Menopause isn’t just a phase—it’s a major life transition that impacts health, confidence, and leadership. In this episode, Dr. Dawn Mandeville, a Board-Certified OB/GYN and menopause expert, joins the conversation to discuss the power of women’s health, resilience, and self-care. From her journey in medicine to her advocacy for menopause awareness, Dr. Mandeville shares how women can lead with grace, support one another, and approach life with intention. She also introduces The M Factor, her mission to break the silence on menopause and empower women with the knowledge they deserve. Whether in medicine, leadership, or personal growth, grace and intention remain at the core of thriving through change.
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Why Menopause Deserves A New Conversation With Dr. Dawn Mandeville
We have an amazing guest who is an authority on all things menopause and OB/GYN in general, Dr. Dawn Mandeville, who is a Board Certified OB/GYN and also certified by the Menopause Society as a menopause expert, and she will give us so many pearls of wisdom. We talked about all things from sports to leadership, to menopause and things beyond. Before we get into the interview though, we want to keep you on your seats for that, but we did talk a little bit about cocktails as well, or mocktails.
I love a good cocktail, Angela.
We talked about mocktails, but I thought we would start off by thinking outside the box. Sylvia, do you want to start off by telling me if you could be a cocktail, what type of cocktail you would be? What describes you?
You know I love a good cocktail and probably sometime as we were coming out of the pandemic, it was 2022, maybe. I had the pleasure of being in Phoenix at Sanctuary at Camelback Mountain, and it was my birthday. I shimmied up to the bar, and I asked the bartender to make a cocktail in honor of my birthday, and without a beat, he made me something called a Pendennis. A Pendennis is gin, apricot liqueur, some lime juice, and some bitters.
You never told me about this. It sounds good.
It’s fantastic. I didn’t know anything about apricots liqueur. It is the balance of bitter and sweet, and it comes in this beautiful coupe glass, a gorgeous cocktail. It has some weight to it, so if you have more than one, then it might get you feeling quite right. I was like, “This is me in a cocktail.” It was fantastic. If you were a cocktail or a mocktail, what would you be?
The first thing that came to mind for me is a Caipirinha. It’s my favorite. It’s pretty simple. I probably qualified that way. It’s got Persian lime, cane sugar, and cachaca is what it’s known to have, or sugar cane rum. You put the lime and the sugar in the glass muddle that gently, so a mixture of a lot of different qualities, and you got a good amount of ice, and then the cachaca or the sugar rum was poured over that and it melts the ice.
For some people, it’s like a mojito without the mint, but it’s very different and it’s different from a margarita, but that’s my go-to. That’s my favorite. I love thinking about that, but I’m going to try yours. I like anything that has a little bit of sweet and sour. The bitter is the part that gives me pause, but I’m a novice in terms of all types of drinks. I usually find something I like and I stick with it. I’m in that, but I’m going to try that.
Yours is a good one and I have been to Brazil. If you ever had the opportunity to go to Rio and El Salvador, it’s fantastic. It’s probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Cachaca, that’s good stuff.
On my list, but no, I haven’t been. That would be the first thing that I would go to. We are so looking forward to hearing more about mocktails and menopause. Without further ado, we are going to get into this episode with Dr. Dawn Mandeville.
We have Dr. Dawn Mandeville. Dawn, we are going to get into the conversation immediately. Tell us what you wanted to do when you grew up.
Choosing Medicine: The Journey To Becoming An OB/GYN
There’s always a story behind everything, but my dad is an OB/GYN and I grew up around medicine. His first office was in the basement of my grandmother’s house. We would oftentimes go to her house, have dinner, wait for him to finish office hours, and then we would go to our house, which was half a mile away, but I remember always being told, “Be quiet. Don’t run around with your brother because they can hear you in the office,” which was downstairs.
That was commonplace, but my brother and I would run around and make all sorts of noise, but we would also role play. Part of that was I always wanted to be the doctor sticking a pillow in his belly and delivering the pillow. That started the journey. Being around medicine, acting out medicine, and thinking, “This is what I know. My dad seems to love it,” and so it morphed into that. The road itself sounds easy, but as you all know, it was not easy at all. I remember going to college, taking organic chemistry, and thinking, “This is not working.”
I took that twice.
I almost did. I remember sitting in my room. We had a suite at the time, so I was sitting in the common area and I was like, “This is not working out.” I called my dad, and I said, “This is hard. I don’t know.” He said, “F it or get off the pot.” I was looking for a little tender loving hug but he said that. I said, “Okay.” He said, “It’s not easy, so you’ve got to decide what it is you want to do.” You have to decide on whether this is something you can do or something you want to do.” I hung up the phone and I was like, “I’m going to put my big girl pants on and figure this out.” It was hard. I never wanted to do that again, but I ended up figuring it out.
