Literally every day someone reads or hears the word MENOPAUSE for the first time!
A woman who is feeling “not quite right”, is told by a Doctor, a friend, a magazine, Dr Google – it could be The Menopause. Some women hardly notice it, while many struggle with an array of symptoms that change their life.
I thought I was going mad when it started for me. I remember googling “symptoms of Early Onset Dementia/Alzheimer’s”, as I was forgetting things and appeared to have lost my confidence. My friend, (no I didn’t go to the Doctor), suggested it might be Menopause and so I googled that!
The list of symptoms that came up was totally depressing, and I was ticking just about every box. But it was the lack of actual information that really wound me up.
I found myself reading terrible words like “atrophied vagina” and “senile ovaries”. Seriously, only men could have come up with those descriptions in the old medical books!
Biologists call Menopause “The Post Reproductive Lifespan” and that hit me hard…the idea that I was no longer fertile and did that mean the scrapheap?
I found it interesting that other phases in a female’s life are celebrated. Puberty (becoming fertile) and Motherhood are acknowledged as great milestones and yet the next phase in a woman’s life is shut down and definitely not seen as a time to celebrate! (I want to change that)!
Fact check…The average age that a woman enters Menopause (the marker being when she has not had a period for 12 months), is 52. So, if we are fortunate enough to lead a long and healthy life, say to about 85, that’s over 30 years of living beyond Menopause – about a third of our lives! How awesome is that!
But this all got me thinking about how our society treats women as they head into midlife and beyond and also how we treat ourselves. I mean are we willing to allow ourselves to be put in a box with a label saying something like “past it”?
For me, it was a big No no no! This was not it!
I was still young, fit, and healthy and had so much that I wanted to do and say.
That is why I am here helping women navigate and celebrate the sometimes-tricky phase that is Midlife and all that goes with it.