The DTA Podcast

Shannon Gallagher was a Smitherey Style customer for eight years before she bought the company. She first showed up when her body had changed after her first baby and she had four things in her closet she could actually wear. Now she runs what she calls Canada’s only and largest “shop your shape” online retailer, built on one idea: there are six main body shapes, and stylists have been keeping that to themselves for years. Amy and Shannon get into why your shape can change more than once in a lifetime, and why you should treat getting dressed as self-care right alongside drinking water. They talk about holding on to clothes for a body you used to have, the bathtub full of clothes Amy is finally clearing out, and why Shannon calls buying clothes for a future size a form of torture. Shannon also opens up about the burnout that had her saying “I’m fine” when she wasn’t. It’s funny, honest, and a few happy tears get shed along the way.

KEY COMPONENTS

• The six body shapes stylists have kept “under the hood” — why the same dress can look perfect on one friend and like a tent on another.
• Why dressing well sits right up there with drinking water: What a stressful trip through your closet does to the rest of your day.
• Why buying clothes for a future size is “a form of torture", and what Shannon does instead, at the heaviest she’s ever been.
• The question card that made Shannon tear up: The one Amy pulled from the new Down There Affair deck.

“Clothing is a self-care choice. It’s right up there with drinking water, eating your Wheaties, all your fiber, taking your supplements, getting all your movement. It’s right up there, right? I mean, why are we doing all those things? We’re doing them so that we can be the best versions of ourselves"

Visit the Smithery Style website
Follow Smithery Style on Instagram
Take Smithery's Shape Finder Quiz to find out what your body shape is

👉 Click here to join the movement at downthereaware.org

🩲 Subscribe, like, and share to show us you care!

🤘 Podcast produced by Binge-Worthy Studio

For informational and entertainment purposes only — not medical advice. We're here to get loud, not to play doctor.

Dr. Sarah Shaw’s path into women’s health started at 12 years old, in a body cast, after a spinal surgery — watching how little room healthcare left for the actual patient in the room. That question followed her through a career as a social worker, then a developmental psychologist running outreach for street workers in Nova Scotia, then research at Harvard studying young women who self-harm, before she finally went to medical school and spent 17 years as a family doctor. Now she’s one of four women who built Lume Women’s Health in Toronto, a clinic designed around a simple argument: medicine has been built on the male body, and anything less than sex-specific care isn’t actually equitable care. Amy and Sarah get into what a 45-minute midlife wellness visit could look like compared to the ten minutes most doctors are given, why there’s only one province in Canada with a menopause billing code, and the national policy push happening right now that listeners can actually add their voice to.

KEY COMPONENTS

• She traces her entire career back to one question she asked at 12 years old! What a childhood spinal surgery taught her about how little room healthcare makes for the patient’s own voice.
• Only one province in Canada has a billing code for menopause care, and what that actually means for how much time a doctor can spend with you.
• A national policy push just launched the day of this recording: What the Menopause Foundation of Canada is asking the public to do about it, right now.
• Why she walked away from 17 years as a family doctor to start over with three women she’d never met: What finally made her ready to “jump off the cliff.”

“As women, we are so good typically at advocating for our children, our loved ones, our friends. And yet when it comes to ourselves, we really struggle. And as a healthcare provider, I put myself in that category. I find it much harder to advocate for myself when I am a patient.”

Check out Lume Women's Health
Follow Lume on Substack
Connect with Dr. Sarah on LinkedIn
Follow Lume on Instagram

Sign the Menopause Foundation Of Canada's Menopause Policy Agenda For Canada

👉 Click here to join the movement at downthereaware.org

🩲 Subscribe, like, and share to show us you care!

🤘 Podcast produced by Binge-Worthy Studio

For informational and entertainment purposes only — not medical advice. We're here to get loud, not to play doctor.

Sandra Ghaly, founder and clinical director of Makewell Health, sat through two to three days of pelvic floor education in physio school and thought (along with every other woman in her class) "no chance am I ever doing that." She built an entire career in orthopedic physio instead — until she kept meeting patients who told her they leaked when they squatted or felt heaviness she had no idea how to treat. It took her own two pregnancies, one vaginal delivery and one C-section, both requiring her to fight for her own answers, to realize how deep the gap in women's healthcare actually runs. Now she owns a multidisciplinary women's health clinic in Oakville built entirely around the idea that nobody should have to repeat their story five times to five different specialists. Amy and Sandra get into what actually happens during a pelvic floor assessment (it's a lot more than "fingers in your vagina"), why Kegels are terrible generic advice, and the genitourinary symptoms of menopause that don't go away on their own — they get worse the longer nobody treats them.

