In her new column for Platinum, businesswoman Heather Jackson shares the ups and downs of her personal and professional life, and why she fights every day to help women in midlife feel better represented and valued in society.
WORDS: HEATHER JACKSON. IMAGES: CHANTEL KING, GENM.
Four years ago I was on top of the world! Aged 50, I’d just sold my business, and I was a single mother to grown-up kids who’d moved out. I was ready for a guilt-free Thelma and Louise-esque adventure where I could tick off everything from my bucket list, starting with Mount Kilimanjaro and Everest base camp. I’d worked hard my whole life and now felt I’d earned some unapologetic “me time”.
With my periods still regular, I was deliriously ignorant of the oncoming perimenopause that would soon have a huge impact on my life. An impact that would eventually lead my friend Sam Simister (above, right) and I to create GenM – The Menopause Partner for brands including M&S, Co-op, LK Bennett, Holland & Barrett and many more.
It all started when I met Sam for lunch one afternoon, back in July 2019, and she noticed that, since last seeing me, I’d lost weight, lost hair and completely lost my mojo! When she hugged me, I burst into tears. Always a great friend, Sam took me away to Portugal that September and it ended up changing both our lives. On the beach, she told me I might be perimenopausal. I’d never heard the word and had assumed menopause was at least a decade away.
But it would explain the way I had been feeling and my symptoms. Glad to know I wasn’t dying, my joy soon turned to dismay as I traversed the web and realised how difficult it was to find products to support my symptoms. This mirrored Sam’s experience, who told me about having meltdowns in shops searching for sweat-wicking pyjamas, creams for dry skin and shampoos for thinning hair. We thought, surely we weren’t the only ones having this experience. Turns out we weren’t!
PUTTING MENOPAUSE ON THE MAP
We invested in a ground-breaking survey of 2,000 menopausal women, which we named The Invisibility Report and whi
