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That’s Not Very Ladylike is the podcast for every woman who was told to be polite, stay calm, or stop being so dramatic, meanwhile her hormones, boundaries, and sanity were quietly falling apart.
Hosted by Tracey Willingham, licensed social worker and the voice behind That Hormone Girl™, each episode starts with one rule: Ladies don’t…and then they do it anyway.
Together, we unpack the unspoken expectations, the emotional labor, the generational BS, and the hormone chaos modern women are carrying and we get honest about what it actually takes to feel like yourself again.
If you’re ready to question the rules, trust your body, and stop shrinking to make everyone else comfortable, you’re in the right place.
You're listening to That's Not Very Ladylike, the show where every week, we start with one rule, ladies don't, and then we do it anyway. Welcome back to That's Not Very Ladylike. I'm that hormone girl, Tracy Willingham. Today's rule is going to make somebody very uncomfortable, and that somebody might be you. So what we're looking at today, ladies don't leave jobs that are killing them.
Tracey:They call it stability. And here's what I mean. Most women I know are in some version of a job that's costing them more than it's paying. And almost none of them are calling it that because the cultural script doesn't allow it. The cultural script says you have a job.
Tracey:You have benefits. You have a steady paycheck. Be grateful. Don't rock the boat. That's stability.
Tracey:And what I want to do today is unpack the word stability. Because the way we use it for women and the way we use it for men, they are not the same thing. And the way we use it to describe a job that is actively dismantling somebody's body is I'm sorry, it's a lie. So, I'm going to tell you a story about a job I had. And I'm not going to tell you the industry.
Tracey:I'm not going to go into the role. I'm not going to shout out people so that you can Google it and be like, Oh, I know who it is. But I want to tell you the important part, and that's what it did to me. Because I think there's somebody listening who's in the same type of job right now in a totally different industry. And I want you to recognize yourself.
Tracey:So this was my last job before I started that hormone girl. And here's what was happening in my body in the last year I was there. My hair was falling out and not a little. It was coming out in clumps. I was finding it in the shower.
Tracey:My hairstylist was pointing out that I had bald spots. I was not sleeping. I'd lie awake at two a. M. Rehearsing things I should have said in meetings, or things I shouldn't have said, or things somebody might say tomorrow that I needed to be ready for.
Tracey:The mind games at this job were next level. I started doubting whether I was smart enough. I started doubting whether I was capable. I started questioning out loud to myself, How had I ever gotten a team of people under me? How did I make it into management?
Tracey:Because surely they made a mistake. Surely I was about to be exposed to someone who never belonged there in the first place. I cried at my desk. I walked into meetings on eggshells waiting for someone to disagree with me so angrily that I couldn't understand why they were so mad. And here's the part that wrecks me when I think about it, my team.
Tracey:My team was asking me for things, And they were also terrified to ask me for things because they didn't know which day was going to be the day I snapped. They were trying to do their jobs, and I was trying to be a leader. And we were all walking around in this fog of please don't let today be the day. And that's not who I was, and that's not who I am. That was a body and a nervous system and a brain in an active collapse, doing its best to show up, showing up as that competent professional while everything underneath was breaking.
Tracey:So I took some time off, a week and a half, and I thought, You know what? I just need a little break. I'll come back rested, and I'll come back okay. And I made it three days back at my desk before I had the worst panic attack of my life. And if you listen to some previous episodes, you'll hear about that panic attack.
Tracey:And that resulted in me being ordered by my doctor to take another two weeks off. And then this is the part where I want to gently take my own past hand. I went back again without listening to my body, which was screaming. It was making my hair fall out, taking away my sleep, giving panic attacks, and a level of self doubt I had never experienced before. My body had given me every single signal it knew how to give.
Tracey:And I ignored it and I went back. Because the rule, the rule I had not named yet, the rule I'm naming for you right now is that ladies don't leave jobs that are killing them. They call it stability. I had benefits. I had a paycheck.
Tracey:I had a title. I had a team. I had what looked from the outside like a stable life. And the cost of that stability was every single one of my biological resources. So I did eventually leave.
