146: The Invisible Struggles of Menopause as a Childless Woman

When you're childless, midlife and menopause can feel like much more than a biological transition. It's a spiritual reckoning. Especially when the world thinks that the only value women add after menopause is "grandmother" - and you don't get to be one.

In this deeply honest episode, we’re naming what few dare to say: that for childless women, midlife and menopause come with a unique, often invisible layer of grief. Not just hot flashes—but heartbreak. Not just hormone shifts—but identity shifts. 

✨ If you're silently asking yourself:

• “What’s my worth now if I’m not a mother?”
• “Will I be forgotten as I age?”
• "What's my legacy going to be?"
   …this episode is for you.

We explore:

 🔹 The silent grief of childlessness that menopause brings to the surface
 🔹 Why traditional wellness and empowerment models miss the mark for women like you
 🔹 The myth of irrelevance—and how patriarchy and pronatalism shape our fears
 🔹 How to redefine legacy, worth, and purpose on your own terms
🔹 How to Rise and Reclaim your worth and take on a soul-honouring path forward

If you want to know more about how to gracefully navigate menopause as a childless woman, send me an email at sheri@sherijohnson.ca with the word PROGRAM. 

Where to find Sheri:
Instagram: @sherijohnsoncoaching
Website: sherijohnson.ca

Transcript

Sheri Johnson: Oh, do I have a juicy topic for you today.

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Sheri Johnson: I don't know if I've ever talked about this on the podcast. But I definitely talk about it. An awful lot.

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Sheri Johnson: And that is menopause for us childless women. Menopause isn't just a biological transition.

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Sheri Johnson: It can actually feel like a spiritual reckoning

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Sheri Johnson: the world has actually started talking about the change a lot more.

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Sheri Johnson: a lot more in general. So a lot of women on Instagram these days talking about the physical symptoms, maybe the emotional ones. But

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Sheri Johnson: what I'm not hearing people talk about is the grief

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Sheri Johnson: that a childless woman goes through

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Sheri Johnson: at the end of her fertile years.

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Sheri Johnson: And sure some parents, a lot of parents, will go through this as well, because

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Sheri Johnson: the empty nest syndrome is real.

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Sheri Johnson: There's grief when you go through that kind of a transition. The children leave the house, leave the nest.

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Sheri Johnson: but it's different than the kind of grief of never having that nest filled. In the 1st place.

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Sheri Johnson: when that door is closed for good, and in the middle of it you're dealing with all of the physical symptoms

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Sheri Johnson: and everything else.

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Sheri Johnson: So midlife for the childless woman for you is layered.

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Sheri Johnson: It's hot flashes and it's heartbreak.

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Sheri Johnson: So this episode is for you. If you have ever wondered.

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Sheri Johnson: Okay, I'm at the end of the line. I'm not a mother. I'm I'm not becoming a mother. So who am I becoming?

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Sheri Johnson: And maybe if you're someone who is into menopause into your menopausal years.

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Sheri Johnson: You might be thinking, Well, what is my value in the world?

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Sheri Johnson: Because we're all impacted by that cultural narrative that

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Sheri Johnson: tells us that the only valuable role for women after menopause is grandmother.

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Sheri Johnson: So what happens when we don't get to be that

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Sheri Johnson: if you want to find out.

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Sheri Johnson: stay tuned. We're going to dive deep on this one.

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Sheri Johnson: Welcome back to the awakening worth podcast welcome. If you are a new listener, I am so happy that you are here that you found me, and I hope you will stick with me. There are lots and lots of episodes to listen to before this one, and I've got another one coming up next week.

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Sheri Johnson: So

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Sheri Johnson: for today, this has been a theme coming up inside of my program, and also just kind of floating out there on social media.

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Sheri Johnson: And so every month inside of the women of Worth program.

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Sheri Johnson: we have the core foundational program. But then each month I also layer on a theme

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Sheri Johnson: what I'm seeing, what I'm hearing, what seems to be really on people's minds. And this past these past few weeks it's been the body.

