What They Didn't Tell Me About Surgical Menopause

I had a CT scan recently that showed a complex cyst on my only remaining ovary. I call her Bertha. The ovary, not the cyst. The cyst doesn't deserve a name.

Bertha had been causing me pain for a few months, but I wasn't in the mood to deal with ultrasounds and conversations about surgery, so I mostly ignored it — or complained loudly to anyone who would listen. Same thing, really.

Once we had images showing Bertha was hosting not one but two cysts — one large simple cyst and one small complex cyst with some solid features — my doctor ordered bloodwork to check tumor markers. Just to be safe.

A bunch of them came back elevated.

Ugh. F*cking Bertha.

That kicked off a follow-up MRI and a meeting with an oncologist. She decided that even though the MRI looked okay, there was enough risk that Bertha needed to go. We agreed, we scheduled the surgery, and just like that, Bertha got her walking papers.

Here's the thing nobody fully prepared me for: removing Bertha was kind of a big deal. Not just medically emotionally, physically, hormonally — because she was my only remaining ovary abd my only source for hormones Taking her out meant I would no longer produce estrogen or progesterone, and I would be launched — at 100 miles per hour — directly into menopause. Not easing into it. Not a gradual transition. Just... menopause. Now. Go.

Cool.

I already knew enough about menopause to be terrified of it: night sweats, sleep problems, brittle hair, dry skin, dry everything, osteoporosis, heart disease, mood swings, anxiety, depression. Menopause has the energy of the end of a medication commercial. The one where they spend 45 seconds listing everything that might go wrong.

I was scared.

So when my oncologist confirmed we were firing Bertha from her hormone-making duties, I asked about HRT — hormone replacement therapy.

She said, "Oh, we don't really prescribe HRT prophylactically for heart disease or bone health. If it becomes a real problem, maybe your gynecologist will prescribe something."

Okay, LADY. (And I say it exactly like that — because menopause is coming for her too someday, and I highly doubt she's planning to white-knuckle it. But I know when to argue and when to smile and say "Oh, interesting, okay" and move on.)

So I did.

And then I texted my gyno and asked for HRT. Which I'm starting in a few days.

Anyway — I had the surgery at the hospital because I have a lot going on health-wise and this was a "let's rule out cancer" situation, so we brought in the big team. I was in the women's surgical center — a place that performs surgery on women, all day, every day.

So I asked the nurse who was giving me discharge instructions: "Is there anything I should know about what happens now that I have no lady parts left and am in menopause as of 20 minutes ago?"

She said, "No, not really. You'll just take it as it comes."

I mean. What?

Okay. So here's what the doctor and the nurse failed to mention — what I wish someone had handed me in a pamphlet while I was still in my hospital gown:

(Actually, quick note before we get into it: I am not a doctor. I am a woman who just had her ovary removed and got very little guidance on her way out the door. What follows is a combination of research I did on my own, conversations with women who've been through it, and information I pulled together because nobody handed it to me when I needed it. Talk to your doctor — ideally one who actually wants to talk about this stuff. This is my notes, not a prescription.)

Surgical menopause is not the same as regular menopause. Not even close.

Natural menopause is a transition. It unfolds over years — hormones fluctuate, symptoms come and go, your body gets a slow, annoying heads-up that things are changing. It can take anywhere from four to ten years just to move through perimenopause.

Surgical menopause is none of that. When your ovaries are removed, your estrogen and progesterone don't gradually decline — they disappear. Immediately. It's not a transition. It's a hard stop. Going cold turkey from hormones your body has been making your entire life.

That means the symptoms hit harder and faster than they would in natural menopause. We're talking hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, mood swings, and low libido — potentially all at once, on top of recovering from actual surgery. Fun! Great! Love that for us!

And the effects go beyond feeling terrible in the short term. Long-term, the sudden loss of estrogen increases the risk of:

Osteoporosis. Estrogen protects your bones. Without it, bone density loss accelerates. The earlier you go into menopause, the more years your bones are at risk. A bone density scan (DEXA scan) is something you should be asking about.

Heart disease. Estrogen also has a protective effect on your cardiovascular system. Losing it abruptly, especially before the natural age of menopause (around 51), increases your risk of heart disease down the road.

Cognitive changes. Brain fog is real, and research suggests that earlier menopause — especially surgical — may be linked to increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia later in life.

Mood disorders. Anxiety and depression are more common after surgical menopause than after natural menopause. The drop in hormones affects the brain's chemistry, and when it happens suddenly, your nervous system doesn't exactly take it gracefully.