Tracey:And I want to tell you what happened to my body when I left because this is the part that matters. There was still a cost after I left. Yes, my hair grew back, my sleep returned, the panic attacks stopped, the brain fog lifted. But I also was sick for two months straight. Too sick to work.
Tracey:I did that to my body. I wrecked my body into two months of illness for it to regulate and start back up. And now what I understand is it accelerated in my perimenopause because of course it did because my hormones were already in transition. And that level of cortisol made everything worse. From the wreckage of all of that, something beautiful happened.
Tracey:I built that hormone girl. I built this podcast. I built a membership. And I built the work that I do now. Because somebody had to say out loud what was happening to women in those environments.
Tracey:And nobody was. Nobody was saying anything for me. People knew what I was going through. And none of those people who had power and clout ever once said to me, Are you okay? So let's look at the cost.
Tracey:Because everything I just described to you, it's not unique to me. That's my story. But there's probably so many of you right now saying, Well, that's my story, too. It's documented and it's even expected. So, workplace stress in women is associated with elevated cortisol, suppressed immune function, and accelerated cellular aging.
Tracey:There's research now showing that chronic stress shortens telomeres, which is a protective cap on your DNA, which is a biological aging measured at the cellular level. Women in high stress, low control work environments are aging faster than women who aren't. Hair loss from chronic stress has a name. It's documented dermatology. Chronic workplace stress is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular events in women, especially in women in jobs with high demand and low autonomy.
Tracey:That's the technical phrase researchers use high demand, low control. Translation, lots of pressure, no power. And this is the part I really want you to like, like if you can like lean in and be like, I hear you. Perimenopause and chronic workplace stress amplify each other in a really specific way because perimenopause is already a hormonal recalibration. So cortisol disrupts the recalibration.
Tracey:So the woman who's in a high stress job through her forties is not just enduring stress. She is potentially making her perimenopausal symptoms significantly worse. Sleep, mood, hot flashes, brain fog, weight, libido, all of it. Which means the cost of stability for a woman in her 40s is not just a bad year. It's potentially years of accelerated symptoms that don't go away when she finally does leave.
Tracey:That is a slow erosion sold as virtue. So let's look at the historical context. We got to ask the questions that we always ask. Where did this come from? Why are women, especially women, so attached to the language of stability that they will sit in a job that is actively destroying their bodies and call it being grateful?
Tracey:So for most of American history, women didn't have access to financial stability of their own. They had access to their husband's stability. A woman without a husband or a father with money was for most of American history in a precarious financial situation that ranged from uncomfortable to even catastrophic. So when women started entering the workforce in larger numbers, really about the post World War II era and accelerating from there, the culture around women and work absorbed a particular flavor. The flavor of be grateful you're even here.
Tracey:The flavor of don't make trouble. If you have a steady paycheck, that is the whole point. Anything else is a luxury you don't get to ask for. And that never fully went away. We just stopped saying it out loud.
Tracey:We replaced it with words like stability and gratitude and being a team player and paying your dues. Compare that to how we talk about men in work. When a man leaves a job that's making him miserable, we say things like, good for him. He took control of his career. Wow.
Tracey:He really bet on himself. When a woman does it, she's flighty. Well, she made that from an emotional place. She is making a rash decision. Why would she leave a good job?
Tracey:Same action, different cultural script. And again, to be honest about who this rule was for, the be grateful for any job pressure has always been heaviest on women of color and working class women who were overrepresented in the most unstable, least compensated, most physically demanding jobs in this country. The data on this is brutal. Domestic work, agricultural work, service work, healthcare aid work, fields that are dominated by women of color and immigrant women, and that are characterized by low pay, no benefits, and dangerous conditions. So when a Black woman in her 40s says, I'm going to leave this job, she is potentially navigating a very different financial and racial landscape than a white middle class woman saying the same sentence.
