In “You Can’t Get Around It | Midlife Identity, Reinvention & Embracing Menopause”, host Heather Reilly Hiemstra sits down with Tonya Fines — the voice behind Menopause Bestie with Tonya, a space created to support women navigating midlife, menopause, identity shifts, confidence, health, beauty, and reinvention — for a conversation about Pandora’s Box, Unopened, Your Body Is the Best Biofeedback System You’ll Ever Have, The Question Nobody Asks, The Two-Degree Mindset and Phase Two Is a Power Role.
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Heather sits down with Tonya Fines — holistic health practitioner, brand strategist, and the warm, no-BS voice behind Menopause Bestie with Tonya — to talk about what it really means to stop fighting midlife and start moving through it. Tonya’s frame is simple and a little bit ruthless: there’s no way under menopause, no way over it, and no invitation arrives in the mail. But there is a decision — how you want to go through it — and that decision, she argues, is one of the most powerful a woman will ever make.
If your identity has been quietly swallowed by decades of caretaking, and you’ve started to wonder who’s left when the roles fall away, this conversation is your permission slip — and your road map.
Conversations include:
- Pandora’s Box, Unopened Why so many women feel blindsided by perimenopause — and how the body sends quiet, early signals that go unheard when we’re too busy taking care of everyone else.
- Your Body Is the Best Biofeedback System You’ll Ever Have Tonya’s practical framework for tracking sleep, mood, food, and skin changes before the symptoms snowball — and why a simple journal beats most diagnostics for catching the pattern early.
- The Question Nobody Asks What happens in a session when Tonya moves past “what doesn’t feel right” and asks “what have you always wanted to do?” — and why that vacant look gives way to something that looks a lot like liberation.
- The Two-Degree Mindset How small shifts — dropping red wine, adding a morning walk, finally signing up for the salsa class — compound into a new lifestyle built around the woman you actually are in midlife, not the one you were performing before.
- Phase Two Is a Power Role Tonya’s case for celebrating menopause the way we celebrate every other major biological passage — because a body that grew organs, birthed humans, and is now rewiring itself entirely deserves the biggest party of all.
Tune in to hear Tonya make the argument that menopause isn’t something to survive — it’s the moment your body finally clears the runway so you can decide what you’re actually building next.
About Tonya Fines
Tonya Fines is the voice behind Menopause Bestie with Tonya, a space created to support women navigating midlife, menopause, identity shifts, confidence, health, beauty, and reinvention. A Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner, former dancer, competitive bodybuilder, model, and brand strategist, Tonya brings a warm, honest, and relatable approach to conversations about what it really means to feel strong, feminine, vibrant, and seen in this season of life.
Her career began as a high school health sciences teacher before she went on to become a holistic health practitioner — a path she stepped away from, and ultimately returned to, when the women around her started having the exact conversations she was built to hold. She doesn’t diagnose. She doesn’t prescribe. She listens, asks the questions nobody else is asking, and helps women find the clarity that was buried under decades of caretaking.
Her mission is to help women feel less alone, more informed, and deeply empowered as they move through menopause and into their next beautiful chapter. Find her on Instagram at @menopausebestiewithtonya.
Episode Highlights
You Can’t Go Around It — Only Through It
“We can’t get around it. Believe me, I’ve researched ways to get around it. There’s no way under it, over it, you just, you have to go through it. So it’s like, okay, so what’s the decision I’m gonna make today? How do I want to go through this? What’s my choice? Am I gonna go through it, fighting and kicking and screaming? Because that usually feels a lot worse. There’s a lot more that comes at you. But if you can sort of listen, listen to our bodies.”
Why Menopause Bestie Exists
“I kind of felt like I was coming back into a phase of life where I had so much in common with women around me and I wanted to create a space to open up to have these conversations. I’m not a doctor. I don’t diagnose. I don’t prescribe anything. But I’m really good at the holistic part of it and I’m a good listener and I love to talk.”
The Question Nobody Asks Menopausal Women
“No one’s really asked them, what do you want? What do you like? And because of that, they’ve never really asked themselves because we get caught up in our role as mom, as wife, as a lot of them CEOs, or they’re working two full-time jobs to take care of kids. And so to see that look on them, and then she start getting them talking and to see all of a sudden this kind of, they kind of light up.”
Menopause as a Power Role, Not a Loss
“Menopause, I really see it as another power role because now it’s like, I like to step back after I’ve worked with someone. I like to step back and be like, I can’t wait to see what she does because now that is a very powerful woman, leaving my office or my Zoom call with a lot more focus on the things she’s going to do for herself that make her feel really amazing.”
The Third Set of Changes Deserves Celebration
“There’s a deserving celebration around menopause. I really do. I mean, our body is going, our body went through all these changes when we started menstruating, went through all the changes when we had the babies. And now we’re going through a third set of changes. Oh, hell, that deserves to be celebrated in the biggest way.”
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FAQs
Why do so many women feel blindsided by perimenopause even when symptoms started early?
According to Tonya Fines, the blindsiding happens because women spend decades so focused on caring for everyone else that they miss the quiet, early signals their own bodies are sending. “Despite the fact that we don’t get an invitation,” she explains, “our body actually gives us sometimes very quiet, very subtle messages in the pre-perimenopause that are like, by the way, you might want to pay attention to this.” The practical fix is simple: start keeping a journal and track sleep, food, skin, and mood changes before symptoms snowball into a pattern you can no longer ignore.
Who is Tonya Fines and what is Menopause Bestie with Tonya?
Tonya Fines is a Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner, former competitive bodybuilder, and brand strategist who created Menopause Bestie with Tonya as a support space for women navigating midlife identity shifts, menopause symptoms, and reinvention. Her career began as a high school health sciences teacher before she became a holistic health practitioner — a background she says gave her an edge in noticing her own perimenopause signals early. She doesn’t diagnose or prescribe; she listens and asks the questions most practitioners skip. Find her on Instagram at @menopausebestiewithtonya.
Can lifestyle changes like diet and exercise actually reduce menopause symptoms without medication?
Tonya Fines argues that consistent, small lifestyle shifts — what she calls a “two-degree mindset” — can meaningfully change how you move through menopause. She gave her own example: cutting out red wine eliminated the sleep disruption it was causing, and adding a daily walk cleared her head enough that, as she put it, “when I do get home, I don’t want to kill everybody.” The takeaway is to treat your body as “the best biofeedback system you’re ever going to get” — track one variable at a time, notice the pattern, and make the adjustment before the symptom compounds.
How do you rebuild your identity in midlife when decades of caretaking have erased your sense of self?
Tonya’s starting point in every session is the question nobody else asks: “What’s something you’ve always wanted to do but put off?” She describes watching women go from a “vacant look” to visibly lighting up as they reconnect with deferred dreams — travel, pottery, a salsa class — and frames this as the clinical work, not a soft add-on. Her framing for menopause is “Phase Two,” a power role that clears the runway for women to build a life around who they actually are now, and she gives clients explicit permission to be “really selfish” about filling their own cup first.
What does it mean to “embrace menopause” instead of fighting it, and why does fighting make symptoms worse?
Tonya Fines says fighting menopause — resisting the biological changes rather than working with them — creates more misery without changing the outcome, because “you can’t get around it, under it, or over it.” Embracing it doesn’t mean loving every hot flash; it means making a conscious decision about how you want to move through it and redirecting energy toward what actually feels good. She compares it to the power of growing a human being: “We grow organs for heaven’s sake” — and a body capable of that, now rewiring itself entirely, deserves to be celebrated rather than battled.