The Dr Louise Newson Podcast - 95 – Rosie Moss: is it grief or hormones?

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Rosie Moss spent years being told her symptoms were simply grief, when actually there was undiagnosed PMDD also at play.Rosie hosts the podcast Widowed AF, and after her husband Ben died suddenly in a scuba diving accident in 2018, she was left to raise three young children while experiencing monthly crises that went far beyond ordinary grief, including periods of being unable to leave her bed for days at a time. Over the following years she was prescribed a succession of medications, from antidepressants to sedatives to an antipsychotic, none of which addressed what was actually happening to her hormones.Rosie describes being threatened with the police at A&E and being refused the estrogen dose that had finally brought her stability, while Dr Louise explains why physical symptoms such as joint pain and night sweats are often a sign that hormones are involved rather than grief alone, and why current guidelines still recommend antidepressants for PMDD despite limited evidence that they help.Rosie also shares the three take-home tips she would give anyone navigating grief.Follow Rosie and Widowed AF: @widowed_afLet’s connect👉 Track your symptoms and understand hormones, download the Balance app: https://bit.ly/4yZty5A👉 More from Dr Louise Newson: https://linkin.bio/drlouisenewson

So today on my podcast, I've got Rosie Gilmoss, who runs the amazing podcast called Widowed A.F. She was widowed, very unexpected death of her husband, left with three young children. We talk about grief, but we talk about how sometimes grief can be blamed for symptoms, which are actually related to hormonal changes, and how a lot of women who have grief can also have a hormonal imbalance. So it's an open conversation, which I know will resonate. resonate with many of you, so I hope you enjoy it. So Rosie, you are now in the hot seat, whereas I was on your podcast couple of years ago.

Gosh, right back at the beginning, yeah, about two and a half years ago. Yeah. So you've got the podcast, widowed AF, and I came on it, which was great. But, you know, I think about you a lot, partly because my mum was widowed at age nine, brought up three children, and now I'm older. I think, how the hell does she do it? And then I also think about her a lot because I can't tell you how old she is

because I'm not allowed, but I'm 55 so a lot of people could probably work out roughly how old she is. She was really lucky because she was struggling with grief. She was struggling not knowing where her future was. She knew she had to move house. She knew she needed a job and she was working as a teacher and she was getting all these symptoms.

Very hot. And back then you weren't even allowed to wear sleeveless, you know, dresses because it was 70s. You had to keep your shoulders covered. She got very hot. she got quite irritable. And the doctor just said, take this, you're going through the change. She had no idea what it was, because back then, no one asked anything.

She took, in fact, it was pregnant horses during HRT. But it worked for her. And she's been really lucky because I wonder how my life would have been if my mum hadn't taken hormones from not long after my dad died. I mean, my dad died when he was 40, and it was probably a few years after that, she got symptoms. but her grief, I mean, she dreams about him every day and cries a lot even now about him.

So she's got big grief, but I wonder what my childhood would have been like because she's done and she still does the most amazing job for all three of us. But it would be very different if she didn't have hormones and it would be so easy to blame her grief. So just keen to hear about your story really. I mean, not dissimilar actually to your mum's timeline. My husband, Ben, died in 2018. and it was a real cataclysmic shock.

It was an accident, a scuba diving accident. And I just look back and I think, much like you do for your mum, how did I do that? How old were your children then? They were seven, five and six months. Yeah, yeah, it was tough. So it was just out the blue, no morning. Knock on the door from the police.

Yeah. And, you know, at the time I was postnatal, my daughter was six months old. I'd just finished breastfeeding. And so my hormones were kind of all over the shop anyway. And for the first sort of three to four years, to the outside world, I coped. The way I was coping was I was drinking a lot. And I was masking a lot of my feelings.

You know, I was squashing them down because I was kind of scared of what was going to come out. And it was about four years in. And I felt this kind of seismic change in myself. And the only thing I could have liken it to was puberty when I felt completely out of control. and I ended up feeling quite scared. I didn't know what version of me was going to come down the stairs. And in the sort of darker times, I'd be thinking my kids would be better off without me. You know, really horrible, dark, negative thoughts.

And I didn't know what was the matter with me. I really didn't. I thought I was broken. I thought I was mad, bad or broken. And I didn't know where to turn. Did you feel worse at certain times of the month? Or was it the same? Yeah, but because I had the coil, I didn't identify.

Interesting. It was monthly. You weren't having periods. Yeah. So I didn't have that kind of timeline to follow. And yeah, it was. And it was starting to kind of take over initially just a couple of days. And then some months it'd be a week or even longer.

