Ep 39: Erin Lovingfoss, Loving Your Pause: Menopause, Medicine & Making Yourself Heard

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Erin Lovingfoss shares her personal journey through menopause after a hysterectomy, detailing the lack of medical support and misdiagnosis s

Key takeaways

• Many women experience severe menopausal symptoms after surgery but are dismissed or misdiagnosed as depressed or stressed.
• Medical professionals often fail to connect post-hysterectomy symptoms with hormonal changes, leading to prolonged suffering.

Main topics

• Menopause after hysterectomy
• Medical misdiagnosis and patient advocacy

Notable quotes

My body is not betraying me. It is asking for a new way to thrive.

We need information, options, and most importantly, we need to be heard.

Conclusion

Erin Lovingfoss's story underscores the urgent need for better education, empathy, and

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:08) Welcome back to SheCommerce, where power women and real talk collide in the CPG world. I'm Christina. And I'm Jackie. And we have a great episode for you where we really are going to be supporting the she side of our business, SheCommerce. Jackie, I have a hypothetical. Imagine you're... She's trying to see the side. Speaker 1 (0:37) You Speaker 2 (0:37) know what I'm saying? Speaker 2 (0:40) Imagine you're going through a major surgery and only years after you discover that no one prepared you for what might happen next. And some of those things that happen next could be mood changes, anxiety, a host of other physical symptoms, just an innate feeling that you're not yourself, but you don't know why. And then you finally ask for help and you're told it's just stress or maybe it's depression or just you need to live with this. Speaker 1 (1:17) That's your new normal. Well, of course, but today, today we're calling bullshit on the silence surrounding perimenopause and menopause because women are still entering one of the most significant transitions of their lives without enough information, without enough support, and far too often without anyone actually listening properly. Speaker 2 (1:45) Yeah. And this conversation matters for those of you at home, in the doctor's office and in the workplace, because menopause is not just a personal issue. It affects how women feel, how they lead, how they perform at their jobs and whether they feel supported enough to stay and thrive in their careers. Speaker 1 (2:10) Absolutely. I mean, today's guest knows that journey personally. After undergoing a hysterectomy in 2019, Erin Lovingfoss began experiencing symptoms several years later that included mood swings, anxiety, depression, and the sense that there's something that's just not right. Because you know, right? You know how you would normally react to something. And her search for answers eventually led to... her to a practitioner who, shock horror, actually paid attention and listened, and to a treatment path that helped her begin to feel like herself again. Speaker 2 (2:50) Yes, but Erin didn't stop at finding answers just for herself. She went on to study menopause coaching and build a community of support, creating Loving Your Paws. all while continuing a career built on over two decades in the beverage industry. Speaker 1 (3:11) And how incredible is that, that someone who went through the trauma of not being able to figure out what was going on found it and didn't say, no, I found it. I'm okay. If I had to go through the pain, other people do. No, no, no, no. Erin didn't do that. She decided to talk about medical self-advocacy, paying it forward, talking about menopausal work, sexual wellness, everyday habits, and what it means to turn a personal health journey into a second calling, bringing it and paying it forward to the community of women out there. Speaker 2 (3:48) Yes, and that's what we call boss female leadership in action. Erin, welcome to SheCommerce. Speaker 3 (3:57) Thank you, ladies. I'm so excited to be here. That was an amazing intro. Speaker 1 (4:02) Glad you're here. So glad. It's Speaker 2 (4:05) amazing what you've done. So, yeah, we're inviting you in. We want to have this chat. We also want to spill some tea, right, Jackie? Speaker 1 (4:13) Oh, yes, absolutely. We are going to spill some. I'm really into my types of tea. Speaker 2 (4:21) You're like. Speaker 1 (4:23) Oh my God, here we go. Yes, what? Darjeeling, something, Speaker 2 (4:27) something tea. You Speaker 1 (4:28) have Darjeeling now. Speaker 2 (4:30) Yes. She asked me the other day, what kind of tea is this? I'm like, I don't know, chamomile, like black tea, Lipton, like what are we looking for here? Speaker 1 (4:41) Seriously. Speaker 2 (4:42) She's fancy. Speaker 1 (4:43) She's fancy. I am so fancy. But now I'm going to be talking about drones, AI, and the women behind the headlines. Okay, Christina, it's officially time to have a sip of Darjeeling, darling. And today's tea is incredibly future forward. We've got drones delivering your dinner and potentially one of the biggest IPOs in history. Speaker 2 (5:08) Seriously. So basically, the future of commerce is flying over our heads and being powered by robots. Totally normal. So maybe let's start with the DoorDash piece. So at the end of July, DoorDash announced that it received FAA Part 135 air carrier certification, sounds very official, and launched DoorDash Air, its