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

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🤘 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

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🤘 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

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🤘 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

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🤘 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

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🤘 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

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🤘 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

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🤘 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.

Aimee Debow is the founder of Menovate, a corporate menopause education company, and a former telecom executive who spent 25 years climbing the corporate ladder. For 10 years, she suffered silently through perimenopause and menopause while seeing female colleagues experience the same struggle in complete secrecy. One pivotal moment during a major presentation to senior leadership forced her to make a choice, because she couldn't remember anything despite being the expert. She left corporate, took a year to rebuild her health through sleep, nutrition, exercise, and mental health, and came back transformed. Now she's on a mission to bring menopause education into workplaces across Canada, working with companies to build policies, implement e-learning courses, and create space for conversations that have been silenced for far too long.

Key Components

• How a high-performing executive nearly lost her career because no one told her what was happening to her body.
• From 20 expected attendees to 500 showing up (plus people outside the room) and what this tells us about how desperate women are for this conversation.
• Why companies are legally and financially vulnerable if they don't act now: Two countries have already mandated menopause policies—Canada is next.

"Ten percent of women are quitting their job because of menopause. Another huge chunk are taking a step back. That is a huge loss to the company."

Connect with Aimee on LinkedIn
Check out Menovate.ca

👉 Click here to join the movement at downthereaware.org

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🤘 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.

Katherine Glyde is a 36-year-old from just outside London who had a total abdominal hysterectomy after a cervical cancer diagnosis. What started as a routine smear test led to discovering fibroids that had degenerated into cancer, requiring an emergency total hysterectomy. Now on HRT with minimal medical support, Katherine is navigating surgical menopause in her thirties while most of her friends are navigating completely different life stages. Out of that loneliness, she created the Surgical Menopause Club—a community space for younger women facing this transition. In this episode, Katherine and Amy talk about the gap between women like them at different ages, why nobody warns you about surgical menopause, and what it takes to build community when the medical system won't.

Key Components

• How a routine smear test led to a cancer diagnosis the day before her 36th birthday, and what it feels like when everything accelerates overnight.
• The isolation of sitting in a women's outpatients waiting room surrounded by pregnant women while waiting to find out you'll never have biological children.
• From emergency surgery to HRT with a single sentence of explanation — what happens when doctors give you a patch and send you home.
• Building community on TikTok because the healthcare system won't: The Surgical Menopause Club and why 55,000 hysterectomies a year should be impossible to ignore.

"There is nobody talking about this at my age. I'm not married. I don't have kids and I had no choice but to make this big choice. Why are we not talking about this?"

Connect with Katherine on Instagram
Follow Katherine on TikTok
Follow Katherine on LinkedIn
Check out The Surgical Menopause Club

👉 Click here to join the movement at downthereaware.org

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🤘 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.

In today's episode, Amy is joined by Simon Salt. Simon is a speaker, writer, certified menopause coach, and creator of The Quiet Transition—a Substack dedicated to helping men understand and support the women in their lives through perimenopause and menopause. Eight years ago, his wife entered perimenopause and spent four years being dismissed by doctors before finally getting a diagnosis. That experience nearly broke their relationship. Instead of walking away, Simon dove into research and discovered there was virtually no information written for men trying to understand what was happening. In this episode, Simon talks about his journey from personalizing his wife's symptoms to learning to listen, why men and women research menopause differently, and what partners actually need from each other during this transition.

Key Components:

• How Simon went from personalizing his wife's perimenopause symptoms to realizing it had nothing to do with him, and what changed in their relationship that led him down this path.
• The gap in men's understanding: Why there's plenty of menopause information out there, but almost none of it is written for men to understand.
• A framework called "sit, listen, believe": How men can actually support their partners instead of trying to fix them.
• Why men research impact while women research symptoms.

Check out Simon's YouTube channel
Follow Simon on Instagram
Connect with Simon on LinkedIn
Subscribe to Simon's Substack

👉 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.