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

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.

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

She didn’t see it as wisdom then. She saw it as a difference. As something to hide.

Decades later, in the foothills of the Himalayas, scattering her father’s ashes and trying to find her way back to herself after grief had taken her apart, she found her way back to exactly those rituals. And everything changed.

Mangala Rao is the founder of Chasma, an Ayurvedic skincare brand built not from a business plan but from a breakdown and a homecoming. After her father’s sudden death in 2019, her body spoke loudly and unmistakably, hair falling out, skin inflamed, joints aching, nervous system unravelling. She went to an Ayurvedic retreat in India looking for relief. She came home carrying something she hadn’t expected: a reconnection to ancient Indian healing practices she had spent years quietly distancing herself from.

At 50, Mangala’s skin and hair are, by her own account and a recent biological age test, healthier than they were in her thirties. Not because she found the right products. Because she stopped fighting, her skin, her body, her heritage, and started listening.

It is not about products. It is about what it means to finally come home to yourself.

Your skincare journey began in the foothills of the Himalayas, at an Ayurvedic retreat, after scattering your father’s ashes. That is such a profound intersection of grief, healing, and discovery. What was that experience like, and how did something so deeply personal become the foundation of a business?

After my father’s sudden death in 2019 and the pandemic, my body fell apart in ways I didn’t have language for. Massive pain, hair falling out in clumps, and skin that felt like it was on fire. Underneath it all, I also felt like I lost my ability to regulate my emotions. I went to an Ayurvedic retreat in India looking for healing and found something I was not expecting. I found a reconnection to ancient Indian rituals that have surrounded me my whole life. I came home changed. People kept asking me what I was doing differently. Building something for myself still felt transgressive, though, but I set up a table at a local pop-up market and started selling. That was the beginning of Chasma.

At the time you arrived at that retreat, your skin was highly sensitive, red, blotchy, with milia, hair loss, and deep wrinkles. You now say your skin and hair at 49 are healthier than they were in your 30s. What changed, not just in your skincare routine, but in how you understood the relationship between what you put on your skin and what was happening inside your body?

What changed for me was a greater understanding of how my body works and what it needs to nourish, repair, and heal. I spent my 20s and 30s working my body hard. From childbirth to a demanding career to running marathons, I was aggressive and focused on performance. My body was sending me clear signals of misalignment, my nervous system was in a constant state of fight, my joints deeply ached, my gut was irritated, my hair had increased shedding, and my skin was sensitive and inflamed.

I tried marginal changes with temporary relief. It wasn’t until I met an Ayurvedic practitioner that I realised how working in alignment with my dosha could unveil my best health and best self. At the retreat, I learned to slow everything down. I simplified my routine, removed synthetic fragrance completely, focused on barrier repair, nourishment, scalp health, sleep, stress reduction, hydration, and anti-inflammatory ingredients. I also began thinking about beauty as something connected to the nervous system and hormonal balance, not just topical products.

The irony is that at 50, my skin and hair are healthier than they were in my 30s because I stopped attacking them and started supporting them, and a recent biological medical test revealed that even though I am 50, my biological age is 35.

You discovered that synthetic fragrances were the hidden culprit behind years of skin sensitivity and irritation, something most women would never suspect. For South Asian women in midlife, who are often navigating skin changes they don’t fully understand, what are the most common ingredient offenders hiding in mainstream skincare that are quietly making things worse?

People of colour often experience inflammation differently and are prone to post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation (American Academy of Dermatology). Research has shown that synthetic fragrances are one of the leading causes of dermatitis, and they are hiding in plain sight and smell. It can cause redness and irritation. Another common ingredient in skincare products that can make skin worse is Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS). It is an overly aggressive foaming system, and with overuse, it can strip your moisture barrier.

Perimenopause and menopause bring significant and often distressing changes to the skin, increased dryness, sensitivity, thinning, pigmentation changes, breakouts, and a loss of the elasticity that women have taken for granted. From an Ayurvedic perspective, what is actually happening in the skin during this hormonal transition, and why does the approach to skincare need to fundamentally shift at this life stage?

From an Ayurvedic perspective, perimenopause and menopause occur when hormonal changes cause a dosha imbalance. When women experience dry, fine-lined, dull skin, that is a vata imbalance. At the same time, a pitta aggravation shows up as redness and sensitivity. The biggest mistake we make is trying to continue treating your skin the same way you always have. Mid-life skin needs nourishment, restoration, hydration, calming, and barrier support. The approach becomes less about control and more about balance.

Ayurveda sees skin not as a surface problem but as a reflection of internal balance, of the interplay between Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. For South Asian women in midlife who are under significant stress, often depleted, and experiencing hormonal shifts, what does their skin typically tell you about what is happening deeper inside, and how does Ayurveda address that root cause rather than the surface symptom?

Our skin is the last organ to absorb nutrients, but the first organ to show issues. Ayurveda looks at the whole system because what is showing up on your skin is happening inside your body, too. Vata imbalance often shows up on the skin as dryness, dullness, and accelerated ageing, so the skin is telling us that the body needs hydration. Pitta imbalance can manifest as redness, inflammation, and pigmentation, so the skin is telling us that the body needs fewer inflammatory foods and a calmer nervous system. Finally, a Kapha skin imbalance appears oily and puffy, and the body needs clarifying and stimulation, such as facial massage and exercise. By addressing the root cause, we can bring our doshas back into alignment and reveal radiant skin.

South Asian women in midlife are navigating a particular relationship with their skin, shaped by colourism, by cultural ideals of fairness, by decades of products marketed around brightening and anti-ageing in ways that can feel both familiar and harmful. How do you approach the conversation about skin and self-worth with South Asian women who have grown up in that cultural landscape?

I love this question because for a lot of South Asian women, our relationship with our appearance is shaped by growing up with the idea that lighter, younger, smoother skin somehow equals beauty and worthiness. That conditioning comes from deep generational trauma dating to colonialism. I try to create a conversation about the importance of alignment, loving yourself, and focusing not just on what you put on your skin, but on your overall health to reveal your best skin ever. Healthy skin is balanced skin, where the mind, body, and soul are better aligned. I think there is something deeply healing about reconnecting with beauty rituals from our own culture, rooted in care and celebration rather than aggressive correction. For me, Ayurveda is not about chasing fairness or the media definition of perfect skin. It is about balance, nourishment, and honouring the skin you are in.

You built Chasma on the principle of purity and intention, stripping away the unnecessary and returning to what is genuinely nourishing. That philosophy maps almost exactly onto what The Sattva Collective believes about midlife itself. What parallels do you see between the journey of simplifying a skincare routine and the journey of simplifying a life, particularly for South Asian women who have accumulated so much of what they no longer need?

We live in a culture of MORE. More supplements, more skincare steps, more routines, and more makeup. I think there is a profound parallel between simplifying skincare and simplifying life. Many of us are carrying so many expectations, pressures, roles, emotional labour, and products. We are problem-solving, constantly looking for answers. Ultimately, we eventually realise that more is not always better. This was my experience. I stopped using electronic facial brushes, harsh exfoliants, and layering endless products and started asking myself what was truly nourishing and what was causing stress and irritation. Midlife has a way of clarifying what truly matters. There is wisdom in shedding what no longer serves you, whether that is your routine, your relationship, or your beliefs about yourself.

Many South Asian women in midlife approach skincare with a sense of urgency, trying to reverse or halt what they see as damage, fighting their ageing skin rather than working with it. What shift in mindset do you try to help women make, and what becomes possible when a woman stops fighting her skin and starts listening to it instead?

In Ayurveda, ageing is seen as a natural transition to be supported through nourishment, balance, ritual, and care. It recognises that the body, skin, and hair naturally evolve through the different seasons of life. The mindset shift I try to help women see through my brand, Chasma, is that the goal is not to look 25 forever, but to age intentionally, beautifully, and well. Ayurveda teaches us to focus on longevity and vitality from within, calming inflammation, nourishing the nervous system, supporting sleep, and caring for the scalp and skin before imbalance shows up externally. Your skin and scalp are telling us what our body needs. So, when we focus on treating the whole self both topically and internally, stop fighting ageing aggressively, and listen to the body, what becomes possible is connection to ourselves at every age.

Ayurvedic skincare is deeply rooted in South Asian heritage, yet many South Asian women have spent decades turning away from it in favour of Western products, only to return to it in midlife. Why do you think that return happens? And what does it mean, culturally and personally, for a South Asian woman to reclaim the beauty wisdom of her own heritage?

This question speaks to my soul. I think for many South Asian women, there is a complicated relationship with our own beauty rituals growing up, especially for those of us born and raised in the West. Growing up in Canada at a time when there weren’t a lot of South Asians, I was mortified when my mom used to wash our hair with shikakai and rub coconut oil into my plaits, when everyone else was using salon shampoos and Western beauty products. I didn’t see those rituals as luxurious or wise at the time. I saw them as a thing that made me feel and smell different.

So many of us spent years distancing ourselves from our culture to try to blend in. Western beauty was viewed as success, modern and sophisticated, while our South Asian traditions were dismissed as old school and traditional.