That’s the story of so many of us. I pledged my sophomore year. That was not a great semester. I came in doing well, but then, after that, I wanted to go to medical school. You got to figure out, “How do I make this work? How do I adjust? How do I make it better?” That fortitude, it sounds like what you have. Your dad can tell you to do it, but whether or not you had it in you to do it.
You’ve got to do it. You may have the tools and support to do it, but ultimately, we are the ones taking the test. We are the ones in the lab. We are the ones doing the homework. I pledged the spring after that, and I got the best grades ever then. I don’t know what happened. Maybe they took pity on me. I don’t know.
Did your dad go to an HBCU for medical school?
He did. He went to Meharry. He went to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
My dad did. My dad is from Reding. He went out and he went there.
They know each other then. I don’t know. They all went to HBCU, my father, my mother, my brother. I’m an outcast.
Medical school, if I remember.
Yes. Eventually, I got it together, but I did an exchange at Spelman College from Wells, which was a wonderful experience. That helped to round me out a lot and showed me where I was comfortable and where I could do things well and comfortably. It was a different environment.
Wellesley College And The Power Of Women’s Support
You went on to go to Wellesley with one of our co-authors, Diane, and that’s how we were introduced. Tell us how Wellesley shaped you. We certainly have had an earful from Diane, and it sounded like an amazing, wonderful, beautiful experience for a woman going into that phase of life, but tell us your experience and how it shaped you.
Wellesley almost didn’t happen. I was very much a tomboy and always loved to play with the boys. I was athletic, so I could hang with them, but when the college counselor suggested Wellesley, I didn’t know. I sat there and she said, “It’s an all-women’s college.” My mother felt me stiffen up. We needed to ease into this one.
I looked and I was like, “No, thank you,” and my mother was like, “Just listen. Listen to her,” and I think she must have seen something in me, and I wish I remembered her name and I wish I remember the rest of the conversation, but she must have seen something in me that she felt that environment would be advantageous, would be something that was good for me.
I fought it for a while because I said, “There’s no way in the world I’m going to go to an all-girls college,” and I said it like that. Your parents have other ideas. They convinced me to at least look at the campus. The campus is right outside of Boston, about three and a half hours from New York. It was close enough. I went and I was trying to not play my cards to my mom, but I was like, “It’s nice.” They said they had a great sports center. I’m into sports, and I said, “That’s a plus,” and the biggest thing was that I saw enough faces of color walking around. I said, “Let me think about it.”
It turned out it was probably one of the best colleges that I got into. I put it all together with my gut. and said, “I will get over that and see what happens.” I will tell you as I look back at it, hands down, that place was a great place for me. It is a place that I still look back on and have wonderful experiences, and I have friends from there that I still talk to.
That is a place where you have all these women. Even though it was academically rigorous, it was a place of support. You worked hard, but you were also supported well. First year physics almost took me out. Phyllis Fleming, I went to her discombobulated and she sat me down and I ended up getting a B minus, and I was like, “Thank you, Jesus.”
I had not seen a B and so that was traumatic, but I got through it. She helped me through it when I was online. I had calculus and Mr. Wilcox. I would go and sit down with me. He knew something was up. He didn’t quite know why I had the little cap on and why I was stressed like that, but he sat down and helped me through it.
The support there was awesome. Also, it wasn’t a level of competition. It seemed like we were all there to learn and it seemed like it was a very empowering place. A place of strength, a place where they wanted you to be a leader, but it wasn’t taught. You felt it, and you manifested it, and I’m realizing a lot of this after the fact.
I didn’t sit there and say, “I’m being taught to be a leader.” No, you manifested it. The people around you, the things that they did, the things that they said ended up you embodied that and went with that. I would say a couple of things. The tennis team. I played tennis growing up, not competitively, because I didn’t like tournaments, but I was good enough to play well.
When I got there, I saw that there were signups or tryouts for the tennis team. I was like, “I play tennis. Let me see what happens.” I went, I tried out and I made the team. I called my parents and said, “I made the team.” The other person I called was my uncle. My uncle was a professional tennis player. He won a couple of major tournaments like Wimbledon and US Open way back in the day. I say my uncle. We have uncles and aunts who are not blood relatives. Arthur Ashe was one of my father’s best friends. My formative years were around that.
By then, he had stopped playing tennis, I think, but his wife was also a mentor to me. I loved hanging out with Jeanne. She was cool. She was a photographer. She was beautiful. I was like, “This is cool.” They helped me in terms of life lessons and also, I had a moment, a summer where I didn’t know what to do, and they said, “What do you love to do?” I said, “I like to play tennis.” “Let’s find a place for you to play tennis.” They were the second group of people that I called. I remember a tennis racket in the mail from Arthur that was the fancy graphite. That was him saying, “You did a good job. Now go do a better job.”
You still have that racket, right?
I have that racket. It’s got pink strings in it. That’s gotten changed. Those sorts of things, and then tennis itself, being on a tennis team, or let me say going to college and trying to figure out college and the newness of it. Being in a dorm. Being with a roommate from Kerrville, Texas.
