Women's Health > Menopause > Personal Story

eight months ago i couldn't get out of bed & couldn't stand my husband touching me. now i'm 52 and having the best sex of my life.

Nobody told me menopause would do this to me. Not the hot flashes, but the part where I lost myself and marriage completely. Then a friend mentioned something I'd never heard of and everything changed in 90 days.

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By Sharon H., 52

Last Updated Mar 23, 2026

I know how the headline sounds. Trust me.

 

If someone had told me a year ago that at 52 I'd be having the best sex of my life, better than my 30s, better than my 20s honestly, I would've laughed in their face. Or cried. Probably both.

 

Because a year ago? Things were bad.

 

I'm not going to spend this whole thing talking about how bad it was because honestly I'm tired of living in that chapter. I'd rather tell you about the chapter I'm in now. But I need to give you enough so you understand where I was, because if you're where I was, I need you to know it doesn't have to stay like that.

where i was 8 months ago

I don't even know where to start because it wasn't just one thing. It was everything. All at once.

 

Sex genuinely hurt. It wasn't just "uncomfortable", but felt like sandpaper. My husband would barely touch me and I'd tense up. We'd try and I'd be gritting my teeth. He could always tell so he'd stop and we'd just lie there in silence. Eventually we stopped trying altogether.

 

But here's the thing nobody tells you: it wasn't just the sex. It was my entire life falling apart.

 

I was depressed. Like couldn't-get-out-of-bed depressed. I'd wake up in the morning and just lie there thinking about all the things I was supposed to do and none of them felt possible. Unloading the dishwasher felt hard. I stopped going to the gym (even though I was the woman who never missed a workout) because my body was hurting all the time and I just didn't have it in me.

 

I stopped giving attention to my daughter. That's the part that really kills me to say. She'd come talk to me and I'd be somewhere else entirely. Short with her. Annoyed by everything. She asked me once, and I swear this still sits in my chest, "Mom, what happened to you? You used to be fun."

 

She wasn't being mean. She was asking because she genuinely didn't recognize me anymore. And the worst part? Neither did I.

 

My husband just kept getting quieter. Not angry. Not confrontational. Just... smaller. Like he was slowly making himself invisible so he wouldn't set me off. I'd snap at him for breathing wrong. For leaving a cup on the counter. For trying to hug me. He'd reach for me and I'd pull away and he'd just... nod. And go sit somewhere else.

 

And at this point I'm thinking this is over. Not just the sex. Everything. Our marriage. My energy. My personality. The person I used to be. I thought she was gone and this is just who I am now. An angry, tired, dried-out version of myself that nobody wants to be around. Including me.

what i tried

I'm not going to go into a whole thing about every product I tried because you probably already know the list:

Lube

Had to keep reapplying. Messy. Killed the mood. Didn't fix anything underneath.

Vaginal Estrogen

Got it prescribed and was expensive. And honestly? Using prescription creams and applicators just to have sex with my own husband made me feel OLD. Like we'd officially crossed into "old people who need medical help to be intimate." That's not who I wanted to be.

Moisturizers, Suppositories

Goop. Temporary. Embarrassing.

Cranberry Pills, Probiotics

For the UTIs that had started showing up every few weeks on top of everything else.

Everything felt like I was just managing a condition. Preparing for sex like it was a medical procedure, applying stuff, timing stuff, cleaning up after. None of it made me feel like ME.

 

I didn't want to manage this. I didn't want to "cope." I wanted to feel like a person again. Not just during sex. I wanted to want to get out of bed in the morning. I wanted to want to go to the gym. I wanted to look at my husband and feel something other than nothing. I wanted my daughter to think I was fun again.

the conversation that changed everything

My best friend Sara, whom I've known each other since college, she could see something was off with me. For months. I was cancelling plans. I was short with her. I almost snapped at her one afternoon over literally nothing and she just looked at me and said:

 

"Okay. What is going on with you?"

 

I got defensive. Obviously. That was my default setting for everything at that point. But she didn't let it go. She just sat there, quiet, and waited.

 

And I broke.

 

I told her everything. The dryness. The pain during sex. The irritability. The ice packs. The feeling like I'd lost myself. I was crying in her kitchen and she just listened.

 

Then she said something I didn't expect.

 

"My mom went through the exact same thing."

 

Her mom is from Turkey. And apparently, women in her family have been using something called sea buckthorn, a small orange berry, for this exact problem. For generations. Her mom started taking it when she hit menopause and swore by it.

