The Advocate Changing the Menopause Story for Black Women
There is a quiet revolution happening in the menopause conversation, led by Black women who refuse to let our experiences remain invisible.
At the forefront is Nina Kuypers, founder of Black Women in Menopause (BWIM), a voice who has carved out space for a demographic routinely ignored in research, under-represented in policy and too often dismissed in healthcare.
Nina’s work begins with a truth many Black women know but rarely name. Our menopause journey is distinct. Symptoms often start earlier, hit harder and are more likely to be minimised by clinicians who have not been trained to recognise the cultural, hormonal and stress-related realities of Black women’s lives.
She dismantles the myth that “we just cope.”
She validates the emotional, physical and neurological shifts so many of us were taught to push through.
She gives language to the experiences our mothers and grandmothers endured in silence.
Standing alongside this work is another powerful voice. Dr Basheerah Ahmad, holistic health strategist, women’s transformation specialist and advocate for the mind–body connection during midlife.
Dr Ahmad’s framework reinforces everything Nina is fighting for. That menopause is not decline, but recalibration, not an ending, but a transformation that demands support, not secrecy.
Dr Ahmad reminds us that Black women navigate menopause against a backdrop of chronic stress, cultural expectation, health disparity and over-performance.
Hormonal change does not happen in isolation, it happens in bodies shaped by generational resilience, racialised stress responses and environments that often deny us rest. She teaches that the symptoms many of us internalise as “weakness” or “fatigue” are in fact biological signals calling us into a new season of care, nourishment and identity.
Together, Nina Kuypers and Dr Basheerah Ahmad expose the systems that silence Black women while offering a pathway back to understanding, dignity and agency.
They give us permission to say:
“I am changing and I deserve support.”
“I am overwhelmed and it is not my fault.”
“I am not losing myself, I am becoming someone new.”
To every Black woman who has questioned her mind, her emotions or her body during this transition:
You are not imagining it.
You are not alone andYou are not required to carry this in silence.
Your story belongs here, fully, visibly and unapologetically.
What part of your menopause journey have you found hardest to name out loud?