KEY COMPONENTS

• She spent physio school swearing she'd never specialize in the pelvic floor, and what changed her mind after she'd already built a career in something else entirely.
• "Your pelvic floor is not weak — sometimes it's guarding": Why the advice to "just do your Kegels" is often exactly backwards.
• The genitourinary symptoms of menopause that never go away on their own — unlike hot flashes and brain fog, this set of symptoms gets worse the longer it's ignored.
• Why she has patients bring a mirror into the room, and what she's found most women have genuinely never looked at.

"If something doesn't feel right, tell someone about it. It's probably a very common thing that you're feeling, but also very treatable. There's help out there."

Visit Makewell Health's website here
Follow Makewell Health on Instagram
Follow Sandra on Instagram

👉 Click here to join the movement at downthereaware.org

🩲 Subscribe, like, and share to show us you care!

🤘 Podcast produced by Binge-Worthy Studio

For informational and entertainment purposes only — not medical advice. We're here to get loud, not to play doctor.

Shirlee Williams ran a successful yoga and spin studio for 14 years — she was in the wellness industry and still spent her first year of menopause convinced she was dying. Joint pain, funky blood work, a mysterious itch her doctor kept treating as a yeast infection four rounds running, before anyone thought to check for lichen sclerosis. She even went to her family doctor certain she was pregnant, only to find out she was actually in menopause. It took years of being told she was "fine" before she finally started hormone therapy — and cried the day she began it, feeling like she'd somehow failed her own body. Now she's a strength and mobility coach on a mission to change how women think and talk about aging, and she's doing it by handing women literal weapons: steel maces, in her words, an "ancient weapon" that builds strength and confidence at the same time. Amy and Shirlee get into perimenopause, testosterone, the exhausting work of medical self-advocacy, and why "good enough" is no longer good enough for either of them.

KEY COMPONENTS

• She thought she was pregnant when she was actually in menopause: What her family doctor's blood test revealed instead.
• Four rounds of yeast infection treatment for something that wasn't a yeast infection: The diagnosis her naturopath caught that her doctor initially dismissed.
• She cried the day she started hormone therapy: Why beginning estrogen and progesterone felt, at first, like letting her own body down.
• Why she's teaching women to swing an ancient weapon, and what happens to a woman's confidence when you put a steel mace in her hand.

"When you know better, you do better. I wouldn't go to my GP for a root canal — so source out the people that are doing the things you have questions about."

Connect with Shirlee on Instagram
Visit Shirlee's website
Check out the Wild Hearts Tulum retreat

👉 Click here to join the movement at downthereaware.org

🩲 Subscribe, like, and share to show us you care!

🤘 Podcast produced by Binge-Worthy Studio

For informational and entertainment purposes only — not medical advice. We're here to get loud, not to play doctor.

Nicole King — known as Ms. King, of Ms. King's Kitchen, serving caribbean-inspired meal prep, catering & events — spent over a decade on birth control before anyone asked why she was in pain in the first place. It took passing out mid-catering-job on a 300-person boat ride, a fallopian tube destroyed by endometriosis before anyone told her, and a parade of doctors offering the same three "solutions" — birth control, painkillers, or go get pregnant — before she landed anywhere close to real answers. She's since been declined for a specialist referral four times. Amy and Nicole get into what it's like to become "the guinea pig" at your own corporate job, why fertility gets treated like a cure for a disease that actually causes infertility, and why two women who don't look anything alike ended up becoming the exact partnership this movement needed. This is a conversation about being dismissed again and again — and choosing to get louder every single time. Nicole is now a partner of The Down There Affair and will be stepping on stage with Amy on September 26th!

KEY COMPONENTS:

• She passed out mid-shift catering a 300-person boat ride and kept working, and it finally pushed her to demand answers.
• A doctor told her a dye test would check her fallopian tubes and the room went silent. Everyone's face told her something was wrong before anyone said a word.
• Declined for a specialist referral four separate times: The bureaucratic runaround that happens after you finally find a doctor who believes you.
• Why she posts her surgery scars on Instagram and doesn't care who's uncomfortable: The reaction that made her decide to keep doing it anyway.

