Tamsen. Fadal; EPISODE LINK

Documentary: THE M FACTOR

TRANSCRIPT:

Colleen:

Welcome back to hot flashes and cool topics podcast. We are so excited to be

talking to Tamsen Fidel today. Welcome to the show.

 

Tamsen:

Oh, thank you. Thanks for having

me.

 

Colleen:

Well, you know, we run in these circles where we see each other kind of when

there’s events or you have been so busy and before we talk about this incredible

documentary coming out in October and your book it’s always interesting how women get

started in this community because we all kind of have a similar story where we’re

doing one thing and then menopause hits so can you share a little bit with our

listeners about how you came you went from being an Emmy Award winning newscaster to

a menopause or to a menopause advocate?

 

Tamsen:

– Yeah, yeah, it wasn’t anything in the

plan, you know? We’re always like, okay, I’ve got a plan and this is what I’m

doing next. You know, it was November of 2019 that I had had an incident in the

news studio where I was in between commercial breaks. They have like a two and a

half to three minute commercial break between, you know, news segments. I have been at the

evening news for a very long time, the most 15 years in New York at night.

And I was, you know, looking ahead to the next scripts and I got this flush from

like the, I mean, if you had a hot flash, a really bad one, not a like, okay,

that went away, but one where you just feel like you can’t get control and your

heart is racing and your body is sweating and you don’t know if you’re gonna throw

up or pass out or you just don’t know what’s happening and this was in particular

uncomfortable because I could feel my heart race and I could hear it in my ears

and I went something is not going right so I said out loud if I fall over

somebody catch me and the sports anchor who stands up at a monitor across the

studio looked and he goes wait are you joking and I said I don’t think I am like

I didn’t want to be I didn’t want to be alarmist I was in a studio of all guys

but I didn’t know what was really going on and I thought I also don’t want to

pass up on the air. So he helped me off the set. I went to the bathroom, I was

like laid on the floor next to the toilet, not anything I would have done in the

right mind. Got up not long after that, went to, went home. Next week started

making doctor’s appointments. Like what’s going on? Is there something, is it more

serious? Is it something bad? And if I had thought back, which I did eventually

think back and go, okay, you’ve Gain some weight, your sleep is crap, but maybe

that’s because of stress. You’re on a Lexapro because you went to the doctor

talking about anxiety and depression and moodiness. I’d had a lot of moments at work

where I’d be looking at a word and then not be able to read the word off the

teleprompter, but I thought, you’re tired. I always gave everything an excuse. And so

finally I got a note in my patient portal after those. those initial appointments that

said in menopause, any questions? And it was like the doctor’s signature under it.

That was it. And I went, what? I’m too young for menopause.

That, there must be something wrong. And I remember my now husband then, I think

boyfriend, I think he was my boyfriend at the time we were not engaged. I was

like, I’m a menopause. I can’t have children. He was like, but you weren’t gonna,

you made that decision got a long time ago. I’m like, but now it’s official. So I

that’s where it kind of started for me. But I think what really started outside of

that physical incident was going back and doing research, like as a journalist, I’d

always like wanted, you know, what are the answers? How did I not know? What else

do I need to know? And when I hit upon that number of 1 billion women are going

to be a menopause by 2025. Remember, this is, you know, not now we’re in 2024, I

went, what, that can’t be right? And then I started understanding what it was. And

then I heard the word perimenopause. And then I heard, all these things that came

together like this wall of, oh, that’s why I had my period for a month and then I

didn’t have it for four months. And that’s why, so I just didn’t know what I

didn’t know and started looking into the information and the research and then met

up with Joanne LaMarca, who is one of my four documentary partners.

And we were like, we need to do something. We tell every other story in the world

and we’re not talking about this. So we really started grassroots on our iPhones

going, we’re gonna do a documentary about this. People need to know. Like we had no

idea that all this was, that there was a community, any of this. And that’s really

where it began. And I feel like I thought my story was unique and I came to find

out as knowing and meeting more people, it’s anything but. –

 

Bridgett:

Right, did you find

when, doctor sent you the information back and you’re in

menopause, signature at the end? – What do you do? – I know, what did you find?

What was surprising?

 

Tamsen:

I know it was surprising to me and I found out little or how much

doctors really know about menopause.

 

Bridgett:

What did you find was so surprising?