I think the reason why, in midlife, many women return to our South Asian traditions like Ayurveda is that we start to see how much our population has been underserved by traditional medicine, and we are looking for something deeper than quick fixes or trends. We start realising that our mothers’ and grandmothers’ practices were never just about beauty, but their rituals were about nourishment and connection to a higher power. I also think there is something very healing about reclaiming our rituals and realising there was always wisdom there. For me, it felt less like discovering something new and more like a homecoming and a sense of comfort.

You are 49, building a business rooted in your own midlife experience, with skin that tells a story of healing rather than decline. What do you want South Asian women in midlife to understand about what is possible for their skin and for themselves in this season of life?

I want women to understand that midlife is the beginning of a beautiful next chapter. It can actually become a period of healing and reconnection with yourself if you let it. Your skin is capable of improving. Your hair can become healthier. Your energy can return, but it requires a relationship rooted in understanding and nourishment, not punishment and criticism. Now at 50, I do not feel like I am trying to turn back time and be a younger version of myself. I feel more physically and emotionally aligned now than I ever have been before, and for the first time in a long time, comfortable in my own skin. That is the possibility I hope women can see for themselves, too.

What stays with me from this conversation is the image Mangala returns to at the end.
Not younger skin. Not turning back time. Not a before and after.

Comfortable in her own skin, for the first time in a long time.

That phrase carries so much. Because for South Asian women who have spent decades navigating colourism, cultural expectations, the relentless pressure to look a certain way, and the particular disorientation of a midlife body that no longer behaves as expected, comfort in your own skin is not a small thing. It is the whole thing.

Mangala’s journey, from grief to an Ayurvedic retreat, from hiding coconut oil and shikakai in her childhood to building a business rooted entirely in those practices, is a story about reclamation. About the wisdom that was always there, waiting patiently for us to stop running from it.

Your skin is not a problem to be solved. It is a conversation to be had, with your body, your history, your heritage, and yourself.
And midlife, as Mangala reminds us, is not the end of feeling beautiful. It is the beginning of understanding what that actually means.

If you’d like to explore Mangala’s work and the world of Chasma further:

Website: www.chasmaskin.com.

Not “How much do you want to lose?” Not “What did you use to weigh?” Not “How quickly do you want to see results?“

The question is this: How do you want to feel in the next decade of your life?

It sounds simple. But for many South Asian women in midlife, women who have spent decades measuring their health by how they look, how much they can give to others, and how quietly they can carry it all, it is the most disorienting question they have ever been asked.

Because no one has ever asked them before.

Darpan Bhasin is a qualified Personal Trainer and Nutrition Coach who left a corporate career to do work that she believes in, helping women build strength, confidence, and sustainable health from the inside out. No quick fixes. No restrictive plans. No telling women to become smaller versions of themselves.

Her approach is rooted in something The Sattva Collective holds deeply too: that midlife is not a decline to manage. It is a phase to navigate, with the right support, the right mindset, and the kind of honest, compassionate guidance that actually meets women where they are.

She works with women who are exhausted, depleted, disconnected from their bodies, and quietly struggling with the changes that perimenopause and menopause bring. And she helps them find their way back, not to who they were, but to something stronger, more grounded, and more sustainable themselves.

This is a conversation about strength. About food and culture and the guilt that doesn’t have to be part of either. About grief, consistency, and what becomes possible when a South Asian woman finally decides that her own body deserves attention, too.

We are very glad she is here.

For many women, especially in South Asian communities, health has often been measured by how we look on the outside, how much we can give to others, and how quietly we can carry it all. Midlife and menopause invite us to challenge that narrative.

This phase is not about decline, it’s about redefining. It becomes less about appearance and more about building strength from within. Strength in our bodies, strength in our mindset, and strength in how we choose to show up for ourselves. It’s about asking a different question: How do I want to feel in the next decade of my life? Not just today, but 10, 20 years from now.

Redefining health at this stage means prioritising muscle, energy, and resilience. It means supporting our bodies through lifestyle changes that help us manage menopause, whether that’s strength training, nourishing ourselves properly, or creating habits that sustain our energy rather than drain it.

Body changes in midlife can feel deeply personal, especially for women who have spent years tying their worth to how they look. How do you help women shift the focus away from weight and towards something more sustaining?

At this stage, I help women zoom out. I help them shift their mindset away from just numbers and appearances and instead focus on what’s still working in their favour. Their body is still moving, and that, in itself, is one of the greatest gifts.

From there, we begin focusing on what their body can do rather than just how it looks. Can you move with ease? Do you have the energy to get through your day? Are you feeling stronger, more capable?

When women start noticing improvements in strength, energy, and overall well-being, their relationship with their body begins to change. It becomes less about shrinking themselves and more about supporting themselves, which creates something truly sustainable.

South Asian women are often the carers, the organisers, the ones holding everyone else together. What do you see happen when a woman in midlife finally realises that her own body needs attention too?

What I see is a gradual shift from depletion to awareness. They begin to recognise their own needs, their own fatigue, their own limits. And when they start taking small actions, even something as simple as carving out 20–30 minutes for themselves, it creates a ripple effect.

They have more patience. More clarity. More energy, and interestingly, they don’t become less available to others; they become better for others, because they’re no longer running on empty.

You speak about strength training as something transformative, not just physically but mentally. What changes have you witnessed in women who stop trying to become smaller and start building themselves stronger?

The shift is incredible, and it goes far beyond the physical. Physically, yes, they become stronger, more capable, and more resilient. But mentally, there’s a confidence that starts to build, not from how they look, but from what they’re proving to themselves.

They start trusting their body again. When a woman realises she can lift heavier than she thought, move better than she expected, and stay consistent even on hard days, it changes her internal dialogue. She starts respecting herself again.

And that body confidence shows up everywhere, in how she carries herself, how she sets boundaries, and how she navigates life.

Menopause can bring fatigue, brain fog, disrupted sleep, anxiety, and a sense of not quite feeling like yourself. Where do you encourage women to begin when they feel disconnected from their body and overwhelmed by the whole experience?

I always bring it back to simplicity, breaking things down into small, manageable steps. For me, it started with something as simple as a 10–15 minute walk each day. It may feel small, but those small actions build consistency, and that consistency helps women start feeling better about themselves again.

From there, we layer in the basics: regular movement, simple strength training, balanced meals with enough protein, and creating small routines that support better energy and sleep.

But just as important is mindset.

We need to understand that our bodies are not what they were 20 years ago, but that doesn’t mean they’re failing us. It’s changing. And when we shift our thinking and start adapting our actions to support this phase, that feeling of disconnection begins to ease.

It’s not about doing everything at once, but about starting small, staying consistent, and rebuilding that connection with your body over time.

Food is rarely just food, especially in South Asian households where love, culture, hospitality, and expectation are all tied up in it. How do you help women create healthier habits without losing that sense of identity or turning nourishment into guilt?

This is such an important conversation, because food is deeply emotional and cultural. I never approach it from a place of restriction or “cutting out” traditional foods. Instead, we look at balance and awareness.

How can we add rather than take away? Can we include more protein alongside traditional meals? Can we be more mindful of portions without feeling deprived? Can we create structure in our day so we’re not constantly grazing or skipping meals?

It’s about working with culture, not against it. When women realise they don’t have to give up the foods they love, but simply adapt how they eat them, the guilt disappears, and consistency becomes much easier.

My coaching is based on the 80/20 principle. You don’t need to eat perfectly 100%; eat with moderation & balance.

There can be a quiet grief in midlife when a woman realises the habits that worked in her 20s or 30s no longer serve her. How do you support women through that emotional shift, not just the practical one?

The first step is acknowledging that grief and that change. Because unless you recognise and accept what’s happening, you end up fighting against it, and that only creates more frustration.

I help women create a safe space where they understand that many of these changes are part of this phase of life and, in many ways, out of our control. But what is within our control is how we choose to respond, the actions we take to navigate it, and even to thrive through it.

We shift the focus. Instead of seeing it as something being taken away, we begin to ask different questions. Not “How much can I push or do?” but “What is my body capable of giving me right now?” From there, we take actions that support growth, strength, and self-focus.

And when women start to accept that these changes are a natural part of this phase, not something they’ve done wrong, the frustration softens, and those emotions become much easier to manage.

So many women in this season are not lacking knowledge; they are lacking capacity. They are depleted, stretched, and mentally carrying far too much. How important is mindset when it comes to creating change that actually lasts?

Mindset is everything. But at this stage, it’s not about pushing harder; it’s about being smarter. For many women, the old approach was more: more cardio, more time in the gym, more intensity. But now, it’s about asking a different question: What can I realistically do today with the energy I have?

Sometimes that might be a shorter workout, a walk, or a simple strength session that supports your body rather than draining it. It’s a shift away from unrealistic expectations and all-or-nothing thinking.

Because when women stop trying to do everything perfectly and start doing what’s sustainable, they become far more consistent, and that’s what creates real, lasting change.

