This episode of The Shift first aired in June 2022.

I’ve lost count of the number of women I’ve spoken to who were taken totally by surprise by perimenopause but, to date, none of them actually had medical training. Todays guest changes all that. Before she was an award winning writer, Christie watson was a nurse. She spent 20 years on children’s intensive care before her debut won the Costa first novel award and altered the trajectory of her life.

Since then Christie has written two bestselling nursing memoirs, including the wonderful The Language of Kindness, and a second novel. Then, aged 42, perimenopause totally floored her. A single mum of two teenagers, she suddenly found herself a “blubbering snot crying wreck” in Sainsburys car park - a stranger, inside and out. Sound familiar?!

I met Christie to talk about her memoir about that experience, Quilt On Fire, in a no-man’s land opposite the US embassy. As you do. We discussed being blindsided by menopause, grey pubic hairs, biblical bleeding, and the impact of unresolved trauma. Plus being single in midlife and braving the dating shark tank, her own personal menopause club (lucky woman), having a vulva the size of Brazil, the joy of becoming visible to older women and why nobody really has their shit together. Oh and an unexpected use for frozen fish fingers.

* You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at ⁠⁠The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org⁠⁠, including Quilt on Fire by Christie Watson and her latest thriller, Killing Me Softly, as well as the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

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• The Shift is created, hosted and produced by Sam Baker and this episode was edited by Emily Sandford.

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Christie Watson on menopause, mischief and midlife - THE SHIFT REVISITED