 

 

Tamsen:

– I guess

what I found most surprising was like, okay, so here’s what you do. Take two pills

and call me in the morning. You know, there was no follow up from that. It was

like, yeah, it happens. That was what I read into it. And it was also, I feel

like because it’s this new season and this transition and this next place in life,

it just needed a little bit more care, you know? It just needed a little bit more

than like, you know, your vitamin D levels are low.  And this was a male doctor. And I know not all male doctors like that

because there are many that are amazing. But in this case in particular, I was

like, what do you mean? I was just so set that it wasn’t like, this is a moment

that I need to, I need some love. And so I think that I felt pretty alone.

And I, and I know my friends had talked about it, whether one, I found out I had

gone through it and she was like, breeze through it. And now she’s like, is it too

late for hormones?

You know, and then there’s others, but they never talked about that to me. And my

mom had breast cancer and died of breast cancer at a young age, she was diagnosed

at 44, died at 51. And I, you know, now have learned that, you know, she went

through a medically induced menopause and no idea. So I did feel was just kind of

very dismissive.

 

Colleen:

Right. Because you have a voice in the community that can spread a

lot of information. At any point, did you feel like, oh, if I start going on this

road, I don’t know what’s gonna happen in my career.

 

Tamsen:

– 100%. I’m so glad you asked

me that actually because I don’t think that we always give that as much spotlight

as it needs to be because it’s, we’re all talking about it and we feel good

talking about it ’cause we’re talking about it with each other. But the truth is,

is that if you walk into most workplaces, Sometimes they make you feel like you’re

lucky to be there. Sometimes you work really hard to get where you’ve gotten.

Sometimes you’re trying to hold on because you’re worried about age, you’re worried

about your sex, you’re worried about your experience, whatever it is. And to add

this on top of it, made me worry that I was gonna go out there and say something

and then risk being found out that I was 49 or 50 that I was,

you know, in menopause. And that symbolizes so many things that we wanted to not

symbolize anymore and we want to rewrite this narrative, but I know it’s going to

take a long time and it’s going to take voices making more and more noise. But I

did worry about it. And it was why I actually started talking about it on social

media over on TikTok. It was TikTok, was my dirty little secret. dirty little secret.

I’m going to go there because I don’t know a lot of people from work, but I know

there’s a lot of people there. And that was where I started kind of reading those

symptoms. I’d read something that says there’s 34 symptoms or whatever symptoms. And

I literally read them off of a teleprompter app on my phone. There’s an app that

like is like a teleprompter, you just read them. That’s all I did. And, and I just

remember thinking like, I want people to see it, but I don’t know if I want

everybody to see it that I know. Once I did that and once I realized that there

was this, you know, this kind of swell happening. And then I posted on Instagram,

Instagram’s where I got very nervous because it was people that I knew and some

people, you know, one woman in particular said like, what are you doing? That is

not sexy. Like that is not gonna, that’s not gonna bode well for you in a career

that worships youth. But I felt like the conversation was important enough that I

kept pressing forward and wow am I glad I did but yeah it didn’t come without it’s

it’s a bit of fear for sure.

 

Bridgett:

Yeah you know so I saw you on social media a lot

and I follow you on both TikTok and on Instagram.

 

Tamsen:

My dirty little secret. My dirty

little secret

Bridgett:

but so so glad that it’s out there that someone with a platform has

it out there. What did you find are some of the most common things that women

would talk about on the out on social media? –

 

Tamsen:

Yeah, I mean, I think the two big

things are, I felt like I was going crazy and I felt like I was alone. And now I

think that the next big question is, where do I find a menopause practitioner that

knows what they’re talking about or a provider that I can trust? And I think that’s

a great leap of questions, right? To, because I think that that means that people

are getting informed. And not only are they’re getting informed but now they’re doing

the next thing is advocating for themselves because I think that that’s I think it’s

awful to put the onus on us to have to advocate for ourselves but there is no

choice and so it is why I keep pushing for it why all of us keep pushing for

that and it’s so necessary but I hope that a day comes and part of my reasoning

behind the documentary is that we can educate people faster and a bigger you know,

bigger groups on a quicker basis because we not only have to educate women, we have

to educate the doctors, we have to educate the schools, we have to educate the

hospitals, we have to educate men. And so we have politicians and the people that

control the purse strings. So I think that we have a lot of work to do, but I

want women to feel like they have control and they’re not waiting for everybody else

to tell them what to do. –

 

Colleen:

So let’s talk about the purse strings a little bit. The

M factor, it’s coming out October 17th. We are so excited. We saw a little preview

on social media and some of just women we have had, experts we’ve had on the show

and so many more and we cannot wait to see it. But did you approach companies be

like, “Hey, we’re doing a menopause documentary. Would you like to fund it?” What

was the response?