Your own journey began with discovering what strength and lifestyle change could do for your life. How does that lived experience shape the way you speak to women who fear it is too late, or who have quietly given up on themselves?

My journey is a big part of how I connect with women. I didn’t come into this with everything figured out. I experienced the shifts, the challenges, the doubts, and what happens when you take small, consistent action.

So when a woman tells me it’s too late, I understand where that belief is coming from, but I also know it’s not true. I’ve seen what’s possible, not just in my own life but in the women I work with every day. It’s never about starting perfectly. It’s about starting where you are.

And often, midlife is actually the most powerful time to begin, because you bring greater awareness, greater resilience, and a deeper reason to want change.

If a South Asian woman in perimenopause is reading this while feeling exhausted, uncomfortable in her body, and unsure where to begin, what would you want her to hear from you clearly and compassionately?

I would want her to know this: You are not broken. And this is not the end of feeling like yourself. What you’re experiencing is real, and it’s valid, but it’s also a phase that you can learn to navigate with the right support and approach.

You don’t need to do everything at once. Start small. Start gently. But start. Take one step towards supporting your body, whether that’s moving a little more, nourishing yourself better, or simply choosing to prioritise yourself in a small way each day. Because this phase isn’t about losing who you are.

It’s about rediscovering yourself in a stronger, more grounded way.

What you’re feeling is valid. It’s real. And yes, your body is changing. But this is not something you’re going through alone. It’s a phase that generations before us have experienced, and generations after us will go through too. The difference now is that greater awareness, understanding, and support are available.

There are people like me who are here to guide women to start where they are and take small, meaningful steps forward. You don’t need to do everything at once.

Start small. Start gently. But start, because this phase isn’t about losing who you are.

It’s about learning how to navigate it with the right support and approach… and rediscovering yourself in a stronger, more grounded way.

What I want to sit with, after reading this conversation, is something Darpan says towards the end.

Start small. Start gently. But start.

It sounds almost too simple for how hard midlife can feel. But there is real wisdom in it. Because so many women in this community are not lacking in knowledge, they broadly know what would help them. What they are lacking is capacity. They are depleted. They are stretched. They are running on empty for everyone else and cannot find the entry point into doing something, anything, for themselves.

Darpan’s answer to that is not a programme or a plan. It is permission. Permission to begin with a 10-minute walk. Permission to add a little more protein to a meal you already love. Permission to stop fighting a body that is changing, and start listening to it instead.

For South Asian women who have spent a lifetime being told that their worth lies in what they give to others, that reorientation is not small. It is everything.

You are not broken. This is not the end of feeling like yourself. And you do not have to figure it out alone.

If you’d like to connect with Darpan and explore her work further, you can find her on Instagram at @deebee.fitness, where she shares practical, honest, and culturally grounded guidance for South Asian women navigating fitness and health in midlife.

The post Interview with Darpan Bhasin appeared first on THE SATTVA COLLECTIVE.

Tafiq Akhir, known widely as Mr Menopause, remembers being a teenager and watching his mother stand at an open window during a Cleveland snowstorm, drenched in sweat, silently suffering through what he would only understand years later was menopause. No one in the family knew what was happening to her body, her mind, her sense of herself. No one had told her. No one had told any of them.

Decades later, when Tafiq finally understood what his mother had been going through, it broke his heart. He thought about how he would have checked on her more, made dinner for her more, tried to make her days a little easier. That realisation stayed with him. And years later, working with women in fitness and nutrition, he began to see the same confusion, the same silence, the same suffering playing out again and again. That is when the direction of his work became clear.

For more than 20 years, Tafiq Akhir has been one of the most dedicated and distinctive voices in women’s hormone, health, and weight management. And for over 15 years he has focused on menopause care and education, becoming one of the few men in a space that has almost exclusively been occupied by women. He has documented 80 symptoms and side effects of menopause. He works with workplaces, families, and communities. He has sat with women from across cultures, Black women, Latina women, Middle Eastern women, South Asian women, and listened to what the mainstream menopause conversation keeps getting wrong. His focus is always the same: giving women the education they need to advocate confidently for their own care.

For The Sattva Collective, this conversation matters for a specific and urgent reason. South Asian women are among the most underserved communities in the global menopause conversation, shaped by cultural silence, by the expectation to endure quietly, by caregiving roles that leave no room for their own needs, and by a healthcare system that was not built with them in mind.

Tafiq Akhir understands all of that, and he is not afraid to say so directly.

We are honoured to have him.

You watched your mother suffering during what you later understood was menopause, standing at an open window in a snowstorm, drenched in sweat, with no support and no answers. That moment clearly shaped everything that followed. What did it feel like, years later, to finally understand what she had been going through, and what do you wish someone had told her?

When I finally understood what my mom had been going through when I was a teenager, it honestly broke my heart. I remember her closing herself in her bedroom every night. Back then, we thought she just wanted privacy after being around people all day. But knowing now that she was silently suffering physically, mentally, and emotionally makes me look back at those moments very differently.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have checked on her more. I would have made dinner for her more. I would have tried to recreate some of the little things we enjoyed together when I was younger just to make her days a little easier.

What I wish someone had told her is that she was not crazy, weak, dramatic, or “just ageing.” She was going through a major hormonal and neurological transition that can affect every part of a woman’s body and mind. Unfortunately, many women from that generation suffered in silence because nobody explained what menopause actually was beyond hot flashes. So yes, that realisation is a huge part of why I wrote Decoding the 80 Symptoms and Side Effects of Menopause because I never want women to feel as confused and alone as my mom did.

You are a man who has dedicated his career to menopause education. The question you say everyone asks is: why? But I want to ask it differently, what has doing this work taught you about women that you don’t think you would have understood otherwise?

I actually grew up in a very unique environment. From the time I was born until about 11 years old, our home was periodically a safe haven for battered women and children. I was also very attached to my mother growing up, so I was constantly around women from different backgrounds and experiences from a young age.

As children, we hear and absorb everything. There are very few experiences women go through physically or emotionally that I did not witness or hear discussed growing up, from miscarriages to period flooding to chronic stress and exhaustion. Because of that, things that most men grow up seeing as “too much information” or “women’s issues” were simply normal conversations around me.

I think that environment taught me very early on to truly listen to women rather than dismiss or minimise what they’re saying. And when I entered the health and wellness space over 25 years ago, women naturally gravitated toward my teaching and coaching style because they felt heard. So, it’s more like women’s health and menopause found me instead of me finding menopause.

What this work has taught me is just how often women adapt to suffering instead of being supported through it. Women are incredibly resilient, but resilience should not require silent suffering. That’s another reason I focus so heavily on education and awareness, because once women understand what’s happening biologically, physically, cognitively, and emotionally, everything changes.

South Asian women are among the most underserved communities in the menopause conversation. From your experience working across diverse communities, what specific barriers do you see South Asian women facing that the mainstream menopause world still isn’t adequately addressing?

Living in Los Angeles and working with women throughout the city for over 20 years has allowed me to engage with women from diverse racial, cultural, and religious backgrounds. And many of the barriers South Asian women face overlap with Black women, Latina women, Middle Eastern women, Indigenous women, and many other communities as well.

The biggest barrier, from what women have told me, is often cultural silence. Conversations around hormones, mental health, vaginal health, sexual health, mood changes, or ageing itself can carry shame or discomfort in many households and communities. Women are often expected to quietly endure symptoms rather than openly discuss them.

There’s also the belief that symptoms are “just stress,” “just ageing,” or “just part of being a woman.” So women normalise suffering instead of recognising that many symptoms are connected to menopause.

In some South Asian families, specifically, there can also be strong expectations around caregiving, sacrifice, and endurance. Women are conditioned to prioritise everyone else while minimising their own needs, until, unfortunately, their quality of life is significantly impacted.

Another major issue is the lack of adequate education on menopause overall. Many doctors openly admit they were not properly trained in menopause care. Then online, women are bombarded with conflicting advice from influencers, gurus, anecdotal experiences, and product marketers. So many women are left overwhelmed and confused instead of informed. That confusion and lack of clarity are one of the biggest reasons I do this work and why I wrote the book.

In South Asian families, there is a deep cultural conditioning around silence, particularly around the body, health, and anything perceived as weakness. You work with workplaces, but the silence starts at home. How do you think the conversation around menopause needs to change inside South Asian families and communities, not just in HR departments?

What I see as a substantial part of the issue regarding the cultural conditions around menopause is that, for decades, it has largely been viewed through a reproductive and gynaecological lens instead of being recognised as a much broader life and health issue. Because of that, menopause often gets categorised as only a “women’s health issue,” which can make conversations around it feel private, shameful, or inappropriate to discuss openly in many communities, including within some South Asian families.

But menopause is much bigger than that.

Yes, menopause happens within a woman’s body, but its effects extend far beyond reproductive health. It can affect emotional health, cognitive function, sleep, relationships, confidence, communication, work performance, and overall quality of life. So whether people realise it or not, menopause impacts families, marriages, workplaces, and communities too.

That’s why I believe the conversation has to shift from silence and endurance to understanding and support.

