A Note from Jenn 💌

June 5, 2026

Why Don't I Recognize My Life Anymore?

Written for the woman sitting in her own appointment, wondering if she is the only one. A story of hormones, brain fog, and learning to advocate for yourself.

Hey you, it is me.

I am writing this for the woman who has been living in a fog she cannot explain. The woman who keeps showing up for her life, answering messages, making appointments, taking care of people, checking boxes, and quietly wondering why she does not feel like herself anymore.

That was me this past year. Good things and hard things were landing at the same time, the way life sometimes refuses to take turns. Somewhere in the middle of all of it, I started to feel like I was losing my mind. My short-term memory was almost gone. There were moments I could not pull up the names of people I love. I would step into the simplest conversation and feel the words slip away before I could catch them.

And here is the part I have not said out loud until now. I was embarrassed. So I did what so many women do when they do not recognize themselves anymore. I got quiet. I pulled back. I started isolating, because it felt safer to disappear a little than to admit I felt like a stranger in my own life.

If you are reading this with your stomach in a knot because it sounds like you, please hear me clearly. You are not alone. You are not broken. You are allowed to ask questions until your life starts making sense again.

A Careful Note Before I Go Further

This is my personal story, not medical advice. I am not your doctor, and I do not know your medical history, medications, labs, risks, or family history. Hormones, bone health, brain fog, surgical menopause, testosterone, estrogen, and chronic illness are medical conversations that deserve an informed provider who knows your body and can walk through the risks and benefits with you.

I am sharing this because too many women sit in exam rooms feeling confused, dismissed, embarrassed, or too overwhelmed to ask one more question. Let my story become a starting place for your own questions, not your final answer.

The Appointment That Stopped Me Cold

I had been seeing the same OB-GYN office for a few years. They had known since my very first appointment that I had a full hysterectomy because of health issues. So I went in for my yearly visit the way you do, expecting routine.

There was a new doctor in the office. She came in and told me my testosterone was not FDA approved for women in the United States and that she would not write my yearly refill. That one sentence landed hard because it was the first time anyone in that office had said it that plainly to me.

Then she told me I needed a bone density test. When the results came back, she told me my bones looked much older than expected for where I am in life. She also said some of what I had been feeling, including the memory loss and fog, could be connected to the lack of estrogen reaching my brain. Then she mentioned that the estrogen I had been taking was synthetic and may not have been the best fit for my body after a full hysterectomy.

I do not think she was a bad doctor. I think one provider may have been working from one understanding, another provider was looking at it differently, and I was caught in the middle of information I did not know how to ask for yet. Every doctor approaches menopause, hysterectomy care, and hormone conversations differently. That is one of the truest things I can tell you.

I sat there thinking, how did I get here? Is this why I do not recognize my life?

I left that office in shock. Not at her. At the question underneath it all. Why had I been a patient there for three years and was only now learning so much of this?

What I Did In the Parking Lot

Here is the part I want every woman to hear, because this is the part I can actually hand you.

I did not get in my car and drive home. If I had, my brain would have written the story for me on the way, and it would not have been a kind one. So I stayed. I used the framework I teach as a wellness and neuroscience-informed coach. I used it on myself. I used P.A.U.S.E.

I paused first. I stopped and refused to react in the moment, because a nervous system in shock can write terrible stories. I walked the sidewalk, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, until I could feel my body again.

Then I acknowledged what was true. I looked up and watched other women going in and coming out of that building, and I let myself remember I was not the only one struggling. I opened the notes app on my phone and wrote down exactly what had been said. Just the words. No interpretation. The brain can hear, your bone density is not where it needs to be, and store it as, you are old, you are failing, you waited too long. Writing the facts down kept fear from rewriting them.

Then I moved into understanding. I let the information sit separately from what my fear wanted to do with it. I reminded myself that information is not an emergency. It is information. I did not have to know what to do with all of it yet.

Then I surrendered what I could not change. I cannot go backwards. I cannot undo three years of not knowing what I did not know. I can grieve the thought, I wish I had known sooner, but I cannot rewrite the past. So I set a one-minute timer on my phone. One minute to feel it. One minute to cry. One minute to pray. One minute to whisper, Be still, and know that I am God, the verse that has carried me through every hard thing in my life. I gave myself one minute to fall apart on purpose, so the feeling did not run the rest of my day.

Then I emerged with a plan. Not panic. A plan. I would write this blog. I would use my voice and my resources to help the next woman who feels unseen in this season. I would gather better questions. I would research how to find a doctor who actually fits me. I would track every symptom from now on so I could walk into the next appointment calmly, with my own data in hand.

That is how one woman grounded her emotions, grounded her thoughts, and redirected the noise.

Why I Built These Tools In the First Place

The old version of me would have doom-scrolled until someone validated the easiest story. It is the doctor's fault. It is the nurses. It is the system. It is men, because if they had to deal with this, we would have a cure by now. I would have Googled every hot-button word that landed wrong and walked away convinced I had something terrifying. I have done that before. It almost cost me my life once.