And, you know, when I say I was white, I would be in bed staring at a wall. I wouldn't even be able to look at my phone, read, watch television. I would just stare at a wall and cry and think, I can't do this anymore. At the time, I had a partner. So he was able to help with the children. but we've since separated. And that really made me realize how precarious things would have been

had I been entirely on my own. Yeah. And I worry about this a lot, actually. I worry about deprive people. I worry about vulnerable people. But I also worry about the impact of hormonal imbalance on children because a lot of people,

I'm sure you had some PMDD, you had grief, but there was a hormonal imbalance going on as well. and you can ignore yourself well you can't but you know what I mean like a lot of women tell me that they close the blinds they go to bed they stare at the walls and that's awful in itself

but if you've got children who are only dependent on you what happens then if you haven't got a partner or haven't got any other people who are going to help with child minding those children are just stuck in front of a screen and probably not fed

not put to bed not loved in the same way Yeah, and it's, you know, I'd get the children to school and then I would go back to bed and I'd just pull the duvet over and then I'd set a timer for when I had to go and pick them up and I'd sort of get up, put the big dark sunglasses on, drive to the school, you know, probably crying, get to school, really not want to speak to anybody. I mean, Wob had a teacher if one of my kids had had a bad day and they needed to, you know, the walk of shame when they come towards you because I didn't have any resilience to that sort of thing. I took it all very personally. It all felt like it was an attack on me. And yeah, the relationship between me and my kids absolutely did suffer. It did because they didn't understand what's wrong with mum. And actually, as I began to learn more about the hormones and the impact they were having, and actually I wasn't mad, bad or broken, I was able to talk to them, particularly the older to the boys and explained to them in age-appropriate ways

why I might be struggling at certain times of the month. But of course, that's still very scary for a child to see their mum like that. Yeah, so how did you manage to get help? Well, it was a long old process. Initially the NHS where I have to say, and you know, the NHS is amazing for many things, but women's health, not always. And in the end, it got to a point where I presented at A&E. I'd got to the point where I was begging to be sectioned. I was begging to be sedated because I was scared. So we went to A&E and I waited in the corridor for hours, as you do. And then by the time I was seen, actually I was all right. They'd given me some valium and I was feeling calmer. But when I asked to leave, they threatened me with the police. Yeah.

They said if I left, the police would come to the house and social services would be involved. Oh, no. At which point I had a meltdown, you know, because I think as soon as somebody threatens what I perceived as my children, then you just... It's a different level, isn't it? Yeah, it really is. And that in turn made me very frightened to seek help. The only real support that they would give me was they prescribed progester entableness. as the mini pill, which actually had...

But they're not progesterone, as you probably know. And it had an adverse effect on me. It made things worse. Because they block your progesterone looking at their body. And I just, again, I was thinking nobody's going to help me. And it's that real sense and it took me right back actually to being widowed where you're knocking on doors asking for help. And everybody's saying, not our problem.

Well, we can't help you. Or here's some antidepressants. So it was actually chance I came across an us in clinic. And it was, and this is not me saying this because I'm sat across from you. This is genuine. I felt for the first time that somebody cared and listened to me. And every individual clinician that I spoke to all came to me with sympathy and kindness. And just understanding that actually I might need a higher dose of estrogen, which I do.

I'm on 200. Yeah. But then I've gone back to the NHS since and said, actually, my financial situation has changed. Could I come back under the NHS? And again, it was that computer says, no, you know, you're on far too higher dose. we can start you back on 50 and see how you go. And I said, I've done all the work for you. I've done it.

And it's not like I've been, you know, buying it on the black market. I'm being prescribed it by professionals. So they still refused them? Yeah. Do you know, it makes me so cross because, you know, we run a specialist clinic. We are all specialists. We are all qualified doctors. We're all registered with the GMC.

We all have annual appraisals. We've had an outstanding in RCQC who have looked at our doses of prescribing. And there's good evidence. that some people don't absorb enough through the skin. There are no guidelines by regulating authority that say we can't prescribe higher doses. I quoted that back to them in a sternly worded email. Yeah.

