A Company, a Product, and A Mission

By Susie Hadas –

“There are no second acts in American lives.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, American author

“Oh, yes there are!”  – Susie Hadas, Founder & Chief People Person of Personally Cool, and Inventor of coldfront

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I founded Personally Cool in 2007 because I couldn’t find what I’ll call an “and” product for hot flash relief: effective; AND safe; AND convenient; AND discreet; AND elegant; AND reusable; AND eco- and wallet-friendly. I invented coldfront to be that product – and I am proud to say that our first-of-its-kind cold therapy system designed specially for women IS all of those “ANDS.”

Hot flashes are beastly, and we are thrilled to have created something that actually works to provide instant relief from them. But we cannot ignore the enormous need for psychological and social relief, too. There is a growing unrest, a roiling undercurrent, a sweeping desire to reassert control over our own lives, and to put a stop to allowing other people to define for us what this time of life should mean. If you are a woman of a certain age, chances are you know what I’m talking about. With coldfront, we are basically saying: you don’t have to be a doctor or a pharmacist; you don’t need to be an expert in this age of micro-specialization to handle what is an absolutely normal part of life; YOU are in charge of your own relief; and that relief is no farther away than your handbag and no more complicated than what we already know works – cold.

Our tagline, “We make menopause cool,” is more than a clever way of saying we deliver really cool hot flash relief. It is our aim to make it a rallying cry to reframe the discussion around menopause. The shared challenge for like-minded women is nothing less than a rebranding of the mid-life female, a shift in perception (and self-perception) of what it means to live our lives through the menopausal transition and beyond.

The bottom line is that menopause is not the time to retire into obscurity, nor surrender control of how we think about ourselves to anyone else. It is the time to amp it up because we can — we each finally have the freedom to apply and share a lifetime of lessons. How absurd to relegate half of the world’s emotional and intellectual capital to the scrap heap just when it’s peaking and available – and when it’s never been more relevant and needed!

For the first time in history, technology, knowledge and social evolution have combined to give us the great second act that a century ago really was denied us: In Fitzgerald’s time, the average life expectancy for a woman was 48.3 years. In 2010, the average life expectancy for women in the U.S. was 80.8 years. This is an additional 32.5 years to contribute wisdom and life’s lessons, to be a perspective and a voice, which in days of yore died off before it could be heard.

Trivialized? Medicalized? Ignored? We don’t think so. Whether it’s great sex in the bedroom or great ideas in the boardroom, it’s time for us “women of a certain age” to claim our equal seat at every table.

 

Susie Hadas is Founder & Chief People Person of Personally Cool Inc. She’s also the inventor of coldfront®, and mother of three beautiful sons. Please visit her website: www.mycoldfront.com; “Like” her coldfront Facebook page: www.facebook.com/mycoldfront; and follow her on Twitter @personallycool.

©Personally Cool Inc. 2012

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A Company, a Product, and A Mission
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