That must have been a culture shock.
It was for both of us, and we didn’t know what we were going to get, but we are still the best of friends. The tennis team helped to structure my life. You knew that you had to eat, go to class, study, go to practice, eat, study, and go to bed. It helped me to focus and structure my life. Besides that, some of my best friends are from the tennis team. I don’t know if Diane has ever told you about Ginger. Ginger is one of our sorority sisters, and she was on the tennis team. When I made the tennis team, they kept asking, “Do you know Ginger? Have you met Ginger? What about Ginger?” “I don’t know who Ginger is.”
You must know Ginger. We know what Ginger is.
I had suspicions. I knew what Ginger looked like. She was an exchange student in Spain during the first semester that I got there. She came back in the spring and we became the best of friends. She was two years ahead of me. I looked up to her. She introduced me to her friends, who were a little older. I was hanging with an older crowd. She introduced me to the sisterhood of Delta Sigma Theta and was always a great friend.
Unfortunately, she got sick, and her sickness did not stop her. She would keep traveling. She’d get her surgeries, she’d have her heart valve put in, she’d get bowel resection, all of these things, and she would keep moving. She will keep doing well. When she kept doing it so much until she got so sick, she couldn’t do anything else, but even then, she was trying to do things, run things, and tell people things.
I would say that that’s part of my Wellesley experience, learning perseverance and learning that no matter what’s in front of you have to deal with it head-on. She will always be someone that I look at and remember. I think about her every day. That shaped a lot of my life in many different ways, but perseverance was probably the biggest thing that I would say came out of Wellesley for many reasons.
No matter what's in front of you, deal with it head-on. Share on XI find myself saying beautiful so much on this show. Everybody’s story is so different in how they are shaped, but what I heard from you is something we should all be trying to find when we are in any particular situation, whether it’s higher education, whether it’s in your job, to have support, not necessarily competition, to feel like you are always competing. Also, to have a place where you feel like leadership is fostered and not squashed. I can’t think of a better way to go through school, the environment that you described. Thank you for sharing.
Dawn, I have to share with you, I’m a huge tennis fan. I’m an awful player. One of my best sports experiences, I have been to the US Open a couple of times. For me, it’s the best. I have never been to the Super Bowl, but the US Open, being on the grounds and being able to sit and see the huge screens and going into Armstrong Stadium or Arthur Ashe. I think it’s fantastic. I saw the William sisters, so I was like on cloud nine.
Women Supporting Women: How We Can Do Better
Thank you for sharing your story about tennis. What came to my mind is women supporting women. You went to a women’s college, and now you practice OB/GYN. My question is, over the totality of your experiences, how do you think that women can better support women, in particular in this climate in which we live now?
Take a breath. I’m going to put the climate to the side for a second. As I think about these things, it’s always that I’m pulling from my past because I live in the present, and I forget what happens until I’m asked about it or when I sit down and think about it. I don’t know if we celebrate ourselves enough. Doing this episode is a celebration. When you asked me to do it, I was like, “Me for what? Why?”
I look back at things, and I’m like, “That was cool. I did something pretty cool. I’m doing some things.” Celebrating our sisters or our girlfriends, celebrating ourselves, we have to keep that in mind. We have to keep that in the front of our brain and acknowledge the things that we do. We do so many things that we don’t realize we do. It’s not like we are going through the motions, but we are doing it because we know how to do it. We know it needs to be done. With that, we don’t know we are doing it until we get in bed and try to go to sleep and say, “That was a busy day, or this was a great week.”
In terms of supporting each other, we should be more intentional about seeing how we are doing, giving advice, or being there to be the sounding board for someone. Checking in. As I was thinking about this, I have about 4 or 5 texts that I sent to say, “How are you doing?” I thought and I’m thinking, “I don’t want to do it as a response to something. I’m trying to be more intentional about doing it proactively.”
In terms of women supporting each other, we should be more intentional about seeing how we are doing, giving advice, or being there to be the sounding board for someone. Share on XThat’s hard because we are trying to live our lives and we are busy and also, as perimenopause, menopause sets and you forget things, and so you have to write lists to say, “Do this and do that.” Even though you are thinking of those people, the day gets away from you sometimes. I truly believe that because it’s happened to me when you say in this climate, medicine is difficult, being a mom, wife, and doctor is difficult, but we pushed through it.
Being a citizen is difficult. I’m sorry. I had to add that.
Being a woman. Did I say that or did I encompass all of that? A few years ago, my partner and I in my medical practice had gone through a lot of turmoil. Emory bought the hospital. A long-term partner left. You have life, marriage, and kids, all of that stuff, and I was just going and moving. I must have said something a few days before that, and I remember her coming into my office before office hours, and she closed the door and was like, “What’s going on? Are you alright?”