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Sheri Johnson: and it's been menopause.

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Sheri Johnson: So I want to talk about some of the things that might be different for you that are coming up, and what I think is missing out there in the Menopause space when it comes to helping and supporting women through it.

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Sheri Johnson: So 1st of all, let's talk about this invisible layer of grief.

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Sheri Johnson: So I'll tell you my story, and and you have. You might have heard this before. If you've been with me for a while.

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Sheri Johnson: I had 3 miscarriages between the ages of 39, and 42, and

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Sheri Johnson: I also had went subsequently, went through some fertility treatments, and I thought that I had unexplained infertility. There didn't appear to be anything wrong with me.

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Sheri Johnson: and what I realized was really going on when I finally saw an infertility, doctor, was that

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Sheri Johnson: I was in perimenopause.

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Sheri Johnson: So it wasn't that there was something wrong with me. I thought there was something broken. There was something wrong with me, something wrong with my body? No, it was just going through the normal course of nature.

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Sheri Johnson: I was beginning to go through perimenopause, which is the period of

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Sheri Johnson: it can be up to 10 years prior to the actual

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Sheri Johnson: of your period before the actual point of menopause.

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Sheri Johnson: So you can start feeling symptoms, or you're

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Sheri Johnson: your egg quality may begin to deteriorate even in your late thirties.

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Sheri Johnson: So that's what I was going through.

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Sheri Johnson: There wasn't something broken. And yet.

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Sheri Johnson: because I was going through this it became very confusing, I think, because I was trying to get pregnant

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Sheri Johnson: in my forties.

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Sheri Johnson: Suddenly I became very attuned to my hormones and everything that was going on, and it seemed way too early to me to be going through men through perimenopause. So I just yeah chalked it up to.

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Sheri Johnson: There's something wrong with me.

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Sheri Johnson: So you find out when you are in perimenopause, even if you're not really feeling symptoms

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Sheri Johnson: when you're going through infertility treatments. You're going to find out because

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Sheri Johnson: you're gonna you're gonna find out exactly where your hormones are at. They're going to tell you your egg quality is deteriorating.

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Sheri Johnson: And so you're going to know exactly where you're at.

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Sheri Johnson: So that's where I was when I was

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Sheri Johnson: 42, 43, 44.

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Sheri Johnson: And so then I found myself going through this period of

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Sheri Johnson: grief at the same time that I was starting to experience physical symptoms, and

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Sheri Johnson: those symptoms for me lasted. I didn't have really deep symptoms. I was taking pretty good care of myself physically.

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Sheri Johnson: but I did get some night sweats and definitely, some memory issues. Lots of little things, and

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Sheri Johnson: I was sort of grappling with that as I, until the moment that my period finally went away for good, which was when I was about 48.

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Sheri Johnson: So when you're going through all of this, and

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Sheri Johnson: you know, feeling this looming end of that window of fertility

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Sheri Johnson: happening at the same time there can be all sorts of emotions on top of the emotions that you're feeling because of the hormone shifts.

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Sheri Johnson: And really I wonder whether whether you really, truly grieve until menopause hits.

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Sheri Johnson: There might be grief before then, of course.

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Sheri Johnson: but I found, and I'm seeing this in a lot of my clients, that until they actually hit menopause.

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Sheri Johnson: there's always this little bit of hope

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Sheri Johnson: I still felt like, well, if I'm still getting a period I might still get pregnant.

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Sheri Johnson: and sometimes I'd feel some symptoms that I thought were kind of similar to what I had felt when I was pregnant, and

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Sheri Johnson: and I would wonder, oh, maybe I am pregnant.

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Sheri Johnson: It's not out of the question you hear about women who suddenly, surprisingly get pregnant in their forties.

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Sheri Johnson: I knew someone who had 2 children in her forties.

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Sheri Johnson: and so that hope kind of lingers until the door is really closed.