 

Tamsen:

A lot of companies. We did a lot of the self -funding, and we

haven’t talked too much about it, but yeah, we did that because it was that

important to us. But, you know, we had different response. We had response like,

yeah, I don’t know if that’s big enough. I don’t know if that’s a big enough

topic. I don’t know if that’s a topic for us. You know, I don’t,

you know, that’s not where we’re putting our money right now. And so I think I

felt, I will say that was discouraging in some ways. But when we got the green

light that we had a place for it to air and a place for it to be seen. And we

said like it doesn’t matter what we’re doing, we’re all throwing everything we have

into this in terms of, you know, sweat and lots of sweat and finances and making

sure it happens. And so we really were so lucky that We had experts that came

forward that that gave their time. We had women that came forward and shared their

story. We had, you know, that I work with four women, and it’s just been this.

I was sad. I was excited when I got the final version two days ago and then I

was sad because I’m like, Oh no, it’s been it’s such and now you know now we’re

going into the screenings and stuff so I know it’s not, it’s not over but we’ve

been like it’s been this little baby, you know, that we’ve been really working on

and making sure that every frame is perfect and making sure that it’s not about

jokes and it’s about education. And that was, that was really important to us.

And it did change from where we were at the beginning, you know, at the beginning

we were like, well, we’ll do some movie clips and we’ll do some this and we’ll do

some that. And then we went, you know what, we’re gonna do, we’re gonna spend the

time that we have for this film And we are going to educate and we are going to

talk about the things that women need to see in one location and be able to talk

about. So then when they see it, they can go have those conversation amongst

themselves. So that was really important to us. And it was exciting to see that

change.

 

Bridgett:

Did you find, what did you find the most surprising about the whole thing?

Did you learn? I mean, I know you learned, but what did you find that was so

surprising when doing this.

 

 

 

Tamsen:

Yeah, that’s a good question. I think that,

I think what I found the misinformation that we all know about with the 2002 study,

you know, I knew that, and I knew that kind of the top line of that, but I don’t

think I really understood how deep it went in terms of, you know,

we have doctors in there that were practicing during that time and got those phone

calls to their offices with women screaming at them. We got, we have experts that

were just finishing medical school during that time or just entering medical school.

So it’s been interesting to see the different ways that affected it, but it affected

everybody. And then I think that was the surprising part to me ’cause I realized

how many layers deep it went. and I as somebody who’s been in the media for such

a long time feel like the media did such a disservice to not make sure that those

same headlines were corrected. So that’s one thing, and I guess the other part was,

you know, it was really understanding sex and understanding what, you know, the

things that can be done to help and that we don’t just have to shrug and say

like, well, it’s just kind of how we are, and that we’re really working toward that

next area of understanding and testosterone and, you know, and the women who spend

day and night trying to make a difference and make those changes and educate. And I

thought it was really good.

 

Colleen:

And we just, like I said, saw a quick preview, but

that you had not only experts, but you had women going through it because it seems

in our community, the strongest conversations are between women are just sitting at a

table, having a cup of coffee, but those can really change the trajectory. What are

your hopes for this film?

 

It’s on PBS, which is great. So anyone can go see it,

but what are your hopes for this film? What do you hope for it to accomplish?

 

Tamsen:

You

know, I hope the film, um, makes women feel like they’re not alone in that they

have control and there’s, there’s somebody out there that can help them and now

we’ve got to get them to that person. I hope it, it matches them with a, you

know, a doctor that they feel like they can find a doctor. I feel like that we

shattered the silence. I feel like it becomes a movement. I mean, I know that

we’re, we’re seeing that in so many ways, but we didn’t want it to just be a film

one and done. We really want it to create a movement so that when women are coming

to see that’s why we’re, when we license it out, we say licensing, but we’re giving

it to, you know, different groups that want to host a screening. So they’ll be able

to say, okay, I’ve got 25 people that want to see this or we’re going to put

together, you know, one of the doctors, Dr. Kelly Casper said is put together an

auditorium of women to bring this together. So that gives me chills, but it just,

it lets me know that that’s how we move that needle so that if somebody isn’t on

social media or isn’t watching TV but may watch it on online or may be willing to

go to a theater with their friends and see it, that we’re moving this message

forward. Because we reach people in all different ways. We reach people by podcast,

we reach them by social, we reach them all over the place. And I wanna make sure

that we’re doing our part with this. So that’s why we have it in so many different

areas. And it’s not just, hope you catch it once. So it’ll be, you’ll check your

listing for depending on the city you live in, it’ll be on pbs .org. And then we’ll

also be able to license it out for the screenings. So those we’ve gotten a

tremendous response from women all over the, all of the world actually. And yeah, so

it’s exciting to see, but it also tells me the hunger for it, you know, the hunger

for that information.