But if I was a private psychiatrist and I'd prescribed you an off-label higher dose of antidepressants, it would be no problem. If I was a private cardiologist giving you a dose of whatever for your blood pressure or your heart arrhythmia, no one questions it and this is where like we need to turn out and it says and say hang on what are my risks of not having the dose that I need because I've seen what I was like before and I do they want to just harm women I don't know this is what I said in the in the appointment

I said you know you can see my notes in front of you can see the distress I was in three years ago before I independently went and sought help for myself and I said I'm on my own I've got three children this is you know this is dangerous you know this is one of the biggest killers in women over 40 and it was just that there's nothing we can do and I felt incredibly frustrated. I think I'm in a very different place to where I was back then but it just felt like nobody was listening to me and it's so lonely to feel that way. Yeah it's really hard it's very it's very difficult and I don't I don't know what the answer is really other than challenging and saying so what are what are the risks where are the guidelines where's the evidence because there isn't any

that shows that a higher dose is harmful because having too lower dose can be harmful as well. But you notice a difference on hormones to your mental health. I didn't just notice a difference, Louise, my life changed. You know, I was able to, don't get me wrong, it's still there. But what I would say is it's two days a month where I'm just very, very tired. I'm a little bit cautious about what I say on WhatsApp groups and in emails. You know, I second guess myself a little bit more because I have,

I'm prone to, you know, being a bit stroppy. But that feels to me like quite normal PMS rather than the debilitating hellhole of PMDD. So, yeah, I mean, I was able to work again, to build up my own podcast. I was able to get back to being the mum that I knew I was, which, you know, I'm never going to be the mum I was before I was widowed, because you have to be good, bad cop, all the time. But that kind of fun side of me began to come back out again. Amazing. Things like, you know, I didn't get out of bed and my joints didn't.

I felt like I was about 95. I was gaining weight. I was sweating through to the mattress. You know, I felt just horrible all the time. Whereas now I feel like I've got my life back. Yeah, it's amazing. What I often say to patients is you don't know what you're missing until you have it back. And I also say to patients is I don't know how you're going to feel on hormones,

but I'm prepared to give them to you, get the right physiological dose for you, and then we let's see. But when we think about grief, people can have, you know, short-term grief. You know, if your great, great-granny who's in the late 90s dies, of course that's very sad. But people can move on a lot easier than if it was someone younger or someone like your partner so unexpected to such a young age.

And people's grief and their grief reaction can really be different. And, you know, we talk in medicine as people having an abnormal grief reaction, which I find is a bit harsh because what's normal and what's abnormal? Like, so my mum still thinks and loves my father, there's so much, but it's not abnormal. They were so in love and they, you know, but that warmth is there and it should be there, really. So the way that I grieve is different to my sister and brother grieve, but I don't want to be judged whether it's normal or abnormal. I don't even want someone to talk to me about it. I'm content with how I've changed my life, whatever, because I don't know what I'm missing, because, you know.

but I feel like when we were taught at medical students about grief, it was almost like a bit of a tick box to sort of ask, I don't know. Five stages, rattle through them. Yeah, it was. It's a bit like sort of the whole cycle of change when people are trying to give up cigarettes, you work up where they are. And a bit like with grief, have you had the anger yet? Have you had the, and it's like, oh, hang on.

But then what I realise more and more when I, you know, this symptom question, that we've got on balance with 84 different questions, is thinking about other symptoms as well, like the physical symptoms of the dry skin, the palpitations, skin changes, joint pains, like you say. Because if you just focus on the mental health symptoms, you're only going to be thinking about grief and you're looking at that side of that person.

And I just wonder how many people I just labelled as it's all related to your grief and no one's thinking about hormones. Yeah. But if you say if I was your grief counsellor and then I did these symptoms and you also told me you were getting joint pains and muscle aches and night sweats, well that's not related to grief, is it? Yeah. And I think there's so much around kind of misdiagnosis, mislabelling, particularly for women. You know, I look back at my childhood.

I spent time in a young person's unit when I was 17 because nobody knew what was going wrong with me. As it transpires, I'm noradivirgent and had PMDD. But how different might that outcome have been? I know. I was asked to leave school in my joint my A-levels, yeah. Yeah, they didn't know what was wrong with me. You're the calmest person I've met. Well, I'm well-medicated now.