 

Sara said her mom tried to tell her about it years ago and she'd brushed it off as "old country stuff." But then she'd looked it up and found actual clinical research behind it. Double-blind studies and real science. Not just some random tradition.

 

She told me to look it up myself. So I did.

what i found

I went down the rabbit hole that night. And what I found made me equal parts hopeful and furious.

 

Hopeful because thousands of women were talking about this. Real women. On Reddit. On menopause forums. All saying the same thing. It works.

 

Furious because why didn't any of my doctors mention it? Why was I prescribed expensive estrogen and told to try different lubes when THIS existed?

 

Here's what these women were saying:

I'm reading these thinking "are these women serious? Hours-long sessions? Tingling 24/7?" This sounds too good.

 

But there were hundreds of them. And they weren't selling anything. They were just telling each other what worked.

why it works

I'm going to keep this stupid simple because that's how Sara's mom explained it to me and it's the only explanation that ever made sense.

 

Everything I was using (lube, cream, estrogen) was working on the outside. The problem was on the inside.

 

When estrogen drops, the tissue lining your vaginal walls gets thin. Like really thin. It can't hold moisture. It can't stretch. It tears from normal everyday stuff like walking, sitting, wiping.

 

That's why lube didn't last. I was putting moisture on tissue that was too thin to hold onto it. Like pouring water into a cracked cup.

 

Omega-7 fixes the cup. You take it orally. It enters your bloodstream. It reaches the tissue from the inside and helps it get thicker, more elastic, able to hold moisture on its own again.

 

Sea buckthorn is the richest source of omega-7 on the planet. Women in Central Asia have been eating it for this exact reason for centuries. There's a real clinical study — 116 women, double-blind, placebo-controlled, showing it works.

 

That's it. That's the whole thing. No hormones. No prescriptions. No inserting anything. No mess. Just giving your tissue what it's been starving for.

i expected nothing

I found Nourish, gummies with sea buckthorn omega-7 at the clinical dose. Three a day. Orange flavor.

 

I ordered them mostly because they had a 90-day money-back guarantee and I thought "Fine. I've wasted money on worse. At least I'll get a refund if these don't work either."

 

I genuinely expected to be disappointed. I was already planning what I'd say in my refund request.

 

I was wrong.

🗓️ Week 2

Honestly? I didn't notice anything dramatic. But my husband did. We were watching TV and he looked at me and said "you seem... calmer." I didn't know what he meant. But he was right. I hadn't snapped at anyone in a few days. I'd walked to the store and back without that raw, irritated feeling I'd gotten used to. Small stuff. So small I almost missed it.

🗓️ Week 4

This is when things got weird. In a good way.

 

I woke up on a Tuesday and I just... got up. Like, without lying there for 20 minutes dreading the day. I got up, made coffee, put on real clothes instead of sweats, and went for a walk. A long one. And halfway through I realized that I was humming. Just humming some dumb song under my breath. I hadn't done that in over a year.

 

My daughter came home from school that day and I actually asked her about her day. Like really asked. And listened. And she looked at me like I'd come back from somewhere far away. She said "you seem like yourself again, Mom" and I had to turn around so she wouldn't see me cry.

🗓️ Week 6

Okay so this is the part that's hard to explain but I'm going to try.

 

I was in the kitchen. My husband walked through to get something from the fridge. And as he walked past me, I don't know how to say this, my whole body just... turned on. Like a switch. Like being in high school when a boy you liked walked by in the hall and looked at you and your entire body would just zing.

 

I hadn't felt that in so long I'd forgotten it was a thing that could happen. I literally stopped what I was doing and stood there like, what was THAT?

 

It was me. Coming back. My body remembering what it felt like to want something. To want someone.

🗓️ Month 3

We had sex. And I need you to understand what I mean when I say that because I'm not talking about the obligatory, teeth-gritting, get-it-over-with sex I'd been forcing for the past year and a half.

 

I mean I WANTED it. I reached for him. He looked at me like he wasn't sure what was happening. Because it had been so long since I'd started anything.

 

And it didn't hurt. No lube. No preparation. No stopping halfway. No lying there after in pain.

 

It was good. Like really really good. Like, I'm 52 and I'm not supposed to be feeling this, right? But I was. Everything was more sensitive. More responsive. More... there.

