My Book of the Year: Navigating Menopause After Cancer

I know we’re only just over halfway through 2025, but Navigating Menopause After Cancer by Dani Binnington is already my Book of the Year. Without a doubt. It’s an essential read for anyone finding themselves in the confusing, sometimes lonely world of post-cancer menopause.

I’m so grateful this book exists. Even though I’ve been navigating menopause after cancer for over two years now, I still learned so much from it. It is full of holistic, evidence backed information, written with compassion and lived experience, and has practical guidance.

Menopause is the Unspoken Side Effect of Cancer Treatment

The menopause conversation is growing, thanks to celebrities like Davina McCall, but we, the menopause and cancer community, are the forgotten group. It’s the unspoken side effect of cancer treatments.

For those of us who’ve been through cancer, menopause isn’t just a natural life stage. It’s often sudden, medically or surgically induced. The usual advice doesn’t always apply. Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) might be off the table. Symptoms can feel more intense. And worst of all, support is patchy at best. 

That’s where Navigating Menopause After Cancer steps in. Dani, a fellow cancer survivor, writes from lived experience, hers as well as others.  She knows what it means to have your body thrown into hormonal chaos while still carrying the emotional weight and ongoing fear of cancer. She also knows how hard it is to find the right advice and information.

I particularly resonate with how Dani talks about all the choice you have when facing a mastectomy – flat or reconstruction, implant or tissue, nipple or no nipple. But when it comes to menopause related treatment, and switching hormones off, there is often no conversation.

My experience of Menopause After Cancer

As someone who’s faced breast cancer twice, I thought I’d become used to the unexpected twists that come with a diagnosis. But nothing prepared me for the challenge of menopause — especially one triggered by cancer treatment. It wasn’t just the immediate plunge into symptoms. It was also the initial lack of support from my medical team that left me feeling completely adrift. 

Thankfully, during my journey, I found Dani through her podcast — and later felt compelled to support Menopause and Cancer, the brilliant organisation she founded to provide practical, free support to women like me. That community has been a lifeline for me in so many ways.

Menopause after cancer is uniquely difficult. Having had breast cancer, and knowing I’m lucky to benefit from treatments that reduce my risk of recurrence, I sometimes felt I had no right to complain. I’m alive, right? I should just be grateful.

But I felt awful. Constant hot flushes, the brain fog that always hit at the worst moments, the anxiety, the fatigue (which is still a gift that keeps on giving), the sleepless nights, the aching joints that made me ‘waddle like a penguin’ every morning. It , for a while, slowly chipped away at my confidence — and I know I’m not alone.

This is something that comes up again and again in the Menopause and Cancer community. The long list of symptoms. The belief that we shouldn’t complain. And for some, the feeling that there’s nothing we can do anyway.

But that’s simply not true. Quality of life matters. And there is help out there.

I personally have since had much better care from a new oncologist, but I know that support differs across the country, and even clinics. 

This book can help. It is the ULTIMATE guide for women like me!  And maybe you’ll know someone who needs it too?

My Key Takeaways from Navigating Menopause After Cancer