And then things like, you know, being labeled as moody and disruptive or flaky. But you see, that's so common for PMDD. It's so common, this disruptive behaviour. And PMDD and ADHD are very closely linked. and, you know, I've written about it in my book, and I feel very strongly I hate labels. I don't even like the term PMDD, because what's he telling you? Like, what you want to know is have I gotten a hormonal imbalance

and how do I treat it? Because that's the most important thing. But those hormones in our brain can help all the connections to work, can help people feel calmer, can help people naturally have that ability to rationalise in the way that you can't when you don't have the hormones, all the hormones are just fluctuating the whole time. which when you're 17 was probably what was happening or not. Yeah, and I just felt like such a freak, for want to a better word,

I felt like I was different to everybody else. So what I became very, very good at is masking, which we know is commonly used in neurodiversity, but also I think with the hormone imbalance, I felt like I had to be, make myself very likable, make sure that nobody saw beneath that veneer. And then when I hit impermanopause and those cracks began to appear and I couldn't mask those traits anymore,

I felt that everybody was going to abandon me. They would see the real me, you know. And actually, it's interesting how, particularly when we build up these coping strategies, and then you have a significant life event, like the loss of your partner, which blows all ability to hold that mask up, and then you throw in perimenopause as well,

and it just became untenable. I hope you enjoy today's episode. If you'd like more information about your hormone health, download my free Balance app. It allows you to track symptoms and cycles, access hundreds of educational articles and videos, and also connect with supportive community of women. Many people tell me that they want to understand their hormones so they can access the right treatment to feel better and also improve their future health. That's why Balance app is designed not only to educate, but also to help you become empowered and prepare for conversations with

healthcare professionals so you can make informed decisions about your hormone treatments. The Balance app is completely free to download and part of my mission to help more women access the information they both deserve and need. Search for Balance in your app store and download it today. The link is also in the show notes for this episode. Labels for me have been helpful in a way. Yes. They have.

But I do sometimes feel like I'm collecting acronyms. Well, I think the label's only helpful if you've got a treatment plan. Yes. But a treatment plan that's treating underlying cause as well. Because otherwise, your label and then it's been masked with a medication that might or might not be appropriate. Yeah. And that's where I think, thinking about any condition, we've got to always have in the back of our mind, could there be any hormonal imbalance as well.

And I think so much with the same. grief because so many people I see even my clinic you know the dog has died and it's been awful and everyone's focused on that and said no it can't be your hormones because your dog's died it's like hang on I can have grief and I can have a hormone imbalance you can have yes more than one thing going on at the same time yeah yeah and I think that's it I think when you present to the doctors and you say I feel like I'm losing my mind I keep crying I can't eat I can't sleep and then I say oh but my husband died automatically that's going to be the assumption isn't it that, well, that must be why.

So I was prescribed searcherlene, like so many women were. A little, a little. They prescribed quite a high dose, which I was uncomfortable with because I felt that I needed to feel that grief that I owed it to him to feel it. I do still take, I take a very low dose now because I'm in the process of hopefully winning myself off

because I'm not actually depressed. And that was the thing that I really struggled with is this version of myself, the staring at the wall, you know, completely nonverbalt, that isn't somebody that I recognize in myself. Once I realised it was only happening once a month, I began to be able to separate the condition from myself, if you like, because when you're in it, you can't see out of it

and you just think this is untenable, I can't live like this, and that's when those awful ideations begin to sneak in. Because quite frankly, the prospect of living like that all the time forever, it's really scary. It's awful, yeah, awful, nobody would want that. No, it completely can torment your mind. And, you know, the only advantage of PMDD often over menopause is that people with PMDD get a bit of a break because their period comes, they have some hormones and they're, you know, there's a bit of reprise. Sometimes it's not for long, but it's still there.

But it can be very difficult and it's very hard to explain to people so when you have mental health symptoms. You know, if you have a rash on your arm, you can show someone and get sympathy. But it's not the same when it's inside, is it? No, and when you're in the midst of a crisis, you're not capable of, you know, advocating for yourself and explaining what's going on because you just have this kind of angry, spiky ball. And then I would come through it and I think, oh, I'm fine now. I'll cancel that doctor's appointment because much like when you're in it, you can't remember it being good.

When it's good, it's hard to remember it being that bad. Yeah, totally. And I totally, it is that Jacqueline Hyde, the sort of black and white night and day. There's nothing grey in between with PMDD. And I know when I opened the clinic eight years ago, we called it a menopause and well-being centre because I was too scared of women with PMDD because they changed so quickly

and I didn't feel that I had enough clinical experience, really. But over the years of her more knowledge and now it's really we call ourselves women's hormones experts because I actually really enjoy seeing, it sounds a bit weird, I really enjoy seeing women with PMDD because I know I can help them because what I don't enjoy

is the stories and the suffering because often, and they're dismissal from so many people. But when you ask, just that really easy question, you know, how do you feel when you have your period? Do you feel different those days before your periods? Then, you know, you know it's related,

