Welcome to Through the Fog


Hi.  I'm Alica.  For years, I was the person everyone relied on when stakes were at their highest. When perimenopause brought relentless brain fog into my own life, I had to find a calm, structured way forward—and now I share that pathway with you.

Decades of calm under pressure

I have spent nearly two decades as a civilian emergency police 111 communicator and dispatcher, and an air ambulance mission coordinator. In roles where split-second clarity, and steady composure are vital, I held space for the public and frontline responders through some of New Zealand's darkest times—including the Canterbury earthquakes, the Christchurch mosque terrorist attacks and I deployed with the first contingent of police post-Cyclone Gabrielle to Gisborne, New Zealand, service for which I have been decorated. My work day could involve talking to a deeply distressed person who was threatening to kill themselves or someone else, giving advice around fencing disputes, theft or fraud, talking to the victim of a family harm incident, to dispatching police to an assault, homicide or an active firearms incident.  It was pretty intense. My work 'identity' was built on decades of razor-sharp thinking under pressure and progressively losing mental clarity felt incredibly disorienting. I realised that busy professional women need practical, compassionate tools—worksheets, daily logs, and structured check-ins—to pause, reset, and restart without shame or fear.

Building the New Zealand Police Menopause Support Network
and beyond

While balancing shift work and high responsibility, I suffered terribly with perimenopause - in particular, brain fog. My suffering brought about a realisation; my employer had no supports in place for women transitioning through perimenopause and menopause in the workplace.  A colleague and I, the most fabulous Det. Stephanie Bradshaw (ret) set about (perhaps stumbled through is a better description!) establishing the New Zealand Police Menopause Support Network. Slowly, the network evolved.

A brief summary of our work is as follows.

  • We  authored workplace guidelines and resources which are now used in other government departments in New Zealand. 
  • We set up a private New Zealand Police Facebook group.
  • Prepared and presented workplace resources dedicated to women in policing to the Police Commissioner, senior leadership teams, district & area leadership teams, and hosted seminars for all staff. 
  • We co-led the inaugural Cross Agency Uniformed Services 2023 World Menopause Day seminar with the New Zealand Defence Force, Fire & Emergency New Zealand and the New Zealand Department of Corrections. 
  • We obtained funding from the Australasian Council of Women and Policing (ACWAP) for national and international seminars (with as many as 750 viewers per seminar).
  • We lobbied for and received funding from New Zealand Police to ensure menstruation and hygiene products were placed in first aid kits in front-line police cars and police stations NZ wide. 
  • We connected with international policing jurisdictions to become a respected and trusted source of information and support in the workplace menopause support space. 
  • We were nominated for a Woolf Fisher scholarship, and for awards at the annual Women in Policing ACWAP awards in 2025.
  • I hosted the Southern Government Women's Network World Menopause Day event in 2024. https://gwn.govt.nz/
  • I was also privileged to be a co-presenter for the Ministry for Women’s webinar about menopause in 2024 with the amazing Sarah Connor (one of New Zealand's first and best-known menopause advocates and the founder of grassroots project Menopause Over Martinis*). Sarah helped the Ministry for Women create a free menopause guide for workplaces and I was honoured to attend its launch in Wellington ahead of World Menopause Day 2025.    

Lived experience led me here

Through the Fog was born out of lived experience and practical survival. It offers a structured haven for your peri/menopausal mind: purposeful brain dumps, daily check-ins, weekly reviews, strategies, tools and advocacy advice that give you back control in your professional and personal life.

You do not have to carry the mental load alone.

"When you've 'run out of brain', pause, reset, and restart".

Alica, founder of Through the Fog