Hi! New here? I've spent the last 20 years at the intersection of behavior change research and coaching. On The Uplifters Podcast, we share diverse stories of trailblazing, change-making women who are doing big, brave things in the second half of their lives, and showing us how we can too!
Listen to This If...
You want to understand the real science about hormones (spoiler: most of what you’ve heard is wrong)
You’re in your 40s or 50s and wondering if what you’re experiencing is “just stress” or something more
You’re considering starting something new at an age when society says you should be winding down
You need evidence that one person really can change a broken system
This Week’s Featured Uplifter: Joanna Strober
Joanna was gaining weight without changing anything. She’d stopped sleeping. Her anxiety was through the roof, and she felt like she was losing herself. Her kids still joke about how she’d roll down all the car windows in the middle of a cool day, declaring it unbearably hot while they shivered in the back seat. Her son remembers her literally taking off her shirt at the dinner table because she couldn’t handle how hot she felt.
“What’s gone wrong with our mother?” they wondered.
She went to doctors. Multiple doctors. They prescribed sleeping pills (the addictive kind you can only take occasionally). When those didn’t work, she tried marijuana gummies that just made her dizzy. The anxiety kept coming. The weight kept climbing. The sleeplessness continued.
I bet you see where this is going, but not one doctor said the word “perimenopause.”
Joanna was in her late 40s, early 50s. Prime perimenopause territory. And yet, because she was still having periods, her doctors assumed it couldn’t be that. Turns out, perimenopause can start in our 30s or 40s and last up to 20 years before menopause actually arrives.
When she finally got the right diagnosis and the right hormones, everything changed. But alongside the relief came something else: deep anger and sadness that it had taken so long. That all the signs were there. That millions of other women were probably suffering the same way.
I’ve known Joanna for years. We worked together back in my Weight Watchers days, and even then, I was in awe of how she moved through the world. Smart as hell, yes, but also unflinchingly honest. The kind of person who sees a problem and can’t unsee it.
So when she started MIDI Health at 53, I wasn’t surprised. That’s what happens when someone with Joanna’s brain and heart collides with a broken system. She doesn’t just get mad. She gets strategic.
Together with an amazing team of midlife women, she built the first insurance-covered virtual care platform specifically for perimenopause and menopause. Not boutique $1,500-per-visit concierge care. Insurance-covered care. The kind that a factory worker in Ohio and a tech executive in San Francisco can both access.
Today, MIDI Health serves nearly 20,000 women every single week.
Twenty thousand women who could have been exactly where Joanna was: confused, dismissed, suffering, and not knowing there was a name for what they were experiencing.
In 2021, Joanna started posting on LinkedIn about menopause. People told her she was “so brave.”
(Translation: “Oh my god, you’re admitting you’re old and unemployable. Career suicide!”)
But Joanna had already decided she didn’t need another corporate job.
She could be the first domino. The woman willing to say out loud what millions were experiencing in silence. And once she started talking, other women started listening. And sharing. And realizing they weren’t alone or crazy or broken.
She told me a story that still makes me angry. A recruiter was interviewing a woman for a senior position. This woman had an incredible track record, came highly recommended. But during the interview, she was flushed and sweating. The recruiter assumed she was nervous and didn’t put her forward for the job.
She was having a hot flash.
If she’d felt comfortable saying, “I’m having a hot flash, it has nothing to do with my capabilities,” maybe she would have gotten that job. If the recruiter had known what a hot flash looked like, maybe she would have seen past the sweating to the competence underneath.
But we don’t talk about these things. So women lose opportunities. So brilliance gets overlooked because someone’s estrogen is fluctuating.
What I’m Taking From This
I turned 50 this year. I’m standing in the generation of women who will benefit from what Joanna built. And I keep thinking about how different this conversation is from even five years ago.
Five years ago, menopause was something people whispered about. Now it’s something we’re manifesting businesses around, writing books about, having honest conversations about at work.
But I’m also thinking about the broader pattern here. About what happens when we stop accepting that suffering is inevitable. When we transform personal fury into systemic change. When we use our “nothing to lose” moments to say the unsayable.
Joanna didn’t wait until she had all the answers. She didn’t wait until she felt young enough or qualified enough. She started at 53 with a clear vision: women deserve better care, and if the system won’t provide it, she’d build a new system.
What’s one systemic issue you’ve experienced that you wish someone would fix? Hit reply or comment and tell me. I read every response.
Listen to my full conversation with Joanna on The Uplifters Podcast, where we dig into manifesting, the operational realities of scaling healthcare, and why she believes perimenopause care is actually primary care for women over 40.
And if you’re experiencing any perimenopause symptoms (hot flashes, night sweats, brain fog, sleep disruption, unexplained anxiety, weight gain, or any of the other billion symptoms), check out MIDI Health. It’s covered by insurance in all 50 states.
If You Liked This Story, Check Out These Episodes Next
Isabelle Raymond (Nutrafol) - Studied women’s hair thinning in menopause to create a treatment designed just for that stage of life
Julie Gordon White (MenoWell) - created the menopause power snack she needed during her transition
Denise Pines (Producer of The M Factor Film) - age enthusiast, longtime community health advocate, and media pioneer
Konika Ray Wong (Girl Power Science) - creating education that centers girls’ actual bodies and experiences
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