That was the first time that I paused and I said, “No.” I remember that and I’m not going to cry here, but it changed my life. She checked in on me and she needed to. That changed the trajectory of my life in terms of slowing down. We can’t do it all, even though we think we can, but now the perspective has changed. Checking in even though you don’t know what’s going on, you may have an inclination of what’s going on, even if you think everything’s fine, checking in and being genuine about it.
Menopause Awareness: Breaking The Silence
It’s so important and as we get older, we realize that. If we can impart that to our younger sisters, they should do that for each other and even check in on them, the young ones that are coming up, and continue to mentor them. Very excellent advice. Before we move on, I want to talk about menopause. As an OB/GYN myself, it sounds like our tracks are similar. I finished residency in 2001, and started practicing, and we came about at a stage in medical school residency where we learned about hormone replacement, and you need to be on this for the rest of your life.
My practice, nothing. Nobody would give it and we are examining the literature. I will be honest and I have listened to some of your work and it is all true, we didn’t learn a lot in medical school, and I don’t think there’s enough attention to it now. It’s like lifestyle medicine. There are so many things that we didn’t learn in medical school and residency, but you are shouting it now, which is wonderful. Tell us how you got into this space. Not that you haven’t been taught menopause all of your career, but I know you have a big focus now and are shedding a lot of light for many women. Tell us what that has looked like for you.
There’s a whole generation of women and practitioners who know nothing about menopause. When the rug was pulled out from under us in 2002, I don’t know about you, but I was like, “It’s bad. They said it’s bad, so let me take care of the other things.”
We are talking about hormone replacement therapy for those of us who are not OB/GYNs or physicians.
The thought was that they did a study. We thought hormones were advantageous and beneficial to women, but then the study came out and said, “No, it’s bad.” They have since tracked back that information and realized there were way more benefits to hormone therapy than there are risks. As you know, we all have those girlfriends. I have a girlfriend who I met while on exchange at Wellesley. We are still tight. We talk a lot. She called me out. She said, “Why didn’t you all tell us what we were going to expect? Why didn’t you tell us this?”
This is that friend whose neck is rolling and hands are on the hips. She doesn’t do this anymore. That’s that friend who doesn’t hold back. If she feels like she needs to tell you something, she’s going to tell you something. I got a lot offended. I jumped back as hard as she jumped toward me. I said, “We are trying to make sure the pap smears, colonoscopies, bone densities and mammograms are done. We are trying to make sure that the fibroids, if they have fibroids, how are we managing that? Bleeding. Are the babies okay? We have African-American women who are dying 3 to 4 times more than anybody else. We are trying to keep our patients alive.”
“Do you want me to just say, ‘You may have a perimenopausal symptom?’” We had a little beef. We didn’t talk for a little bit. We went at each other and I was like, “We need to end this conversation.” We didn’t speak for a couple of weeks. I started to think she’s right. Maybe it was the time of our lives. Maybe it was because of where we were in life and I said she’s right. I am not going to tell her she’s right right away. I started thinking, “How can I pivot in my practice to be able to get more information to my patients?” All along, I had been trying to fit everything in an annual. Patients wanted everything to fit in an annual.
An annual is 10, 12, to 15 minutes tops. I started saying, “Come on back. I’m going to invite you back and we’ll talk all about perimenopause.” We’ll start the conversation. Not one person has said, “No, I can’t come back.” That was a pivot for me. They want to come back. I started learning about it and I was like, “Look at all this information that we have not been giving to our patients. Look at all the stuff that I ignored over time,” and that made me start thinking about patients.
Certain instances would come up. I have called about 4 or 5 patients to apologize because I know what they were telling me. I said, “It couldn’t be.” We cried on the phone, and they thanked me. I said, “No, thank you because this is a part of my evolution.” I have gone into it headfirst and I love it. I feel like there’s a lot to learn. I feel like helping women, they appreciate being heard and given whatever medicine. It doesn’t have to be hormonal medicine. Knowing their options. My goal is to give them options so that they can make a decision about their health going forward.
It’s not all about hormones. It’s not all about hot flashes. You could feel hot flashes. You can feel your brain fog. You can feel your sleep deprivation, but you can’t feel your bone loss. You can’t feel your insulin resistance. You can’t feel your arteries thickening. There’s so much other stuff in midlife that we need to know to help save our lives because cardiovascular help or disease is the thing that’s taking us out.
There’s so much other stuff in midlife that we need to know to help save our lives because cardiovascular health or disease is the thing that's taking us out. Share on XFor Black women, proportionately higher. It’s disproportionate. There are so many things. I can echo what you are saying, and not only did we not learn about it and get a lot of information, and then certainly, once we came out in practice, it was squashed. It was like, “We’ll take that off late,” but it wasn’t necessarily relevant to us at that stage. I think I have been empathetic to a patient’s fight when they say how miserable they are.
