The beginnings of the Sweet & Salty Menopause Meetups
The idea of creating Sweet & Salty Menopause Meetups began at the end of last year after I reached out to my good friend Tanith Lee (Mrs Menopause) for some clarification around female hormones. Having not seen each other in a few years (that Covid thing!) we met up for lunch and chatted all things menopause for the next 4 hours! It was an absolute delight to shoot the breeze, share and reconnect and in that moment we knew we needed to join forces and create the thing we really wanted for women in this life phase – friendly faces, tribe, connection, community and above all positvity in what has historically been narrated as ‘ the end of life as we know it’. Sweet & Salty Menopause Meetups was born!
Collaboration
They say 2 heads are better than one – the ideas have not stopped flowing. Our motivation to do the projects we have wanted to create for women has been so much easier to find, by collaborating together. In the world of menopause, things like imposter syndrome, overwhelm, difficulty focusing, lack of confidence, fatigue and anxiety are all so real, but can be managed and overcome by supporting ourselves in the right way, asking for help and feeling the support of others. Collaborating together has given us these wonderful foundational blocks to be who we want to be.
Community
Community and a sense of belonging has really made the biggest change for me in the last couple of years. With a workaway husband, family who live nowhere near and friends dispersed all over the globe from a former job as a touring stage manager, I got used to and created patterns of coping on my own. Although we moved to the south coast when we had our daughter, I still repeated these patterns of coping alone, by not asking for help from the new friends I made. I even set up my clinic down a country lane – on my own!!
My repeated patterns and circumstances left me feeling isolated, lonely, trying to be super woman, lacking self worth and far from the life – loving Nat of my former self.
The lightbulb moment for change
The pandemic, although rough for us all, brought a turning point for me. I found my community. My wonderful sea swimming sisters. It was the shift that I needed to realise that patterns needed to be broken. It was also the wake up call I needed, to realise I hadn’t been paying attention to my own self care and mental health. I realised that going forwards, particularly into the inevitable perimenopasue years to come, that I needed to drastically change things up. I did alot of ‘me’ work in this time, going back to energy work and consequently qualifying as an Energy Alignment Method practitioner last year. Time to thrive!!
We do not need to do this alone
It truly takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a village to build community and support. I made a big decision last year to give up my clinic on my own, down a country lane, in favour of joining a clinic with other amazing therapists. I have not looked back. The sense of community and having others to bounce ideas off has been exactly what I was looking for. I love the support, the friendship, the community and collaboration and this has become a MUST going forwards in my work life, private life and in my transition through menopause.
Bringing joy, happiness and resilience to others
The foundational aspects of what brought Tanith and I together to create Sweet & Salty Menopause Meetups and Events are exactly what we want to bring to other women making the menopasue transition. In a time of great chnage and confusion, we aim to help women build resilience going forwards; know how they can help themselves to better navigate this time and to bring joy, happiness and fun back to everyday living. With the menopause period taking up 1/3 of our lives, let’s change the narrative and thrive on through to the other side and beyond.
Sweet and Salty Menopause Meetups Venues and booking
The Menopause meetups run on alternate weeks in Worthing (Laughing Dog, Worthing) and Haywards Heath (Wolfox, Broadway).
You can book your free spot here:
About Nat
Nat is a Pain and rehab therapist, specialising in Women’s Health. She helps women through all stages of life to make their journey through the shifts and transitions of womanhood, with ease and grace.
Nat uses a multi-disciplinary approach to provide a ‘whole-istic’ approach to helping you understand and move more easily in your body, emotionally and physically. She uses a combination of manual bodywork, neuromuscular repatterning, movement, nervous system regulation and energy work to help you move beyond pain and emotional blocks and back to living life with joy and zest.
Nat helps with:
- Postnatal recovery
- Diastasis Recti recovery
- C section recovery
- Pelvic Floor Function
- Perimenopause and Menopause Lifestyle Coaching
- Nervous system regulation
- Hysterectomy Recovery
- Post-op rehab
- Scar care
- Functional Movement repatterning
- Relieving pain
- Reintroducing Stability to the system physically and emotionally