Cora Darlington is a Menopause and Midlife Transformation Coach rewriting the narrative of what is possible for women after 40. With over 20 years of coaching experience and a wide range of credentials spanning NLP, CBT, life coaching, women’s wellbeing coaching, executive coaching, meditation, and yoga, Cora has dedicated her life’s work to empowering women and now to challenging the mainstream view that midlife marks the beginning of a woman’s decline.
After navigating her own profound midlife unravelling during perimenopause, Cora recognised the devastating gap in how women are supported through this powerful rite of passage.
Whilst mainstream approaches focus on symptom management and decline narratives, leaving women feeling invisible and ashamed, Cora created something revolutionary: “The Menopause as Sexy” movement–a bold reframing of menopause as a woman’s most powerful upgrade, not her ending.
She is the creator of HOMECOMING, a comprehensive 12-month transformational programme guiding women aged 40-60+ through four sacred passages: The Great Undoing, The Deep Forgiveness, The Reclamation, and The Rise.
Her approach integrates deep shadow work and somatic body wisdom, empowering women to build their midlife support team–from healthcare practitioners (whether that’s HRT, acupuncture, reflexology, or the right trainer) to empowered community–and getting crystal clear on what they want the next season of their life to look and feel like.
Author of “The Great Surrender: A Guide to Your Homecoming,” Cora’s work is distinguished by her commitment to her lived experience as her primary and most potent authority.
In partnership with US-based strategist Michelle Fetsch, she is expanding her transformational work from the UK into the American market.
Her mission: Making midlife transformation sacred, not shameful.
Cora Darlington, Menopause & Midlife Transformation Coach
Cora, tell us about yourself and the “Menopause as Sexy” movement you’ve created. That’s bold, provocative language – what does it actually mean?
I’m a midlife transformation coach who has walked first-hand through the very real fire of menopause and discovered that everything we have been told about this passage is fundamentally wrong.
For over 20 years I have worked with women, but nothing prepared me for my own midlife journey. When menopause hit, I felt like a stranger in my own body and in my own life. I found myself looking in the mirror and not recognising the woman who was staring back. I went from being someone who felt clear and purposeful, to lost and disconnected, and on top of the physical symptoms that we hear so much about, I also dealt with huge amounts of grief and rage. It felt like a continuous dark night of the soul.
Here is what I discovered: There was nowhere to go that honoured the full truth. The medical establishment wanted to treat my “symptoms.” The wellness industry wanted to help me “manage” this “difficult time.” Menopause communities felt more like women trauma bonding than being in an empowering relationship with their own transition.
Everyone operated from the same assumption–that menopause is something going wrong, something to fix, something to survive, something that marked the beginning of a woman’s steady decline. That was not something I desired to be a part of.
“Menopause as Sexy” is not about physical attractiveness. It’s about power. It’s about the raw, unapologetic, fierce claiming of yourself that becomes possible when you stop performing for everyone else. It’s about the wisdom earned from walking through fire.
It’s about the freedom of no longer giving a damn what people think. It is about stepping into your sovereignty without apology.
Society conditions us to believe women become less valuable as we age. “Menopause as Sexy” is my refusal to accept that narrative. This passage isn’t our ending–it’s our upgrade.
You say mainstream menopause coaching has it fundamentally wrong. What narrative are you challenging, and what’s at stake for women when we get this wrong?
The mainstream narrative treats menopause as a problem to solve–a deficiency disease, symptoms to manage, something to “get through” so you can return to “normal.”
This framework is devastating because it positions women as broken, declining, and powerless. The medical establishment prescribes hormones to fix what’s “wrong.” The wellness industry sells supplements to “ease symptoms.” Even progressive coaches focus on helping women “cope” with this “difficult transition.”
What’s at stake? Women internalise the message that they are, in fact, declining. That their value is diminishing. That their best years are behind them. That they should make themselves smaller, quieter, less demanding.
