I’m Kirstin Bouse, Clinical Psychologist, mentor, writer, and a woman who discovered that perimenopause isn’t a gentle nudge. It’s a full-scale internal uprising, the kind that sweeps through your life without warning and insists you pay attention.

I didn’t step into this work because it looked neat or inspirational. I stepped into it because it dismantled me first.

I spent seven long years in the trenches of perimenopause. Exhausted to the marrow, losing words mid-sentence, crying at the slightest provocation, mood swings with the power of a small cyclone, and holding together a life that suddenly felt too small. HRT didn’t help me at all. And yes, there’s a skip-bin story that my family still brings up like it’s folklore.

And perimenopause didn’t hit me in isolation. I was also navigating divorce, raising kids, building and selling an 18-year-strong group psych practice, and living in a seven-year “living-apart-together” relationship long before it was a TikTok trend.

All of it pushed on every raw edge I had. All of it exposed the places I’d been holding my breath or holding myself back.

I’ve worked across courtrooms, hospitals, prisons, universities, and therapy rooms for nearly three decades. I can handle complex human stories. But nothing cracked me open like midlife.

And weirdly, that cracking was my turning point.

Perimenopause stripped me down to my truth.

It revealed every pattern of self-silencing, self-sacrificing and ultimately, self-abandonment.
It forced me to stop carrying everyone else’s emotional luggage.