When The Heat Comes FINAL

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WHEN THE HEAT COMES

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Agility & Self-Compassion: giving yourself grace when your hormones have other plans

A story of three Nigerian women, one salon, and the menopause journey nobody warned them about

Written by

[Amazon Divas]

© [2026] [Amazon Divas] • All rights reserved

You are not crazy. It’s just your hormones.

WHEN THE HEAT COMES

Agility & Self-Compassion: Giving Yourself Grace When Your Hormones Have Other Plans

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Copyright © [2026] [Amazon Divas]

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means - including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or any electronic or mechanical method - without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Kemi Adebayo, Ngozi Okafor, and Aisha Bello are fictional characters. Any resemblance to real persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental. The medical and health information referenced in this book is intended for general educational purposes only and does not constitute professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for personal medical concerns.

Published by: [Self-Published]

First Edition: [2026]

Country of First Publication: Nigeria

For permissions, bulk orders, speaking enquiries, or club partnerships, contact: wealthpaddiesmentorshipsch@gmail.com

We glow together. Even in sweat. Even in the dark.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication ----------------------------------------------------------4

A Note Before We Begin (Foreword) ---------------------------------5

Meet Our Women: ---------------------------------------------------6

Chapter One - The Sweat ------------------------------------------8

Chapter Two - Pepper in the Head ---------------------------------11

Chapter Three - Volcano to Ice Age -------------------------------14

Chapter Four - The Sleep Thief ------------------------------------17

Chapter Five - The New Her ---------------------------------------19

A Note from the Author ---------------------------------------------22

Coming Next: -------------------------------------------------------23

DEDICATION

To every woman navigating midlife

To the one whose body feels like a stranger

To the woman crying at small things she used to laugh at

….…You are not crazy. You are just cycling out and you are not alone.

FOREWORDLet us begin here, in the gentlest possible way: you are not broken.

You are not too sensitive. You are not overreacting. You are not "a lot." You are a woman whose body runs on one of the most sophisticated hormonal orchestras nature ever composed - and sometimes, that orchestra decides to play a completely different song to the one you rehearsed.

There will be mornings when you wake up and feel like a stranger in your own life. The coffee tastes wrong, your patience is thinner than paper, and you burst into tears watching a detergent commercial. Your calendar says it's a Tuesday in March. Your hormones, apparently, did not get that memo.

Here is what nobody tells you often enough: that is biology, not character failure.

Oestrogen, progesterone, cortisol, thyroid hormones: these are not background noise. They are the conductors of your mood, your energy, your hunger, your libido, your concentration, and your very sense of self. When they shift and they will shift, monthly, seasonally, and across the decades of your life, everything shifts with them. To expect yourself to perform at the same level, with the same emotional steadiness, on every single day of a cycling body is like expecting a tide to stay out because you have a meeting.

Self-compassion does not mean giving up. It means giving yourself the same grace you would give your dearest friend without a second thought.

Hormonal shifts are not your personal punishment. They are the shared experience of being female in a human body across an entire lifetime from the first bewildering period to the last hot flush and everything in between. Menarche, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, menopause: these are not diseases. They are seasons. And every season asks something different of you.

Agility, true agility is not about being the same person in every season. It is about being able to read the season you are in and respond wisely. A tree that refuses to let its leaves fall in autumn is not strong. It is rigid. And rigidity breaks.

So let the leaves fall. Rest when the winter comes. Trust that spring will return because it always does.

And in every season, in every phase, be the friend to yourself that you would never hesitate to be to someone else. Speak to yourself gently....