Inside many South Asian families, women are often expected to quietly push through discomfort, especially when it comes to hormonal or emotional health. But understanding what’s happening in your body is not weakness. Asking for support is not a weakness either.

Education is empowerment.

And something worth noting, studies have shown that when women feel more supported and able to speak openly about menopause, symptom distress often decreases. That alone shows how powerful awareness, validation, and connection can be.

Your work focuses significantly on men understanding menopause, as well as on partners, colleagues, managers, and sons. For the South Asian men reading this, husbands, brothers, sons, colleagues, what is the single most important thing you want them to understand about what the women in their lives are going through?

Although I provide educational resources like ‘What Every Man Should Know About Menopause” and “Menopause Made Simple For Couples”, my work actually does not significantly focus on men understanding menopause. It’s definitely an extension of what I do. My main focus is providing educational resources for women so they can confidently advocate for the care, support, and resources they need with clarity and autonomy. But I do believe it’s important for men to understand what menopause actually is because they are part of these women’s lives.

What I want South Asian men to understand is this: the woman you love and care about is going through a biological transition affecting nearly every part of who she is physically, mentally, emotionally, cognitively, and hormonally. Many women don’t recognise themselves during this phase and often feel scared, isolated, frustrated, or overwhelmed.

She needs your support. She does not need you to “fix” menopause because you cannot fix menopause. What she needs is understanding, patience, compassion, and advocacy.

Support her. Nurture her. Love her. Listen to her. Help her feel safe talking about what she’s experiencing without judgment or dismissal.

Similarly, in workplaces. Male employers and coworkers don’t need to become menopause experts, but you can lead with understanding instead of judgment.

You document 80 symptoms of menopause. Many South Asian women have been experiencing multiple symptoms for years and were told it was stress, anxiety, or simply how they are. What happens, psychologically and physically, when a woman finally gets an explanation for what her body has been doing? What shifts?

When women finally understand that what they’ve been experiencing can actually be connected to menopause, it tends to completely change how they view what’s been happening to their bodies and their minds. Many women have spent years being told it’s “just stress,” “just ageing,” “just anxiety,” or simply part of who they are now. So they start questioning themselves instead of questioning whether hormones may be playing a part.

But when they finally connect the dots, it reduces a tremendous amount of fear, confusion, and self-blame. They stop thinking they’re lazy, irrational, overly emotional, or “losing it.” They begin to realise there may actually be a biological reason behind the brain fog, anxiety, exhaustion, sleep disruption, mood swings, joint pain, heart palpitations, or emotional overwhelm they’ve been experiencing.

One of the things I also see during menopause is that the autonomic nervous system can become much more sensitive, increasing feelings of stress, anxiety, and fight or flight responses. And when the body remains in that heightened state, symptoms often worsen. So when women finally feel understood, supported, educated, and less afraid of what’s happening, it can positively impact both their emotional well-being and even the severity of some symptoms.

I saw this often during my years coaching women through menopause.

There’s also a huge sense of validation. The feeling of being alone disappears once they realise millions of other women are experiencing similar symptoms too. And once you understand what may actually be happening, you’re finally able to start making informed decisions about support, symptom management, and the types of solutions that may be right for you.

You work extensively with organisations on workplace menopause. Many South Asian women are navigating menopause symptoms at work in silence, managing brain fog, fatigue, and anxiety while trying to appear completely competent. What would you say to the South Asian woman reading this who has never disclosed anything at work and is wondering whether she should?

For women experiencing symptoms at work, I personally would not recommend immediately disclosing any information at work unless you feel safe and comfortable doing so.

What I would recommend first is helping create awareness within the workplace itself. For example, sharing information about workplace education on menopause or suggesting a menopause awareness webinar or training can often open the door in a less personal way.

Sometimes simply saying, “I recently heard about menopause workplace training and thought it might be valuable for employees,” is enough to start the conversation.

The first step is usually education because once leadership and teams better understand menopause and its impact, conversations around support become much easier and less uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, many women are silently struggling through brain fog, anxiety, fatigue, sleep disruption, and emotional overwhelm while trying to appear fully functional and composed. The more normalised these conversations become, the safer women will feel asking for support when they genuinely need it.

The conversation about menopause has gained significant mainstream momentum in recent years. But from where you sit, what is still not being said, the gap that still exists in how menopause is understood, treated, and talked about, particularly for women from minority ethnic backgrounds?

I think one of the biggest gaps is that women are still not being taught how individualised menopause really is.

Many women are still searching for “the solution” instead of understanding that menopause symptoms can present very differently depending on genetics, stress levels, trauma history, lifestyle, metabolic health, sleep quality, nutrition, culture, environment, and underlying health conditions.

Women from minority ethnic backgrounds are also often underrepresented in research, underdiagnosed, or culturally conditioned not to speak openly about symptoms in the first place.

But that doesn’t stop you from learning all you can about what’s happening in your body and how you can get the support you need. Don’t wait for support to come to you.

You have said that your motivation is knowing how much of your mother’s suffering could have been minimised, prevented, or reversed. For the South Asian woman in midlife reading this, who is struggling right now and perhaps recognises herself in your mother’s story, what is the most important thing you want her to know?

For the South Asian woman in midlife reading this who is struggling right now. First, I want you to know that you are not crazy. You are not weak, you are not “just getting older,” and you are not alone. Millions of women are struggling physically, cognitively, emotionally, and hormonally just like you. The problem is that most of you were never properly educated on what menopause can actually look and feel like beyond hot flashes.

I also want women to understand that education has to come before decision-making. Before choosing supplements, medications, treatments, or lifestyle changes, first understand what may actually be happening in your body.

Maybe you need medical support. Maybe stress and anxiety are amplifying your symptoms. Maybe sleep disruption is creating a cascade effect. Maybe you need community and support more than another prescription. Every woman’s situation is different. So getting a foundational understanding of what’s happening in your body and why is imperative.

And again, that’s one of the biggest reasons I wrote my book, Decoding the 80 Symptoms and Side Effects of Menopause, because too many women are struggling with symptoms they don’t understand and are trying to make important health decisions without clear information. I want women to be able to connect the dots between the physical, emotional, and cognitive symptoms they’re experiencing while also understanding the different pathways available for reliable support and relief.

The Sattva Collective was founded on the belief that South Asian women deserve a midlife and menopause conversation that truly understands them. As someone who has championed menopause awareness across cultures and communities, what gives you hope that the conversation is changing? And what still needs to happen?

What gives me hope as someone championing this conversation is that more women are finally speaking up and sharing their experiences openly. That matters because the only way support improves is if people know support is needed and that women are not just requesting it, they are demanding it.

But there’s still a long way to go. We need more culturally specific conversations. More education for healthcare providers. More workplace awareness. More representation in research. More honest discussions around mental health, sexuality, cognitive symptoms, and emotional well-being during menopause.

And most importantly, women need to feel safe enough to speak openly without shame.

That’s why platforms like The Sattva Collective are so important. You are creating space for women to finally be heard, understood, and supported. I am genuinely honoured to be part of that conversation.

What strikes me most about this conversation is not just what Tafiq knows, but why he knows it. This is not a man who encountered menopause through research papers or professional curiosity. This is a man who watched his mother suffer in a way that, had someone simply explained it, might have been so much easier to bear. That’s where this work comes from. That’s what makes it land differently.

For South Asian women reading this: you are not crazy. You are not weak. You are not simply getting older or being dramatic. You are navigating a profound biological transition in a culture that has, for too long, asked you to do it in silence. And that silence has a cost. Tafiq has spent over two decades making sure women understand what that cost is, and what becomes possible when the silence finally ends.

His message to the South Asian men in our community, the husbands, brothers, sons, and colleagues, is equally clear: she does not need you to fix this. She needs you to show up. To listen, to not dismiss what you don’t fully understand, to love her through it.

That feels like something worth repeating.

If you’d like to connect with Mr Menopause and explore his work further, you can find him across your favourite channels:

Website: www.tafiq.com | YouTube: @MrMenopause | Facebook: @MrMenopauseOfficial | LinkedIn: @TafiqAkhir

Subscribe now

That is exactly what came to mind as I sat with the story of Mani Kohli MBE. A pioneer in British South Asian fashion, Mani has spent decades shaping how South Asian women see themselves and how they allow themselves to be seen. Through Khubsoorat, she helped bring elegance, tailoring, visibility, and cultural pride to women who had too often been taught to shrink, cover, or blend in. But what struck me most in this conversation was not only her creative legacy. It was the force of the woman behind it.
Because beneath the glamour, craftsmanship, and decades of entrepreneurship is a story of grit, self-belief, survival, reinvention, and a woman who kept going even when life demanded more of her than most people ever saw. We talk about confidence, adversity, divorce, self-worth, menopause, leadership, legacy, and what it means to keep becoming, especially in midlife, when the body changes, the energy shifts, and life asks you to meet yourself in a new way.

This is a conversation about visibility, yes. But also about endurance. About identity. About style as self-expression. About building a life on your own terms, even when it comes at a cost. And perhaps most of all, it is a reminder that midlife is not the end of a woman’s relevance. In many ways, it is the chapter where everything she has lived begins to make its deepest sense.