My journey is a little bit interesting in that I was on the birth control pill until 45, until I got a pulmonary embolism. That’s a whole another story. I’m sure we don’t have enough time for that, but I stopped the birth control pill and then didn’t get a menstrual cycle back. I’m like, “What’s going on? What happened?”
I checked a menopausal test and I was in the menopausal range, and that shocked me. A whole lot of other things were going on at that time that, however I felt, I blamed it on that. Ginger getting sick, my daughter coming out, my grandmother, who was 100 years old, was fading. The relationship, marriage was not great. I’m thinking all these things that I’m feeling are because of life, not menopause.
The M Factor: Advocating For Women’s Health
I’m looking back now and saying, “A lot of those things, I’m connecting those dots.” The M Factor is a documentary about menopause. It looks at women’s experiences and healthcare providers’ experiences as they navigate menopause, and they talk about the difficulties that they have and have ha. The misconceptions, the confusion, and, quite frankly, the disappointment that we have in terms of the research or lack thereof.
It’s not something to say, “Here’s how we fix it.” It’s a sounding board. It’s a springboard. It’s a way for women and men to say, “This is terrible. Let’s start talking about it.” My goal is to talk about it. If you talk about it, people will or might listen. If you yell about it, they have no other way but to listen to you. I’m trying to use my voice and use whatever modalities I have to get that information out.
As you know, on social media, there are a lot of influencers, a lot of people are in the menopausal space, and most of them are not of color. They give great information for the most part, but they are not of color. When this documentary came out, one of the biggest women in menopausal information and education said that she was going to fill a theater of 800 women to watch this documentary, and it was out in Washington State. She filled that theater and she showed all the pictures on social media.
I had to take my glasses off, put my glasses back on, and I didn’t see any color. I said, “No. I can’t do this. I can’t have us miss the boat again.” They were allowing people to do a screening. I said, “Let’s do an Atlanta screening.” I called a friend and I said, “Do you know who could help? Who’s in this?” We started the process of getting it screened here in Atlanta. I have rented a theater. My goal is to fill 350 seats. It was supposed to be on a Tuesday, but the snow had other plans.
The second snow in Atlanta. It should not have happened.
I canceled it an hour and a half before because I was going to have that screening. They had to pull me down from the cliff and say, “We can’t have it,” because I wanted it to happen. I was excited for it to happen, but the snow and ice changed that.
I have to admit, I was selfishly excited because now I can come because I wanted to come, but I was out of town for that, and so I’m going to let you finish, but at the end, we want to let the audience know how to purchase tickets if it’s not already sold out, but that’s exciting. Tell us.
Everything happens for a reason. There are going to be far more people there than might have been last time.
Menopause & Mocktails: Creating A Community Of Support
Not only are you hosting The M Factor, but you’ve been doing this for a while now, the Menopause & Mocktails. I want you to tell us what that looks like and then tell us what type of mocktail you would be if you could be one or a cocktail.
Knowing that I jumped into all this, my mind keeps going in the middle of the night when I think about things, but as I mentioned, 2023 was a tough year and I decided I needed to get away to get my mind. I went to Miraval, which is a retreat place, and I went to the one in Austin all by myself. I put the phone down and enjoyed myself, the people around me, the nature, and the classes.
One of those classes ended up being a cocktail class. I ended up taking two, but I realized that cocktails are not just liquor. It’s a lot more. It’s a balance of flavors, aromas, and textures, and I thought it was cool because it was science, you can put it together, and I was like, “This is cool.” Before I left, I asked the guy, “What books would you recommend?” I bought one of the most common books, and then I said, “I’m into this menopause. Menopause & Mocktails.” I was like, “What can I do?” I need to know more information before I do that.
Six months later, I had created a whole side program. I started inviting patients first, and then anybody else. We have a lower level in our office. I have about fifteen women come. We have little hors d’oeuvres. I make the mocktails, I shake them and I pour them, and then we engage. We talk about intimate things. We talk about what’s happening in life, what’s happening to their bodies. I give them a little journal so they can start writing this down because by writing things down, you can always look back on it and hopefully say, “I’m in a better place than I was,” or, “I’m not in the place where I was.” I have found it to be therapeutic for me, too, because it’s helped a lot of people, but it’s therapeutic.
The one that I’m having that also got canceled, this is a big one. I’m doing it at my hospital and I have 75 people. It’s 78 because I might have oversold it a little bit, but it’s going to be a big one. I have a patient who owns a mocktail company and she’s supplying that. I’m highlighting Black women business owners. Women who has a charcuterie business, mocktail business, and then a dessert business. I’m going to highlight them as well. Come on by.
Yeah. It’s interesting you said Miraval. One of the places that we started editing our book that we wrote with Diane and our two other classmates. I can remember sitting around a table there for one of our annual girls’ trips, but you bring up something that is important and that is taking care of yourself. You took that time and to just be by yourself, which is huge because you can be with your own thoughts, not anyone else interjecting. A lot of times, you are able to come out of your fog, come up with ideas, or sleep, relax, and recharge. That sounds like a very good form of self-care. Do you have any other things that you do on a regular basis that form your self-care regimen?