Sexual dysfunction. Vaginal dryness, discomfort, and low libido are common — and undertreated. There are options, including vaginal estrogen, that can help specifically with this even if you're not using systemic HRT.

Weight changes. Oophorectomy is associated with more rapid weight gain than either natural menopause or hysterectomy alone. Just so you know.

So what actually helps?

HRT — hormone replacement therapy — is the most effective treatment for surgical menopause, and according to current guidelines, it's recommended for most women who go through surgical menopause before the age of natural menopause. Not as a "let's see if it gets bad enough" afterthought — proactively, because your body lost hormones it wasn't supposed to lose yet.

This is why I made the follow up with my gyno on the day I realized I needed surgery.

Beyond HRT, the basics matter too: weight-bearing exercise for bone health, adequate calcium and vitamin D, monitoring your blood pressure and cholesterol, and not smoking.

Here's my point: I was in a facility that operates on women every single day, surrounded by medical professionals, and I walked out of surgery without a single person handing me a roadmap for what was about to happen to my body. No pamphlet. No conversation. Just "take it as it comes."

We deserve better than that.

So consider this my pamphlet.

You're welcome.

Are You on the List?

Do you spend most of your day—your week, your month, maybe your whole life—making sure everyone else is taken care of and worrying about yourself last?

When did we stop including ourselves in our own lives?

The Rooms We Clean (And the One We Ignore)

I love a to-do list. I have lists for chores, errands, projects for when I magically have “free time,” and—of course—a list just for me.

That list is always the one I look at last.

Like Cinderella, I can’t get to the things for me until everything else is done.

Think about it this way: I clean every room in my house. I organize everyone else’s spaces. My daughter’s room is functional. My husband’s office is tidy. The living room is guest-ready. The kitchen is spotless.

But my room—the space that’s supposed to be mine—it’s on the list I never quite get to.

Do you have the same kind of list? Even if it’s not written down, it’s probably running on a loop in your head.

Where are you on that list?
Are you even on it?

Making Room for Everyone Else

Most of the people I know who seem like they “have it together” are really just taking care of everyone else. They’re working full-time jobs (sometimes two), managing households, raising kids, scheduling appointments, handling paperwork, remembering birthdays, and making sure there’s always toilet paper.

They’re available all the time. For all the people. For all the things.

We spend our lives making sure everyone else has a room to thrive in—while quietly giving up our own.

But do we really need to disappear completely for other people to be okay?

Can’t we make room for both?

Finding Your Room in the House You Built

Take a look at your to-do list—real or imagined. How many items are actually for you?

And if the answer is “none,” ask yourself this:
Is there anything you could leave for later? Or let someone else handle?

I know—it won’t be done the way you would do it. And that’s okay.

Here are a few shifts that helped me:

Delegate

The people around you are capable—even if they do things differently. Everyone deserves responsibility for their own room.

Lower your standards (just a little)

The world will not end if the bed isn’t made perfectly or the lawn isn’t mowed in straight lines. Perfection steals time from joy.

Stop being a martyr

Doing everything, asking for nothing, and then resenting everyone is not a sustainable plan. Ask for help. Let people show up.

Make a list just for you

Not chores. Not projects. A joy list. Things that light you up. Keep it handy so when you have time, you don’t default to more work or mindless scrolling.

Claim Your Room

Here’s what I’ve learned: if you don’t claim a room for yourself in the house of your life, no one else will.

Not because they’re selfish—but because you’ve taught them that your room doesn’t exist.

It does exist. You just have to stop letting everyone else use it for storage.

Lock the door for an hour. Or an afternoon. Do something that pulls you out of obligation and back into yourself.

Let’s make a commitment to put joy on the list—our list.

And in case you haven’t heard it lately:

You are important.
You are valuable.
You deserve joy.

You deserve a room of your own.

Want more stories about finding joy, breaking cycles, and choosing courage? Sign up here to get updates about the book launch, and you’ll receive a downloadable guide to finding your own rooms that may be holding you in place.

The Fear of Change

What are we so afraid of?

I have no research to back this up, but I’m pretty sure fear of change has to be right up there with public speaking and death. Change is terrifying. Even good change. Getting married. Having a baby. Getting a new haircut. Why does all of it feel so scary?

What the heck are we actually afraid of?

So let’s try this: I’ll show you my fear, if you show me yours.

The Room Where It Started

I’m mostly afraid of two things: failure and judgment. And I know exactly where both of those fears were born.