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Sheri Johnson: So

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Sheri Johnson: that moment that time when you're going through the the latter stages, and or you've stopped your period. That's when

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Sheri Johnson: maybe a second layer of grief or the 1st can really hit.

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Sheri Johnson: and the finality of that hits, then.

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Sheri Johnson: So there can be this delayed grief. So even if you're someone who.

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Sheri Johnson: for example, is partnered with someone who didn't want kids.

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Sheri Johnson: you know, there might still be that little bit of hope.

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Sheri Johnson: Maybe we'll still, maybe he'll change his mind still.

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Sheri Johnson: because I'm still able to get pregnant.

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Sheri Johnson: so that may or may not be you, but I do see that happening inside of my program, and that was my story.

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Sheri Johnson: So

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Sheri Johnson: inside of the women of Worth we not only name this grief. We talk about it. We don't stop there.

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Sheri Johnson: We actually use it as a gateway to liberation.

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Sheri Johnson: We can use your grief as a catalyst for growth and

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Sheri Johnson: the end of one identity, which is really what this is. It's the end of maybe more than one identity. It can also be the beginning of another.

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Sheri Johnson: And that's the way that we

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Sheri Johnson: inside of the women of Worth. We can process that grief, but also

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Sheri Johnson: shift the identity to allow you to let go of the identities that you might be holding onto, and that that is actually what's keeping you stuck.

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Sheri Johnson: Something else I want to talk about is the myth of irrelevance.

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Sheri Johnson: So there is this fear out there that

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Sheri Johnson: I think I had running underneath the surface. I don't think I was fully conscious of it. But it is something that I hear

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Sheri Johnson: a lot of my clients talking about, and that is the fear of aging without children.

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Sheri Johnson: and the fact that aging without children makes us invisible.

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Sheri Johnson: We feel invisible at times, anyway, and patriarchy and pronatalism really reinforced this.

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Sheri Johnson: There's the cultural narrative that youthful mothers equals valuable aging, childless women equals invisible, forgettable.

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Sheri Johnson: And this is really reinforced in the media and through advertising.

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Sheri Johnson: Just think of all of the

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Sheri Johnson: anti-aging products that are out there all the messaging that tells us

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Sheri Johnson: we need to do this in order to stay looking young, we need to do that

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Sheri Johnson: in order to feel youthful.

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Sheri Johnson: how to get rid of wrinkles, how to get fuller lips all of those things, how to cover up your grays.

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Sheri Johnson: all of these things that keep us looking youthful, sometimes feeling youthful.

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Sheri Johnson: And there's so much media and advertising out there around that

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Sheri Johnson: that, of course, like, that's a lot to go up against. Of course we're going to feel like.

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Sheri Johnson: If you don't look youthful. If we're not youthful.

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Sheri Johnson: then we must not be valuable, and on top of that

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Sheri Johnson: there is ageism, you know. The workplace becomes more difficult, more challenging. It becomes harder to get jobs. I've also felt that.

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Sheri Johnson: And I have been in human resources for a lot of my career. Before I started coaching

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Sheri Johnson: I saw that happen.

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Sheri Johnson: Managers would

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Sheri Johnson: would judge people for, however, what their you know, they would try to guess their age if they couldn't see it on their resume. Nowadays they just look on Facebook.

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Sheri Johnson: and that is real. So there is.

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Sheri Johnson: There is this cultural narrative out there that youth equals value aging does not.

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Sheri Johnson: And I really want to change that. By the way.

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Sheri Johnson: and just by talking about it, kind of releases some of that. It releases the shame around that it.

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Sheri Johnson: It gets people standing in their own power and taking back their self-worth. We've equated youth to worth.

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Sheri Johnson: And that's really what we need to take back ourselves. We can't ask society to make us valuable. We need to actually stand in our power to take back, reclaim

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Sheri Johnson: our own self-worth.

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Sheri Johnson: And that's actually how society makes us question our worth.