own in-house drone delivery program. Speaker 1 (5:35) That's just, I mean, that's, but that's not just a cute innovation story, right? That certification is a huge. Because DoorDash says it is only the eighth drone operator to receive that. And the company is building the program directly into its existing marketplace rather than treating drones like some separate science experiment. Speaker 2 (6:00) Yeah, that's really cool. And that's the interesting part from like a commerce perspective, because this is not about the. technology or the medium. It's not about the drone alone. It's about the network, right, that they're building. And I think by doing that, they're essentially saying we have dashers, the humans that deliver. We have autonomous vehicles in some markets. We have robots. And now we have drones. And our platform is going to be the one deciding which of those fulfillment methods makes the most sense for each order and optimizing. obviously, to incremental profit and speed, customer service, et cetera. So that changes the conversation from how fast can I deliver to what is the smartest way to fulfill Speaker 1 (6:54) this specific trip. Exactly. And there is a real operational reason behind this. DoorDash has said that more than 20 % of its orders in 2025 traveled between three and five miles, and those trips took almost 25 % longer. than shorter deliveries. Their argument is that drones could take some of those mid-range trips, while dashers focus on shorter deliveries and the orders that autonomy can't easily handle. Speaker 2 (7:31) Interesting. Yeah. And so brands, retailers that are listening, here's the so what. The consumer expectation around immediacy is not going anywhere. Like, spoiler alert, it's definitely not going backwards. So if drone delivery makes certain orders even faster or more economical, suddenly the use case gets even more interesting. Like, think about cold medicine, a missing ingredient when you're in the middle of cooking a meal, coffee, maybe a heating pad for your cramps that suddenly come on, a forgotten item before a kids game. I think this changes what people consider worth ordering for delivery. Speaker 3 (8:18) We just found out where I live in the suburbs of Illinois that they're going to be delivering Amazon packages within 30 minutes. Speaker 2 (8:25) Via drone. Speaker 3 (8:27) Via drone. Speaker 1 (8:27) Via drone. Oh. Soon. Now, here's the thing, though, Erin. This completely changes the definition of impulse buying, right? Because now your impulses are arriving from the sky. That's just exciting. I feel like Speaker 2 (8:43) there's a shock and awe appeal Speaker 1 (8:45) to that. It's feeding the addiction. It's feeding the addiction. It's super feeding my addiction. Speaker 3 (8:51) Imagine a neighborhood just alone is going to have drones constantly over it. Imagining how many times Amazon packages get dropped off at their doors. What's happening? We're going to get used to a constant buzz. Speaker 2 (9:03) Oh, God. Speaker 3 (9:05) Think Speaker 2 (9:06) about a kid's birthday party and you having a drone drop in like the pinata or like a candle. Speaker 3 (9:12) Like you, I mean, that's like. rockstar level. Speaker 2 (9:17) I wonder if there's like a weight limit though. Like what if it's carrying, I don't know. It Speaker 3 (9:22) did say there was a weight limit. I want to say it was under 10 pounds. Oh Speaker 1 (9:27) man. If there was a weight limit that was just maybe 10 pounds over my weight. Can you take me to the office? All right. Speaker 2 (9:37) Oh, my gosh. All right. Story number two. And this one is very she commerce. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, maybe you've heard of it, is reportedly preparing for what could become the largest IPO ever. Erin, have you heard this yet? I don't think I have. OK, so before I tell you what the potential valuation is at, give me a guess what you think it's at. Speaker 3 (10:07) Oh, gosh. I have no idea what number. Billions. Speaker 3 (10:12) Right? And that's a Speaker 2 (10:13) lot. Well, you got to go, you got to add some more zero. Speaker 3 (10:19) Oh, trillions. We're talking trillions here, huh? Two trillion. Speaker 2 (10:23) Two trillion. Two hundred trillion. Two trillion dollars. Who said it doesn't even Speaker 1 (10:30) sound right? A trillion dollars. Speaker 2 (10:31) Wow. Speaker 1 (10:33) Do you remember Austin Powers where one million dollars was like a big deal? And now it's like $1 million. Please. That's how much I pay for my Starbucks. We're talking trillions now. Yeah. Rolling in the trillions. Speaker 2 (10:49) Okay. So we'll caveat saying this is still speculation, right, around the eventual public market valuation. It's not a guaranteed IPO price. We have to disclaimer. But that's the level that is being thrown out there right now. Speaker 1 (11:08) But also, here's the thing, Aaron. Speaker 1 (11:12) Christina knows that I have a very special place in my heart for Anthropic because I am basically a dork at heart. And Anthropic is just so much more. And I think maybe I have a crush on Claude. I'm not sure. I'm working through my emotions there. But the post that really, really caught our attention was from Jenny Stokovic. Because instead of only talking about the giant valuation, which is, you know, gigantic. Speaker 1 (11:40) She asked a really, really brilliant question here. And that