I’m twelve years old, standing in our kitchen in 1990, holding a cordless phone. A group of girls had invited me to a sleepover—or so I thought. When I called to say I could come, they laughed. It wasn’t an invitation. It was a joke.

I wasn’t wanted in that room.

That kitchen—with its marble-brown carpet and Formica countertops—became the room where I learned I wasn’t enough. Not cool enough. Not pretty enough. Not wanted. And I carried that belief out of that kitchen and into every room I entered after it.

Thirty-five years later, I was still standing outside of rooms, afraid to go in.

Fear of Failure

Who actually likes to fail? Certainly not me.

But here’s something interesting: if you asked me to list my biggest failures—ten of them, five of them, even two—I’d struggle. Not because I’m embarrassed, but because the things I once thought would ruin me forever barely register now.

At the time, they felt catastrophic. Looking back from my cozy home, with my beautiful family, I don’t see them as failures at all. Every choice I made—good, bad, and questionable—brought me here. And I’m grateful to be here.

My divorce. The drunken nights in my twenties. Even the time I got arrested. Were they my proudest moments? No. But without them, I wouldn’t be who I am today.

What I’ve noticed is that we use fear of failure as an excuse not to try new things, while completely ignoring a lifetime of successes that prove we’re capable. Why do we cling so tightly to the worst moments of our past, instead of standing on everything we’ve survived?

I have far more moments of success than failure. And I’m willing to bet you do too.

Fear of Judgment

This one’s a doozy.

For years, I avoided trying new things because I was afraid of being judged. And if I’m honest, most of that judgment wasn’t coming from other people—it was coming from my own insecurities.

I’d assume the thing I wanted to try was stupid. And somehow, I also assumed I’d surrounded myself with people who would agree.

Usually, neither of those things was true.

Not every interest will be shared or understood by the people around you. That doesn’t make it stupid. Sometimes the uncommon things are the most interesting. And while there are judgmental people in the world, you usually know who they are—and those aren’t the people you need to be sharing your heart with anyway.

When I started sewing, no one in my immediate circle was particularly interested. So I found my sewing people—online, in fabric stores, on YouTube. And those people were kind. They remembered being beginners. They celebrated my first crooked tote bag like it was a masterpiece.

Sometimes you don’t need permission from your current circle—you just need to find the people who are already doing the thing you want to try.

Ways I Work Through the Fear of Change

These are some of the strategies we use in my house—and the ones that have helped me the most.

1. Set reasonable expectations

You will probably not be good at something the first time you try it. Or the tenth. And that’s okay.

Beginner-level expectations take the pressure off. Being new at something is freeing. You’re allowed to scribble before you paint masterpieces.

2. Ask, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

This is a game we play often. The more ridiculous the answer, the better. Shark attack. Covered in honey while bears are released. Will that happen at the dentist? Probably not.

The point isn’t realism—it’s perspective.

3. Find your community

When I learned to sew, my family was politely supportive. My sewing community? They got it. They celebrated the wins and helped me through the disasters.

Find the people who understand the thing you’re trying to do. They’ll bring you along.

4. Journal it out

Journaling has helped me untangle more anxious thoughts than almost anything else. Writing takes the power away from fear. You don’t have to journal every day—but when you’re stuck, it can shake things loose.

5. Go back to the room

This one changed everything.

I went back to that kitchen—not physically, but in my mind. I sat with twelve-year-old April and told her the truth: that those girls’ cruelty had nothing to do with her worth.

When we’re afraid of change, it’s often because we’re still living in an old room. A room where someone made us feel small. A room where we learned a belief that no longer fits.

When you heal what happened there, you stop carrying it into every new room you enter.

A Final Thought

Your life is built on survival, resilience, and quiet victories. Every hard day you got through. Every time you tried again. Every moment you didn’t give up.

Fear doesn’t disappear when you find joy—but it does lose its grip.

And when you go back to the rooms that taught you to be afraid, you often discover something surprising: you were always brave enough to walk through the door.

You just needed to stop listening to the voice that learned fear too early.

So try the thing. Step into the room. Find your joy.

You’re allowed to be here.

If this post resonated with you, my memoir The Room to Be Brave explores this same theme on a deeper level—the courage it takes to try, to fail, to keep going, and to finally face the rooms we've been afraid to enter. The book releases January 27, 2026.

Want more stories about finding joy, breaking cycles, and choosing courage? Sign up here to get updates about the book launch, and you’ll receive a downloadable guide to finding your own rooms that may be holding you in place.