"Your pain is your pain. Don't ever let anyone dim it or try to tell you anything differently. People aren't living in our bodies — they can assume they may know what you're going through, but you are the only one that actually knows."

Follow Ms. King's Kitchen on Instagram
Watch Ms. King's Kitchen on YouTube

👉 Click here to join the movement at downthereaware.org

🩲 Subscribe, like, and share to show us you care!

🤘 Podcast produced by Binge-Worthy Studio

For informational and entertainment purposes only — not medical advice. We're here to get loud, not to play doctor.

Erin Beattie spent twenty years bleeding through her clothes, flooding through overnight pads in a two-minute car ride, before anyone said the word endometriosis out loud. Then, in the middle of an 18-month wait to get diagnosed, she was found to have breast cancer — three surgeries in nineteen months, including a bilateral mastectomy and a total hysterectomy that finally revealed stage three endometriosis along the way. Now, almost a year into acute surgical menopause with almost no map for what she's going through, she's built Nila: an app born out of her own research spiral, designed for the other 23 hours a day when you're not in front of a doctor and don't want to fall down a Google rabbit hole. Amy and Erin get into what it's like to be dismissed for decades, why "having kids cures endometriosis" is a myth that keeps costing women years, and why the gaps in menopause research go a lot deeper than most people realize — especially for anyone who doesn't look like the woman on the pamphlet.

Key Components: 

• Twenty years of "flooding" before anyone said the word endometriosis: What finally made her doctor connect the dots — and why it took so long.
• A breast cancer diagnosis found completely by accident: How a routine pre-surgery scan for something unrelated changed the entire next two years of her life.
• The myth that having kids "cures" endometriosis, and why Erin spent nearly two more decades being told her symptoms couldn't be what she already suspected.
• Why she built her app, Nila, instead of waiting for the healthcare system to catch up: What she noticed was missing for anyone who doesn't fit the typical menopause picture.

"We then just live fine versus great and wonderful and blood-pant free. There's so much that we endure quietly."

Check out Nila at hellonila.com
Connect with Erin on LinkedIn
Follow Nila on Instagram
Get more information about endometriosis and adenoymyosis 

👉 Click here to join the movement at downthereaware.org

🩲 Subscribe, like, and share to show us you care!

🤘 Podcast produced by Binge-Worthy Studio

For informational and entertainment purposes only — not medical advice. We're here to get loud, not to play doctor.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky, Founder & CEO of Thigh Society, didn't set out to build a company — she got mad. Seventeen years ago, after a lifetime of yo-yo dieting and being told her thighs touching was a problem to fix, she went looking for something to stop the chafing and found nothing that wasn't marketed like a consolation prize for not being thin enough. So she built it herself. Today Thigh Society has sold over three million pairs and basically invented the long-leg underwear category — but this conversation is about a lot more than fabric. Amy and Marnie get into the real (and often absurd) economics of underwear design, why women have spent decades getting the "scraps" of product innovation, and what it actually takes to talk about sweat, chafing, and bodies out loud without flinching. It's funny, it's blunt, and it's about something much bigger than underwear: permission. Permission to take up space, to stop apologizing for your body, and to say the things out loud that others won't.

Key components:

• Thigh Society exists because of a rage moment, not a business plan: What happened on one hot summer day that made Marnie stop accepting what was already on the market.
• The real reason most underwear doesn't actually fit real bodies: A cost-cutting design choice most brands make — and why Marnie's team refused to make it.
• The slogan a man pitched her that she loved but legally can't use, and what it revealed about how differently people talk about comfort once given permission.
• Why Marnie says "your body is the least interesting thing about you" — the mindset behind Thigh Society that has nothing to do with the underwear itself.

"It came out of a rage that I had — that I was being told, and millions of other women were being told, that we should shrink our bodies to avoid the problem of thigh chafing."

Check out Thigh Society's anti-chafing shorts here!
Follow Marnie on LinkedIn

👉 Click here to join the movement at downthereaware.org

🩲 Subscribe, like, and share to show us you care!

🤘 Podcast produced by Binge-Worthy Studio

For informational and entertainment purposes only — not medical advice. We're here to get loud, not to play doctor.

