A monthly record of The Sattva Collective’s journey, for our community, and for anyone who wants to understand what building something meaningful actually looks like from the inside.
June arrived quietly, the way the best months often do. No single, landmark moment. No anniversary to anchor it. Just the steady, determined accumulation of work; stories published, voices amplified, resources built, relationships deepened. That is what this organisation actually looks like from the inside, when the milestone months are behind us and the real work begins.
And what June produced, when I look at it clearly, is more than I could have mapped at the start of it.
Here is what this month held.
We launched My Sattva Story, and the first stories are live
This is the thing I am most proud of from June.
My Sattva Story is a year-round storytelling campaign inviting South Asian women to share their midlife and menopause experiences in their own words. Not case studies. Not statistics. Stories, told at their own pace, in their own voice, for the women who will one day read them and recognise themselves.
The campaign exists because data alone does not change minds. Stories do. And the stories of South Asian women navigating midlife have been largely absent from the national conversation for too long.
The first story published was my own. I made that choice deliberately. I could not ask women to step into a space I hadn’t been willing to enter myself. My Sattva Story: Kiran Singh is about the silence I grew up inside, and the moment I decided it had gone on long enough.
The second story belongs to Rubina Chadha. Read Rubina’s story here. It is honest, generous, and exactly the kind of voice this campaign was built to hold.
Two stories. Two women. Two different experiences of the same silence that has surrounded South Asian women’s midlife and menopause for generations.
This campaign is open year-round. If you have a story, or know a woman who does, we want to hear it. Submissions to hello@thesattvacollective.org with My Sattva Story in the subject line.
The Sattva Collective Podcast is live
In June, The Sattva Collective Podcast launched with its first two episodes now live on Spotify.
These early episodes are solo, me, thinking alongside the community about the experiences, the silences, and the questions that brought this organisation into being. There is something different about speaking rather than writing. It reaches a different part of the listener, and a different part of me too.
Expert guests join from Autumn 2026 onwards. The podcast is designed to extend the reach of The Sattva Collective’s education beyond the written word, to women who are driving, cooking, walking, who absorb information through their ears rather than their eyes.
If you have a question you would like explored in a future episode, send it to hello@thesattvacollective.org with Sattva Collective Podcast in the subject line.
Two new expert interviews published
June saw two significant additions to our interview series, the editorial backbone of The Sattva Collective’s 2026 content strategy.
- Darpan Bhasin brought a perspective that sits at the intersection of identity, culture, and midlife, one that rarely finds space in mainstream health conversations. Her interview is thoughtful, culturally grounded, and deeply resonant.
- Mangala Rao-D’Sa was generous and candid. The kind of candid that takes courage, and that a reader can feel. Her conversation has stayed with me.
These interviews are not just content. They are part of a deliberate strategy: every expert voice we platform is someone whose knowledge, experience, and credibility expands what this organisation can offer the community it serves, and helps build the pipeline of speakers for the Thrive Through Midlife & Menopause Summit in May 2027.
We wrote about invisible carers
Carers Week fell in June, and I could not let it pass without addressing what I see in our community.
South Asian women in midlife are disproportionately likely to be carrying caring responsibilities, for elderly parents, for children, sometimes for both simultaneously, and doing so largely without acknowledgement, without support, and often at high cost to their own health and well-being.
The article “The Invisible Carer: What Carers Week Means for South Asian Women in Midlife” names this experience directly. The women this article is written for already know it intimately. But there is power in seeing it documented and reflected back. And for the professionals, policymakers, and healthcare providers who read our work, the article makes visible something that has been systematically overlooked.
We published two Substack essays
June produced two Substack pieces that speak to the broader purpose of this organisation.
We Made Our Website Available in Your Language. Here’s Why. documents our decision to make The Sattva Collective website accessible in multiple languages: Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, and beyond. For a community where English is not always a first language, and where older women are often the ones most in need of support and least served by English-only resources, this is not a technical feature. It is a statement about who this space is for.
Good Girls Don’t Talk About This. Until Now. is the book I had been circling for some time. It examines the cultural conditioning that has kept South Asian women silent about their bodies, their health, and their experience of midlife, and what happens when that silence finally breaks.