Before that, you didn’t tell us if you were a cocktail or a mocktail.
Let’s see. I wish I could show you. I write down the recipes of the good ones, and there’s one called a strawberry jalapeno margarita. It’s like a little liqueur, but it has a lot of components that are my characteristics. I like to say that strawberries are my sweetness, some people may disagree. The jalapeno is a little fiery and I’m a little hot sometimes. I put some Tajin on the rim. That’s the spicy part, and then you’ve got a little liquor to make it feel good. I would be a strawberry jalapeno margarita.
Self-Care Ands Finding Joy In Movement
What other self-care practices do you engage in?
The easiest thing is taking a walk. I will walk in the neighborhood. It is 1-mile to La Vista Road and 1-mile back. That’s my two-mile walk, and then we have other loops that we can take. I will put my AirPods on, and I will listen to a podcast or music, but it is usually a podcast because I want to have some information in my head.
Is Boss Leap on your list now?
Yes, it is. I’m intrigued by the strength of the women you’ve had on this show, the stories they have told, the lightness in which they have told them, and the relaxed nature, but they are bosses. Everybody you’ve had here have been bosses. I feel very flattered to be among your guests because I have to be told that I’m a boss. Sometimes I don’t manifest that, but I’m going to manifest it more.
I also take a dance class called REB3L Groove, and it’s a hip hop dance class. When my knee is acting right, I do it quite often, but it is liberating. You go in there and you shake everything. You can wear whatever you want. You could touch whatever you want. It’s time to have a good time. Sweat, good music and good comradery. I have made very good friends from that class. The other thing is I have given up tennis and now I play golf.
Golf is my thing. It’s like if you say squirrel and somebody looks around. If they say golf, I’m there. I love to play golf. I get exercise by playing golf because I will walk. I put the bag on and walked the course. As you know, I may be a little bit competitive. I’m competitive. I play mostly with guys. They may offer, “Do you want to play for money?” I’m like, “Whatever you want.” I have a very close friend that we play match play. It doesn’t matter what your handicap is, it will equal out. We have what’s called the Mandeville Smith Cup, and whoever wins gets to hold the Mandeville Smith Cup. He has it right now. I’m going to get it back. It’s a lovely competition that we have. I love golf. It’s frustrating, but when you hit that one good shot, that’s what keeps you coming back.
We have a lot in common, and those are all great. Not only self-care, but as you know, with menopause, you are staying active, you are doing new things. It’s good for your brain because you are learning new things, but you are moving, but you are moving to things that you love to do. That’s what we try to encourage our patients to do. Find something that maybe you haven’t done before, but something interesting that you’ll continue to do, and certainly golf is one of those things.
That’s on my list. I played when my baby was a baby. My husband is an avid golfer, so I will not play with him, but that’s on my list now that I have taken some steps back and can breathe a little bit in what I’m doing and practice and such. The movement that you are talking about, I would love to find a hip-hop class. That’s one of the things that I’m looking for. Where I am, I’m not finding it, and I know you are closer to Sylvia, so I may have to come down and join you.
Where are you?
Gainesville, Georgia.
It’s only a 40-minute ride.
Yeah. I will do it.
It’s called REB3L Groove.
The Power Of Photography And Capturing Confidence
I wrote it down. One of the things I found interesting about you, again, we are very much aligned, I love photography. I have so many pictures on my iPhone. My daughter has the big camera, but it sounds like you’ve been passionate about photography for a while. Tell us how that started. It sounds like I heard something in the beginning that may have been a while back that you became interested in.
That’s one of those winding roads. The basic thing was that I wanted to take pictures of the kids, school, concerts, sports, all of that. That’s how I started. People saw some of my pictures and they said, “You need to charge money.” I was like, “Okay.” The particular person who said that wanted me to take pictures of her granddaughter. I started looking at YouTube, “How do you do newborn photography?” I said, “I could deliver a baby and then take the baby’s pictures,” but babies don’t listen. You can’t say, “Smile.” That turned out to be hard, but in terms of photography itself, again, it’s that technical part of my brain wanting to know why things work. That’s one thing, but also making people smile and making people know that they are beautiful when they don’t believe it.
When I do headshots and you’ve got somebody who’s a little bit pensive and I will take a few shots and I will say, “Here look,” and they are like, “That’s me?” “That’s you.” I would say 9.9 times out of 10, that’s how I get them to say, “Let me relax,” and they relax and then it generally goes well, and they are excited about their pictures. The other thing is as my kids grew up, it kept me out of trouble on the fields and on the courts.
You are that mom?