When you look back over your journey, what do you think midlife has asked of you that your younger self couldn’t yet understand?

The first thing that came to my mind was my inability to handle my mood swings and irritability. As I had no guidance, I found myself facing the highs and lows of my daily life, as normal, yet by the time I was ready to hit the bed, I was exhausted, physically and mentally, blaming my stressful life of choice.

Your work has helped shape the visibility of South Asian fashion in Britain. What did you have to believe about yourself to keep going when the wider culture wasn’t ready?

I did find it quite shocking to meet women in the late 1970s and early 1980s when I arrived in Britain in 1977, who camouflaged behind layers of oversized fabrics, cardigans and coats. Loose-fitting, self-tailored clothes, more to cover than enhance.

At the few outings that I attended, I designed and tailored my own Indian suits, which showed more of my shape and my confidence to be seen in them. Even my saree blouses were stitched to enhance my body shape, and saree draped to show off my curves.

I saw the gap and introduced the well-tailored suits to enhance and be seen to fit in the environment. I did not turn to predictable Indian fuchsia, turquoise, and reds, but subtle shades of browns, nudes, blues and greys, that seemed to set the trend and tone, yet culturally uphold the roots. It was so satisfying to see more women wear my creations on the streets and feel right in them. It purely stemmed from confidence and self-belief to be visible when racism was intense.

You’ve built a legacy over decades. What keeps you creatively alive now, and how has your relationship with ambition changed in midlife?

Legacy exists because I believed in my fashion sense and the confidence to uphold it. Today, the mainstream has turned to Asia for inspiration, where we feel comfortable addressing our attire with modernity and are proud of the craftsmanship that exists in parallel to digital essence. I have been addressing

it for 4 decades now with ease. When I started my investment in fashion, it was a challenge to create a source of income. Over time, the ambition and desire to be visible overtook the entrepreneurship to scale the supply, to meet the demand, and its purpose as the glamour and glitz it provided for the discerning women, who were beginning to find themselves and their identity.

Midlife can bring a new relationship with the body, confidence, and “being seen.” In fashion, that can feel loaded. What do you want women in midlife to know about style as self-expression, not performance?

It is very important to be comfortable in your skin before you are seen. The onset of midlife comes with lowered confidence, as youth is not in the forefront to battle. Wear what suits your frame, not what fashion dictates. Impressions count, without staging them.

Dressing in comfort and adding style to it is an art. Regular indulgence in try-ons at stores, new make-up and accessories to enhance, can clear your expression. I find there is so much help around now to decide on your esteemed look, which was one big hindrance in my crisis time, as compliments were hard to get and self-expression itself a huge challenge!!! Knowing oneself and enhancing one’s personality is the key to identity and creating presence.

You’ve spoken about resilience and adversity shaping your path. What did rebuilding your life teach you about self-worth and standards, especially as a South Asian woman?

At the time I started my adventure with my business and building a home for my kids, there were enough people around to put me down for my individualist approach. I could not be “modern” in my dress sense or my expression, as women of that era did not do it, especially with the “stigma” of being a “divorcee”. Outspoken was the intense criticism I had to face, as I was practical and clear with my statements.

Most saw me as a rebel, as I would go against the norms laid out culturally to follow. I had to turn a blind eye and pretend to be deaf, as I could not understand how I was meant to build my own income and fend for my children, if I could not stand upright and fight for my space and voice! Steering clear of criticism was the only format I adopted to be visible and establish my vision of self-reliance. The South Asians felt I was aggressive and non Asians couldn’t fathom my spirit as normal, because of my colour.

So many women are the backbone of everyone else’s life. What are the boundaries or non-negotiables you’ve had to put in place to protect your energy as you’ve grown older?

I was barely 20 when I had to put my foot down to assert my authority to be an independent woman, who wanted to earn for myself and set standards for my own life, that too in a foreign land. A few cries from my siblings and colleagues at the time!! Besides, I was a graduate from convents in India, so language and understanding certainly were non-negotiable. I could not, and would not, put up with the atrocities from my ex/late husband, whose mental and physical abuse was overridden or challenged at every stage, single-handedly by me. I was a warrior who had set a path and decided to fight and surmount every possible obstruction that stood in my way as an individual, as a provider for my family and as a visionary for my fashion label. I guess the energy was derived from my genes!!

Khubsoorat has always held this blend of heritage and modernity. How do you personally navigate that same tension: tradition, duty, family expectations… and choosing yourself?

It is indeed very heartening to learn how the “Khubsoorat” label is perceived. It was my stance and vision when I chose fashion as a language to express myself and my vision. I never started this investment as self-centred. I was always representing my upbringing and roots. So, I never set out to correct either tradition, duty or expectations. If at all…The expectations and goals were set for me to meet by enhancing and balancing my heritage. I did burn the candle at both ends for it. Even in the present day, I have had to evolve my thought process to meet the expectations of the new consumer, without compromising on my identity. I do have to satisfy my inner creatives before displaying for the people to appraise.

What has menopause or the midlife transition (in any form) taught you about leadership: how you lead, how you hire, how you mentor, how you say no?

This has been one mighty ask from myself!!!! I was 42, at the peak of my fashion business, when I had a full hysterectomy and my ovaries removed. I was neither mentally nor physically prepared for the ongoing journey. Nobody even paid heed to it, let alone understood the sufferings of the bearer. So sympathy is never sought or given.

I met the staff as a listener when I wanted to tear my hair out. Assuring that one can overcome highs and lows was the worst when I used to wake up in sweat in minus temperatures and a mind on overdrive, to advise the next generation on bettering their lives. I never learnt to say NO… it would mean not giving myself or the person who stood in front of me, a chance to fall and learn. Experience is the biggest teacher of all journeys… the rest comes as sermons!!!

You’ve supported artisans and heritage crafts. What does legacy mean to you now: what you leave behind, what you pass on, and what you want to protect?

Having experienced the build on my own risk, I can certainly affirm that legacy is not a terminology that one can phrase as inheritance; it is a process that needs to be enriched by the framework, by the builders, be it artisans or crafts. It has to be preserved by a caring generation as a precious learning.

If you could speak to the woman at 40+ who feels invisible, exhausted, or like her best years are behind her, what would you say to her plainly and directly?

DON’T be harsh on yourself. Lower your own expectations. Learn to accept and not fight, as circumstances all fall into place. And when you are near a ripe age, you will only look back and laugh at yourself, as you alone know the path you walked on, and what it took to get you this far!!!

What stayed with me most after reading Mani’s answers was the strength of a woman who refused to disappear. Not when culture tried to contain her, not when criticism tried to quieten her, not when midlife and menopause arrived without guidance, tenderness, or understanding, and not when life demanded she keep building, leading, mothering, surviving, and showing up through it all.

There is something deeply moving about a woman who has lived enough to speak without pretence. Mani does not offer polished inspiration. She offers something far more valuable: lived truth, the kind that comes from having walked through fire and still choosing to create beauty, the kind that knows legacy is not a title you inherit, but something you build, protect, and pass on through courage, vision, and consistency.

What I also love is how clearly she reminds us that being seen is not vanity. It is self-possession. It is identity. It is a woman deciding that she will no longer apologise for her presence, her style, her voice, or her standards.

For so many women in midlife, especially South Asian women, there can be a quiet temptation to believe that the best years are behind them. That confidence belongs to youth. That visibility belongs to someone else. That desire, ambition, beauty, and reinvention have an expiry date. Mani’s life says otherwise.
She reminds us that midlife is not a fading. It is a reckoning. A refinement. A season where you begin to understand what it really took to become yourself.

And maybe that is the deeper invitation here: to stop being so hard on ourselves, to honour the road we have walked, to dress for the woman we are now, to protect what matters, to trust what we know. And to remember that the life we have built, and are still building, carries its own kind of beauty, because there is nothing invisible about a woman who knows who she is.

Subscribe now

For many South Asian women, that truth is layered. It lives in the body, yes, but also in culture, conditioning, silence, duty, shame, identity, and the quiet weight of everything we have carried for far too long. Menopause is often spoken about as a hormonal event, but for so many women, it is also emotional, relational, psychological, and deeply revealing. It can stir questions that have been buried under years of coping: Who am I now? What am I no longer willing to endure? What is this stage of life asking me to see, say, and change?

That is why I wanted to speak with Shireen Noor. Shireen is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and licensed couples therapist in private practice in Hertfordshire and London. Her work sits at the intersection of trauma, culture, migration, identity, and decolonising psychoanalysis, with a particular focus on South Asian experiences of mental health. She also has a deep interest in the psychological shifts of midlife for South Asian women, especially the way this season can invite a powerful rethinking of self, relationships, and life direction.

In this conversation, we explore what menopause can begin to expose in relationships, why silence and endurance have such a cost, and how midlife can become not just a destabilising chapter, but a deeply transformative one. We talk about inherited scripts, emotional labour, intimacy, shame, and the quiet but radical act of becoming more honest about what you need.