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Sheri Johnson: It's through those shifts in our body, our appearance, our energy.

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Sheri Johnson: That's what society uses. That's what they use to advertise to us is your body's changing. You want to lose the belly fat. Do this. You want to cover up your grays. Use this product.

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Sheri Johnson: That is how society gets us to question our worth.

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Sheri Johnson: What I see in the menopause space

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Sheri Johnson: out there right now on social media. And even I've looked into other people's programs because I used to.

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Sheri Johnson: I used to have my own program on midlife and menopause.

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Sheri Johnson: So most of the wellness advice around it is really about either managing symptoms

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Sheri Johnson: or staying how to stay youthful, how to look youthful, but rarely do I hear.

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Sheri Johnson: Do I hear anyone talk in the menopause space about identity, the transition from

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Sheri Johnson: even for the parents, the transition from mother to

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Sheri Johnson: who are you now when your kids don't need mothering.

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Sheri Johnson: They might need guidance or support.

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Sheri Johnson: but they don't need to be mothered.

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Sheri Johnson: So for women who don't have kids.

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Sheri Johnson: we're also shifting identities from. I wanted to be a mother to

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Sheri Johnson: who am I now for the next half of my life? Potentially.

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Sheri Johnson: those are the kinds of questions that we ask and answer

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Sheri Johnson: inside of the women of worth? It's who who are we? Now? What do we really desire? What do we want next? What do we want our next chapter to look like.

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Sheri Johnson: and that's what I see as missing out there

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Sheri Johnson: in both the childless space and in the Menopause Space.

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Sheri Johnson: Now

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Sheri Johnson: the last. Well, a couple more things I want to talk about. Why, most healing models don't work for us.

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Sheri Johnson: Most of the healing work this kind of tags on to what I was just talking about.

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Sheri Johnson: Most of the healing work out there doesn't account for

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Sheri Johnson: living in a pronatalist culture. Nobody talks about pronatalism. You might not even know what that is. And that's okay. I didn't, either, until I,

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Sheri Johnson: until I really leaned into becoming a child to being a woman without kids

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Sheri Johnson: pronatalism. I have other episodes on that. So just check those out

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Sheri Johnson: if you want to know more about prenatalism.

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Sheri Johnson: But essentially, it's it's our culture that

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Sheri Johnson: that is pro-birth pro children, pro-parent, pro-parenting. And it's all of the

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Sheri Johnson: all of the policies, religion, government, everything that kind of supports that encourages it.

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Sheri Johnson: even society that tells us we're going to regret it if we don't have kids.

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Sheri Johnson: So that's prenatalism. And most of the work around menopause doesn't account for that

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Sheri Johnson: most people are parents, majority of

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Sheri Johnson: women in their forties and fifties and sixties are.

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Sheri Johnson: It doesn't account for having grief with no visible loss. So maybe there are

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Sheri Johnson: programs, accounts, people talking about the empty nest, and how to manage that, how to get through that grief.

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Sheri Johnson: But not a lot are talking about

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Sheri Johnson: having this grief without a visible loss, without a visible change.

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Sheri Johnson: And then there's also being a woman who still might have dreams, but no roadmap.

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Sheri Johnson: There's sort of a roadmap for a parent, for a mother.

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Sheri Johnson: You know you. You have children. You do this when they're toddlers. You do this when they're teenagers, you take them to their sports, things, their dance, their gymnastics, whatever it is, and then you send them off to college or university, and you support them there and then maybe you even support them for longer.

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Sheri Johnson: and then

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Sheri Johnson: they start their lives and you support them while they get jobs and get married, and then they have children, and you become a grandmother, and then you support them. Then. So there's a roadmap

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Sheri Johnson: for a parent.

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Sheri Johnson: There is no roadmap for a woman who doesn't have kids.

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Sheri Johnson: And that's what I want to provide is it's helping you. And this is a roadmap that you actually need to create. That's the thing.

