I never intended to write a book called Sexy Menopause. Like many women, I entered midlife carrying a collection of beliefs I didn't even realise I had subconsciously absorbed. Somewhere along the way, I had accepted the cultural story that ageing meant becoming less desirable, less visible, less relevant.

As a physiotherapist and female pelvic and sexual health educator, I spent decades helping women navigate the intimate realities of their bodies. Every week, women sat in my clinic asking questions they were often too embarrassed to ask anywhere else.

"Why does sex suddenly hurt?"

"What happened to my libido?"

"Will I ever feel like myself again?"

"Is this just what happens when you get older?"

What struck me wasn't simply the physical symptoms they were experiencing.

It was the shame, loneliness, grief and silence.

The sense that they had somehow failed because their bodies were changing.

Then menopause became personal.

At the same time I was navigating my own hormonal transition, my long-term relationship came to an unexpected end. The experience shattered many of the assumptions I held about love, security, ageing and identity. There were moments when I felt lost and questioned my worth. I wondered whether the best parts of my life were behind me.

But something surprising happened.

What initially felt like a breakdown became an awakening.

As I moved through grief, healing and self-discovery, I began to see menopause differently. Not as a decline, but as an invitation. A threshold. A sacred disruption that strips away what no longer fits and asks us to become more fully ourselves.

I started having deeper conversations with women. In my clinic. At workshops. Through my writing. On social media. In private messages from women all over the world.

The same themes kept emerging.

Women weren't only looking for information.

They were looking for permission.

Permission to desire in the ways they wanted to desire and to stop apologising for taking up space.

Permission to have soulful conversations and to believe that life, love, sexuality and pleasure do not have an expiry date.

This book was born from those conversations.

It brings together the science I have learned over three decades as a physiotherapist, the wisdom I have gained from working with thousands of women in therapy sessions and workshops, and the lessons I have learned through my own journey of heartbreak, healing and transformation.

Because menopause is not simply a hormonal event.

It is a profound psychological, emotional, relational and spiritual transition.

And despite what we've been taught, women do not become less powerful as they age.

Many become more themselves than they have ever been.

Sexy Menopause is my invitation to step into that possibility.

Not to reclaim who you once were.

But to discover who you are becoming.