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A Stranger on a Bench at the Botanical Garden Looked at Me and Said One Sentence That Cracked Open Two Years of Things I Had Been Carrying Alone. I am writing this because the woman who started taking it after me asked me to write it down for the next woman who might need it. So I am writing it. For the next woman. If that is you, keep reading. I am Diane. I am sixty-one years old. I retired three years ago after thirty-two years as an elementary school principal. I have been married to my husband for thirty-six years. We have three grown kids and four grandkids. I have been the strong one in every room I have ever been in. I have been post-menopausal for eight years. I want to tell you what happened to me on a Wednesday afternoon in October two years ago. Because that Wednesday afternoon changed how I have spent the last two years of my life. For about two years before that October, I had been carrying something I had not told anyone about. Not in pain. Not anything I could put a name on. Just a kind of unfamiliar weight in my chest at the top of a flight of stairs that used to be nothing. A kind of tightness when I carried the laundry basket up from the basement. A kind of pressure I could feel in the late afternoon if I had been on my feet too long. I had been doing all the right things. I walked four miles a day. I had been doing that since 1998. I ate well. I had cut back on salt years ago when my mother had her stroke at seventy-three. I slept eight hours. I went to my annual physical every year without fail. I had been to my doctor about the weight in my chest twice over those two years. She had run every test you can run. Bloodwork. EKG. Echocardiogram the second time, just to be sure. Everything had come back fine. She had sat me down both times and told me, honestly, what she was seeing. She said: "Diane. Your numbers look great. Your heart is structurally healthy. What you are describing is something I hear from a lot of women in their late fifties and early sixties. Your hormonal landscape changed about eight years ago. The cardiovascular supports your body used to give itself have been quietly thinning since. Most women feel that thinning all at once at about your age. It is not a disease. It is not something I would put you on a medication for today. It is real, and it is what you are feeling." She had given me the standard advice. Keep walking. Keep sleeping. Keep eating well. Come back next year. I had thanked her both times. I had walked out of her office both times feeling validated and stranded at the same time. I had been carrying that around for two years. The Wednesday afternoon in October, I drove out to the botanical garden by myself. I had not been there in years. I had been in a meeting that morning that had gone badly. Nothing dramatic. Just one of those meetings where you walk out feeling smaller than when you walked in. I had told my husband I was going to drive somewhere quiet for the afternoon. He had said: "Take all the time you need, honey." I drove forty minutes to the botanical garden. I parked in the lot. I paid for my ticket. I walked the perimeter path slowly for about an hour. Then I sat down on a bench in the rose garden. The garden was almost empty. It was a Wednesday in October. Most of the roses were past their peak. The light was the slanted yellow light of late afternoon in the fall. There was a woman already sitting on the other end of the bench. White hair in a long braid down her back. A canvas jacket. Sensible shoes. She had a book in her hands. I had not seen her at first. I sat down at the far end of the bench so as not to disturb her. She looked up. She smiled at me. She said: "Beautiful afternoon." I said: "It is." She went back to her book. We sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. Then she set her book down on her lap. She turned slightly toward me. She said: "You came out here to think about something." I was startled. I had not said anything. I had been sitting on my end of the bench for maybe four minutes. I asked her how she knew. She smiled. She said: "Honey. I have been walking these gardens on Wednesday afternoons for fifteen years. I know what a woman who came here to think looks like." I laughed. She did not say anything else. She let the laugh be the thing. I do not know why I did what I did next. I think it was the way she had said it. I think it was the fact that I was never going to see her again. I think it was that I had been carrying something for two years and had not told a single person, and she had named the carrying in eleven words. I told her. The whole thing. The weight in my chest at the top of the stairs. The two doctor visits. The clean tests. The honest framing from my doctor about the hormonal landscape and the thinning supports. The standard advice. The feeling of being told there was nothing else to do. The two years of carrying it alone. She listened to the whole thing without interrupting me. When I was done, she did not say anything for a long time. She just looked out at the roses. Then she turned back to me. She said: "Honey. Can I tell you something? You do not have to do anything with it. I am a stranger on a bench. But I want to tell