399: What if a hormonal disorder rewrote your identity?
This Is Actually Happening
Audible
4.6 • 10.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2026
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After decades of stability, a woman’s experience of menopause brings back a lifetime of buried symptoms and reveals an unexpected truth about her identity, forcing her to reexamine everything she thought she knew about herself.
Today’s storyteller wishes to remain Anonymous. If you’d like to reach out to her, you can email her at SunflowerSpark44@gmail.com.
Producers: Whit Missildine, Andrew Waits, Ellen (Elly) Westberg
Content/Trigger Warnings: Suicidal ideation, mental illness, child abuse (mentioned), sexual abuse (mentioned), medical trauma, emotional distress, divorce, death of a loved one, explicit language
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Read more about Whit’s insights into each episode on Beyond The Story Substack: whitmissildine.substack.com. On the Substack, Whit will be sharing personal reflections on the deeper themes that emerge from each episode and from across the conversations he’s been immersed in for years, including the psychology of radical transformation, the power of storytelling, the lessons of trauma and healing, and how we die to an old Self and are reborn. He’ll share behind-the-scenes glimpses into the making of the show and his own personal journey in creating it.
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Intro Music: “Sleep Paralysis” - Scott Velasquez
Music Bed: KPM Main Series (KPM) - Barely There
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of This Is Actually Happening, |
| 0:04.4 | ad-free right now. |
| 0:06.4 | Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. |
| 0:09.4 | This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. |
| 0:13.7 | Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode, |
| 0:17.0 | and for more information about support services. |
| 0:20.1 | Hi, listeners. |
| 0:21.6 | Last week I launched a substack called Beyond the Story, and I'm so grateful to everyone who's subscribed. |
| 0:27.6 | It's really been so meaningful to share my reflections there and to hear from you all, so if you haven't subscribed yet, I'd love to see you there. |
| 0:33.6 | You'll find an article I wrote about why I started the show, as well as some of |
| 0:38.3 | my own mental health struggles that form the basis of the storytelling that we do here. You'll also |
| 0:43.1 | find an article reflecting on last week's episode, as well as one on this week's episode that I just |
| 0:48.3 | posted today. To subscribe, go to whitmissildine.substack.com. Again, it's called Beyond the Story at whitmissildine. |
| 0:57.6 | It's free and I'm thrilled to share this new addition to the show with you. And now on to |
| 1:04.5 | today's episode. What if a hormonal disorder rewrote your identity? |
| 1:12.2 | I lived this life that I thought was me, and then I woke up that day, and that life |
| 1:18.4 | didn't feel like me. The house I was in didn't feel like my house. The neighborhood that I |
| 1:24.8 | lived in felt like someone had transplanted me there. The routine that I lived in felt like someone had transplanted me there. |
| 1:28.8 | The routine that I went through day by day just felt like it belonged to somebody else. |
| 1:42.7 | From Wondery, I'm Whit Misseldine. |
| 1:46.2 | You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. |
| 1:52.9 | Episode 399. |
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