She’s not ashamed to talk about it, and believes more people should join in on the conversation. Tamsen Fadal’s post-TV calling is helping women — and the men in their lives — to navigate menopause.
“If you would’ve asked me five years ago… if I was going to be doing this, I would’ve said, ‘No, I’m going to try to stay as young as I can, so I can stay on TV as long as I can,” Fadal, 53, told Page Six of her former youth-obsessed industry.
That all changed in 2019 when the former PIX11 news anchor started experiencing menopausal symptoms that affected her teleprompter skills.
“I had brain fog. I would look at a word and it wouldn’t come out of my mouth, or I would wonder if I skipped a word,” she recalls.
She described another incident when she was left breathless while anchoring the primetime news. “I was on set… I was sitting next to Kory [Chambers], getting ready to do a business report, and my heart was racing like, you can’t catch your breath, and I was just burning up,” she explained.
Fadal half joked to the nightly all male staff at the time, “If I fall over, somebody catch me!”
Unfortunately, a colleague did have to come to her rescue: She was taken to the restroom where, “I laid out on the floor. I didn’t know if I would either pass out or faint,” she said.
It took 15 minutes for the episode to pass, and Fadal spent the following week making doctor appointments.
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A doctor’s message to her would awaken a new identity, and change her career trajectory. It read, “In menopause. Any question?” Fadal started writing her new chapter.
In 2023, Fadal stepped down from the anchor desk after 15 years at PIX11, and has since rebranded. “It’s become my new dinner party conversation,” she quipped.
She also told us, “The realization I needed to put my voice into this conversation led me to leave [TV news]. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do my job anymore, but I had a bigger story to tell. I couldn’t stop talking about it. I couldn’t stop studying it. I couldn’t stop talking to women about it,” she said.
Husbands are even stopping her on the street asking for advice about their wives.
“Men are becoming more interested in it. [They’ll say], ‘Listen, my wife is going through a lot, and I want to see what I can do for her?’ Last year, my 83-year-old dad asked me about menopause realizing my mom had gone through it, and my 13-year-old nephew! So, there’s a 70-year-[age gap],” she said.
Fadal is now regularly crossing paths with celebs who are helping amplify the conversation, including Naomi Watts, Halle Berry, Stacy London, Jennie Garth, Carla Hall, Sherri Shepherd and Broadway star Audra McDonald, who appears in her upcoming PBS doc, “The (M) Factor Film,” premiering Oct. 17.
“To be where I am today, and to be talking about [menopause] and — so proud of the fact that women of this age, and during this time, are making noise, it is pretty incredible,” she said.
Fadal has also penned a book, “How to Menopause: Take Charge of Your Health, Reclaim Your Life, and Feel Even Better than Before,” out next year.