SEEN & HEARD: 37 and in Perimenopause — Why We Need to Listen to Women

SEEN & HEARD: It Starts With Listening to Women

Welcome to the first episode of SEEN & HEARD, a new special series from Perimenopause WTF?

We are launching SEEN & HEARD during Perimenopause Awareness Month with a message we believe needs to be at the center of this month:

Awareness starts with listening to women.

For too long, women have been telling us what is happening to their bodies.

They have talked about the anxiety that seemingly came out of nowhere. The sleep that suddenly changed. The brain fog, exhaustion, changes in their periods, libido, mood and sense of self. They have asked whether these symptoms could be connected. And too often, they have been dismissed, treated symptom by symptom, or simply told that they are too young for perimenopause.

SEEN & HEARD starts somewhere different: by listening to women.

Because women’s lived experiences are not an afterthought to the healthcare conversation. They are where the conversation should begin.

In our first episode, we meet Kristin Cohen, Perry Community Manager, who was just 37 when she first began experiencing symptoms of perimenopause.

At 37, perimenopause wasn’t the obvious explanation. Kristin’s experience represents something we hear again and again in the Perry community: women know when something has changed in their bodies, even when they don’t yet have the language to explain what is happening.

Kristin shares her story with Dr. Alyssa Dweck, MS, MD, FACOG, MSCP, practicing gynecologist and Chief Medical Officer of Bonafide Health.

And importantly, the conversation begins with Kristin.

Her experience. Her questions. What she noticed. What she needed.

Dr. Dweck brings the clinical expertise to help put that lived experience into context.

That is the soul of SEEN & HEARD.

Listen to the woman first. Then bring in the science, expertise and care.

Because if we want to build better healthcare for women, we have to get better at hearing what women have been telling us all along.

Kristin and Dr. Dweck explore:

• What it can feel like when perimenopause begins in your 30s
• Why women may not recognize that seemingly unrelated symptoms could be connected
• What happens when women feel their concerns aren’t being heard
• The questions women are really asking inside the Perry community
• How lived experience can help inform better clinical conversations
• Why listening to women has to be part of improving perimenopause care

This episode also marks a broader collaboration between Perry and Bonafide Health built around making trusted perimenopause education more accessible to women.

Together, we are launching Perry Shorts with Dr. Alyssa Dweck: short, digestible educational videos that take the real questions we hear from women and bring them directly to a trusted healthcare expert.

The principle is the same:

Start with what women are asking. Start with what women are experiencing. Start by listening.

Dr. Alyssa Dweck, MS, MD, FACOG, MSCP is a practicing gynecologist, Menopause Society Certified Practitioner and Chief Medical Officer of Bonafide Health. She has decades of experience caring for women, with a particular focus on menopause and female sexual health.

At Perry, listening to women is only the beginning.

What we hear from women also needs to make its way back into healthcare.

Through Perry Academy, we bring the lived realities of perimenopause together with multidisciplinary, evidence-based healthcare professional education. The goal is to help more healthcare professionals recognize the whole-person experience of perimenopause and have better, more informed conversations with the women sitting in front of them.

That connection matters.

Listen to women.
Learn from women.
Bring their experiences into healthcare education.
And ultimately, change the way women are cared for.

That is what SEEN & HEARD is about.

🎧 Follow Perimenopause WTF? wherever you listen to podcasts and stay tuned for more SEEN & HEARD conversations.