If you have ever felt like you were carrying more than anyone could see, or like this season of life is changing you in ways you struggle to explain, I think this conversation will meet you where you are.

In South Asian cultures, women are often taught to endure rather than express. In midlife and menopause, what does that endurance start costing us in our relationships?


Yes, in South Asian culture, women take on a lot. The subliminal message is to endure, to be selfless. But I often say the meaning of selfless is ‘thinking less of yourself’, but at what cost? Menopause symptoms are not just hormonal. They reflect years of psychosocial stresses of navigating culture, tradition, honour of the family and expectations, and these can take a toll. The positive is that menopause is a wake-up call for many women; they become more aware of what they have been enduring. It becomes a point in their life that they feel that they can say no and express what is acceptable to them. I don’t think it has been at a cost to their relationships; in fact, it can strengthen relationships. It’s being able to know that you can put healthy boundaries. Menopause is a phase in life to rethink what is toxic in relationships, friendships, career and family. It is a time for growth, transformation and investing in yourself.

You work with couples around culture, interfaith dynamics, in-laws, and mixed marriages. Where do you most often see menopause becoming the unspoken third person in the relationship?


I like your question, Kiran. I believe that any life-changing event can become an unspoken third person in a relationship if we allow it to be and give it power. This can be an in-law, partner, friend or illness and also menopause. Menopause is a natural phase of life; we know every woman will go through it. How it impacts us and how we relate to it is up to us. I believe that menopause can be a life-transforming experience; it’s our body’s way of telling us its ok to pause, reflect, reassess and reinvent.

Many women describe feeling disconnected from themselves during menopause. What does that self-disconnection tend to trigger in a partnership, even when there’s love?

Menopause is a stage of transition in a woman’s life; it is not just our bodies that are changing, but we change mentally too. What was familiar and known to you is no longer familiar; you don’t understand what is happening to you. Hot flushes, insomnia, irritability, exhaustion, your moods may fluctuate and shift.

Now add your partner witnessing these changes, if neither of you have information about menopause and don’t communicate, suffer in silence, you might end up blaming yourself. If couples don’t communicate, they grow distant. You both may end up feeling guilty or blaming yourself. Couples need to keep talking, even when it feels uncomfortable. This is where therapy can help if you need it, even for a brief time.

If you could name the top three misunderstandings partners have about menopause, what are they, and what do you wish partners understood instead?

The first is the lack of information; many women and their partners simply don’t have enough information about what menopause involves. Please find your tribe, by that I mean women like you in a similar stage of life. Their journey might be different, but a community is essential to share, listen and support one another.

The second is the belief, is it me? Is something wrong with me? Am I not enough anymore? Women can internalise physical and mental changes that are not their fault as a personal failure. Remember, it is ok to pause, look inwards, and listen to what your body and mind are telling you.

The third is comparison. The thoughts or being told by other people, too, my mother, mother-in-law or auntie went through it, she was ok, so I should be too. But every woman and every generation’s experience is unique. Circumstances and emotional histories are not identical.


In South Asian families, conversations about sex, desire, and emotional needs can be loaded with shame. How does that show up in couples’ work during midlife?

Shame has many layers of meaning and nuances in the South Asian culture. It is rooted in ancient histories, patriarchy, religion and rituals which are part of our everyday lives. It can mean honour and also plays a regulatory function in what is ok to speak about and what is not spoken about. Topics such as women’s reproductive systems, periods, childbirth and pregnancies, menopause, and sex are often wrapped in silence. If a couple has never felt comfortable and open to approach and speak about sex, emotional needs and desire, this silence and discomfort will not disappear in midlife. In couples’ therapy, we gently rework the narrative. There is nothing wrong with rituals or traditions, it is part of our identity. But it is not shameful to express pleasure, to verbalise your desires and the meaning of sex. Midlife can be a powerful moment for both partners to rewrite the script and come together to spark a new energy in their relationship


You speak about inherited belief systems. What are some inherited scripts South Asian women carry into marriage that become harder to live with during menopause?

Many South Asian women carry inherited beliefs in their lifetime, in their relationships and into marriages. The sublimated message that comes through to women is to be accommodating, not to bring shame to the family; they are protectors of honour in the family. The expectation to be a good wife who adjusts, a good mother, and desires becomes secondary to duty and care for others.
 These scripts may have worked, or at least felt manageable, in younger years. Menopause is like a light bulb moment, when self-awareness deepens, and living life the usual way starts to suffocate. Many women tell me that they don’t want to spend the next 30-40 years of their lives living life the way they have done in the past. Menopause often amplifies the question, who am I beyond service?

A lot of women say: I’m not the same person, and I don’t know how to explain it. What’s a good starting point for a conversation with a partner when words feel impossible?


When a woman says, I am not the same person and she does not know how to explain it, that is already the first step towards being vulnerable and starting a conversation. Nobody is looking for fancy words or a solution. It’s ok for the partner to respond, ‘I don’t know the solution, but I am here to listen, and if you need my help to find a way through, let’s work together. This is enough because it means I care for you and am here to support you.

For women navigating perimenopause while also parenting teens, caring for elders, and holding a career: what relationship patterns do you see emerge under that kind of pressure?


When a woman is navigating perimenopause while parenting teenagers, caring for ageing parents and holding a career, the pressure can be immense. I often see patterns of over-functioning, trying to be perfect and doing their best not to disappoint, specifically herself. As a consequence, resentment can quietly build, and emotional withdrawal can follow. If there has never been shared emotional labour in the relationship, menopause exposes that imbalance. It is not that menopause creates the problem. It reveals what was already uneven, and cracks that were there can become more apparent. The coping strategies that were working before stop being effective.

You work with themes like migration, identity, racism, and attachment trauma. How do these deeper layers complicate menopause and intimacy for South Asian women specifically?


This goes for all women, that menopause does not sit in a vacuum. In the case of South Asian women, add migration histories, racism, shame, expectations of what it means to be a woman, attachment wounds and the pressure to succeed in a new country while preserving culture. A woman learns to survive through endurance, silence and compliance. Menopause can destabilise that coping strategy, and that can feel frightening.

Intimacy may become complicated because for intimacy there is a need to be vulnerable and express your desire, enjoyment and pleasure. But when these have not been expressed, menopause can become even more complicated where intimacy is concerned. Many women may completely shut out intimacy because of the shame that surrounds it. This is why I believe that for South Asian couples, cultural and relational context matters deeply.

If a couple is stuck in blame or distance right now, what’s one small, practical shift you’ve seen create the fastest sense of reconnection?

If a couple is stuck in blame or distance, the fastest shift I often see is moving from defending and attacking to being curious. Make a cup of tea or coffee, sit together, talk, share and listen. Even if it’s five minutes a day, intentional, uninterrupted listening can begin to soften distance, listen, hear and feel. Think about how you would be with a child? Be kind, gentle, share and allow space for sharing. It sounds simple, but it is not always easy, yet it is powerful.

What I appreciated so deeply about this conversation with Shireen is that she did not reduce menopause to symptoms alone. She spoke about it as a threshold. A revealing. A wake-up call. A moment when the patterns, silences, and survival strategies that once kept a woman going begin to feel too tight to live inside anymore.

And I think that matters, because for so many South Asian women, midlife is not simply about hot flushes, sleep disruption, or changing hormones, though those things are real. It is also about finally noticing the emotional cost of a life lived in accommodation. It is about seeing where duty has overshadowed desire, where silence has replaced honesty, and where endurance has been mistaken for strength.

What Shireen reminds us so beautifully is that this season does not have to be the beginning of disconnection. It can be the beginning of a deeper truth. In ourselves, in our relationships, and in the way we choose to live from here.

Midlife can be the point where a woman stops asking, How much more can I take? And starts asking, What do I need now? What is no longer mine to carry? What would it mean to relate to myself and the people I love, with more honesty, tenderness, and courage? That is not selfish. That is wisdom. And maybe that is one of the quiet gifts of this chapter: the invitation to stop disappearing inside your own life.

I hope this conversation leaves you feeling seen, soothed, and perhaps a little braver about the conversations you need to have, with your partner, with your family, and with yourself, because you are allowed to change. You are allowed to need more. You are allowed to outgrow old scripts. And you are allowed to create relationships that can hold the woman you are now becoming.

Subscribe now

Parita supports professional women and working mums through the internal patterns that keep them depleted, overgiving, and stuck in high-functioning survival mode. In this conversation, we talk about what really changes in midlife and menopause, why so many women feel alone in it, and how mindset and energy management can become a form of self-respect rather than another thing to perform.
If you’ve been feeling stretched thin, emotionally reactive, or like you’ve lost your grip on yourself lately, I want you to read this gently. Not as homework. As a mirror.

When you work with professional women and working mums, what do you notice shifts most in midlife and peri/menopause, and why do so many women think it is just them?

I think what shifts for many women in this phase of life is the push and pull of “I don’t care what anyone thinks of me” and “But what will people say?” The latter is a part of our wiring since childhood, and the freedom we begin to claim comes when we hit midlife. Many women think something’s wrong with them for feeling both of these things at the same time, but that’s not the case. It takes a lot of time and grace to stand in your authenticity, and we have to give ourselves the space to do so in a way that works for us.

