The Holderness Family Gets Real About Perimenopause

unPAUSED with Dr. Mary Claire Haver

Mary Claire Media, LLC

Medicine, Health & Fitness, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2026

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of unPAUSED, Dr. Mary Claire Haver sits down with Kim and Penn Holderness, the husband and wife content creators behind the widely popular Holderness Family, bestselling authors, and winners of The Amazing Race Season 33. Together they built an audience of millions by finding the humor in real life, and in this conversation they turn that same lens on perimenopause, ADHD, marriage, and the particular chaos of midlife. Kim opens up about the perimenopausal symptoms that arrived before she had any name for them: the anxiety that made everything feel like being chased by a bear, the panic attacks triggered by nothing she could identify, and the growing sense that something was fundamentally wrong with her. She describes walking out of her doctor's office with no treatment after being told her symptoms were normal, the financial reality of having to seek out a functional medicine doctor to finally get the estrogen and progesterone support she needed, and the combination of hormonal and psychiatric care that eventually helped her feel like herself again. She also speaks with real honesty about her postpartum anxiety, perimenopause and depression, and her OCD diagnosis, and how all of it left her desperate for a voice that would simply say: this is hard. Guest links: The Holderness Family The Holderness Family (Instagram) The Holderness Family - Music (YouTube) The Holderness Family - Comedy (YouTube) The Holderness Family (Facebook) The Holderness Family (Substack) The Holderness Family (TikTok) Laugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness (Apple Podcasts) PC’s Playbook Podcast (YouTube) Books: “ADHD Is Awesome,” by Penn and Kim Holderness “Everybody Fights,” by Penn and Kim Holderness To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode contains references to child loss and death.
0:04.5	Some listeners may find it distressing.
0:07.3	Please listen with care and step away if you need to.
0:10.7	He is the world's most sensitive understanding husband ever.
0:13.8	He's like, don't need to explain it.
0:14.9	We're good.
0:15.3	Just go lay down and go for a walk, whatever you need to do.
0:17.7	So everything felt like I was being chased by a bear,
0:22.8	and I really thought something was wrong with me. So that started before any of the physical stuff started. And I was
0:30.5	relieved to hear that like, oh, that happens in perimenopause. I just thought I was going crazy.
0:36.4	So when did you hear that, though?
0:37.9	Like when did someone say, hey, you told me on the internet, which is like going to make me cry.
0:43.9	Yeah, I mean, even the postpartum depression stuff, like there weren't women talking about it.
0:48.7	They were talking about like how wonderful it was to have like a newborn baby.
0:52.0	And I was like, I can't even walk on the stairs without like fear of tripping. And it was it was so hard.
0:55.5	And then paramedopause hit. how wonderful it was to have like a newborn baby. And I was like, I can't even walk downstairs without like fear of tripping.
0:57.2	And it was, it was so hard.
0:55.5	And then pari menopause hit.
0:57.2	And I just thought I was going crazy.
0:58.5	I'm like, and I'm so sorry you marry me. The views and opinions expressed on unpaused are those of the talent and guests alone and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only.
1:03.0	No part of this podcast or any related materials are intended to be a substitute for professional
1:24.0	medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
	...

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