Amy is solo in this episode — and in her underwear — fired up after hearing a radio ad for the common cold and realizing the word "common" isn't a feeling, it's a number. It's a regulatory scale, printed on every drug label, that decides what gets studied, funded, and believed. So she runs the numbers on endometriosis, PMOS, hysterectomies, and surgical menopause against that same scale, and it breaks the chart entirely. Amy lays out exactly how far off from "believed" these conditions are compared to conditions men live with, backed by funding figures that are hard to sit with (to say the least). Tune in to hear why Amy is walking on September 26th, and why you need to be there, too.

"Between 2019 and 2023, global funding into erectile dysfunction companies, over a billion dollars. 1.24 billion. And endometriosis, same window, 44 million. Same scale, 28 times the money."

👉 Click here to join the movement at downthereaware.org

🩲 Subscribe, like, and share to show us you care!

🤘 Podcast produced by Binge-Worthy Studio

For informational and entertainment purposes only — not medical advice. We're here to get loud, not to play doctor.

Dr. Olga Bougie is the Head of Research in Endometriosis and Chronic Pelvic Pain Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, an Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Toronto, and a minimally invasive Gynaecologic Surgeon specializing on surgical management of advanced endometriosis as well as other complex benign gynaecologic conditions. For years, she's been watching patients bounce between five to seven specialists before reaching her, all while endometriosis remains chronically underfunded compared to other conditions affecting women. In this episode, Dr. Bougie talks about why endometriosis has been historically dismissed, what the biases in women's health research look like, and what you need to know before walking into your doctor's office. This is the conversation shows exactly why we are running the Down There Affair—because without research funding, there will be no change.

Key Components

• Why a condition that affects millions isn't prioritized for funding, and how that cycle perpetuates.
• The racial and ethnic biases hiding in medical textbooks: What endometriosis was labeled as in medical literature—and how those biases still live in healthcare today.
• How to advocate for yourself when even specialists may miss your diagnosis, and what you need to bring to your doctor's appointment to actually be heard.
• Why private fundraising is the only way forward right now, and why OHIP should start funding research.

"For the people who are having a lived experience, know that there's somebody who will listen to you and continue to share your story. The symptoms and the burden that you're experiencing are not okay and it deserves investigations and it deserves treatment."

Follow Dr. Bougie on LinkedIn
Check out Sinai Health Systems

👉 Click here to join the movement at downthereaware.org

🩲 Subscribe, like, and share to show us you care!

🤘 Podcast produced by Binge-Worthy Studio

For informational and entertainment purposes only — not medical advice. We're here to get loud, not to play doctor.

Michelle Withers is a peer health navigator, a patient advisor with Ontario Health, and dedicated advocate for pelvic health from Mississauga. Michelle spent 28 years bouncing between doctors, being dismissed, misdiagnosed, and left without answers... until she took her health into her own hands and created the solution that was missing. From chronic UTIs, vulvodynia, endometriosis, pelvic floor dysfunction, and a lupus diagnosis discovered years too late, Michelle's journey is one of relentless self-advocacy. She left her career in marketing and graphic design when the pain became unbearable, and instead of giving up, she founded The Happy Pelvis—a peer-led platform combining her lived experience with practical medical guidance and community. In this episode, Michelle talks about what it takes to advocate for yourself when nobody's listening, how to know you're not alone, and why The Happy Pelvis exists for everyone the medical system failed.

Key Components

• From a childhood toboggan accident to perimenopause: A medical journey that should have taken years, not decades: What happens when doctors tell you nothing's wrong while your body screams otherwise.
• The word nobody told her until age 27: What pelvic floor physical therapy is and why it would have changed everything decades earlier
• How she asked for a differential diagnosis and changed the conversation: The one question that forces doctors to actually think instead of dismiss.
• From leaving her career in pain to building a platform for people like her: How rock bottom became the beginning.

"Community is such a special place because there are so many times that we feel alone on our pelvic health journeys and just knowing that you're not alone in this - it's a great feeling to have that community."

Connect with Michelle on Instagram and Facebook
Visit The Happy Pelvis
Get tickets to Spike The Stigma Charity Volleyball Tournament
Check out The Endometriosis Film Festival
Follow Advocate Well on Instagram

👉 Click here to join the movement at downthereaware.org

🩲 Subscribe, like, and share to show us you care!

🤘 Podcast produced by Binge-Worthy Studio

For informational and entertainment purposes only — not medical advice. We're here to get loud, not to play doctor.