Hi, I'm Katy
I spent a year searching for answers my GP couldn't give me.
Her Forties is the resource I wish I'd found — plain-language information about perimenopause, built for Australian women who deserve better than "you're probably just stressed."
My Story
I was in my late 30s when it started — and it didn't look anything like what I thought perimenopause looked like.
There were no hot flushes. No missed periods. What I got instead was a fog that descended on my brain and wouldn't lift. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't find words. I'd sit in sharp, senior meetings and feel like I was thinking through wet concrete.
The fatigue was bone-deep. The anxiety came out of nowhere. My mood was unpredictable in ways I couldn't explain to the people closest to me.
I went to my GP. I was told I was probably stressed. I was told to rest more. I was told — more than once — that my bloods looked fine.
A year passed. I still didn't have answers.
The Tokyo Moment
The answer came not from a doctor's office — but from a podcast, on the streets of Tokyo.
I was travelling solo in Japan when I started listening to Dr Louise Newson. I walked through the streets of Tokyo listening, and something shifted. The symptoms she described. The age she described them starting. The way hormonal changes affect brain function, mood, energy, sleep — all of it.
I stood on a street corner in Tokyo and thought: this is me. This is exactly me.
When I came back to Melbourne, I didn't go back to my GP for reassurance. I went back with a plan — I asked for a referral to my gynaecologist to talk about hormones. That conversation changed everything.
The ADHD Connection
Then I discovered something that stopped me in my tracks.
There is a well-documented but rarely discussed connection between perimenopause and ADHD. As oestrogen levels decline, many neurodivergent women find that symptoms they had quietly managed for years suddenly become unmanageable — because oestrogen plays a critical role in regulating dopamine.
This is why perimenopause is often the moment women receive their first ADHD diagnosis — in their 40s, finally understanding why their brain has always worked differently.
If this resonates with you — if the brain fog feels more like a collapse than a fog — you are not alone, and you are not broken.
Why I Built Her Forties
I'm a strategist and researcher by profession. When I understand a problem, I build something to solve it.
The website I needed during that year didn't exist. Not one that spoke plainly about the brain symptoms — the fog, the anxiety, the memory loss — not just the hot flushes. Not one that connected perimenopause to neurodivergence. Not one that was honest about how hard it can be to get answers from the medical system.
Her Forties is the resource I wish I'd found on that street corner in Tokyo.
Evidence-Based Information
Her Forties draws on the work of Dr Louise Newson, Jean Hailes for Women's Health, and the Australasian Menopause Society — written in plain language, for real women living real lives.
If you're in that fog right now — exhausted, anxious, not quite yourself — you're in the right place.