 

Bridgett:

Right, you know, that’s what I was going to ask you, do you

have some confirmed areas where it’s going to be shown. Confirm areas where it’s

going to be shown on air or I mean a screening.

That’s Nashville.

We’re doing a couple in New York. LA is being scheduled right now.

Kelly’s is in Washington, but we’re going to put a list on the website for any of

them that are public screenings and then we’re asking people to do the same like

within their their immediate group And, but we’re going to try to hit ourselves.

I think we’re doing a 10 or 15 city tour ourselves. And then we have like over a

hundred screenings that people are reaching out for asking to do their own

screenings. So, yeah. – That’s amazing, that’s really exciting. – Yeah, so if you’re,

if someone’s interested, I mean, you all know, but if you’re interested in doing a

screening, you know, let us know, we’ll send you the information. It’s a really like

a quick form to fill out, but it’s just basically, we don’t want it to pop up on

YouTube or somewhere. So we just have to have that in place, but otherwise we will

send that so people can watch it and share it and have that conversation afterwards.

There’s like a kit in there that allows you to have conversation starters and ask

questions of each other. So you’ll get all of that. It’s like a toolkit, but we

just want to be able to help further the conversation for people within their own,

you know, wherever they’re going to have it, a theater or a community center,

libraries are having them. So yeah, we’re excited.

That’s so exciting. And when

you’re with a group of similar people that have this, just the same interest that

they are involved, then I don’t know, it just the shared experience with other

people really makes it exciting beyond. And I think that that’s what, you know, we

go back to the storytelling aspect of it that you all know really moves that needle

and I think that that’s where we have people bring things up that they feel they

don’t want to talk to about it or they feel like it’s just them or they feel

awkward about it and you know, that’s, I mean, that’s what I try to do on social

media is make it a safe space for people to be able to talk about those kind of

things because I don’t know that we have very many of those, right? And we have to

create them, right? –

 

Colleen:

Were you completely shocked when you started getting hundreds of

thousands of followers on Instagram, on TikTok? –

Tamsen:

Yeah, I’m still shocked, but.

Yeah, I didn’t, you know, I’ve been doing journalism for a really long time and

with a lot of people’s stories and a lot of different type of stories. And I

always like, you know, read somebody else’s script, right? Or told somebody else’s

story. So doing this was very foreign to me and very raw and not quite so

comfortable initially. And so to see that response, first it was a little scary.

I’m like, so every single word, I’d look at every word that I was typing. I’m but

is that grammatically correct? You know, I want to make sure that I didn’t get–

now I’m like, ah, it’s fine. Somebody will tell me if it’s wrong. But yeah, but it

also speaks to the need, right? And I do think it speaks to the conversations that

we really want to be having, and that there maybe hasn’t been an outlet for. And

now finally, we’re seeing podcasts like yours, and we’re seeing social media accounts,

and doctors, and experts, and advocate speaking out. And I love how this has

connected us all around the world. Like, I, that blows my mind. Like,

I have friends in the UK now, what? When did I get that? You know, but it’s, it’s

just really amazing because everybody has got the same purpose. And everyone’s got

their head down doing the same purpose. And I just don’t think I’ve ever met a

community quite like this. So it’s pretty special to me.

 

Bridgett:

Yeah, it really is and if

you aren’t following her on on Instagram or TikTok, they’re really great They really

are I think what you do you share things that are Just practical or even that

people are too embarrassed themselves to bring up and you just share them And so

and I say this so much Colleen’s probably sick of hearing me saying but it makes

people feel not alone It makes them feel like I’m not the only one. How do I put

this patch on? How do I, you know, how do I get ready?

What are, you know, if I am in my midlife and I am facing a life change in life,

whether it’s a relationship change or a change in your family, I think when you

address these, somebody that has your platform. It just really helps them.

