What Coaches/Mentors Can Learn from The Menopause Manifesto
Renata had coached executives through burnout, career pivots, and confidence crises for over a decade, confident she had a framework for nearly any challenge a client brought her. Then a longtime client, sharp and self-aware, sat down and described symptoms Renata recognized instantly, because she'd been quietly living them herself for months without naming them even to her own therapist. Renata realized she had been coaching this exact client through anxiety and focus issues for weeks, offering frameworks and reframes, without once considering an underlying physiological transition, mostly because she hadn't considered it in herself either. That session became a turning point for both of them: Renata started reading plain, factual material on the subject, not to diagnose anyone, but so she'd finally recognize the pattern when it walked into her own room again.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Knowing the Body You're Coaching Around
Plain, accurate knowledge of the physiological transition equips a coach to recognize its footprint, brain fog, mood shifts, sleep disruption, in a client's story without overstepping into diagnosis, the same way understanding grief or burnout patterns helps a coach recognize them without becoming a therapist.
Coaches sometimes reach for a purely motivational or mindset explanation for a struggle that actually has a physiological driver worth naming.
Add one open question to your intake process asking whether a client has noticed any physical changes alongside the challenge they've brought you, and note the answer for future sessions.
Separating Signal From Sales in Your Toolkit
Coaching adjacent industries are full of confidently marketed supplements and programs claiming to fix menopausal symptoms, and a coach's professional obligation to recommend only what has real support extends naturally to anything menopause-related they might be tempted to mention to a client.
A coach's genuine desire to help a struggling client can lead to recommending a product or protocol that sounds plausible but has no real evidence behind it.
Before mentioning any remedy to a client, apply the same standard you'd apply to any coaching technique: what evidence actually supports it.
Coaching the Advocacy Conversation
The book's emphasis on advocating for yourself within an under-trained medical system is a skill coaches already teach, in negotiation, in career transitions, and it transfers directly to helping a client prepare for a dismissive doctor's appointment with clear language and specific asks.
A coach can over-function here, effectively rehearsing a medical conversation in detail that belongs with a clinician, not a coaching session.
Help a client draft three specific questions for their doctor, then hand the actual medical judgment back to the professionals entirely.
A Season You Can Coach Through
Reframing this transition as a normal life stage rather than a crisis changes what a coach is actually helping a client do: not survive an emergency, but navigate one identifiable season with the same tools used for any other transition, career change, relocation, new parenthood, that a good coach already knows how to support well.
The instinct to hold clients accountable for pushing through discomfort (a coaching default) can compete with recognizing when a physiological transition needs medical attention rather than more grit. When in doubt, refer rather than push; a good coach's boundary is exactly where medical judgment begins.
Name one thing, honestly
Which current client's stuck pattern might actually have a physiological explanation you have never asked them about?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Help a client draft three specific questions for their doctor, then hand the actual medical judgment back to the professionals entirely.