I want to tell you the truth about why this women’s health blog exists.
Not the polished version. Not the one that sounds like a mission statement. The actual reason.
It started with frustration.
I am a registered nurse. I have spent years inside the medical system — learning it, working it, trusting it, and slowly becoming more skeptical of the way it handles women’s health in particular. I have sat across from patients who were exhausted and dismissed, handed prescriptions for symptoms that were never investigated, and sent home with “your labs look normal” when nothing about how they felt was normal.
I was one of those patients too.
What Happened to Me
When I was thirty-nine, I went in for a routine annual wellness check. No concerns. No symptoms I could point to. Just the kind of appointment you schedule because you’re supposed to — the one you almost cancel because everything feels fine.
It wasn’t fine.
My A1C came back at 7. I was diabetic.
I remember sitting with that number and feeling genuinely scared. Not panicked, but the kind of scared that makes you go quiet and start asking questions. I was a nurse. I knew what that number meant. I knew where it led if nothing changed.
So I started a ketogenic diet. Honestly? My first motivation was weight. I had over a hundred pounds to lose and I needed a reason to finally do something about it. The diabetes diagnosis was that reason.
The weight did come off. But somewhere along the way, something unexpected started happening.
My A1C normalized. My Crohn’s disease went into remission. My PCOS — the condition that had caused irregular cycles and metabolic chaos for years — quietly resolved. I came off medications I had been on for a long time. My nervous system calmed down. My energy came back.
I had started keto to lose weight. I ended up getting my health back in ways I never anticipated and could not have predicted.
A few years later, around forty-two or forty-three, a new layer emerged — brain fog, anxiety with no clear source, memory problems that scared me. That’s when the hormone piece entered the picture. I went to my doctor and was referred to talk about “women’s concerns.”
That was the beginning of a longer search for something better.
Why I Don’t Trust the Standard Playbook
Here is the part where I am going to be honest in a way that might surprise you coming from a nurse.
I do not trust the standard medical playbook for women’s health and metabolic conditions. Not because individual doctors are bad people — most of them are genuinely trying to help — but because the system they work inside is not built to address the root causes of what ails most women in midlife.
When you go to a conventional doctor with fatigue, weight gain, brain fog, and irregular cycles, the standard response is a TSH check, maybe a basic metabolic panel, and an offer of an antidepressant or a referral. The underlying hormonal and metabolic picture — the one that often explains all of those symptoms — is frequently not investigated at all.
Dietary approaches like ketogenic eating are dismissed or minimized, often by practitioners who have not read the research and who were trained in a nutritional model that has not changed substantially since the 1970s.
Women are told their symptoms are stress. Or anxiety. Or just getting older.
I am tired of that narrative. And I suspect you might be too.
What I Wanted to Build with This Women’s Health Blog
I wanted to create a space that felt like sitting down with a friend who also happened to be a nurse. Someone who would be straight with you. Who would point you toward real information — not alarming, not selling you something, just honest and practical and rooted in both the science and the lived experience.
Someone who would say: your symptoms are real. Your instincts about your own body are worth listening to. There are practitioners who will take you seriously, approaches that have real evidence behind them, and things you can do that are not just “take this pill and come back in six months.”
I also wanted to give you a place to find information about perimenopause that doesn’t assume you already know everything, information about ketogenic eating that isn’t written for men or for athletes, and honest conversations about chronic illness from someone who has navigated it personally.
If you’re looking for a provider who actually specializes in this, The Menopause Society maintains a searchable directory of certified practitioners at menopause.org — you can search by zip code and filter by telehealth availability if there’s no one local. Look for practitioners with the MSCP credential (Menopause Society Certified Practitioner), which means they’ve passed a competency exam specifically in menopause care.
The Morningside Studio and this women’s health blog is that place. It’s still growing. So am I.
A Little More About Me
I am a registered nurse, BSN, RN, with clinical experience in home health and behavioral health nursing. I have been a nurse for ten years.
I am also a wife of twenty-six years, a mother, and a cat mom to seven — Puma, Goose, Maki, Bat, Shit Kit, Babby, and Jetpack Pigeon Forge, the last of whom is the unofficial mascot of this blog and the most chaotic creature I have ever loved.
I have been crocheting for twenty years and design original patterns. I bake, decorate cakes, hike, race Rally Cross, and enjoy painting and drawing. I am someone who makes things with her hands and finds peace in that.
I live in Washington State, where the weather encourages you to stay inside and make things — which has worked out well for me.
I work with a naturopath who I trust deeply and who has been central to my hormone health journey. I currently take no prescription medications except Protonix for reflux. My health is managed primarily through diet, lifestyle, and a supplement protocol I have built thoughtfully over time.
That is not a flex. It is the result of years of intentional work and significant investment in my own health. And it is not the right path for everyone. But it is my path, and I want to share what I have learned honestly — including what worked, what didn’t, and where I still have questions.
Pull up a chair. I’m glad you’re here.
Kelli Roulette, BSN, RN, is a registered nurse with clinical experience in home health and behavioral health nursing. She writes about women’s health, perimenopause, and ketogenic living from both her professional background and personal experience.