South Asian women are often high-functioning and quietly depleted. What are the most common thought patterns you see that keep them stuck in survival mode?

Should shows up a lot for South Asian Women; “I should be a better mom; my house should be cleaner; I should cook for my family every night; I should be able to find time to exercise and take care of myself; I should be a better wife.” And the list goes on. As we say in coaching, let’s stop shoulding on ourselves! This is what keeps us stuck. We need to start to acknowledge and validate ourselves for what we’re doing instead of living based on an outdated societal construct.

You talk about energy as a kind of currency. In midlife, when hormonal changes and life responsibilities collide, what does managing energy actually look like in real life?

This is going to sound way too simple, but I believe the simple act of checking in with ourselves is how we manage our energy from a day-to-day perspective, regardless of what else is going on. So, for example, asking, “How do you feel emotionally in this moment? How do you feel physically? Any pain or aches? How do you feel mentally? What thoughts have consumed you so far today? What can you let go of?”

If you’re honest with your answers, they will give you the data and information you need to figure out the right next step for you. If you’re doing ok, keep going. If there’s something that needs your attention, take your next small action about that. We often feel depleted of energy because we don’t pay attention to what we need from a foundational perspective. Start doing the inner work to fill your cup and keep it full!

How does people-pleasing show up differently for South Asian women, and what is the first boundary you usually encourage them to practise?

For South Asian women, people pleasing ends up as resentment later in life. Human beings, in general, can control only one thing. Ourselves. Our own thoughts, our own feelings, our own actions. We can influence some people some of the time, but we can’t control anyone. Not what they think, not what they feel, and not how they act. When those people-pleasing tendencies are activated, we fall into this idea of “Well, I am doing everything I can as I believe they would want me to, but they are still not changing.” This then turns into resentment towards the other person, but also towards ourselves.

What do you say to the woman who feels like she is losing herself in menopause but cannot afford to slow down because everyone depends on her?

If you can’t make time to slow down and take care of yourself now, are you willing to make time for sickness tomorrow? Not slowing down leads to more and more stress. And research shows that increased stress can lead to disease, and in women, that looks like autoimmune disease.

I recently heard someone share how not slowing down in her 40s led to a Lupus diagnosis, which forced her to slow down for six years. That was six years where she had to sacrifice her work, her hobbies, her friendship, and even family time.

Confidence can wobble in midlife, especially when the body changes. What is your approach to rebuilding confidence without forcing toxic positivity or hustle?

I like to frame confidence as the output and not the input. If we want to feel more confident in our bodies (and I’m not just talking about size and shape), we have to do the mental, emotional and physical work to get there. Confidence is the prize for walking the plank. You don’t need confidence to walk the plank.

Imposter syndrome is already common in high-achieving women. How do menopause symptoms like brain fog, anxiety, and disrupted sleep amplify it, and how do you coach through that?

Firstly, I believe that imposter syndrome is a myth that’s tricked us into thinking we are the only ones not capable. In fact, that feeling is just a part of being human. By putting a label on it, we are likely to feel more stuck. Remove the label and address the feeling for what it is.

In menopause, feeling like an imposter can be amplified. If that’s the case, it’s good to pause and ask yourself if you really don’t know what you’re doing, or if it’s a hormonal fluctuation/lack of sleep. Something else mid-life women need to consider is expanding the definition of competence from productive, speedy, and available to discerning, clear, strategic thinkers, delegators, etc. True leadership means listening to our mind and body and doing what feels right in the moment.

Many South Asian women are carrying cultural expectations, invisible labour, and sometimes intergenerational trauma. How do you help clients untangle what is theirs versus what they inherited?

I do an exercise with clients called the “Who Bag.” The Who Bag is an imaginary bag we carry around with us from birth. It’s filled with all kinds of messages from our parents, family, friends, society, media, etc. Later in life, when thinking about what’s ours to carry, the question becomes “What serves me right now?” Our job is to go through this bag every so often and sift through the messages. What doesn’t serve us gets thrown out, and whatever messages are working can stay.

What is one simple daily self-check-in you would recommend for a woman in peri/menopause who feels overwhelmed, reactive, or emotionally ‘all over the place’?

A ten-second pause does wonders. When overwhelm takes over the mind and the body, we can pause and ask ourselves, “What does this moment require of me right now?” Answer honestly and act accordingly. We aren’t broken. We just need to create space to feel and think.

If a midlife South Asian woman is ready to design her next chapter but feels guilty for wanting more, what would you want her to hear, clearly and directly?

I am a big believer that the guilt females, from all over the world, feel is a societal construct to keep them stuck. Guilt implies that you did something wrong. If you did in fact do something wrong, you are guilty. But most of the guilt that women feel comes from a clash of values. You value time with your girlfriends, but that can clash with your value of family. You value professional achievement, but this can clash with your value of family. It’s ok to value two seemingly opposite things. That doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means that sometimes we have to make hard choices. That’s all there is to it!

What I appreciate about Parita’s work is how simple it is, in the best way. Not simplistic. Not overly polished. Just honest. A reminder that so much of what we call being dramatic, being difficult, being too much is often a woman who has been holding too much for too long.

Midlife and menopause don’t create a new personality. They expose the truth. Where you’re overextended. Where your boundaries are porous. Where you’ve been living on borrowed energy.

If this conversation brought something up for you, let that be information, not self-criticism. You don’t need to fix yourself. You might simply need a new way of supporting yourself in this season. And if you’re a South Asian woman reading this, I’ll say it clearly: you’re not broken, and you’re not alone. You’re allowed to want more ease. More steadiness. More space. You’re allowed to design your next chapter from a place of self-trust, not self-sacrifice.

If you’d like to connect with Parita and explore her work further, you can find her at Awarify Coaching.
And as always, if you’re reading this in the middle of a hard week, take one small thing from today’s conversation and let it be enough. One boundary. One pause. One honest sentence. One choice that brings you back to yourself.

Subscribe now

In this conversation, I sit down with Sadia Hameed, Founder and CEO of Sadia Hameed LLC, whose work is reshaping how we understand feminine power, leadership, and embodiment in midlife. Sadia doesn’t offer theories or quick fixes. What she brings is lived truth. A deeply integrated path that honours the nervous system, the body, and the soul as the true architecture of a woman’s life and work.

Drawing from her own journey through burnout, solo motherhood, entrepreneurship, and profound self-reclamation, Sadia speaks candidly about why midlife is not a crisis to be managed, but the most potent stage of the feminine experience. A portal where ambition and devotion no longer compete. Where leadership no longer requires self-sacrifice. Where healing is not endless analysis, but release, remembrance, and return. This interview is an invitation. To soften. To listen. To recognise midlife not as an ending, but as the moment everything essential begins.

Your work centres on emotional well-being, self-awareness, and inner transformation. How did your own midlife experiences shape the way you now support women navigating this stage of life?

My own midlife experiences have been pivotal to the way I support women now. See, for most of my adult life, I believed that I needed to perform at my highest capacity to the standards of others, and that became my marker of success. I did that throughout my career, and I hit burnout more than once. Each time I bounced back and went harder and rose higher. This last time, the burnout was different. I was 43 years old, and I was so exhausted I could barely even function anymore. I had jumped from an intense 26-year career straight into entrepreneurship, and I was hustling constantly.

But this time I wasn’t succeeding as easily, and something in me called on me to stop. As a solo mom of two young children, something in me told me I had to listen, that this time was different for a reason. So I turned to the one compass I had mostly ignored, my body and my nervous system. I healed myself in about 4 months, and everything inside and out began to shift very quickly. I understood in that process that the exhaustion I felt was from resisting myself for the benefit of others and also from generations of inherited trauma that were no longer mine to carry.

Midlife often brings a reckoning with old patterns, people-pleasing, and self-abandonment. What do you see women most urgently needing to unlearn as they move through this transition?

What happens when we hit midlife is that the people-pleasing facade that we were once able to pretend to be happy in and to learn to survive in begins to crack. People tell us we are more edgy, irritable and opinionated. We hit this point somewhere around 40 years old, where we just don’t care about what other people think as much, and that creates friction. This is normal, it’s not a midlife crisis, it’s a midlife awakening. An energetic invitation to walk into the sovereignty of who we truly are without society trying to shape us. In this moment, resisting ourselves is what brings on the deep exhaustion and burnout, and the more we try to fight it and power through it with masculine approaches, the harder it feels.

The invitation here is to actually return to deeper remembering of the feminine cycles, seasons and elements and to turn back to our own inner knowing. That love, success, belonging, validation, safety and certainty that we keep searching for out there in the world, in our work, in our relationships, in our family- it won’t be found out there. It lives within us, and that is what we get to come home to now.

Many women reach midlife feeling successful on paper but quietly depleted inside. How do you help women recognise the difference between external achievement and inner fulfilment?

