There are women who look like they have it together from the outside, but inside, everything feels harder than it should. The mental load is constant. Focus slips. Time gets away from them. Everyday life can feel more overwhelming than anyone around them seems to understand. In this episode, Shay sits down with Dr. Jolene Brighten for a conversation about the hidden signs of ADHD in women, and why so many women go years without realizing what they are actually dealing with.

Together, they explore how ADHD often shows up differently in women, why it can be missed or misdiagnosed, and how hormones can shape the intensity of symptoms across a woman’s cycle and throughout different life stages. They also move into the overlap between ADHD and anxiety, trauma, burnout, motherhood, and relationship stress, while staying grounded in practical ways women can begin understanding their brains and bodies with more clarity and compassion.

• Why ADHD in women is so often overlooked or mistaken for something else
• The hidden ways ADHD can show up in high-achieving women
• How hormonal changes can affect ADHD symptoms
• The difference between ADHD, anxiety, trauma responses, and chronic overwhelm
• Why thyroid conditions, nutrient deficiencies, and fatigue also deserve consideration
• Practical support ideas around nutrition, routines, and everyday life
• How ADHD can affect relationships, communication, and motherhood
• Moving from self-blame toward greater understanding

If you’ve ever felt like you’re working twice as hard to hold everything together, this conversation may help some of your experience make more sense. Subscribe to the Rising Woman Podcast and share this episode with a woman who may need it.

ADHD and Women (book) out NOW: https://drbrighten.com/adhd-and-women/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjolenebrighten

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrJoleneBrighten

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drjolenebrighten

Rising Woman YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RisingWoman

Sheleana Instagram: @SheleanaAiyana

Newsletter: https://newsletter.risingwoman.com/

Sheleana's Substack: https://sheleanaaiyana.substack.com/

Becoming the One: https://a.co/d/05Ohal7d

Becoming the One Journal: https://a.co/d/0fzCQUQJ

Thank You for This Day children's book: https://a.co/d/0elmLm2g

By 43, Dr. Mindy Pelz was gaining weight, not sleeping, and depressed for the first time in her life. Nothing dramatic had happened. Her hormones however, were shifting.

In this conversation, Shay talks with Dr. Mindy Pelz, author of Age Like a Girl, about what's actually happening in a woman's brain during perimenopause and why it's closer to a rewiring than a decline. They get into the grandmother hypothesis, the evolutionary theory behind why women were built for this exact transition, why so many marriages hit a wall in a woman's 40s, and where hormone replacement therapy fits into a process that's as much spiritual as it is physical.

If you've felt a shift in yourself you couldn't quite explain, and wondered whether something is wrong with you, this conversation offers a different read on what's actually going on.

• Why progesterone, the calming hormone, starts dropping as early as your late 30s
• The grandmother hypothesis: the evolutionary case for why menopause rewires the brain toward leadership
• What depression, anxiety, and rage are actually trying to tell you during this transition
• Why the corpus callosum, the part of the brain estrogen helps activate, explains so much about why relationships matter so much to women
• What changes in motherhood when perimenopause and early parenting overlap
• Why 70% of divorces after 40 are initiated by women, according to Julie Gottman's research
• Marriage 1.0, 2.0, 3.0: Dr. Mindy's framework for giving a long marriage room to change
• The two camps in the hormone replacement therapy debate, and where Dr. Mindy actually lands
• The caterpillar and the chrysalis: the biological metaphor Dr. Mindy uses for this transformation
• Dr. Mindy's own corrective experience: being told at 12 that girls don't surf, and going back for it decades later

Dr. Mindy Pelz's Book, Age Like a Girl: https://www.discover.hayhouse.com/agelikeagirl/ Dr. Mindy Pelz's Website and Podcast: https://www.drmindypelz.com/

Follow Rising Woman + Sheleana Aiyana on Instagram: @risingwoman @sheleanaaiyana

Rising Woman Website: https://risingwoman.com/ Sheleana Aiyana's books: https://sheleanaaiyana.com/becoming-the-one-book-journal/

