From Toxic Rage to Midlife Clarity: Katie Fogarty on the Power of Naming Menopause
On Tuesday evening, Flow Space hosted an intimate gathering to celebrate the release of Midlife Private Parts: Revealing Essays That Will Change the Way You Think About Age. Among all of the standout voices was Katie Fogarty, podcaster, career coach and author of the searingly honest essay 'Toxic Rage.'
'I want a divorce,' her piece begins. 'Four words detonating a sunny day, shouted in my gravel driveway at my college boyfriend husband of 24 years.' It's a dramatic opener, but not for drama's sake. It's a symptom. A red flag. A hormonal thunderstorm rolling through the landscape of a marriage.
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Fogarty's essay recounts the emotional volatility and confusion that arrived—unannounced and unrecognized—as she entered menopause. 'I felt crazy,' she writes. 'Most of the time.'
'For many years, I never thought about menopause at all,' she told the audience of the Tuesday night event. 'And if I did think about it, I associated it with hot flashes, right? Because they have an excellent publicist.'
'So when I never had a hot flash, I didn't think I was in menopause, but I had months and months of sleep interruptions,' she continued. 'I had what my doctor called 'mood instability,' which sounds very genteel, but actually was presenting more like toxic, volcanic fury, and the film was tearfulness, unexplained… Like, I couldn't manage my emotions. I felt like a toddler at times, and my brain had been hijacked.'
At the time, Fogarty had just launched her podcast A Certain Age, and was beginning to hear echoes of her experience from guests and listeners: rage, sleep loss, disconnection, depression, even suicidal ideation.
'It's insane that all of these well educated women who are so powerful in so many areas of their life don't have enough information [around menopause]' she said at the event. 'And I felt angry again about how underserved so many women are, and that there are a lot of toolsthat are available that can really help.'
Her essay, like her podcast, aims to name what's too often unnamed. She describes the physiological derailment of midlife hormones and the emotional toll of feeling unmoored. It's deeply personal—but it's also a rallying cry.
Fogarty's story doesn't end in that driveway.
'Slowly, my husband and I made some changes,' she writes. 'Time passed, and I became more steady, solid.' Hormone therapy, communication, great lube and sheer persistence helped her reclaim joy and connection—with herself and with her husband. The final scene? The two of them laughing uncontrollably in a supermarket aisle, 'holding an artichoke,' the rage now replaced by love and absurdity.
It's a reminder that naming our pain is the first step to healing. As Fogarty puts it: 'How did I get here?' In asking that question—not just in despair, but later, in gratitude—she gives all of us permission to do the same.
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