This is one of the leading indicators of a midlife awakening and one I experienced as well. You have done all the right things, and you have the “success” we were trained to seek out- the career, the family, the marriage, the house and more. But something inside says, “Surely there is more than this”, or “if I have it all, then why do I still feel an emptiness inside me”, or “why don’t I feel like myself anymore?” These are all signs that your soul is stirring within. You have enough life experience and accolades to know that what is missing is not superficial or material; it is much deeper than that.

As we move through my programs, women come back into a new relationship with themselves. They begin to name their deepest desires and big, audacious dreams out loud, the ones that they are told or telling themselves they can’t have, but that actually light them all the way up. We release the blocks between them and these desires and dreams so they can actually live from a state of being that is rooted in joy, nourishment and expansiveness. From this place they begin to bloom, and the inner fulfilment guides the way to the outer lived reality.

You speak openly about emotional literacy and nervous system awareness. Why are these skills so critical for women in midlife, especially during menopause and major life transitions?

Our nervous system is the major energetic communication pathway in our body. It is responsible for the signals between how our body scans the environment or situation and how our mind responds. It is how we generate our emotions. Most women by midlife have been living in a state of perpetual survival mode.

Their body is in a constant state of stress and vigilance. They feel overwhelmed and exhausted even when they are doing all the right things. They are medically minimised to hormones and aging but it’s more complex than that. Through nervous system regulation, you are able to calm your body back into a coherent rhythm and to overcome emotional states of stress, fear and anxiety. You reconnect to your intuition and to what I like to call your inner genius. From this state of being, you can access calm, clear, precise inner guidance, and you make decisions and choose your reactions from a place of self-trust.

This is what alignment really feels like, and once you live it, you understand how important our need for “well-being” is. It’s not just a fad, it’s the way in which we bring our body, emotions and mind into coherence with our natural rhythms. cycles and our most full and joyous expression of ourselves. Most media we consume is actually designed to keep us in a state of dysregulation, stress and panic because then we are easily influenced by external voices and we cede our power and decision making to them.

Midlife can surface long-buried emotions, grief, or trauma. How do you help women approach this not as a breakdown, but as an invitation to healing and integration?

Nothing about the depth of grief and trauma is a breakdown; it is a moment of breakthrough and release. I work through quantum energetics to support women to release generations of trauma from their cellular body, to break old patterns and loops, to release the deeply buried emotions and to move into a lighter, happier state of being very rapidly. I realised a year ago that I had become addicted to healing myself.

And the more programs I went to, the deeper I looped because I was focused on trying to analyse or intellectually understand my patterns. Truth is, I wasn’t sure who I would be without my pain, but by the time I hit my last burnout in November 2024, I was ready to find out. And from there the healing was very rapid, because I no longer wanted to understand it, I simply wanted to release it, and as soon as I gave my permission to do so, it all happened very quickly, and I felt better in my body, energy, stability and clarity within weeks and months. This is the journey I walk with women through. The process of permitting themselves to exist without all the suffering and then the integration to bring the nervous system into acceptance of that new lived reality.

For women who feel disconnected from themselves after years of caregiving or putting others first, what are the first gentle steps you encourage them to take to reconnect with their own needs and desires?

The first gateway that women walk through with me is called Devotion to Self. It is the first of three gateways in my transformational process known as the Trinity of Self

. Devotion to Self is a lived state of being where a woman comes into a very deep and meaningful relationship with herself. Where she fully embraces that she is worthy, loved and already belongs.

Together, we work towards coming into a full embodiment of this state of being. It begins with gently identifying how you most want to feel and to be loved. She identifies her needs and what would bring more ease, joy and calm into her life right now. Then we take small and intentional steps towards this in order to recode the nervous system, training it that this level of self-love, care and forgiveness is safe and desirable. Over a period of days and weeks, the shifts become noticeable, and they compound quickly to create transformation and relief.

There’s a lot of noise telling women how they ‘should’ age or cope with menopause. How do you help women come back to self-trust and discernment instead of external validation?

There is a great deal of noise, and more than that, there is a great deal of gaslighting women to believe that they are “normal” and “fine” even when their body does not feel that way at all. Furthermore, they are shamed for aging and so they are pushing so hard to hold onto their youth, usually in ways that further burn them out and make it even worse. And they are also criticised endlessly for being too loud, opinionated, edgy, irritable and impatient. Truth is energetically the sovereign feminine soul is saying “enough” to the patriarchy and hyper masculine approach, calling on the woman to awaken back to her own natural state of being that is not intended to simply conform, placate or please everyone else.

This is the time of life of the queen, and she has a Sovereign Feminine flow. What is happening in her body energetically is something I call the Ascension of Light, and it’s a very purposeful span of our life where we are able to lead as visionaries and pioneers. The codes of how to do that are already present within us. We can encode with them, and once we calm our nervous system, we are able to access them in profound ways. Alongside this, women also need to care for their physical bodies in new ways.

Mainstream US healthcare fails midlife women at every turn. I encourage women to seek out holistic functional + feminine cycle-centric care that will help them understand the physiological changes so they can meet their bodies in that change in ways that nourish, unlock and expand them. This is when we can regenerate our bodies, understand our hormones as they shift, when we can reverse aging and change our DNA. It’s not by punishing ourselves with medications and surgeries or working harder; it’s much more gentle and intuitive than that. And it starts to feel great, so you want to do it more, and that’s how you shift your habits and behaviours in ways that work for you, not by listening to the outside propaganda, but by listening to your own body.

Cultural expectations can add an extra layer of complexity for women in midlife. How do identity, culture, and conditioning shape the way women experience this transition, and how can they begin to rewrite those narratives?

Yes, cultural conditioning is a huge factor, and truthfully, the feminine experience of midlife in particular has been erased from our mainstream memory. The ancient wisdom around feminine cycles, seasons and elements is not what we are educated to embody; in fact, it is the opposite, so much of the feminine experience from menstruation to sex to menopause is made taboo, or something out of our own direction and control. The scrambling of our nervous system amidst all this conditioning is how we stay stuck and looping in pain and suffering that is no longer ours to carry. And generational trauma is an added factor.

Many women feel a heaviness in their bodies that they can’t even explain. They feel a deep grief and pain that isn’t always proportional to their life. This is the imprint of generational suffering, and it is part of my mission to help women release it entirely. To become the last in their lineage to ever carry the memory of generational suffering and the first to make a different choice. This can be done quickly; it requires one to permit oneself to know that you can honour your ancestors and also put down their pain. Then we gently retrain the nervous system and come into a different state of being. From her,e you create a completely new feminine experience.

Midlife is often described as a time of reinvention. From your perspective, what does true reinvention look like when it’s grounded in authenticity rather than pressure to become someone new?

The beauty of midlife is it isn’t a reinvention at all- it is a remembering. A remembering of the true expansiveness, joy, limitlessness, power, clarity and purpose that she incarnated here with. It is the remembering of her complete self before the world taught her to fragment herself into tiny pieces through self-abandonment and disembodiment. So midlife is the return to self. Not the performative set that people may know- the magnificent self that has been waiting for you to remember her and live as her fully.

If a woman is standing in midlife feeling overwhelmed, unsure, but quietly hopeful, what is the one truth you would want her to understand about herself and this season of her life?

That this is the most potent, powerful and expansive time of your life. This is the portal of absolute awakening and possibility. It is the most exciting time to be alive, and every answer you seek and need is already encoded within you. How wonderful is that! All this hype about midlife being the age where youth goes to die is simply patriarchal propaganda that seeks to keep women struggling. The truth is, this is the time in the life of the queen who gets to consolidate into the matriarch. It is your time of visionary leadership and legacy, and I cannot wait to see more and more women take flight into the beauty, power and magnificence of who they truly are.

What stays with me after this conversation is not just Sadia’s language, but the energetic permission she offers. Permission to stop resisting ourselves. Permission to put down inherited suffering. Permission to lead, love, and create from wholeness rather than exhaustion.

Sadia reminds us that midlife is not about reinventing who we are to stay relevant in a world that was never designed to honour feminine cycles. It is about remembering who we were before we learned to fragment ourselves. Before success demanded self-abandonment. Before, strength meant endurance at all costs. Her work speaks to a deeper truth many women feel but struggle to name: that what is surfacing now is not pathology, but power. Not failure, but awakening. And that is when we meet this stage with nervous-system safety, embodied self-trust, and devotion to self; everything changes.

If you are standing in midlife feeling tired, tender, or quietly hopeful, let this be your reminder: nothing about you is broken. This season is not asking you to fix yourself. It is asking you to come home.
You can explore Sadia’s work and offerings at https://www.sadiahameed.com/, and if this conversation stirred something in you, trust that. Midlife doesn’t whisper without reason.

Subscribe now

We had an honest and heartfelt conversation about South Asian women and menopause, the realities we face, and how our families and friends can play a bigger role in supporting us through this season of life.

It’s time we normalise these conversations, break the silence, and remind women they’re not alone in navigating midlife changes. Thank you, Sheetal, for creating this space – it’s much-needed work for our community.

TUNE IN HERE >>