you." I said yes. She said: "I am sixty-seven years old. I am a retired botanist. I worked for the state extension service for thirty-eight years before I retired and started coming out here on Wednesdays." She said: "About six years ago, I sat on this same bench and had almost the same conversation with myself that you have been having with yourself for the last two years." I did not say anything. I let her keep going. She said: "Same age range. Same doctor framing. Same feeling of being told there was nothing else to do." She said: "I want to tell you what I did. Not because I am telling you to do it. Because you asked me how I knew you came here to think, and the answer is that I came here six years ago to think about the same thing." Her name was Margaret. She had spent her career, she told me, thinking about plants as living systems. Systems that thin and thicken depending on what they were getting. When her own doctor had given her the standard advice six years ago, she had gone home and started thinking about her own body the way she had spent thirty-eight years thinking about plants. She said: "I am a careful reader. I do not believe things easily. I went home and I read for two months." She told me what she had concluded. There was a layer of cardiovascular and cellular wellness that the standard tests were not built to capture. The body's natural antioxidant balance. The body's natural circulation. The body's natural cellular function. The layer underneath the lifestyle layer. That layer quietly diminishes for many women in their sixties. Not because something is broken. Because the body that supported itself effortlessly at forty does not support itself the same way at sixty-five. The most researched ingredient she had found in the wellness-layer category was beetroot. Studied for decades. Its active compound — the betalains, the deep red pigment in the root — supported the body's natural antioxidant balance, supported healthy circulation, and supported the body's natural cellular energy. She had read about different beetroot products. She had landed on a small company called Rosabella. She said: "I am a botanist. I think about how plant compounds are processed. The active part of beetroot — the pigment — is delicate. It is sensitive to heat. A lot of standard processing methods are fast and warm because that is cheaper and easier." She said: "Rosabella cold-presses their beetroot at low temperatures. The active compound stays intact. When you open the bottle, the capsules are a deep, dark crimson. That color is the pigment. That is what tells you what is actually in there." She said she had brought the bottle to her doctor before she started taking it. Her doctor had agreed it was a sensible thing to add. Good research on antioxidant support for cardiovascular wellness for women her age. Add it to what she was already doing. Don't change anything else. Margaret had been taking it for six years. I asked her, carefully, what had happened after she started. She thought about it for a moment. She said: "Diane. I do not want to make claims I cannot make. I am one woman who watched her own body over six years." She said: "Here is what I can tell you. The weight I had been feeling at the top of the stairs started thinning out a few weeks in. I do not know exactly when. I had stopped tracking it because I had been carrying it for so long." She said: "I picked up my garden again. I had let my own garden go for two years before I started reading. The summer after I started taking it, I put in tomatoes for the first time in three years." She said: "I am sitting on this bench in October at sixty-seven and reading a book in slanted afternoon light. Six years ago I was not sure I would still be doing that at this age. I am not telling you the supplement is why. I am telling you it is one of the things I added when I had run out of other things to try, and my body has felt like my body again ever since." She paused. She said: "And I am not in a hurry to stop taking it." She did not push. She did not tell me to buy it. She tore a page out of her notebook and wrote the name down. She handed it to me across the bench. She said: "If you want to read about it, the name is at the top. If you want to talk to your doctor about adding it, do that first. I am not a doctor. I am one woman who tried one thing." She put her notebook back in her bag. She picked up her book. She went back to reading. We sat on the bench for another twenty minutes in silence. When I finally stood up to go, she looked up. She said: "Honey. Come back next Wednesday if you want. I will be here." I said: "I would like that." I drove home with the slip of notebook paper in my purse. I cried a little on the highway. Not sad crying. The other kind. I am going to skip the part where I read for two weeks. Most evenings after dinner, in my reading chair, with my laptop and a notepad. I had been a principal for thirty-two years. I knew how to read carefully. Here is the short version of what I concluded. Margaret had been telling me the truth about the research. Beetroot was indeed one of the most researched ingredients in the cardiovascular wellness category for decades. The betalains — the deep red pigment — were indeed delicate and