It really helps them feel like I’m not the only one going through this. There are

lots of other people going through this. So if you’re not following Tamsen on social

media, you need to do that. And then I wanted to ask, I know your book, is it

being released in March of 2025?

 

Tamsen:It is.

 

Bridgett:

Did you share a little bit about that?

 

Tamsen:

Yeah, I’d love to. It’s called How to Menopause, because I feel like it’s the one

thing we haven’t learned how to do, you know? And Um, yeah, they started that about

two and a half years ago and I think what was important to me with the book was

while I was interviewing all these doctors to also make sure that there were a lot

of other things that we realized that menopause effects, you know, and it affects us

often, most of the time at a time where we’re going through a lot of stress, we’re

dealing with relationships, empty nest, trying to, our bodies are changing, you know,

how we work out is changing what I have to eat differently than I did when I was

30. I can’t, you know, have a margarita and a pizza at 12 o ‘clock at night and

be okay the next morning to go work out at 6 a .m. No. And so I just felt like

it was important to address those things because I’m not a doctor. But what I did

do is I interviewed 42 experts in the book. And we talk about all these different

topics. And so I wanted to make sure that it had more of that lifestyle approach

to it because we have some incredible doctors with great books. A lot of them are

in this book with their expertise. And so I wanted to make sure that, you know, it

goes beyond the doctor’s office to the bedroom and the boardroom and beyond in real

life. And so that’s, that was my focus for it. And so I’m excited. It was, it was

another thing that I was like, gosh, we’re doing the revealing of the cover, like

all these things make you very nervous. And then it’s done. You’re like, okay, I

don’t know what I was nervous about. It’s good. So it’s over, but yeah, I’m excited

about it.

 

Colleen:

You also took a leap of faith in leaving your job to start all this.

Yeah. What was that final? This is my next path. This is what I know I have to

pivot to.

 

Tamsen:

You know, it’s funny. Um, I’m coming up on a year and, um,

on November the 11th. And I, I can’t believe it because every month I, like the

day I left every month, I’d be like, uh, it’s it’s been a month, am I doing okay?

Everything’s okay, it’s been a month, but you know, it’s just, it’s very scary. I

did that career since 2002, no, I’m sorry, 1994.

So I’ve had a career in journalism for a really long time, but I think that I

couldn’t stop having this conversation one. I think that I could see that I wanted

to do more and I couldn’t, you know, I was splitting my time, I was doing four

newscasts a day and trying to do this in the morning and split between these two

things and trying to speak, and so it was getting hard. And then I realized, this

was a story I kept bringing up, so when they’d say, “What do you want to talk

about?”

Say at four o ‘clock, and I’m like, “There was a new study on brain health

and perimenopause.” They’re like, “Oh,

But I realized like that was telling me everything. Like that’s what was really

driving me at that point and getting that information. And I thought that if I can

do that and figure out a way to go forward in the next few years and have that

be the focus, that’s what I really wanted to do. And so now we’re almost a year

out. And so for the documentary in the book to be released is kind of surreal

right now for me, but super exciting.

 

Bridgett: How can people find out about the documentary

and about the book and your website?

 

Tamsen:

Yeah, all of it’s on the website because I

just wanted to put it in one place. If you want to go to Instagram @TamsenFadal and then the book is howtomenopause.com. And I am,

I did, we did put up a Instagram account called the M Factor.

And so we’re, if you are interested in hosting or want more information about it,

you can email me directly and I will make sure the team gets back to you. It’s

info@tamsenfadal because we wanna just make sure that people that are really curious

and interested in hosting get that information right away so they can sign up for

it and be able to do it in their communities. ‘Cause I know hosting takes, you’ve

gotta put it all together and everything. So I know it takes time. –

 

Colleen:

Thank you so

much, Tamsen. And the next one needs to be on post menopause because we are finding

that the conversation is now starting to gear towards what happens after all this.

So I think that next documentary should be posted.

 

Tamsen:

Well, I agree with you on that.

I agree with you on that because I think that that’s what I was talking about with

the book. It just needed to go to the next place because I felt like I had all

this information and now I’m here and I didn’t want it to be like, and it’s really

hard. And so the book is like about reinvention and relationships. And so I want I

agree with you on that. So maybe we need that conversation. Absolutely fine. There’s

a lot. A lot.

 

Colleen:

Yeah, there’s and we’ll have to have you back on please when the

book I would love it. I look forward to seeing you in Nashville. I know it’ll be

great. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Tamsen: Thanks for having me.