Founded on one simple belief: you deserve to understand what's happening in your body.

Menopause Understood exists for the woman moving through perimenopause, menopause or postmenopause who feels overwhelmed, unheard and unsure what's happening to her body. We meet her with warmth, clarity and genuine community, so she never has to work it out alone.

Our Founder

Hi, I'm Melissa Tahu. Welcome to Menopause Understood.

My journey here began with a simple shower. About three years into early menopause, I had more symptoms than I could count. I wasn't sleeping, I had chronic migraines, and I was hot, achy and irritable more days than not. I was juggling an undergraduate degree in Nutrition Science, kids, and family life, and I felt isolated, confused and sad. One morning during my shower, after another bad night's sleep, I looked down at a body that had changed overnight and thought, "Why did no one ever tell me about menopause? Surely I wasn't the only one going through this?"

Those questions led me to enrol in a Master of Medical Science, where I'm researching women's interactions with menopause health information and services. But the more research and women's stories that I read, the more it felt like I was reliving my own story. Isolated. Confused. Overwhelmed. Over and over, in study after study.

When I began volunteering as a menopause peer group facilitator and co-facilitator around the northern suburbs of Brisbane, I heard the same story again and again, just in different voices. So many women carrying some version of what I'd felt in that shower. Something had to change, and now.

My brain doesn't let a pattern go once it's noticed one, and it's never had much patience for injustice. As a late-diagnosed autistic ADHDer, both of those turned out to be exactly what this problem needed. I combined research, the stories I'd heard, and my own lived experience. And Menopause Understood was born.

I want you to feel informed instead of confused. Connected instead of isolated. Supported instead of alone. And eventually, at ease in your own menopause journey. Through short courses that explain what's really happening in your body, and a real community of women who get it, you don't have to figure this out by yourself.

I'm not a doctor, and I won't pretend to be one. What I bring is research, lived experience, warmth, and a genuine commitment to making this stage of life feel less overwhelming and a lot less lonely.

Welcome. I'm so glad you're here.

Why we exist

So many women spend years feeling confused, unsupported and unheard, by doctors, by workplaces, even by friends and family. Symptoms get brushed aside. Questions go unanswered. And the isolation can be as hard as the symptoms themselves.

Our courses and workshops give you the practical knowledge and real people you need, so you're never left to piece this together on your own.