Not many people know this, but this is not my first hard chapter with the medical world. Years ago, I was diagnosed with lupus, fibromyalgia, and interstitial cystitis, and the early years of figuring all of that out left scars I still carry. I was misdiagnosed. I was handed a bag full of medications that caused more harm than good. I learned, in the hardest possible way, that being prescribed something does not automatically mean it is the right thing for your body.

I also learned that good doctors can miss things, smart women can be overwhelmed in medical rooms, and credentials do not erase the need for a woman to advocate for her own body.

That season is the reason I learned to ground myself in a doctor's chair. P.A.U.S.E. was not theory to me that day. It was the only thing standing between me and a spiral I have lived in before.

There are wonderful doctors in the world. Every doctor will not be the right doctor for you. Both can be true.

Please Do Not Do What I Did

Three years ago, I walked into that office, was handed a plan, and assumed it was the right one because I trusted the person handing it to me. I did not know enough about the difference between hormone options. I did not know what to ask after a full hysterectomy. I did not know that the type, dose, route, timing, personal history, and risk factors all matter. I did not know there were questions I should have been asking. I just took the plan.

Now I am here, in repair mode for my future self, trying to age the way I want to age. And the only thing I want more than my own healing is for the next woman not to lose years to silence the way I did.

So please hear me, even if you only take one thing from this. Ask. Research. Study. Weigh the pros and cons with a qualified provider. Every body matters. Your body matters. Every doctor is different, and every woman is different. Find the doctor who fits your values, your medical history, and your stage of life. Track your symptoms. Write down your questions before you walk in. Bring someone with you if you need a second set of ears.

Why So Many of Us Were Never Told

Part of the reason this conversation is so confusing is that there is a real and complicated history underneath it.

In 2002, the Women's Health Initiative reported risks connected to certain types of hormone therapy, and hormone prescriptions dropped sharply after those results were released. A generation of women heard the fear. Many of us did not hear the nuance that came later.

In the years since, researchers and menopause experts have continued to revisit what those findings mean for different women in different bodies at different ages, including women who have had a hysterectomy. The current conversation is more nuanced than the old headlines made it sound. Hormone therapy is not one-size-fits-all. It is not a miracle cure. It is not automatically dangerous for every woman. It is a medical decision that should be individualized.

That is what I wish someone had told me sooner. Not what to choose. Not what to fear. Not what to demand. I wish someone had told me that I was allowed to ask for the full conversation.

It is not that the science was simple. It is that the story many women received was too simple, and many of us were never handed the rest of it.

A Word About Where We Get Our Information

Here is the other piece I have to name carefully, because I love the women in this online community and I never want anyone harmed by what we share.

Right now, on social media, you can find serious researchers, thoughtful doctors, and women generously sharing what helped them. You can also find oversimplified advice that is genuinely dangerous. You can find voices telling women to skip evidence-based care entirely, that one supplement will fix everything, that hormones are evil, or that hormones are the answer for everyone. A woman in a fog at two in the morning cannot always tell which voice is which. I know, because that woman has been me.

So if anything I say lands hard for you, please do not let it become your full answer. Let it become a question you bring to a provider you trust. Listen to multiple voices. Check who is selling something. Notice when a claim feels too clean. Life with a body is rarely that clean. Give yourself permission to keep asking until something actually fits.

What I Am Doing For My Future Self

Alongside the medical conversation, there are small daily things I am doing because they support my brain, bones, energy, and nervous system. They do not replace medical care. They are part of me refusing to be passive about my own life anymore.

I am eating less processed food. I am drinking fewer carbonated drinks. I am cutting back on added sugar. I am joining a gym. I learned muscle mass matters in this season, so I am moving my body in ways that feel good, sleeping like it matters, and giving my nervous system real silence on a regular basis.

None of this is me trying to punish my body into behaving. This is me learning how to partner with it again.

If This Is You

Sometimes not recognizing your life anymore is grief. Sometimes it is burnout. Sometimes it is hormones. Sometimes it is your nervous system asking for a different way to live. Sometimes, like it was for me, it is all of those at once, tangled together so tightly you cannot name them yet.

If something in this hit you square in the chest, I want you to know why I wrote it. I did not write it to give you a diagnosis. I did not write it to tell you what to do. I wrote it to reach back into the fog and find your hand. I wrote it to tell you the thing I needed someone to tell me.

You are not crazy. You are not failing. You are allowed to ask questions. You are allowed to take notes in the parking lot. You are allowed to set a one-minute timer and fall apart on purpose. You are allowed to walk back in there and ask again.

Do not disappear into the embarrassment. Say it out loud, even to one safe person. The fog is not the end of you. It might just be the beginning of the woman you are becoming.

Don't quit in the quiet.

Pause is power. The deeper we dive, the sweeter it gets. Stay sweet out there.

With love,
Jenn

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If this hit you square in the chest, tell me. Have you ever sat in an appointment and not recognized your own life? What did you do in the parking lot? Scroll down and write me back.

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