Most women arrive at perimenopause believing something has gone wrong with them. The rage feels disproportionate. The exhaustion goes beyond tired. The grief doesn't have a clear source. And yet the people around them — sometimes even their doctors — hand them strategies for coping with symptoms rather than language for what's actually happening.

In this episode, Philippa Scott introduces The Mother Awakening Cycle: a six-stage developmental framework built on more than two decades of work with mothers across every stage of life. The cycle describes the identity and nervous system transitions that motherhood initiates — not once, but repeatedly — and explains why perimenopause is not the origin of the crisis. It is the moment the crisis can no longer be ignored.

The six stages are: Initiation, Accommodation, Fragmentation, Awakening,  ...