Women's Health > Menopause > Personal Story

menopause didn't just take my sex life. it took my confidence, my energy, and the woman i used to be. here's how i got her back.

I tried lube, estrogen, moisturizers, suppositories. Nothing fixed it because nothing was fixing ME. Then I found something that worked from the inside, and my husband says I'm a completely different person.

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By Sharon H., 52

Last Updated Mar 30, 2026

If you asked me three years ago to describe myself, my first words would've been confident and fun. I was the kind of woman who grabs her husband's hand and pulls him somewhere spontaneous on a Friday night.

 

If you asked me a year ago? I would have said tired. In pain. Embarrassed. And honestly? I wouldn't have told you the rest. Because I couldn't talk about it. Not to my friends. Not to my mom. Not even to my husband, who was the one person actually living through it with me.

 

I kept silent. That's the honest truth. I just kept quiet and kept suffering and kept pretending everything was fine while my whole life was falling apart underneath.

 

I'm done being silent. So here's what actually happened.

it started with the dryness

I knew menopause was coming. Everyone tells you about the hot flashes, the mood swings and the weight gain. I was fine with that, I could deal with it.

 

What nobody told me about was the dryness.

 

And I don't mean "things felt a bit dry sometimes." I mean it felt like my body just... stopped working down there. Completely. Like someone switched off a faucet I didn't even know was on.

 

Sex went from something me and my husband loved to something I dreaded. It hurt. Not a little bit, it felt like tearing. No matter how much foreplay we did or how patient my husband was. No matter how much I wanted it in my head, my body just said no.

 

And then came the constant itching. The kind where you're sitting at work or at dinner or in the car and you can't think about anything else because everything down there is on fire and you can't do anything about it.

 

Then the burning. It happened after taking a walk or sitting too long or just peeing. There was constantly this discomfor that never fully went away.

but the worst part wasn't the pain

The worst part was what it did to ME. Not my body — me. The person I was.

 

I stopped being spontaneous. How can you be spontaneous when intimacy requires 15 minutes of preparation and still ends in pain? Everything had to be planned. The lube had to be right there. The mood had to be exactly right. And even then I'd be bracing the whole time, waiting for it to hurt.

 

The spontaneity was gone. And with it went something I can't quite name. That lightness. That confidence. That feeling of just being free in your own body.

 

I started pulling away from my husband. Not because I didn't love him, but because I couldn't stand seeing the look on his face when I'd wince. Or worse, the look when I'd make up an excuse not to try at all. He never complained or pressured me. He just got quieter, which was honestly worse.

 

I felt like I wasn't enough for him. Like I was failing at something that used to be the easiest, most natural part of our relationship. And I couldn't even tell him how bad it really was because I was too embarrassed to say the words out loud.

When I read that from another woman, I had to put my phone down. Because that was exactly it. Less than a woman. That's how I felt. Like menopause had taken something from me that made me ME and I didn't know how to get it back.

i kept it all inside

If a friend asked how I was doing, I'd say "fine." If someone brought up menopause, I'd joke about hot flashes and change the subject. If my mom asked about my marriage, I'd say everything was great.

 

I kept silent because I was too embarrassed to talk about it. But in reality it felt like hell. Literally. I'm was in constant pain. I couldn't have sex with my husband without wanting to cry. I was itchy and burning all the time and I didn't know why. I felt like my body was broken and nobody could fix it.

 

So I just kept silent.

everything i tried

I wasn't just sitting there doing nothing. I was trying everything. Spending money I didn't have on products that didn't work.

Lubricants

Every brand. Water, silicone, organic, the $38 "gentle" one my doctor recommended. Maybe there was five minutes of relief then dry again. Having to stop and reapply in the middle of intimacy is the least sexy thing on the planet. And some of them made the itching WORSE.

Vaginal estrogen

Got prescribed it. It helped a little but I had to keep using it constantly. Miss one day and everything came right back. I felt dependent on it and the risk warnings made me anxious on top of everything else.

Moisturizers, suppositories

They were messy, temporary and embarrassing. Like putting a bandage on something that needed surgery.

Natural remedies

Coconut oil, black cohosh, slippery elm. Tried them all. Some did nothing. Coconut oil threw off my pH and gave me an infection.

Every single thing I tried was something I had to apply, insert, or reapply. And every single thing wore off. Nothing lasted and nothing fixed the actual problem. They just patched it for a few minutes and then I was right back where I started — dry, in pain, and frustrated.

 

I was spending probably $100-150 a month between all of it. And I was still miserable.

 

The cycle was I'd try something, get hopeful, it doesn't work, get frustrated, try something else, repeat. All until you start believing nothing will ever work and this is just your life now.

 

I was almost there.

the moment i had nothing left to lose

I'm going to be straight with you about how I found the thing that actually worked. It wasn't some dramatic discovery. I didn't have an epiphany. I didn't stumble across a secret.

 

I was just done. Done trying. Done spending money. Done hoping. I'd been through every product and every doctor and every recommendation and none of it had worked and I was exhausted from the cycle.

 

And one night I was scrolling my phone late and I saw an ad for something called Nourish. Sea buckthorn gummies. Omega-7.

 

My first thought was: absolutely not. Another product with an empty promise that will disappoint me.

 

But then I saw they had a 90-day money-back guarantee. And something in my brain just went: you have literally nothing to lose. If it doesn't work, you get your money back. You've wasted more on lubes that gave you yeast infections.

 

So I bought it expecting nothing planning to return it.