Join the Rising Woman Newsletter: https://newsletter.risingwoman.com/

Most of what circulates online about astrocartography says the same thing: find your Venus line, find your Jupiter line, move there, and life gets easier. Helena Woods, astrologer and creator of the Locational Astrology course, has spent years watching that advice work for some people and not work at all for others. In this conversation, Shay talks with Helena about what astrocartography lines actually track, why living on a supposedly "difficult" line (like Saturn or Pluto) can be one of the best decisions a person makes, and the difference between your permanent astrocartography map and the shorter-term transits that can make the same place feel completely different from one year to the next.

They also get into Chiron, the wounded healer placement, and what's shifting now that Neptune has moved from Pisces into Aries.

If you've ever considered moving somewhere because an app told you to, this conversation is worth hearing first.

• The Venus and Jupiter line advice spreading online, and why Helena says it's flat wrong
• Why Helena has lived on her own Saturn line for eight years and calls it one of her most supportive placements
• The difference between your permanent astrocartography map and the transits currently moving through it
• Shay's daughter sleeping through the night in Mexico, and what her Moon line has to do with it
• Whether living somewhere with no astrocartography lines at all means calm, or something's missing
• The clock-on-the-wall metaphor Helena uses to explain what astrology can (and can't) actually tell you
• Ancient tools most people have never heard of: the lot of fortune, the lot of spirit, and the lot of Eros
• Chiron, the wounded healer, and how a person's core wound becomes the thing they help others through
• What's actually shifting now that Neptune has moved from Pisces into Aries
• Helena's story of being in Dubai the night war broke out, and what her chart told her in advance

Helena Woods' Website: https://helenawoods.com/ Helena’s Instagram: @mshelenawoods

Mystic App (get your own astrocartography reading): https://join.mysticapp.com/

Follow Rising Woman + Sheleana Aiyana on Instagram: @risingwoman @sheleanaaiyana

Rising Woman Website: https://risingwoman.com/ Sheleana Aiyana's books: https://sheleanaaiyana.com/becoming-the-one-book-journal/

Join The Rising Woman Newsletter: https://newsletter.risingwoman.com/

Elizabeth Gilbert has a theory about creativity that most people don't expect: ideas are alive. They have will, urgency, and a kind of patience that runs out.

In this conversation, Shay talks with Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, Committed, and Big Magic, about where ideas come from and what happens when we let them sit too long. They get into the novel Gilbert worked on for years and then set down when her own life fell apart, the one that turned up almost beat for beat in her close friend Ann Patchett's next book. They talk about why she's never feared having an idea stolen, and what two years without a new idea taught her about waiting.

If you've ever wondered where your best ideas come from, or worried the ones you let go of are gone, this conversation gives you a different way to think about it.

• The novel Elizabeth almost wrote, and how it ended up in Ann Patchett's hands instead
• Why ideas behave like visitors, not possessions
• The real difference between an idea being stolen and an idea being caught
• What two years with no new ideas taught Elizabeth about waiting
• "Shorty, chill": the journaling practice that got her through a creative dry spell
• Why Elizabeth has never once worried about someone stealing her work
• The forest hikes that gave Shay twenty-two songs she never meant to write
• Who you should never show your unfinished work to, and why
• Why you can fail at making money from your art, but never at the art itself
• Tom Waits' circus metaphor for accepting the size of your own creative life
• How a synchronicity Shay manifested on a Mexican beach led to this interview

Links

Elizabeth Gilbert's Website and link for her book All the Way to the River: https://www.elizabethgilbert.com/ Instagram: @elizabeth_gilbert_writer

Follow Rising Woman + Sheleana Aiyana on Instagram: @risingwoman @sheleanaaiyana

Rising Woman Website: https://risingwoman.com/ Sheleana Aiyana's books: https://sheleanaaiyana.com/becoming-the-one-book-journal/ Join the Rising Woman Newsletter: https://newsletter.risingwoman.com/