A practical guide to aging and health for women who have felt ignored or marginalized by the medical profession, from a leading OB/GYN and expert on menopausal and post-reproductive health

There’s not enough talk around women’s health, and what little there is rarely helps. Women are routinely warned, lectured, or threatened about their health. Or they are ignored, dismissed, or shamed. But they are rarely empowered. And empowerment, more than anything, is what women—and women of color, in particular—need.

Grown Woman Talk is for every woman who has felt marginalized or overwhelmed by a healthcare system that has become more impersonal, complex, and difficult to navigate than ever. It’s also for any woman who is simply standing at the intersection of aging and health, anxious and wanting solutions.

Part medical handbook, part memoir, and part sister-girl cheerleader, this book is filled with useful resources and real-life stories of victory and defeat. It not only highlights the current data around women’s health issues, but it also places that data in a helpful context.

In a tone that is lively and intimate but unflinchingly direct, Dr. Sharon Malone details how to live better, age better, and get better medical treatment, especially when it’s most needed. This is not a medical activism book designed to fight the power. This is a book designed to show women that they already have the power—they need only to increase their capacity and willingness to use it.

Most important, Grown Woman Talk seeks to eradicate the silence that surrounds women’s health by facilitating discussion between women of all ages and encouraging more accurate and productive medical insights. It is Dr. Sharon’s belief that giving women more agency can, literally, give them life.