'When I first experienced menopause I thought I was having a heart attack - now it's my passion'

Deborah Garlick was experiencing such terrible chest pains when she was 45 that her husband thought she might be having a heart attack. A visit to a hospital saw her prescribed painkillers, but it wasn't until she went private that she found out something different.

At age 45, Garlick was experiencing perimenopause - the transition to menopause. “I hadn’t heard that word then,” says Deborah, now 59. “It’s amazing how things have changed.”

She started taking HRT – and still does – and once she “got her mojo back”, was determined to help other women. In 2013, Henpicked was born – as a hub for women to share advice.

“We weren’t about menopause at the time, we were about happiness, health and wellbeing,” she says. “It was when Henpicked had been running for about two years that people kept mentioning menopause. It piqued my interest as back then it was a taboo subject.”

After holding a workshop with women talking about their experiences, and realising how unsupported they felt, Deborah, who’d had a high-flying corporate career, knew she had to act.

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“It was a leap of faith. It got to the stage where the ­menopause was my first waking thought and my last one before I went to sleep. So I lived on my savings, got rid of my car and spent the next couple of years focusing on this.” In 2017 she set up the Menopause in the Workplace conference, believed to be the first one ever, to help employers understand what staff were going through. A year later she had her book Menopause: The Change For the Better published.

She wanted to change the conversation about menopause. Words that had previously been associated with it were “old, hot flushes and past it”.

“In a culture that reveres youth and beauty, who wants to put their hand up and say I’m ‘old and past it!’,” says Deborah, who lives in Nottingham. “It’s not just hot flushes, there’s anxiety, urinary tract infections, hormonal stress… Everyone’s experience is different.”

Fast forward a decade and Henpicked is now a menopause website that covers everything from health to work, relationships to exercise, and as CEO, Deborah has become one of the go-to voices when it comes to this time in a woman’s life. Currently employing 55 people and helping thousands, it is funded by the work it does with employers – everyone from Boots to E.ON to Specsavers – showing them how to help their staff through the menopause.

“A listening ear is more likely to keep them in work,” says Deborah. “We often say to employers it’s just being able to say, ‘Bear with me, I am having a bad day’, without feeling judged. We are an ageing population and one in four people consider leaving work during the ­menopause, and one in ten do. That is talent you might have invested years in and you are letting that talent walk out the door.”

To combat this, Henpicked set up a Revive and Thrive programme. “It’s a bit like a maternity return, but a menopause one,” she says. “We’ve been talking to women who have not been able to get back into work, who’ve lost their confidence, taken early retirement or have just given up altogether.”

Firms who have made positive changes are acknowledged at their Menopause Friendly Employer Awards – this year’s ceremony was hosted by presenter Lisa Snowdon.

Henpicked has also raised £190,000 for menopause charities and research, including a study into menopause and autism by Bournemouth University.

“That is going to have a global impact,” says Deborah. “One thing most people didn’t know was that more women are diagnosed with autism during the menopause transition than at any other time. It’s generally because girls have different coping mechanisms to mask it. But when the menopause hits, that’s when those coping mechanisms don’t work.”

Next month they are also rolling out some groundbreaking work on menopause and osteoporosis with the Royal Society of Osteoporosis. And then there’s the training they provide in 33 languages. “We’ve recently done a rollout in and have got people from the Australian parliament coming to look at the things we are doing. The important thing is informed choice. And knowledge is power.”

How has she used that? “I look after my nutrition and exercise better than I did. And I manage my stress. I am more level now and am actually all right at this age. When I used to have periods, I would have weeks where I felt I could take on the and others where I didn’t want to do anything at all. All of that has gone. It’s a privilege to be able to explore the menopause with so many inspirational people. It still is my passion.”

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