I QUIT!!

I'm a quitter.

My entire vibe is about how much I'm okay with being terrible at something. The Find Your Joy Project, at its core, is about trying new things and probably not being good at them right away. Then I found something that I had hoped I'd be good at, and I failed at it. It was the most epic of failures. So, I quit everything.

What's really bogging me down is that it took months of holding this quittery in the pit of my stomach. I hoped and prayed that nobody would ask me how the Find Your Joy Project was going, because I didn't want to admit out loud that I gave up, and I really didn't feel good about it. I get so much happiness out of this project that admitting I wasn't doing it, was making me sad, but I couldn't put my finger on why I quit! I wanted to know what my stumbling block was, but instead of seeking out the answers, I threw all my energies into every single distraction that I could find. I even went to the gym for crap's sake! I was really avoiding my quitting, sharing my joy, and my feelings.

But why?!

Why would I quit finding joy, and sharing finding joy, and talking to people about finding joy, and beating my family over the head with all of the joy??? Because I had a vision of something I could do, and be, and it turns out that I couldn't, and I wasn't. And my fragile, flower petal of an ego couldn't stand up against the crushing, debilitating feeling of not being good at something immediately, or not having something go the way I dreamed it would.

Here's the kicker, I would have known what to say to any of you if this happened to you… imagine this scenario…

You come to me and tell me, and all of your closest friends, that you would like to start painting landscapes. You want to Bob Ross the hell out of some canvas! You are excited, the joy is contagious and the people you love are excited for you! You buy paint, brushes, an easel, canvas, a palette, a smock, and a fluffy wig to get you in the spirit. You go out to a beautiful nature scene and you start mixing paint, checking the lighting, taking pictures of your set-up for Instagram and then you start to paint. And you're not just terrible, you're cold, your allergies kick up, your wig is itchy, the "blended colors" come out looking like something you'd see with a stomach virus. This sucks and you hate it!

At this point I would tell you that you have a couple of options:

Start over! Watch some videos on painting, or take a class. You can start smaller, like learning how to mix paints, or learning basic brush techniques. Even if you never become a world renowned public broadcasting painter, you can still paint (even poorly) and have fun with it. With practice, you may even get better.

OR (and this is a big one)

Painting might not be for you! You can totally sell or donate your easel and paints and walk away knowing that AT LEAST YOU TRIED!!

There is no shame in trying and not liking something. Even if you REALLY thought it was going to be your thing. Even if you told everyone how much it was going to be your thing. EVEN IF you bragged about your vision of becoming a painter.

I told a lot of people how I would like to make YouTube videos showcasing other folks who have found their joy. I even had two generous and joyful people share their joy with me, on camera (!!) so that I could get the ball rolling on what I fully thought would be an incredible experience. We would have so much fun sharing in their joy that the videos would practically make themselves!

Man, if you could see how it looked in my head? As far as I was concerned, Netflix was about to pick up my videos for multiple seasons. I wouldn't say I was delusional, because in real life I can have a conversation with anyone I meet and have so much fun doing it, but as it happens, I am zero fun in front of a camera. Where I thought I could bring the best out of people who already had joy; I made finding joy look like an insurance seminar.

That was a hard pill for me to swallow. And instead of trying to address what had stopped me from enjoying the work for The Find Your Joy Project, I just avoided it all together. Until now.

Now I pivot. PIVOT!

I don't quit the parts of this project that I love. I don't beat myself up for not being good at making videos. I don't quit the joy. I do quit the guilt, I quit the negative self-talk, and I quit judging myself on one activity that I didn't take to right away. And I move forward towards the joy.

I will continue to try new ways to bring the joy to you. I will continue to talk to people and encourage them to share their joy. And I will continue to share these adventures with you in whatever form brings me the most joy. At this point, it won't be via YouTube, and I'm finding a way to be 100% ok with that.

Wherever this project takes us, I want you to be there for all of the ups and downs. And please feel free to tell me the things that you tried and loved, or hated! Because we are more than likely not going to find our joy in the first thing we try, but we are absolutely not going to find it by giving up.

So let's find our joy, change our life, and inspire others.

If this post resonated with you, my memoir The Room to Be Brave explores this same theme on a deeper level—the courage it takes to try, to fail, to keep going, and to finally face the rooms we've been afraid to enter. The book releases January 27, 2026.

Want more stories about finding joy, breaking cycles, and choosing courage? Sign up here to get updates about the book launch, and you’ll receive a downloadable guide to finding your own rooms that may be holding you in place.