 

My husband looked at me after and I'll never forget what he said. He didn't say anything about the sex. He said: "I feel like I got my wife back. And I'm not just talking about in bed."
 

And yeah. He did.

where i am now (6 months in)

I need you to understand something because this is the whole point of me writing this.

 

I am having the best sex of my life at 52 years old. I know how that sounds. I know. But it's the truth and I'm done being embarrassed about saying it.

 

But it's SO much bigger than sex. That's what I need you to get.

 

I'm back at the gym. Three times a week. I actually WANT to go. My body doesn't hurt all the time anymore. I have energy I didn't think was coming back.

 

My daughter and I went shopping last weekend and she said, and I'm going to cry typing this, she said "I missed you, Mom. I'm glad you're back." She didn't mean I'd been away. She meant the real me had been gone and now she's here again.

 

My husband. Oh my god, my husband. This man sat next to me through the worst of it and never left. And now we're like... I don't even know how to describe it. We're like teenagers. We're flirting at dinner. He grabs my hand in the car and I actually WANT him to. We're laughing at stupid stuff again. We're us again.

 

It's your bounce in your step. You know what I mean? It's humming in the kitchen while you're making coffee. It's turning the music up in the car and rolling the windows down. It's wanting to sing your favorite song at the top of your lungs. It's looking at yourself in the mirror and not flinching.

 

That's desire. That's wanting. That's passion. And I thought it was gone forever. It wasn't. It was just waiting for me to give my body what it needed.

what other women are saying

Lauren T., 54

Verified Purchase

"I was starting to believe I was just broken."

"I tried everything: coconut oil, expensive lubricants, vaginal suppositories, even estrogen cream. Nothing lasted. Within three weeks of taking Nourish, the itching disappeared. By month two, I could wear jeans again. By month three, my husband and I were intimate for the first time in over a year. I cried happy tears."

Donna J., 51

Verified Purchase

"Five years of doctors telling me to use more lube."

"My friend sent me a link and I thought, what the hell, one more try. Three weeks in, the itching stopped. Then one morning things just felt... different. Like my body was coming back. My husband says I seem like a completely different person. I feel like one."

Jasmine K., 52

Verified Purchase

"I initiated sex for the first time in three years."

"Around month four, I felt this warmth over me. Like my body calmed down again. I grabbed my husband and he looked at me like I was crazy. I cried afterward. This gave me my life back. My only regret is not starting sooner. I wasted two years thinking this was just my new normal. Don't make the same mistake I did."

real quick, what this costs vs. what i was spending before

 I want to put something in perspective.

 

Before Nourish, I was spending money on: lube every month, vaginal estrogen prescription, copays for doctor visits that went nowhere, cranberry pills, probiotics, special underwear. Easily $150-200 a month just managing symptoms.

 

Nourish is less than $1.5 a day. And it's not managing symptoms. It's actually fixing what's going on underneath...

90-day money-back guarantee

This is what got me to try it when I was sure it wasn't going to work. If nothing changes after 90 days, you get every cent back. No questions.

 

I expected to use that guarantee. I'm glad I didn't have to.

 

✅ No hormones

✅ No prescription

✅ No mess

✅ No dependency

✅ Three gummies a day. That's the whole routine.

TRY NOURISH RISK-FREE FOR 90 DAYS

Free shipping · Most women feel something within 2–3 weeks · Full refund if you don't

one more thing

I know you're probably sitting there thinking what I was thinking eight months ago. That it's too good to be true. That you've tried things and they didn't work. That this is just your life now.

 

I get it. I was there. I was lying in bed at 11 AM on a Tuesday with no intention of getting up, convinced this was just who I was now. Angry. Tired. Dried out. Done.

 

I wasn't done. And you're not done either.

 

Six months later my daughter says I'm fun again. My husband looks at me the way he did when we were dating. I go to the gym because I want to, not because I'm forcing myself. I hum in the kitchen. I roll the windows down.

 

I'm 52 and I'm having sex like I'm 21. And that's not even the best part. The best part is that I FEEL like myself again. Every single day. Not managing. Not coping. Not surviving menopause. LIVING.

 

That's what's on the other side of this. That's what's waiting for you.

 

Nourish does sell out, happened to me once and I panicked. If the page is live and it's in stock, you know what to do.

 

The woman you used to be isn't gone. She's right there. She just needs you to stop believing the people who told you she was never coming back.

TRY NOURISH RISK-FREE FOR 90 DAYS

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These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Individual results may vary.

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