not maybe all of it, but a lot of it related to hormones. But I went to a group, a meeting of people sort of stakeholder meeting for PMDD group. And they're all just talking about talking treatments. And I went there with one of the doctors, Hannah Ward, who's actually been on my podcast, talking about her own PMDD and how she was close to ending her life. And no one would give her

treatment and the antidepressants didn't work. So she managed to get a prescription for progesterone and it transformed that saved her life as well. And she read a lot of Katrina Dalton's work from the 50s and 60s. We've all read it. We've reactivated her work from that time and see the transformation effects of progesterone. So she was there, not just as a doctor, but someone with her own lived experience,

and they just don't want to listen. No. It's like, of course, having a cup of tea with a friend is going to help. Of course, talking therapy is going to help, but it's not going to treat the underlying cause. You know, if I had a knife in my arm and it was painful, you giving me a cup of tea would help me a bit. A bit sugar in it for you.

Yeah, it would be a lot better if you took the knife, knife out and took me to the hospital. You know what I mean? It just feels like people are just blinded by it or they want to give people antidepressants. And that's that's the, the antidepressant one is quite a big one for me because I was given antidepressants when I was quite young when I was at university. I was put on to Prozac. And Prozac I suspect actually really helped me. I think it masked a lot of the noradiversity, which did it help me or you know, that's another conversation really. but it enabled me to function in a society that wasn't really built for me. Then the search reline, but it's that sense of slightly disconnect, you know, that numbing of your feelings.

And also you've got the other side effects, things like lack of libido, and, you know, you can gain weight, you can increase sweating. There's lots of other negative side effects. Well, we're understanding more and more about the negative effects of antidepressants. I did a podcast with Mark Horowitz a few months ago. But, you know, he talks about the risks of osteopoeuvre, process and dementia and women without hormones have a increased incidence of osteoporosis and dementia but no one really talks about the risks of the antidepressants and I used to prescribe them a lot because I was only taught about the benefits of them but I remember one patient and I think

that she probably did have a hormonal imbalance that I hadn't checked and thought about but she told me that she'd crashed her car she'd gone into the wall like next to her house and parked it really badly but it was really smashed. And I said, how does that make you feel? She goes, oh, well, I just got out and thought, oh dear. And I said, oh, she said, yeah, I could have run over my best friend and I would have gone, oh, well. And I said, do you think those antidepressants are really doing you any good? She said, no, I'm really scared because it makes me realize they've made me too numb. And it was the first time this was many years ago. It was probably about 20, 25 years ago. And I just remember her so well thinking, oh my gosh, you know, me giving her that

prescription has that made her feel like this and you know it was incredible that you don't realize the harm that's being done with these medications but then I was also taught treatment of PMDD and it's still on guidelines is you give women antidepressants for two out of four weeks yes that why would you do that and apparently I mean in all other areas of antidepressants they have a three week yeah what would you call it a settling in-year. So they're not really going to work. No, I can't. No, because my doctor did suggest that I perhaps try that and take,

but I was like, hey, I'm not brilliant at tracking, so I probably get the days wrong anyway. And then you sort of think, well, once I'm in it, it's too late. It just feels really weird. Like, yeah, totally. Because, like I say, it's like nice and day and it often very quick downhill, if you suddenly wake up one morning and you don't want to be waking up, you know, you feel dreadful. Firstly, you're probably not going to feel like taking anything.

But secondly, if it's going to take anything. It's a bit late. It's going to take two weeks to have an effect. You'll be off them again by then. It just doesn't. But the most recent guidelines I was looking at recently, there's some national guidelines and international guidelines, and they still talk about antidepressants,

or they talk about the synthetic hormones, the progestrogens. And then they've got a little thing about progesterate at the bottom. We've not got enough evidence. Well, we've got a lot of common sense, actually. And we know out of all the medication, including blocking hormone, you know, the injections like Zolodex that block hormones, they talk about removing ovaries.

And even antipsychotic, it's like quatopine. It's like, well, all of those treatments have risks. Having natural hormone, I can't see any risk. I don't understand any risk. And actually, at my worst, I was prescribed. I can't pronounce it, the quatipine was it? Cretiapine, yeah. Which I received the prescription.

I was under the care of a private psychiatrist at this point for the ADHD. And he sent this prescription. And I remember getting it and Googling it because you do, don't you? And reading what it was for. and just thinking, oh my God, am I mental? You know, am I really? It's a heavy-duty drug? Whoa, really?

