On the Mones

Midlife reinvention isn’t glossy, curated, or hashtag-friendly. It happens while you’re still paying bills, packing lunches, and doing the work you already know how to do. In this episode of On the ’Mones, I reflect on standing on stage at a menopause education event in Sydney and asking myself a quiet but clarifying question: How did I get here? Not because I suddenly became more qualified, but b...

Recorded on holiday in Hawaii, this episode of On the Mones starts on a beach and ends deep inside the nervous system. Watching her adult children in the surf, Kate reflects on bodies, confidence, ageing, and the subtle way awareness changes how we move through the world. From instinctive confidence to emerging caution, from physical capability to perimenopausal vigilance, this episode explores wh...

What if the thing that makes you feel safest… isn’t actually helping you? In this episode of On the Mones, Kate unpacks a deceptively simple idea with enormous consequences: comfort is not evidence. It starts with a respectful but confronting comment thread on a debunking video about naturopathy, vulnerability, and communication. From there, the conversation widens into something much bigger: why...

A ninety-year-old man walks into a community pharmacy, forgets his wallet… and pays for his prescriptions with Chaucer. A stranger steps in with quiet generosity. And somehow, that moment lodges, deeper than it would have twenty-five years ago. If you’ve noticed that things land differently in midlife, emotions linger longer, moments feel heavier, meaning matters more, you’re not imagining it. And...

In this episode of On the ’Mones , Kate Thomas, pharmacist, midlife woman, and professional oversharer, tackles one of the most distressing and misunderstood parts of perimenopause: what’s actually happening to your brain . If you’ve found yourself forgetting words, losing focus, feeling anxious “for no reason,” questioning whether you suddenly have ADHD in your 40s, or quietly Googling early-onse...

Is testosterone really making women “ragey”… or is it just giving us fewer f*$ks to give? Or is it all down to age and experience? In Episode 4 of On the ’Mones , pharmacist Kate Thomas dives into one of the most misunderstood hormones in women’s health: testosterone . Along the way, she unpacks a petty (and infuriating) pharmacy encounter that sparks a much bigger conversation about boundaries, a...

In this episode of On the ’Mones , we unpack three things many women quietly worry about - progesterone, memory changes, and the wellness advice that sounds scientific but absolutely isn’t . First, we deep-dive into progesterone . Why it’s not always a gentle background hormone, how it acts in the brain, and why some women feel calmer while others feel anxious, flat, or completely unhinged when th...

In Episode 2 of On the ’Mones , Kate starts with a moment many midlife women will recognise: a close friend, a few glasses of wine, a forgotten word, and the immediate dismissal of perimenopause as something “everyone else is doing.” That moment opens the door to a much bigger conversation. This episode explores why many women resist menopause care (even informed, health-literate women) and why pe...

On the ’Mones — Episode 1: Welcome to the Hormonal Girl Band Is it just me… or is something seriously happening to my body? In the very first episode of On the ’Mones , pharmacist of 25 years, Kate Thomas pulls back the curtain on perimenopause, hormones, rage-quitting jobs, libido loss, bone health, and the quiet suffering so many women carry alone. From estrogen “leaving the group chat” to a fri...