heat-sensitive. Cold-pressing at low temperatures was indeed a sensible processing choice for preserving the active compound. Rosabella was a small company that did exactly what Margaret had described. It was support for a layer underneath the lifestyle layer I had already been working on for years. It was not a treatment for anything. It was not a replacement for anything. It was what I had been looking for. I called my doctor's office on a Monday morning. I had been seeing Dr. Mensah for about eleven years. A careful woman. Honest. Direct. I told the nurse I was thinking about adding a beetroot supplement called Rosabella, and I wanted to make sure Dr. Mensah was comfortable with it before I started. The nurse called back the next afternoon. She said: "Dr. Mensah says it is a sensible thing to add. There is good research on antioxidant support for cardiovascular wellness for women your age. Add it to what you are already doing. Don't change anything else. We'll check in at your next visit." I ordered my first bottle that evening. I started taking it the following Monday. Two capsules with a glass of water in the morning. I did not change anything else. I want to tell you what I noticed over the next eight weeks. I am not going to make a claim about what caused what. I am going to tell you what happened in the order it happened. The first thing was the stairs. The weight at the top of the stairs had been a feature of my life for two years. Around the end of the third week, I came up the basement stairs with a basket of laundry and got to the top and realized I had not paused. I stood at the top of the stairs holding the laundry basket and tried to remember when the pause had become so automatic that not pausing was the thing I noticed. I could not remember. A couple of weeks after that, I picked up my garden again. I had let it go for two years. The flower beds had been overrun by weeds. I had told myself for two years that I would get to it when I had the energy. That Saturday in November I went out with my gloves and a kneeler and worked in the beds for three hours. I came inside. I was tired the way you are tired after working in a garden, not the way you are tired the rest of the time. A week after that, I told my husband I wanted to go on the long Saturday morning walks with him again. He had been doing four-mile loops by himself for about a year. I had been begging off because the back hill on his route had been more than I wanted on a Saturday morning. The Saturday in late November, I went with him. We did the full four-mile loop. We did the back hill. I was not winded at the top. He looked over at me at the top of the hill. He said: "Diane. You did not stop." I said: "I know." He took my hand. We walked the rest of the way home. I hosted Thanksgiving that year for fourteen people. I had not hosted Thanksgiving in three years. My oldest daughter had been doing it. I called her in early November and told her I wanted to host that year. She was quiet on the phone for a second. Then she said: "Mom. Are you sure?" I said: "I am sure." I cooked for three days. I sat at the head of the table. I stayed at the table for the whole meal. I cleaned up the kitchen until ten at night with my daughters helping. I drove home from my own house to my bedroom upstairs at the end of the night because I was, finally, the kind of tired you are after a good day. I went back to Dr. Mensah at the three-month mark. She went through the bloodwork. Took my blood pressure. Listened to my heart. She sat back in her chair. She said: "Diane. Whatever you have been doing, keep doing it. You look like a different woman than the one who sat in this chair a year ago." I told her about the Rosabella. About the stairs. About Thanksgiving. She nodded. She said: "I'm glad. Keep going." She did not say anything else. She did not need to. I drove out to the botanical garden the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. I had not been back since the day I met Margaret. I had not gone back the next Wednesday the way she had invited me to. I had been reading. I had been calling my doctor. I had been starting the supplement. I parked in the lot at one in the afternoon. I walked the perimeter path to the rose garden. Margaret was on the same bench. White hair in the same long braid. A different book this time. She looked up when I walked into the rose garden. She did not look surprised. She said: "Honey. There you are." I sat down at my end of the bench. I did not say anything for a minute. Then I told her. About the laundry basket at the top of the stairs. About the garden. About the back hill. About Thanksgiving. She listened to the whole thing. When I was done, she did not say anything for a while. She just looked out at the bare rose bushes. Then she turned to me. She said: "Diane. I am so glad." She paused. She said: "Will you come back next Wednesday?" I said: "Yes, Margaret. I will." I have been coming to the bench every Wednesday for the last six months. Margaret and I sit there together. We read. We talk about books. We do not talk much about beetroot. It is not really what our friendship is about anymore. It is about a bench in a rose garden on a Wednesday afternoon in a botanical garden where two women who would never