is, who are the women helping build this company? And the coolest thing is, which is probably what makes me have a girl crush on Anthropic, there are a lot of them. Oh, that Speaker 2 (12:01) is so exciting. Christina, take it away. Name the names. So there's Daniela Amode. who co-founded Anthropic with her brother, Dario. But I feel like Dario gets a lot of the press and the buzz and she's kind of behind the scenes a bit. Then you look deeper and you see women that are holding leadership roles across product, governance, investing, communications. On the tech side, we have Amanda Askell who helped shape Claude's values and behavior. Speaker 1 (12:33) She's written the ethical white paper. She is the author of that ethical white paper, which is, love that. Speaker 2 (12:40) You have Amy Vora, who leads product after a long career with both Meta and FAIR. Diane Penn, who has helped ship Claude products. And Sasha DeMargny, I might be messing that up, but she's built Anthropix communications function as well. It's just a whole host of women driving that company forward. And Speaker 1 (13:06) if that's not a clear sign that more women need to embrace and invest in AI and practicing and using it in their everyday lives, then honey, you ain't been listening, right? And this is exactly why we talk so much about visibility, because when a company becomes worth hundreds of... billions or potentially in this case, trillions. I don't even know how many zeros that is to be fair. The headline usually becomes founder, CEO, valuation, IPO. Speaker 2 (13:43) But we know that companies are not built by one person and women are often sitting in these incredibly consequential roles, shaping the product, the strategy, the governance, the capital, the culture. without becoming part of that very public narrative. And that's what we want to change. Speaker 1 (14:03) Which is the she commerce takeaway for me. And I love that Jenny brought this out and, you know, blasted it on LinkedIn. We need to stop waiting until women become CEOs before we decide their leadership story is so worth telling. Speaker 2 (14:19) Yes, because influence does not only live at the top of an org chart. And if AI is going to reshape commerce, work, media, our personalized, basically everything, we should absolutely know who is helping make the decisions behind it. Speaker 1 (14:39) So today's Lapsang Sushong, commerce is moving faster. Delivery is moving into the sky. AI valuations are moving into numbers that I don't even know what they look like in terms of zeros. Speaker 2 (14:55) Mm-hmm. And we are going to keep asking the other question, where are the women shaping it all? T-spill. Now, all right. So let's talk about the woman that's shaping the conversation and normalizing the conversation around perimenopause and menopause and get into today's conversation. Speaker 2 (15:19) All right. So, Erin, again, thank you so much for joining us and being willing to share your story and, you know, be vulnerable for our guests and our community. Let's start at the beginning of your story. I know Jackie kind of touched on it in the opening, but if you could take us back to your hysterectomy in 2019 and, yeah, walk us through, like, what were you told to expect and what were you not told? Speaker 3 (15:45) Yeah. I feel like I really wasn't told much. I had the hysterectomy. I was having so much pain, painful, you know, periods, all of that stuff where it really led to I was done having children. Let's have this hysterectomy. And pretty much just sent home. I had two C-sections. So I was kind of like, oh, they're like, it'll be a recovery, kind of like your C-sections, right? So I was like, okay, great. Went home, dealt with that. They did leave one ovary. which I think is why I didn't go into full, you know, menopause then. And maybe that's why they felt they didn't need to say anything or maybe just weren't trained to say anything. From what I'm reading a lot about, it's really just, it's not necessarily the doctor's fault. They're not trained to teach us or educate us on these things yet. And that is changing, thank God. But no, I was just kind of sent back home. And then a couple of years later, like I said, I started having symptoms. I've always been extremely like, go-getter, always the planner, always, you know, on top of it at work and never struggled with depression or anxiety. And I just did not feel like myself. I didn't understand what was happening. I was kind of like pulling myself back socially and even at work, just like lost a lot of confidence that I, you know, had. just not feeling like myself, which when I talk to a lot of women, that's their number one complaint of starting this process Speaker 2 (17:10) is I just don't feel like myself. So Speaker 3 (17:13) I went to the doctor, kind of explained that, had her palpitations. They wanted to give me a depression, anxiety meds. I was like, I've never struggled with either of those. I'm not really comfortable. I didn't want to go on meds. I think that they serve their purpose and that's fine. for people that need it. I just felt like I wasn't one of those people. So I kind of pushed through, um, kept going. Um, but then like, like I said, the heart palpitations, um, I started having even some like acid reflux where things were cut, like. Coming up and I didn't understand why that was happening. Ended up in the emergency room