I’m that mom. My husband and I have to sit separately. Perhaps I might’ve allegedly gotten kicked out of a church fourth grade basketball game. I get excited. Taking pictures helps to calm me down. At least, I would be away from people when I would mutter when I needed to mutter. I would be able to literally be away and be within myself and not get as excited because my eyes were behind the lens.
The other part of that I allowed people to, at the time, I would print them way back in the day. I would print them and give them, but now I put them on my website and people can download them. It’s a way for them to memorialize their child’s upbringing. I still love doing it. I’m doing a lot of other things right now. The camera’s been in that bag for a bit, but I turn that lower level of my office into a studio when I need to, and I put it up and break it down. I put stuff away and I keep rolling, but I still enjoy doing it.
That’s inspiring to me. What a boss.
Grace And Intention: Two Keys To Thriving
I’m going to ask you one last question before we get you out of here. What I would like to know, and I know our audience would too, is what advice would you give your younger self?
I thought about that. I have been thinking about that or thought about it, and it’s interesting. I look at it as not giving it myself, but that advice would be the advice I have given my daughters. If it were myself, I’m living through my daughters now. I know that the things that have gotten me where I am now are because of my parents and what I have told them so, and what they have told me.
The biggest thing is as young Black women, you have to know that everybody’s looking at you and they are not necessarily looking at you in a favorable way. You have to present yourself in a favorable way. You have to make sure that you are dressed appropriately. You have to make sure that you speak, as my dad says, the queen’s English. “You have to be able to be confident. If you study and you are prepared, you are confident. If you are confident, you are going to be successful.”
The confidence part of that is what has allowed them to get where they are now. I also tell them, and this is something that I have learned, is to give grace, and they have probably taught this to me more than I have taught. To give grace because we don’t know what’s going on in people’s heads, in their lives, anything. I
f we jump to conclusions, we will probably be off base. If we count somebody out, we will be off base because we didn’t take the time to see what the real story was. We talk about that quite often and we bounce that back on and off of each other because it’s something that you have to continually remind yourself of. Give grace and be intentional about that, and be intentional about anything that you do because you are being watched.
You need to make sure that you are okay, but again, that person next to you don’t know what’s going on in their lives. Give them grace if they say something or do something, and then keep moving, but keep moving on a forward path. They have amazed us with what they have done. We couldn’t be any prouder of them. We gave them the foundation, but they have done everything that we have asked them to do and everything that we wanted them to do, and they have done it by themselves. Yes, we have paid for everything but they have done very well. When I see them in action or talking to people, I look and I sit back in amazement like, “That’s my kid.” I’m very blessed and proud of them.
That’s a great way to end. Our kids are our legac. As a mother of daughters, I have the same sentiments. Finding your happy place but always doing your best and being of service to others, and part of being of service to others is giving them grace. As you mentioned, you don’t know what someone’s going through, and what a life lesson to learn early. Somebody said, “My philosophy is it’s them, not me.” If somebody is going off or they are acting out, I cannot take it personally because, most of the time, it’s not me. Thank you so much. We need to have you back. We want you to share wherever our audience can reach you because you have such important information.
My daughter has told me that you are supposed to like and follow, and it’s Dr. Dawn Mandeville on Instagram, and I have a website as well. My daughter is my media specialist now. She doesn’t quite know it. She’s been guiding me. She’s been awesome, but she’s helped me to do what I’m supposed to do on the social media aspect to be able to spread the word that I want to spread.
Tell her she’s doing a great job.
We may need to engage her services for Boss Leap.
She’s there. Thank you all. I want to thank you because this is awesome. This is empowering. I want this to leap for women of all ages, even younger women, because if they know this, they will embody it and they know that this is something that they can do. Thank you all for having this show.
Thank you so much. We look forward to seeing you soon, attending your events and hopefully doing some other things. Maybe a little bit of hip hop. I can’t say tennis. I’m not doing that but maybe golf. Thank you.
Dr. Dawn Mandeville, may you be well.
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Final Thoughts: Leading With Strength And Grace
Angela, we learned so much from Dr. Mandeville. There are so many take-homes and she was dropping information throughout our conversation. What resonated with you?
Most of all, I was pretty much in awe. She’s a very multifaceted person and has a lot of the same interests that I do, but she’s accomplished, and I haven’t been able to or haven’t made the time to do so.
We are all on our own path.
I’m with her because one of the points is I’m moving forward, not focusing on the past. I’m saying this to say she was inspiring to me. She gave me some inspiration to go out and do some of the things, and golf is on my list.
You are on your own with that one.
We could do something, but yes, that’s on my list. Moving forward, I got that from the beginning. She’s not focused on the past but moving in a forward motion, not only mentally but physically in activities. Love of life came up and the importance of perseverance. We, as women, have to teach that we can have all of the tools in our toolbox, but we have to find and dig deep within ourselves to make things happen.
In our current environment, we cannot rely on others. We can rely on sisterhood and people around us that we love and trust, but other than that, we have got to dig deep and make things happen and believe in yourself that you can do these things.
