Hello, I’m Shae.

Professional Executive, Leadership & Life Coach.

Heart Woman. Mother. Baby Crone.

Embodiment & Intimacy Educator.

Midlife Alchemist.

Hello extraordinary woman, I’m Shae, a transformational guide for women at Midlife.

My mission is to support the wild critical mass of menopausal women on the planet today to create profound positive change, impacting the lives of as many women as possible who lead humanity in a new, wise and empowered direction.

A goal that inspires me to my core.

My work supports midlife women to repattern toxic narratives and awaken to their authentic embodied power. This is activated through the pillars of heart awakening; midlife sensuality and sexuality; activism and new paradigm empowered self leadership—a contemporary feminine force of the highest order. The vision and creative inspiration for this movement is to ignite powerful impact for the wisdom of humanity, the most vital shift needed on the planet today.

My work with midlife women was born from my own experience of an early menopause at the beginning of 2019, just after my 44th birthday.

At 41 years old I began perimenopause—not at all unusual, however within two and a half years just after my 44th birthday, I reached 1 year without bleeding, my official menopause. It’s typical for women to spend much longer in the peri phase, but for me it was swift—and it shocked me—I wasn’t ready to face all the negative conditioning around what I had been led to believe menopause meant about my worth as a woman.

During the peri phase I had sporadic periods and having regular hot flashes that at first had me feeling like there was something really wrong with me. I wasn’t computing at first that my body was entering menopause because I thought this as something that only happened to women in their late forties/early fifties. When it was confirmed that my follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) was consistently in the menopausal range, I was overwhelmed with stress, grief and disbelief. I absolutely wasn’t ready. At the time I understood this to mean I was old before my time, potentially sexually defunct, MIDDLE. AGED. I didn’t want to be. I felt shame about my body and for a period of time all the work I had done as a sexual wellness coach over the previous five years felt out of reach.

I realised my conditioned perception of menopause—the toxic narrative and collective wounding of the midlife woman—was dictating my experience of my body.

Shame and invisibility overshadows this epic stage of life because of the infatuation with youth that dominates our culture. Women’s bodies are constantly pathologized at menopause and empowering, uplifting rites of passage are hard to find. Women joke to each other that it’s 'all downhill from here.' We are programmed and programming ourselves to be disempowered.

One of the GP's I consulted about my FSH hormone approached me like I had a terrible illness, telling me she was ‘sorry to confirm that I had reached menopause.’ So disempowering! These types of interactions happen in medical clinics because the identity of the midlife woman is still mocked and humiliated out there in the greater world. I've heard, felt and witnessed it and I've made it my work to help rewrite the story because when we change narratives we produce empowered action and create momentous change.

Why embodiment and sexuality?

We women live in a world where the media and mainstream porn industry fabricates an experience of sexuality through only one lens—the male or yang pattern of arousal. By this I mean the experience of sexuality for women is typically responding to fast arousal, goal oriented, penetrative or clitoral focus.

For most women, midlife blows the lid off all of this. Many report a desire to pull away and be alone to contemplate what they truly desire for themselves, others report that boundaries are fiercely activated and the journey into deeper personal truth begins.

As hormones and lubrication patterns change, many women are left navigating this vulnerable stage of life alone. I want you to know your relationship to your body is not broken but rather, has the potential to evolve into something far more expansive. Honouring the journey of the sexual self is a vital piece because evolving our relationship to our senses and our authentic sexuality is fundamental to a creative, joyful and impassioned midlife (and beyond).

menopause is a descent, a transformation, a becoming.

Menopause is a descent, this much is true, but what lies at the depths of that descent?

Menopause asks a lot of us as we burn what no longer serves us. It's an initiation with no road map and we live in a culture where there is no acknowledgement or understanding of this. We need to create a culture where women are safe to burn so we can rise from the ashes so spiritually and sexually empowered because we know the depth and truth of our energy and so connected to purpose because we have a direct energy line from our womb through our heart to the eye of our desire. Refusing to please others before ourselves, we learn to use our voice and channel our wisdom in a way we haven’t before; with grace, with courage, with vulnerability and with power.

When we journey with the alchemy of menopause to unshackle, remember, refine and renew it becomes a process of undulating your way from the chrysalis and opening to a more expansive relationship to your body and life. There is darkness, there is dawn break, and a potent crimson sky awaits your metamorphosis.