have otherwise met sit together and read. A Wednesday last month, a younger woman sat down at the far end of our bench. Maybe early fifties. She was quiet for a long time. She did not have a book. She was just sitting on the bench looking out at the roses. After about ten minutes, almost to herself, she said: "I came here to think." Margaret and I looked at each other. I leaned forward. I said: "Honey. Tell us about it." She started talking. That woman is the one who asked me to write this down. She started taking it three weeks after she met us on the bench. She called her own doctor first. Her doctor said the same thing my doctor said. She is forty-eight. She has been post-menopausal for about two years. She had been feeling the same weight at the top of her stairs that I had been feeling. She called me last weekend. She told me she had taken her granddaughter to a children's museum on a Saturday afternoon and had walked through three floors of exhibits and had not had to sit down. She said: "Diane. I do not know if it is the supplement or if it is just paying attention. But something has shifted." I said: "I know." She said: "I want you to write the story down. The way Margaret would have written it down if you had asked her." So I am writing it down. For her. For Margaret. For the next woman who sits down at the far end of our bench on a Wednesday afternoon. I want to be careful here. I am not a doctor. I am not in healthcare. I am one sixty-one-year-old woman who drove out to a botanical garden on a Wednesday afternoon in October two years ago because she needed to be somewhere green and quiet, and who sat down on a bench next to a woman she had never met, and who told that woman the truth for the first time in two years. I do not know for certain that the Rosabella was responsible for what changed. I know what I was doing before. I know what I added. I know what has happened in the months since. I know the timing. I also know I am sixty-one and I am going to keep aging, and there will come a day when no supplement and no medication will hold back the slow turning of the years. I am not pretending otherwise. What I am telling you is what I tried. What I noticed. What my doctor said about it. That is all. If you are a woman somewhere on either side of menopause who has been carrying a weight in her chest at the top of the stairs and has been told by every test that everything looks fine, and you have been sitting with the quiet feeling that the support your body used to give itself has thinned out and nobody has really said what to do about it — here is what I would say. Talk to your doctor. Tell them what you are thinking about adding. Get their blessing. Then add it to what is already working. Do not subtract anything. Do not change anything else. Give it a few weeks before you decide anything. Bodies are different. Some women notice something within the first week or two. For me, the first thing was the laundry basket at the top of the basement stairs around the end of week three. Others take longer. That is the whole story. P.S. Margaret turned sixty-eight last month. I drove her out to a small restaurant near the gardens for her birthday lunch. We sat in a window booth. She had a glass of wine. I had a glass of wine. We toasted the bench in the rose garden. She told me she had been taking the Rosabella for almost seven years now. She said: "Diane. I am sixty-eight. I am still walking these gardens every Wednesday. I am not in a hurry." I told her I was not either. We sat in the window for two hours. I drove her home. She hugged me at the door. She said: "Thank you for being on the bench with me." I said: "Margaret. Thank you for being on the bench with me." P.P.S. Here is what I would tell you to do if you are thinking about trying it. Check with your doctor or pharmacist first. That is the most important step. Then take two capsules with a glass of water in the morning. Do not change anything else. Just add this. Give it a few weeks before you decide anything. Some women notice something within the first week or two — a little less of that weight at the top of the stairs, a little more steadiness through the day, a little more of themselves at the dinner table at the end of a long week. Others take longer. Be patient with your body. P.P.P.S. Rosabella has a 90-day money-back guarantee. If you are not satisfied for any reason, every penny back. No questions asked. That is a sensible policy for a supplement. It gives you time to actually see whether it helps. P.P.P.P.S. Rosabella is a small operation. They harvest and bottle on their own schedule. I keep an extra bottle in the house just in case. The woman who sat down at the far end of our bench last month has been coming to the gardens on Wednesdays with us. Three of us on the bench now. I told her last Wednesday that I had written the story down. She said: "Diane. Will you send it to me when it is published? I want to send it to my sister in Oregon." I said: "I will." That is how this works. One bench at a time. One Wednesday afternoon at a time. One woman who came here to think at a time. https://track.tryrosabella.com/8ae97cac-2146-42d6-af75-de0e59d15644 Individual experiences vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.