Hi, I'm Jess. I started this because I couldn't find it anywhere else.

I'm in my late forties. A few years ago I hit the stretch where everything arrived at once: sleep went, my mood started behaving like weather, my mother got a diagnosis, and my daughter turned fourteen. I went looking for guidance and found two options: clinical pages that read like a symptom checklist, or wellness accounts selling me a 21-day reset and a photo of someone doing yoga on a rock.

Neither of them was talking to me. So I started writing the version I needed: honest about what's actually happening, specific about what helps, and completely uninterested in shaming anyone about their body.

What I'm not

I'm not a doctor, a dietitian, or a therapist. I don't diagnose anything and I'll never pretend a walk fixes grief. What I do is read carefully, talk to a lot of women, ask professionals better questions than I used to, and translate what I find into language you can actually use on a Tuesday.

What I believe

• Most women over 40 are under-informed, over-optimised, and quietly exhausted.
• Strength training and daily walking will outperform almost anything you can buy.
• Grief that nobody names is still grief.
• You are allowed to stop tracking things. Nothing bad happens.
• Nobody should have to piece together perimenopause from forum posts at 3am.

The reader questions

Ask Jess started because the same questions kept arriving in my inbox, the ones women were too embarrassed to raise with a GP in an eight-minute appointment. They come to me privately, I answer honestly, and nothing is ever published unless the person who wrote it says yes.