Did you take it? No. No, I didn't. But I do remember begging my GP and my psychiatrist for sedatives because I felt the only way to keep myself safe during a PMDDD episode was sedatives. So for a while he would prescribe diazepam, which I could take when things got really oralurazepan even. I mean, again, they're very heavy-duty medications. No.

No. It's amazing, isn't it? And quatopine actually blocks your own hormone production. Does it? Yeah. Oh my goodness. So, yeah, it's an increased prolactin, a hormone in the brain, which then suppresses your hormone production.

So progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, it basically gives you chemical menopause. Yeah. And actually, when you're talking about these antidepressants and a lot of the uncomfortable symptoms of menopause, things like the sweating and libido, they cause that. So you could be on trying to get help for your symptoms and actually they're making them worse. Yeah. And we don't really know. I've been trying to look at some of the data, but no one's done the study. So the data's not there looking to see if antidepressants have any blocking effects in any of the pathways for hormone production. Because so many of the symptoms of so-called depression are related to a hormone imbalance and some of the side effects like the anhydonia, this sort of lack of joy, not want to do anything, not being bothered about things. I've ever heard that word before.

Yeah, anhedonia. Yeah, it's a great word. How much of that is related to hormone? as opposed to a pure side effect of the drugs. You know, I'm always very interested in how drugs work. And, you know, because I understand the action of our own hormones and how they work in the body. And there's so much we don't understand about the drugs that we're just, well, I don't prescribe them anymore, but that people prescribe all the time.

But we have to be thinking about the harms, but also the most important thing is thinking about the choice for women. And that, to me, is the most important part of my work is women being able to choose. But it's hard if you haven't got an advocate, we haven't got the right knowledge to really choose what's right for you, isn't it? And a lot of the knowledge gets shared amongst women, doesn't it?

It's women chatting at the school gate or at work. Totally. It was a neighbour. I was absolutely, you know, beside myself, I'd managed to get my daughter home from school and she walked past and she said, you're all right. No, and it just came flooding out.

And she said to me, you need to get some hormone treatment, a friend of mine. has been on hormone treatment. She's had it's been revolutionary and she said make sure you ask about testosterone and I'd never heard of testosterone and this is you know I'm your social media accounts I watch the news but nobody was talking about it outside of this world of 40 something women who were sharing this information like it was a prize secret and you think well why isn't this widely available why are we being just denied it it doesn't it doesn't make sense when you're being offered all these

other drugs as well so we've got a lot to do and I think one of the ways the future is going to change is by women, empowering other women and talking and just having choice. So I'm really grateful for you coming onto the podcast. We've talked about a lot. I always end three take-home tips. So there will be people listening who will be having grief, whether it's recent or in the past, they'll be thinking about various loved ones that they're missing and it will be creating some, I'm sure, emotion for them. So what three things would you say if someone is having any sort of grief process? What three things do you think help people the most?

So the one that I would always recommend is this, and it kind of, it's relevant. You know, we're talking about women sharing knowledge. It's find your tribe. Yeah, whether that be an online network, whether it be a podcast, I know a good one. Yeah. Or whether it be in real life, because there are real life meetups that go on all over the country. It's about because you will feel, no matter how amazing. your friends and family are, you will feel very lonely and isolated. So I think finding people

who have a shared common experience is number one. Number two is, I mean, it's really, really tough to say this to people, because when they're grieving and someone says, you need to take care of you and you think, oh yeah, whatever. Yeah, but it's so important. But it's so important, I started treating myself as somebody who deserves some care, the better I felt. And that's not to say it's perfect. Now, I don't go and walk every single day. I don't eat perfectly every day. I don't do yoga every day. but as long as I'm relatively consistent, I'm able to keep that real dark, acute, overwhelming grief at bay. But also my third point would be let it out sometimes.

You know, don't try so hard to keep it at bay that you forget to grieve or you become scared of grieving. As soon as I allowed myself to have the little kind of incremental cries and to feel sad because it's really sad, you know, it is really sad. Then I felt like I had a little bit more conundated. control. I guess you're so, it's like that Pandora's box, you're so scared of opening it of what might come out that you just lock it in tighter and that doesn't do your mental, physical or emotional health, any good. That is so great. And widowed AF,

listen to the podcast, download it, share it. Thank you. And thank you so much for coming today. Thank you for having me, Louise. Thank you. So just a quick one, it would be really great if you could follow or subscribe to this podcast. This will really help me reach more people with evidence-based information about hormones and their future health. And also means you never miss a future episode. Thank you.