Former Sugababes singer Heidi Range is revered in showbiz circles for always being sweet as pie. So when she started finding herself in a rage about the slightest things, her nearest and dearest were so shocked they suggested she visit a doctor.
The 42 year-old had noticed her shift in mood, but initially put it down to a busy mum life, running around after her two daughters Aurelia, eight, and Athena, four. But then her friends and husband Alex Partakis planted the seed that there might be something more hormonal going on, so she went to get checked out.
“It probably started a year and a half ago, I started to get really anxious and low,” she tells this week’s Second Act podcast.
“And the rage. Oh, my God, I had no patience. I remember feeling it and mentioning it to my husband Alex but he said, ‘I think you’re fine. You’re just stressed, there's other things going on.’ And then about six months later he was like, ‘er yeah, I think you might be.’
“I am not a short tempered person, but I remember, one day being desperate to get the girls out the house to school and so impatient with them to get ready.
“And they walked out the house and I burst out crying, and I was like, They’re gone all day, I miss them now. Why was I so impatient to get them out? If I don't like myself right now, what does my husband and my kids think of me?”
'Invaluable Advice'
Heidi, who also opens up in the chat about battles with body image, the loss of her greatest supporter and her future singing plans, thanked the ‘invaluable advice’ from her close friendships with Kate Thornton, Tamzin Outhwaite and other stars who she has known since she moved to London from Liverpool as a teenager, for priming her on what to expect.
She went straight to the doctors who prescribed her with a combination of progesterone and estrogen.
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“I was scared,” she admits, “but I put the gel on and genuinely about an hour later, I was like, Mary Poppins. Full of the joys of spring - I couldn't believe the difference in my mood.
“A lot of these girls who took me under their wing, they're like ten years older than me, and they've all been so open over the years about what they've experienced and what they've done to get through. It was invaluable.”
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