In this episode of unPAUSED, Dr. Mary Claire Haver sits down with Kim and Penn Holderness, the husband and wife content creators behind the widely popular Holderness Family, bestselling authors, and winners of The Amazing Race Season 33. Together they built an audience of millions by finding the humor in real life, and in this conversation they turn that same lens on perimenopause, ADHD, marriage, and the particular chaos of midlife.
Kim opens up about the perimenopausal symptoms that arrived before she had any name for them: the anxiety that made everything feel like being chased by a bear, the panic attacks triggered by nothing she could identify, and the growing sense that something was fundamentally wrong with her. She describes walking out of her doctor's office with no treatment after being told her symptoms were normal, the financial reality of having to seek out a functional medicine doctor to finally get the estrogen and progesterone support she needed, and the combination of hormonal and psychiatric care that eventually helped her feel like herself again. She also speaks with real honesty about her postpartum anxiety, perimenopause and depression, and her OCD diagnosis, and how all of it left her desperate for a voice that would simply say: this is hard.
Penn offers a perspective that is rare in this space, the partner who is paying attention, confused, trying to help, and sometimes getting it wrong. He reflects on watching Kim's emotional resilience shift, how his love language of physical touch collided directly with her need for space, and the fears, including the subconscious ones, that surface when intimacy changes in a marriage. His advice for husbands navigating the menopause transition is worth the listen on its own.
Together they dig into the overlap between perimenopause and ADHD: both underdiagnosed in women, both stigmatized, both historically understudied in female patients. Penn shares his own adult ADHD diagnosis and the long journey toward understanding his brain. Kim reflects on how their willingness to laugh at their own lives led Penn to create "Perry," the character that gave them both a way to process what was happening without shame. Kim also reflects on her daughter leaving for college and how empty nesting hits differently when your hormones are already in flux.
Dr. Haver brings clinical grounding to everything Kim and Penn share, connecting their lived experience to the neuroscience of why perimenopause starts in the brain, why brain fog and mental health symptoms so often arrive before the physical ones, and why the women's health system has so consistently failed women at exactly the moment they needed support most. She also speaks personally, reflecting on her own experience as a mother of two daughters with ADHD and what it took to finally get them the help they needed.
Guest links:
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The Holderness Family
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The Holderness Family (Instagram)
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The Holderness Family - Music (YouTube)
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The Holderness Family - Comedy (YouTube)
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The Holderness Family (Facebook)
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The Holderness Family (Substack)
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The Holderness Family (TikTok)
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Laugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness (Apple Podcasts)
- PC’s Playbook Podcast (YouTube)
Books:
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“ADHD Is Awesome,” by Penn and Kim Holderness
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“Everybody Fights,” by Penn and Kim Holderness
- “All You Can Be With ADHD,” by Penn & Kim Holderness
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“The New Perimenopause,” by Dr. Mary Claire Haver
- “The New Menopause,” by Dr. Mary Claire Haver
Articles:
- Exploring sex differences in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a comparative study of onset, diagnosis, and symptom severity (Neuroscience Applied)
Other Resources:
