{"id":32447,"date":"2025-07-07T01:28:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T01:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/how-menopause-made-york-woman-forget-her-name\/"},"modified":"2025-07-07T01:28:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T01:28:10","slug":"how-menopause-made-york-woman-forget-her-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/how-menopause-made-york-woman-forget-her-name\/","title":{"rendered":"How menopause made York woman forget her name"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Kit Taylor<\/span><\/p>\n

BBC News, Yorkshire<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"KitKit Taylor\/BBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Kirsty’s life changed when she started experiencing brain fog<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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“I didn’t believe it could just be menopause. I thought it must be a brain tumour or dementia.”<\/b><\/p>\n

Kirsty Dixon’s life changed overnight when she started experiencing intense brain fog at 49 years old.<\/p>\n

Kirsty, from York, was staring at her screen at work one day, when suddenly she could not remember what she was doing.<\/p>\n

“I just asked myself ‘What is my name?’, and I couldn’t even remember my own name.<\/p>\n

“I felt like I was going mad, I thought it was only me.”<\/p>\n

The problems continued when she tried to access support.<\/p>\n

“I thought, why aren’t people listening to me?<\/p>\n

“I’ve got something really serious going on but I can’t get anyone to listen.”<\/p>\n

Kirsty was told by a doctor that what she had experienced was part of the menopause.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Kirsty hopes to bring women together who are going through the menopause<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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It is estimated that one in three women in the UK is going through the menopause<\/a> at any given time.<\/p>\n

Kirsty, learning and development adviser at the University of York, is working to raise awareness of the lesser-known symptoms and the huge impact they can have on people’s lives.<\/p>\n

“Before menopause I’ve always been a very bubbly person, very social, bit mischievous,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Menopause came along and just put a big thunder cloud over my head.<\/p>\n

“I lost myself. The number of times my husband said ‘I want my Kirsty back’ while he was cuddling me and I was in floods of tears.”<\/p>\n

Kirsty spent the next four years “fighting it” as she could not believe that those were menopause symptoms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

‘Lightbulb moment’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Then, during lockdown, Kirsty found herself researching menopause for her work.<\/p>\n

She stumbled across an article by someone who had experienced the same symptoms as her.<\/p>\n

“I got that lightbulb moment that what I was experiencing was perfectly normal, I needed to understand it and know what I could do to help myself,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I went from having this constant cloud and feeling useless, to actually owning my journey.”<\/p>\n

Now aged 58, Kirsty runs two support groups for women experiencing the menopause, including a nature walking group around York, and a pop-up cafe in Acomb.<\/p>\n

They are non-profit and everyone is welcome, regardless of age or gender.<\/p>\n

She hopes the groups will encourage more people to talk about the lesser-known symptoms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"KitKit Taylor\/BBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

One of the groups meets at a pop-up cafe in Acomb<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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“When you’re going through it, it can feel so lonely,” she said.<\/p>\n

“You feel like it’s only you, and you think you’re going mad.<\/p>\n

“One of the most important things I say to people is get your support network around you, and that’s family, friends, and groups like this.”<\/p>\n

Sarah Mortimer, 54, has been coming to the group since it started in 2022.<\/p>\n

She experienced an uncommon symptom of self-diagnosed burning mouth syndrome during her menopause, which involves developing blisters in the mouth with a burning feeling.<\/p>\n

“It can be really isolating, so to find groups like this is amazing,” she said.<\/p>\n

“It makes a huge difference, knowing there’s other people going through the same rubbish that you’re going through.<\/p>\n

“It’s that strength in numbers thing, and there’s strength in the power of talking about the menopause.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sarah has been coming to the group since it started <\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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The group is based in York, but people travel from as far as Leeds, Sheffield and Beverley to attend.<\/p>\n

Kirsty says that it highlights an ongoing issue around the need for more support for people going through the menopause.<\/p>\n

“No one else was running a menopause cafe in York, so it was obviously something that was missing.”<\/p>\n

She is calling for more groups like this so that people do not have to travel so far to get the support they need.<\/p>\n

“What I will say now, is as a post-menopausal woman, I am the most confident, the strongest, most creative person.<\/p>\n

“If someone said to me you can have your life again, without your menopause experience, actually, I’d say no, because it’s what’s made me the person I am today.<\/p>\n

“If I can get through that, I can get through anything.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Kit Taylor BBC News, Yorkshire Kit Taylor\/BBC Kirsty’s life changed when she started experiencing brain fog “I didn’t believe it could just be menopause. I thought it must be a brain tumour or dementia.” Kirsty Dixon’s life changed overnight when she started experiencing intense brain fog at 49 years old. Kirsty, from York, was staring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[10865,3998,983,3024],"class_list":["post-32447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-forget","tag-menopause","tag-woman","tag-york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32449,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32447\/revisions\/32449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}