Midlife Memoirs with Amanda Fletcher — Cancer at 37, Sober at 37, Still Becoming Herself at 52

Wow - just wow - sit back and take this all in!

We have been tight friends for over 2 decades, and I didn't know this level of Amanda life experience.

It made me think how powerful it is as friends to dedicate time to sit and listen

Amanda Fletcher is my friend of twenty years. We met in 2007, when she turned up at my boot camp in Marina del Rey — larger than life, complaining about everything — and we've been tight ever since. She's one of the few people who was there through some of my darkest moments, and I hope I've been the same for her.

Amanda is 52 now. She turned 52 in September, and when I asked her how it suits her, she gave me the longest, most honest answer I've ever had on this podcast. So this episode is her story, and we didn't follow a single question I prepared. We didn't need to.

Her twenties were grief. She lost her mum to suicide when she was 24 — her mum was 49. Mental illness runs deep in her family, and Amanda grew up in the middle of it: an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, all lost. She moved to America, she partied, she hadn't been to therapy, and she was, in her words, very messy.

Her thirties were cancer, then sobriety. She was diagnosed with breast cancer at 37, from a routine check — double mastectomy, six months of chemo, and a drug called Lupron that shut her ovaries down and put her into medically induced menopause at 37. She had a "bye bye booby party" first, because that's Amanda. What the diagnosis taught her was that binge drinking and yo-yo dieting are breast cancer risk factors, and she'd done both — she'd been a binge drinker since she was thirteen. So she got sober at 37, and she hasn't looked back.

Her forties were the work. Therapy, treatment, twelve steps, and a diagnosis that finally fit: ADD/ADHD. She stopped doing what her mum did. Her mum stayed — in a marriage, in a life that didn't serve her, without ever getting help. Amanda left a relationship that didn't serve her, got sober, and did the work. She did it just in time, because what you take into midlife defines how you experience it. If she'd gone into perimenopause still drinking and still not dealing with any of it, it would have been one big mess she couldn't unravel.

Then perimenopause hit, and it hit hard. She was bleeding through an ultra tampon in ten minutes, soaking through adult diapers and her clothes at work, and being told her iron was "fine" when her ferritin was 3. She kept injuring herself — a finger in a splint for six months, a thumb swollen to three times its size — and had to fight Kaiser for a bone scan, which showed osteopenia. Then the hot flashes, the night sweats, the 3 AM panic attacks, the rage that went up to a thousand. Her psychiatrist suggested Effexor, which stopped the sweats and flattened everything else — she had no juice left for her business, and when you're self-employed, nobody does it for you. At 48, she had suicidal ideation for the first time, and she told her people straight away.

The turning point came from two doctors who actually listened. One told her that our bodies have an architecture, like Jenga — you start pulling pieces out and what happens? She said, "I can't promise better, I can promise different." Amanda decided against the hysterectomy. The other, through a subscription service because Kaiser wouldn't even consider HRT with cancer in her history, told her the bleeding was adenomyosis — and that progesterone would have helped it all along.

And then there was the shame around HRT. She felt it — the idea that it's about staying young. Then she called a friend and said, "This is so I can stay alive. My mom didn't have this option." That was the decision: HRT as a mental health decision, a quality-of-life decision. She's on estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone now, and she's clear that it's not for everybody — it was the right choice for her.

Amanda's 52 now, and she's vibrant, relevant, and still becoming herself. She does breathwork with private and corporate clients, she works in mental health and substance treatment, and she teaches people in residential treatment how to slow down. The line that stayed with me: "Why does slower have to be downhill?" Slower is beautiful. Slower is how you get present, how you get embodied, how you actually live in your body instead of outrunning it.

Amanda will be back — we're doing a part two, probably a part three. There's so much more in her story.

A few things Amanda said that I keep coming back to:

• What you take into midlife defines how you experience it.
• The drinking isn't the problem. The drinking is the solution for all the other problems.
• Get a second opinion. Show up for yourself. Do your research. Ask questions.
• Estrogen is the volume. When it drops, everything you've been putting up with gets louder.
• Slower isn't downhill. Slower is beautiful.
• You are valuable simply because you're alive.

Find Amanda

Amanda does breathwork with private and corporate clients, and works in mental health and substance treatment. You can find her at https://theamandafletcher.com, email her at theamandafletcher@gmail.com, or find her on Instagram at @theamandafletcher.

Share your midlife story

Want to be on Midlife Memoirs? I'd love to hear your story — women and men, all of it. Email me at hello@joannelee.com.

Subscribe — and get this month's discount code

Subscribe to the email list and your welcome email will have this month's discount code inside — 15% off all products. The code is only good until November 25, so use it before Thanksgiving.

Subscribe for Updates

This episode is Amanda's personal story, not medical advice — and HRT isn't for everybody. Talk to your own doctor about what's right for you.

Products

Blue Theory Skin
https://joannelee.com/shop/collections/blue-theory-skin

Joanne Lee Store  5 Amino 1mq  SLU PP 332
https://joanneleestore.com

Subscribe for Updates