I think having a good sounding board and checking in with others, the importance of that and being intentional about doing that because you never know. As we get old, when somebody’s on your mind, at least I have learned, reach out. There’s a reason. In whatever you believe, whether it’s God or the universe, there’s a reason. I’m always appreciative when someone has sent me a message or picked up the phone to call, “You were on my mind.” Don’t ignore those nudges that you are getting. How about you?
Checking in authentically is important and sometimes, we can schedule it almost. I know that’s not as fun, but at the beginning of the month or the end of the month, who are your list of people that you want to check in with or your list of mentees and sending, “How are you?” My favorite expression, “Are you good?” That allows space for someone to say, “Yes, I’m okay.” “No, I’m not.” Maybe we follow that up with a phone call or meeting or whatever it happens to be.
Dr. Mandeville gave me so many things to think about that will resonate with our audience. My favorite expression is when her dad told her, “Either you leap or you get off the pot.” I’m using the word leap but it was a different word, but that importance, “You are in it. What are you going to do?” That goes back to your take-home as far as perseverance. Are you going to move forward?
She also talked about keeping moving forward. I’m a huge tennis fan, so her talking about tennis and how she used sport or tennis in particular to give the rest of her life structure. that’s important because whatever we are grounded to, that can allow us to be successful. We had lots of great conversations and pearls of wisdom from Dr. Mandeville. I’m so excited to learn about The M Factor. Please check that out online and make sure you go and support The M Factor.
I plan to be there. I’m excited for the readers to read this episode and I have something to look forward to even afterwards. Until we meet again, Sylvia, thank you for your friendship and to our audience, may you be well.
May you be well.
Important Links
About Dr. Dawn Mandeville
L. Dawn Mandeville, M.D., FACOG, MSCP
Dr. Mandeville was born in Lakenhealth, England and moved to New York at a young age. She spent her formative years in New York City where she attended and graduated from the United Nations International School. She is a Cum Laude graduate of Wellesley College and received her medical degree from Morehouse School of Medicine, graduating with honors. Dr. Mandeville completed residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and moved to Atlanta in 1999. She is the Managing partner of Atlanta Gynecology & Obstetrics, a private practice in Decatur, Georgia. There, she specializes in Menopausal Medicine, Robotic surgery, Minimally invasive procedures and Complex obstetrical care. Dr. Mandeville is an Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor, in the Department of OB/GYN at Morehouse School of Medicine. She is an active member of Emory Decatur Hospital. She is on several leadership committees and is the former Chair of the Department of OB/GYN.
Dr. Mandeville has been named by Atlanta Magazine as one of Atlanta’s Top Docs. She was chosen for the cover of the 2017 Top Docs Issue. Dr. Mandeville is married to Dr. Darwin Brown and has two daughters: Lauren and Jenna. When not in the office or hospital, Dr. Mandeville i an avid golfer, a professional photographer and business owner of Dawn Brown Photography.
Her newest hobby is Cocktail Mixology where she has now connected two of her passions; Menopause Medicine and Mixology into a talk called “Menopause & Mocktails”. This talk addresses all aspects of perimenopause and menopause and aims to shed light on this natural phase of life. She breaks down stigmas, while fostering a supportive community and offering treatment options for those navigating this journey—all while sipping on Mocktails! I’m Dawn Mandeville, a board-certified OB/GYN and Menopause Societ Certified Practitioner with over 25 years of experience. Throughout my career I’ve had the privilege of guiding women through every stage of life—from delivering babies (which I still do) to performing advanced minimally invasive and robotic surgeries.
In recent years, I’ve become deeply passionate about menopausal medicine. Menopause is often shrouded in stigma and taboo, with far too many women entering this transformative phase of life unprepared, unsupported, and misinformed. My mission is to change that narrative. I strive to provide compassionate care that respects and acknowledges women during this complex transition, empowering them to understand and navigate the changes in their bodies.
By breaking down barriers and sparking honest conversations, I aim to shed light on menopause as a powerful and natural phase of life—one that women can approach with confidence and clarity. So how do I do that?…
Providing individualized care—I’ve restructured my practice to prioritize the unique needs of perimenopausal and menopausal patients, dedicating
- time to fully address their concerns beyond an annual exam.
Educating and empowering—I help women understand what’s happening
- to their bodies and how they can thrive during this transition.
Creating a stigma-free space—I encourage open, honest conversations
- to normalize menopause and reframe it as a powerful phase of life.
Hosting community events—Through gatherings like the M-Factor screening and my monthly Menopause and Mocktails talks, I’m on a mission to spread the “M-word” far and wide. I believe that if you talk about menopause, someone will listen. If you talk loudly, more people will listen. And if you scream about it, people will hear, pay attention, believe you, and join you in advocating for evidence-based care.
- Let’s keep screaming—for the dignity, respect, and care women deserve.