaches a woman who might need it.

A final thought

In Sanskrit, the word sattva speaks to clarity, purity, and balanced energy. It is the quality of inner light, the stillness that exists beneath the noise and change of any season of life.

It is not a quality that belongs to one faith tradition, or one country, or one generation. It is a human quality. One that every South Asian woman, across all the extraordinary diversity of who we are and where we come from, carries within her. South Asian Heritage Month is a reminder that we carry it together.

And midlife, with all its difficulty, its disruption, its grief and its invitation, is when we may need that reminder most.

To every South Asian woman navigating midlife this July: your heritage is not a burden, it is a source. And you are not navigating this season alone.

New voices. New platforms. A community campaign that, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure would land the way I hoped. And the quiet, determined work that happens away from the screen, in GP surgeries, local businesses, and email inboxes, that rarely gets documented but matters just as much.

Here is what June looked like for The Sattva Collective.

We launched My Sattva Story, and women started sharing

This was the thing I had been building towards for months, and the thing I was most nervous about.

My Sattva Story is a year-round storytelling campaign inviting South Asian women to share their midlife and menopause experiences in their own words. No clinical language. No performance. Just truth, told at their own pace, on their own terms.

The first story published was my own. I wrote it because I couldn’t ask women to be vulnerable in a space I hadn’t been willing to enter myself. You can read it here: My Sattva Story: Kiran Singh.

And then Rubina Chadha shared hers. Read Rubina’s story here.

Two stories. Two women. Two different experiences of the same silence.

If you have a story or know a woman who does, the door is open. We want to hear it.

The podcast is live

Two episodes of The Sattva Collective Podcast are now live on Spotify. Solo episodes for now, and honestly, I have found them unexpectedly grounding to record. There is something different about speaking out loud the things I usually write. It enters the body differently.

Expert guests join from Autumn 2026. Until then, these early episodes are where I think alongside you.

We published two new expert interviews

In June, we published conversations with two remarkable women.

• Darpan Bhasin brought a perspective I know will resonate with so many women reading this: the intersection of identity, culture, and midlife that rarely gets space in mainstream conversations.

• Mangala Rao-D’Sa was generous and frank in a way that stayed with me long after the edit was done.

Both interviews are on the website. Both are worth your time.

We wrote about invisible carers

Carers Week came and went in June, and I could not let it pass without naming what I see in the women who come to this space.

South Asian women in midlife are often carrying caring responsibilities, for elderly parents, for children, sometimes for both at once, and doing it largely without acknowledgement. The article, "The Invisible Carer: What Carers Week Means for South Asian Women in Midlife," seeks to give that experience the language it deserves.

We made our website available in multiple languages

This was something Khushi and I had been thinking about for a while, and in June, we did it.

For a community where English is not always a first language, where a woman’s mother or auntie might be searching for answers in Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, or Gujarati, accessibility is not optional. It is part of the mission.

We wrote about why we did it here.

Our book is releasing next year!

Good Girls Don’t Talk About This. Until Now is the book I have been circling for some time. You will know the phrase. Many of us were raised inside it. This book will be about what happens when good girls finally decide to speak.

New resources: GP Pack and Resource Hub

In June, we made two new resources available on the website.

1. The GP Healthcare Professional Pack is designed for GPs, nurses, and other healthcare professionals who want to better understand the specific experiences of South Asian women navigating midlife and menopause. We want the conversations happening in consulting rooms to be more informed, more culturally aware, and more useful.

2. The Resource Hub brings together trusted information in one place, because no woman should have to search too hard to find support.

Both are free. Both are for sharing.

Outreach work, going beyond the screen

One of the things that rarely makes it into a newsletter is the work that happens offline.

In June, we continued building relationships with local businesses in Bedford because the community does not live only online, and the women we want to reach are not always the ones already following us. This work is slow. It is unglamorous. And it matters enormously.

A community cause worth supporting this July

As we move into July, I want to share something from Nisha Harichandran, a woman whose work I have been following and whose voice I believe our community needs to hear more of.

Nisha is fundraising for the British Heart Foundation in celebration of South Asian Heritage Month. The reason this matters: South Asians are at a significantly higher risk of coronary heart disease than the general population, and funding research that addresses this specifically is something our community has a real stake in.

In exchange for any donation, Nisha is offering a one-hour coaching or mentoring session; leadership, mindset, joy, clarity, whatever you need. It is a generous offer from someone who clearly understands the value of giving time as well as money.

If this speaks to you, please donate and share it widely.

Support Nisha’s fundraiser for the British Heart Foundation →

The Summit is taking shape

In May, I told you something was coming. Now I can tell you more. The Thrive Through Midlife & Menopause Summit takes place on 14th May 2027, 5 pm – 9 pm, at The Centenary Hall, Bedford.

And our first two confirmed speakers are:

• Sonia Shah of Avenir Clinics, our first confirmed keynote speaker, brings clinical expertise and a genuine understanding of the women we serve.

• Dr Vikram Sinai Talaulikar, confirmed guest panellist, is a leading voice in reproductive and menopausal medicine.

This is just the beginning of the line-up. More announcements are coming. If you know you want to be in that room on 14th May 2027, save the date now.

Support our work

The Sattva Collective is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company. Everything we create, every article, interview, story, resource, and podcast episode, is free and accessible to the community we serve.

If our work has meant something to you, or to a woman you love, please consider supporting us.

Support The Sattva Collective →

June has been full. Not in the breathless, anxious way that full sometimes feels. Full in the way of a table at the end of a long meal, warm, satisfying, with more still to come.

Thank you for being here. For reading. For sharing. For being part of what this is becoming.

With love and Sattva,

Kiran x

Founder & Director The Sattva Collective CIC thesattvacollective.org