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Sheri Johnson: And if you don't know how to create that, that's what makes it

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Sheri Johnson: a challenge to envision what life can look like when you don't have kids.

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Sheri Johnson: So all of the frameworks out there

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Sheri Johnson: assume motherhood or motherhood is at the center of it, and that leaves childless women

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Sheri Johnson: kind of in limbo, unseen, unserviced.

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Sheri Johnson: So my framework was actually built for women like you childless women who are trying to redefine themselves beyond motherhood and

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Sheri Johnson: in menopause. So 2 major transitions, 2 major changes in identity that are going on at the same time, which is sort of a double whammy.

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Sheri Johnson: The next thing that I hear a lot about in my program from my clients, from my followers is

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Sheri Johnson: what was it all for?

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Sheri Johnson: If I'm not having kids, what's my, what's my legacy? What am I leaving behind

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Sheri Johnson: and facing midlife and menopause. This can often bring. Bring up grief around that.

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Sheri Johnson: This feeling like.

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Sheri Johnson: maybe I what is my legacy? I don't have. You know my lineage is not carrying on

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Sheri Johnson: menopause is a real biological and emotional marker.

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Sheri Johnson: That is, it marks the the finality of something

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Sheri Johnson: of one chapter of your life.

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Sheri Johnson: So it's natural and normal for thoughts like.

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Sheri Johnson: I don't have anything to pass on.

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Sheri Johnson: and I don't have anything to pass this on to

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Sheri Johnson: so your own keepsakes, your memories, your knowledge, wisdom

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Sheri Johnson: there might be thoughts of like, who am I going to pass that all on to?

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Sheri Johnson: And who am I going to leave my

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Sheri Johnson: legacy? 2? Maybe that's money. Maybe that's maybe that's your wisdom. Maybe that's your stuff. Maybe it's

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Sheri Johnson: I don't know whatever there's so many different ways that people leave legacies.

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Sheri Johnson: And the big thing that I teach in that

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Sheri Johnson: I want you to take away from this episode

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Sheri Johnson: is that your legacy is not in who you birth, and

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Sheri Johnson: it's also not necessary to pass on things wisdom stuff.

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Sheri Johnson: That's actually. I say this with love.

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Sheri Johnson: because I think the word ego has a lot of charge around it.

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Sheri Johnson: But really your ego is just your brain keeping you safe, and

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Sheri Johnson: there's ego in wanting to leave something behind wanting to be remembered

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Sheri Johnson: for something, or just simply wanting to be remembered.

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Sheri Johnson: That's that's your ego that wants that.

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Sheri Johnson: and we can let that go.

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Sheri Johnson: and we can also reframe that

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Sheri Johnson: your legacy is is in how you live. It's who you touch.

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Sheri Johnson: It's the impact that you make.

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Sheri Johnson: And that's the kind of thing that that we talk about in on our group calls and in the program is what kind of impact do you want to leave behind, regardless of your lineage.

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Sheri Johnson: So that's maybe a question that you can take away now

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Sheri Johnson: is, what kind of person do you want to be?

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Sheri Johnson: What kind of impact do you want to leave

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Sheri Johnson: on the people that you interact with?

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Sheri Johnson: And the last thing

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Sheri Johnson: I want to? Just maybe this is more of a reiteration than a new thing. But self-worth

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Sheri Johnson: in a changing body.

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Sheri Johnson: Menopause can really bring up the physical changes that menopause brings can really bring up or ignite

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Sheri Johnson: old wounds around body image, and most of us, I dare say women have struggled with body image.

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Sheri Johnson: I don't know too many women who haven't, at least at some point, it also might bring up

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Sheri Johnson: stuff about desirability.

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Sheri Johnson: When Jodi Day came on my podcast she talked about the shift of the male gaze.

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Sheri Johnson: and I had actually not thought about that.

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Sheri Johnson: But after that, after she said that I started to notice it all. The young men call me ma'am, instead of miss.

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Sheri Johnson: and they they didn't, you know, give me a second look.