New resources: GP Healthcare Professional Pack and Resource Hub
Two significant resources launched in June, both designed to extend The Sattva Collective’s reach and impact beyond the immediate community.
The GP Healthcare Professional Pack is a dedicated resource for GPs, nurses, and allied health professionals. It addresses the specific cultural, psychological, and physiological context that shapes how South Asian women experience perimenopause and menopause, and what that means for the clinical encounter. Healthcare professionals are among the most important secondary audiences for The Sattva Collective’s work. A better-informed GP makes a material difference to the quality of care a South Asian woman receives. This resource is designed to bridge that gap.
The Resource Hub brings together trusted, vetted information in one accessible place. It exists because no woman should have to conduct her own research across a fragmented landscape of websites, leaflets, and forums to understand what is happening to her own body.
Both resources are free. Both are built to be shared by individuals, healthcare providers, community organisations, and employers.
Outreach and local business engagement
Not everything that matters in a month makes it to the website.
In June, we continued our programme of outreach to local businesses and community organisations in Bedford: conversations, introductions, and the slow, relationship-led work of building The Sattva Collective’s presence in the physical community it serves, not only the digital one.
This work is unglamorous and essential. The women we most want to reach are not always the ones who find us online. They are the ones whose colleagues, employers, GPs, hairdressers, and pharmacists know about The Sattva Collective. That is what this outreach is building.
Community spotlight: Nisha Harichandran
As we move into July, South Asian Heritage Month, I want to give space to something that sits exactly at the intersection of community, health, and solidarity that The Sattva Collective was built around.
Nisha Harichandran is fundraising for the British Heart Foundation. Her cause is urgent and specific: South Asians are at a significantly higher risk of coronary heart disease than the general population, and funding the research that addresses this is something our community has a direct stake in.
In exchange for any donation, Nisha is offering a one-hour coaching or mentoring session. It is a generous and thoughtful offer: her time, given freely, in exchange for yours.
Please donate if you are able to, and please share this widely. The link is here: Support Nisha’s fundraiser →
The Summit: our first confirmed speakers
In May, I told this community that the Thrive Through Midlife & Menopause Summit was confirmed for 14th May 2027. This month, I can tell you who the first confirmed speakers are.
Sonia Shah, founder of Avenir Clinics, will join us as our first confirmed keynote speaker. Sonia brings a depth of clinical and cultural understanding that is rare, and her voice is exactly what this Summit is built to centre.
Dr Vikram Sinai Talaulikar, a leading name in reproductive and menopausal medicine, has confirmed as our first guest panellist.
The full details are on the Summit page. More speaker announcements are coming. If you know already that you want to be in that room on 14th May 2027, save the date.
What June tells us
When I look at June in full, what I see is an organisation that has moved from founding to functioning.
The infrastructure built in May- the anniversary, the awareness day, the updated website, the new platforms- gave us the foundation. June is what we built on top of it.
A storytelling campaign that is already collecting voices. A podcast that is finding its audience. A resource suite that serves both the community and the healthcare professionals who care for them. An interview series quietly building the credibility and relationships that will shape the Summit. Outreach work that is extending The Sattva Collective’s reach beyond the screen. Two Substack essays that frame the cultural conversation this organisation exists to shift.
And the first two confirmed speakers for an event that is still eleven months away tell their own story about the momentum this organisation is carrying.
The silence around South Asian women’s midlife experience is not gone. But it is cracking, month by month, story by story, voice by voice.
That is what June looked like.
Support our work
The Sattva Collective CIC is a registered not-for-profit Community Interest Company. Every resource, article, interview, podcast episode, and story we publish is free and freely accessible to the community we serve. None of it is funded by advertising. All of it is funded by people who believe this work matters.
If our work has meant something to you, or to a South Asian woman in your life, please consider supporting us.
Support The Sattva Collective →
The Sattva Collective CIC is the UK’s first community-led initiative dedicated to supporting South Asian women through midlife and menopause. Registered Community Interest Company No. 16450670 www.thesattvacollective.org
With love and Sattva,
Kiran x
Founder & Director, The Sattva Collective CIC
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