Rebuilding Routine and Purpose After a Summer of Looking After Everyone Else First

Time to rebuild routine and purpose. It’s been a long summer of looking after others and healthy habits slip.

If you have spent the last few months as the chef, the cleaner, the taxi driver and the person everyone turns to when their own plans fall through, you are not imagining how tired you feel right now. How can I say that??? I have been that person for 10 weeks! Summer has a way of quietly removing every single structure you had built for yourself, and you probably haven’t really admitted the effect that it’s had on you. It took me about 8 weeks to work out why I was feeling a bit empty when I should have been feeling amazing - I’d given myself permission to not work or post or research for the whole summer. I realised that was where my bounce had gone. I was missing a huge part of my life, I’d actively removed it to lower stress but it acted as the opposite.

Weeks of feeding everyone, endless laundry, running the family taxi service and generally being everyone's Plan B left me feeling flat by the end of it. My own training fell away, my community fell away, and without really noticing it happening, my sense of purpose fell away with them. I felt my menopause symptoms creeping back in as my routine disappeared, and I want to be honest with you about that, because I talk to women about exactly this every week and it felt important to sit inside it myself for once rather than just coach it from the outside.

Why losing routine hits so much harder at this stage of life

Purpose and community are not soft, optional extras when you are moving through menopause. They are two of the strongest tools you have and I know this because I coach its and yet here I was being confused by what was happening to me. When your hormones are already shifting the way you sleep, regulate your mood and manage stress, a stable routine gives your body something steady to work with. Take that structure away, even gradually and even for understandable reasons like looking after your family over summer, and you can feel the difference within days rather than weeks.

This is not about willpower, it is about the fact that your nervous system genuinely relies on rhythm at this stage of life more than it used to, and summer is often the exact season that strips that rhythm away entirely.

The moment it clicked back into place for me

Yesterday was Monday, so I sat down at my laptop after a game of padel and felt something I had not felt in weeks, honestly not even in months. Real excitement. Real energy. I started building a plan again, for my own training, for my clients and for where I want to take the Menopause Thrive Hub next, and it reminded me instantly why purpose and community sit at the centre of everything I teach.

I had genuinely lost mine over summer. Getting it back has felt wonderful, and it has reminded me why I never want to let it slip that far again and of course now I have a huge To do list in front of me and I’m ready to tackle it.

Rebuilding it without turning it into another set of rules

If there is one thing I want you to take from this, it is that I am not about to hand you a rigid plan and tell you this is how it has to look. Every one of us is different. Our bodies, our symptoms, our lives and our seasons all look different, and what worked for me this week might not be the right starting point for you at all.

What tends to help most women I work with is picking one small anchor in each of three areas, movement, food and connection, rather than trying to overhaul everything on day one. A short walk most mornings matters more than an ambitious gym plan you abandon by Thursday. A lunch you have already prepared matters more than good intentions at midday when you are hungry and busy. A weekly conversation with someone who understands what you are going through matters more than scrolling another feed full of advice.

September is a genuinely good moment to pick those three anchors, not because the calendar demands it, but because most of us are already craving a bit of structure back after a loose, unpredictable summer.

If you would like some company while you rebuild

You do not have to do this on your own, and you certainly do not need to figure it all out today. I have put together a free September Training Plan, a simple month at a glance to help you ease back into movement without any pressure, along with a quick, batch friendly lunch recipe designed so food never has to interrupt your working day again.

If you would like real company rather than another set of rules to follow, I am running a coffee morning and an online webinar this month, just a chance to meet properly, ask questions and talk it through with people who genuinely understand.

Menopause is not the end. It's the beginning, and this September, I would love to build the next chapter of it alongside you rather than for you.