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Sheri Johnson: And so I started to notice. Oh.

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Sheri Johnson: I'm I'm I am kind of invisible.

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Sheri Johnson: So that's another thing that can come.

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Sheri Johnson: and with the changing the other thing that I would add to that the physical changes can also bring a little bit of fear.

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Sheri Johnson: because we also have a societal narrative that

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Sheri Johnson: well, that's just what happens. When you get old, your body breaks down, you get sick.

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Sheri Johnson: you get diseases, you get cancer, you get heart disease diabetes, whatever

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Sheri Johnson: that's what happens. Your body breaks down.

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Sheri Johnson: And so then that brings up the fear

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Sheri Johnson: fears around aging. And who's going to care for me so

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Sheri Johnson: well. I would like to just end that narrative altogether, because that doesn't have to be that way. That is such a myth that our bodies just simply break down. Sure, our bodies age.

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Sheri Johnson: but they don't have to get sick.

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Sheri Johnson: They don't have to get cancer or arthritis or diabetes.

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Sheri Johnson: Those are all Western Western disorders.

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Sheri Johnson: So I could do a whole like series of podcasts on that. But

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Sheri Johnson: just go watch the blue zones to get a taste of that, but I've done a ton of studying on that, because I'm super interested in it.

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Sheri Johnson: And there's tons of books out there that really show that have studied

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Sheri Johnson: more remote tribes that haven't been subjected to our Western culture. And there's all kinds of things that they do differently, and they don't experience all of these things.

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Sheri Johnson: So part of our power comes from

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Sheri Johnson: dissing that social narrative, that cultural narrative.

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Sheri Johnson: and taking the best care of our bodies that we possibly can. Let's do what we what is in our control

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Sheri Johnson: to mitigate.

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Sheri Johnson: I'm of the mind that I'm not going to need somebody to care for me

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Sheri Johnson: so, and maybe my head is up in the clouds. But

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Sheri Johnson: that's where I'm going with it.

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Sheri Johnson: and I don't have the fear as a result of that, so I don't want to live the next 50 years in fear. I don't want to live the next 10 years in fear when I'm probably going to be pretty healthy.

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Sheri Johnson: Okay?

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Sheri Johnson: So I think I've said enough about

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Sheri Johnson: the things that I really wanted to get you thinking about, and all of the things that I see are missing in the conversations around menopause and midlife.

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Sheri Johnson: And

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Sheri Johnson: and these are all the things that we are talking about specifically this month. So our theme this month inside the women of Worth is

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Sheri Johnson: aging and menopause, and how we navigate that as childless women.

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Sheri Johnson: So if you want to be a part of that.

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Sheri Johnson: I have lots of special vip content. That is that I'm that I've created around that.

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Sheri Johnson: And

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Sheri Johnson: if you want that, I'm offering that as a vip bonus when you sign up for the women of Worth

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Sheri Johnson: this week.

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Sheri Johnson: And, by the way, the women of Worth is coming to a close, I won't be offering this going. This is the last time I'm actually offering it.

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Sheri Johnson: So if you want in, now is the time, because it's going away.

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Sheri Johnson: And so you're going to want to jump in. I've only got 10 spots so.

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Sheri Johnson: and that's at the time of this recording. So

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Sheri Johnson: if you want in what you need to do is email me at sherry at Sherryjohnson. Ca, that's down in the show notes. So check there for the correct spelling.

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Sheri Johnson: Send me an email with word program and we'll chat.

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Sheri Johnson: I'll get you the details. You can find out if it's a good fit for you.

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Sheri Johnson: and if there's any spots left.

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Sheri Johnson: So go to that. Send me an email with the word program.

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Sheri Johnson: Find out more

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Sheri Johnson: and come back next week. I've got another episode coming for you, and I'd also love for you to share this episode if you found it valuable.

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Sheri Johnson: Get it out there so that other women can hear and find out about this, and I will leave that with you for today. Bye, for now.