 

I found out later that basically half the women who buy this product say the same thing. They didn't buy it because they were convinced. They bought it because they were done. Because they'd tried everything else. Because they had nothing left to lose.

 

And I was no different.

why this one made sense (even to my exhausted brain)

Here's the thing that was different about this. And I need to explain it because late at night my brain was barely functioning but even half-asleep this made sense to me.

 

Everything I'd ever tried — every lube, cream, moisturizer, estrogen — works on the outside. You put it ON the tissue. It sits there for a few minutes. Then it wears off. Because the tissue underneath is too thin to hold onto anything.

 

That's the actual problem. When estrogen drops, the tissue inside thins out. It's like a cup with cracks in it. You can pour water into a cracked cup all day. It's going to leak out every time.

 

Omega-7 fixes the cup. You eat it and it goes through your bloodstream. It reaches the tissue from the inside and it helps it get thicker and stronger until it's able to hold moisture on its own.

 

No applying. No inserting. No reapplying. No mess.

 

Three gummies a day. That's it.

 

There is a real double-blind, placebo-controlled, 116 women clinical study that showed significant improvement in tissue integrity. Not just moisture. The actual tissue itself getting healthier.

 

And thousands of women on Reddit had been saying the same thing for years:

At 1 AM, exhausted, expecting nothing, even I could see this was different from everything else I'd tried. It wasn't fixing the surface. It was fixing what was happening underneath.

what happened

I started taking Nourish the morning after I ordered it. Three gummies throughout my day. I put the bottle next to the coffee maker so I wouldn't forget.

 

I did not expect this to work. I want to be really clear about that. I was emotionally prepared for another disappointment.

🗓️ Week 2

The itching eased. It wasn't gone, but the constant background irritation I'd been living with for over a year started to quiet down. I didn't notice right away because I was so used to it. It was my husband who said "you seem less... tense." He was right. I wasn't clenching anymore. Wasn't constantly shifting in my seat. Something small had changed.

🗓️ Week 4

I went for a long walk and I didn't feel raw afterward. I tried fitted jeans on without thinking about it. Small things that used to require planning and bracing now just stopped being issues. And one morning I caught myself humming while I was making breakfast. Humming. I hadn't done that in over a year.

 

My husband noticed before I did. He said "there you are", like he'd been watching me come back from somewhere far away and finally recognized me.

🗓️ Week 6

This is when things really shifted. And I don't just mean physically.

 

I felt... desire. Actual desire. Not "I should probably initiate because it's been a while." Not guilt or obligation. I looked at my husband one evening and felt that flutter. That warmth. That pull toward someone that I thought menopause had killed permanently.

 

We were intimate that night. And for the first time in over a year it didn't hurt. No lube. No preparation. No stopping. No pain after.

 

I didn't brace or wince.

 

I was there. Present in my body. Feeling things I'd forgotten I could feel.

🗓️ Month 3

Okay. This is the part where I'm going to say something I never thought I'd say.

 

I feel like me again.

 

Not the dried-out, embarrassed, in-pain, can't-talk-about-it version of me that I'd been living as for two years. The actual me. The one who's confident, fun and spontaneous. Who grabs her husband's hand without thinking about it. Who laughs at stupid stuff.

 

It's not about sex. It was never just about sex. It's about feeling alive in your own body again. About not wincing when someone touches you or not planning your whole day around discomfort.

 

My husband says he got his wife back. My daughter says I'm fun again. My friend said I seem "lighter", like something heavy got lifted off me.

 

Something did. Two years of silence. Two years of suffering alone. Two years of feeling like less of a woman.

 

I'm not less. I was just missing something nobody told me about.

other women who got themselves back

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."

i need to tell you something

If you're reading this and you recognized yourself in any of it — the silence, the pain, the embarrassment, the feeling of being less — I need you to hear this:

 

It's not your fault. It's not something you did or something you should just "accept." You don't have to suffer through this alone.

 

I spent two years thinking this was just my life now. That I was just going to be the woman in pain. The woman who can't have sex. The woman who keeps quiet about it because it's too embarrassing to say out loud.

 

I was wrong. And I wasted two years being wrong.

 

The tissue doesn't stop thinning on its own. Every month you wait, things get a little bit worse. The dryness gets deeper, the pain gets sharper, the distance between you and the woman you used to be gets wider. Until one day you look up and you can't remember what normal felt like.

 

Don't wait as long as I did.

 

Think about what you've already spent. The lubes, the creams, the estrogen prescriptions. All of it treating the surface of a problem that lives underneath.

 

Nourish is less than $1.5 a day. For something that actually fixes the cup instead of pouring more water into the cracks. Clinical-dose omega-7 from Himalayan sea buckthorn without any hormones, prescription or dependancy . Just three gummies a day.

 

And here's the thing that got me to buy it when I was done hoping: 90-day money-back guarantee. If nothing changes — if the dryness doesn't ease, if the itching doesn't stop, if you don't start feeling like yourself again — you get every cent back.

 

I bought it expecting to use that guarantee. I didn't have to.

 

✅ No hormones

✅ No prescription

✅ No applying, inserting, or reapplying anything

✅ No mess

✅ No dependency. Miss a day and your body doesn't punish you

✅ Three gummies

 

The woman you used to be, the confident one, the fun one, the spontaneous one, she's not gone. She's right there. She's just been quiet because she didn't have what she needed. And nobody told her it existed.

 

I'm telling you now.

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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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