Tracey:The pressure to call instability stability has historically fallen hardest on the women with the fewest options. I'm not in a position to speak to that experience directly. What I can say is that the pressure to stay in jobs that are dismantling us is a gendered pressure first, and then it is a racialized pressure layered on top of that. This history shaped all of us, even those of us it wasn't for. So if this were allowed to be said, so here's the sentences a woman might say about her job if she were allowed to say them out loud.
Tracey:This job is making me sick. I haven't slept in months. I cried at my desk yesterday and nobody asked if I was okay. The team is afraid of me. I have become someone I don't recognize.
Tracey:My body is telling me to leave and I am ignoring it. This is not stability. This is a slow disassembly of who I used to be. I am allowed to want a job that doesn't cost me my damn health. I am allowed to leave.
Tracey:I am allowed to start over at 40, at 45, at 52, at 60. Stability is not the same thing as survival. And gratitude is not the same thing as endurance. So here's what I want you to walk away with. If you are in a job right now and you recognize yourself in the story I told, the hair, the sleep, the panic, the self doubt, the team walking on eggshells around you because you've become someone they're scared of.
Tracey:Please hear me. That's your body asking for help. Your body is telling you the cost. The fact that the paycheck is consistent doesn't change the cost. So I'm not telling you to quit your job tomorrow unless you want to.
Tracey:I'm not telling you what to do at all, really. I just want you to know that your situation is yours. You know what's possible for you. You know what the financial calculation is. And you know your kids, what your partner, your bills, your circumstances, all of those.
Tracey:At the very least, because I get it, I've stayed at jobs because I had to. So I want you to know, I totally get some of you are saying I would leave if I could, but I can't get another job right now. Totally get it. What I'm saying in this podcast is it's time for us to call it what it is. So let's stop calling it stability if it's eroding us.
Tracey:You can stay in a hard job and still be honest about what it's costing. You can plan an exit over twelve months instead of tomorrow. You can start saving. You can start interviewing. You can start writing the resume.
Tracey:You can start telling one trusted person. The work isn't always get out today. If anything, the work is stop pretending the cost is acceptable. Because the moment we stop pretending, the moment we call the slow erosion what it is, our bodies will start cooperating with us until you exit. It won't give you the panic attack on Tuesday morning out of nowhere.
Tracey:It will give you the energy to update the LinkedIn instead. It will give you the focus to take the call. It'll give you the clarity to recognize the next opportunity when it shows up. Your body wants you out. It has been trying to tell you, and calling it stability is the rule keeping you there.
Tracey:So last thing that I want to share before we wrap up today, I'm telling more and more people about my work as that hormone girl. Have a membership. Inside my membership, I do have a coach that walks you through not only workplace and how to navigate conversations and things, but I also have one that takes you through the full impact. So we always think about the hormonal impact, perimenopausal impact at the physical level, but there's so much more happening at a relational, emotional, and conversational level. So my membership is called Speak Up for the Woman You're Becoming.
Tracey:And it's a place for women in the exact moment I just described. So women whose bodies are screaming, whose hormones are recalibrating, who are tired in a way that sleep's not going to fix, who are tired of pretending that everything's normal. I have AI coaches that help you understand what your body is doing, what your hormones are doing and how to start advocating for yourself at the doctor, at work and in your relationships. The founding rate is $27 and it closes on May 31. After that on June 1, it's $47 a month for new members.
Tracey:So if anything I said landed today, if some part of you sitting in a moment that feels familiar and you're like, I need this, but I don't know what to do. That's what speak up is for. So please remember to take care of yourselves this week. And I want you to listen to your body when it whispers so it doesn't have to scream. Because when we listen to our bodies and make decisions that are best for us, that's the most unladylike thing of all.
Tracey:Thanks for joining me today for That's Not Very Ladylike. If today's episode lit a fire, pushed your buttons, or called a little BS on the stories we've been sold, share it with another woman who's tired of being told to tone it down, smile more, or play nice. And help a girl out by making sure you subscribe, leave a quick review, and catch me on Instagram at that hormone girl. And until next time, keep getting loud, messy, and raising hell because being ladylike is overrated.