Reimagining Menopause: Life Doesn't End at 50
Sitting down to write this piece, I decided to scour the internet to see at a glance how many podcasts were out there dedicated to the menopause. A ‘one-stop shop ‘site identified no fewer than sixty. I got to thirty, but could only access more titles if I gave them my email address. It was fine, though, as I’d achieved my objective, which was to prove that menopause had – in the thirty years since my mum was having hot flushes – gone from being euphemistically called ‘The Change’ to being talked about more than was the case thirty years ago.
What impact will all of this awareness of how women’s minds and bodies change after the age of forty have on women in their twenties and thirties? My own daughter is three years shy of thirty, and when I asked her if she gave any thought to the subject, her reply was only when she talked to older women. I spoke to a couple of friends about their experiences, and they were the same. One friend, Carol* said she didn’t know anything about the changes her body would go through at fifty when she was a young woman, while my other friend, Marsha* had had no preparation whatsoever.
I was the same.
I was twenty-four when my mum started to get hot flushes. I grew up in an extended family with lots of aunts and uncles. She was fifty when they started, and their clammy unpredictability was a source of hilarity at family get-togethers. Decades later, she recalled how her own mother was probably going through the menopause, but her children just thought she was a whingeing hypochondriac.
At fifty-five, I am officially postmenopausal, which if you’re in your twenties, thirties and forties, means you haven’t had a period for at least twelve months. The symptoms of menopause can vary, and for the most part, it’s my guess that most women don’t even know they’re in the menopause. As I entered my forties, it didn’t occur to me to Google menopause just to, you know, prepare myself. My only concession to being informed came in the form of a visit to the GP when I was 48 to discuss the fifty fibroids that were taking up space in and around my uterus. I was in and out of his consultation room in minutes as he casually reassured me that they’d probably shrink when I entered the menopause. I left his room vaguely looking forward to my fifties.
If I were to take a wild guess, I’d say the prospect of an end to periods is the one thing women look forward to, unless they’re still hoping to have children. This was the case for my two friends who are both in their fifties. Carol felt ‘utterly blessed’ when her periods stopped. It meant the end of fainting spells and headaches. She celebrated the onset of menopause. For Marsha, menopause meant freedom.
For me, once the relief that periods were a thing of the past had worn off, I entered a new and difficult phase that has only recently begun to make sense. Without realising it, I’d started to experience a feeling of decline, beginning with the need for comfort food. Lockdown gave me an excuse to indulge in snack foods on a ridiculous scale. Over time and like many women, I gained weight: reduced motivation and hormonal changes, as well as increased sugar cravings created the perfect storm for what I called ‘menopause belly’, and confidence in my appearance took a hit. The British Menopause Society cites weight gain as the most common side effect of the menopause, with ‘at least 50%’ of women gaining somewhere in the region of ten kilos by the time they reach menopause. Whereas my response to gaining weight in my thirties was to go to Weight Watchers and hit the gym, a decade later, I was finding it impossible to do so much as a press up. I lamented my expanding waistline and self-soothed with a combination of sweets, chocolate, biscuits, and the occasional lemon drizzle cake. Oh, and family-sized packets of crisps.
I hated my menopause belly, and cursed the GP as I palpated my still-present fibroids. My knees had started to creak when I walked and my hair was greying at a rate of knots. I desperately wanted things to change.
By the end of 2023, I started to take stock. A dear friend of mine died suddenly at the age of fifty-six in August, and another friend was undergoing treatment for leukaemia. He was fifty-eight when he died at the start of 2024. I began to contemplate, with earnest, the state of my own health and my mortality, and reflected on what I’d achieved in six decades of life.
My existential angst sounds pretty standard, but when I viewed it through the lens of being a woman, I concluded that my morose thoughts and feelings of inadequacy may have had their origins in the reality of what might have been the natural order of things a few hundred years ago. Most, if not all, women would not have lived to see their fiftieth birthday. And if they did, they would have been under no illusion that they had come to the end of their usefulness to society. It would have been off to the knacker’s yard for them.
Too old to work, too old to attract a mate, too old to bear children. Without realising it, I was getting ready to die. I was finished.
Except I wasn’t.
The untimely deaths of my two friends were a spur for me. I still had things to do, and I still wanted to look and feel great. I started 2024 by giving up meat and animal products and was surprised at how easy it was. In May, my daughter expressed concern about my wellbeing after I offered her some of my snack haul – brioche buns and Garibaldi biscuits. Her kind words (‘Are you okay?’) were the gentle kick I needed to give up ultra-processed food (Thank you, Chris Van Tulleken). I’m three months into what I hope will be a lifetime of abstinence from junk food, and my menopause belly has reduced significantly. My knees feel great, and I no longer get out of breath when I walk for any length of time. Instead of feeling like I’m at the end of my life, I now recognise that I’m at the beginning of a new phase. It doesn’t have to be a choice between wisdom and health. I can have both. In September, I will be embarking on a new career as a deputy head and a keynote speaker.
If you’re a woman in your twenties or thirties, I totally understand if you’ve not given any thought to the menopause (I didn’t). You may be thinking of having children, so why would you contemplate a time in your life when reproduction is no longer on the table? What, if anything, should you do to prepare for the menopause?
My friend Carol’s advice is to cultivate interests and hobbies as they’ll help you navigate the anxiety and common mental health challenges that may accompany the change in your life. She also encourages you to find people you can talk to. Marsha recommended paying close attention to your mind, body and spirit, keeping up your exercise routine and learning about the benefits of nutrition. For my part, self-awareness is the key to everything. The more you understand yourself, the better prepared you’ll be for anything that life presents you with. Learn about the menopause from the wealth of information about what happens to your minds, bodies and spirits.
I’m glad to say the story - so far, at least, - has a happy ending: after months of trying to reclaim my health, I finally managed to give up sugar (I’m three months in so far), I’m enjoying exercising more and most importantly, I can see that I have so much more to give to the world.
Menopause is not the end that my subconscious believed it was. I’m not 35 anymore, but I’m still me. Different, but better!
Written by Laurie O’Garro
Laurie O’Garro has been a bit of thinker since she was very young: she believes in living her truth and has always opted for the road less travelled, even if it meant courting the disapproval of people who were important to her. Laurie has been a teacher for over thirty years and loves sharing with children her nuggets of wisdom. She lives in London with her 27-year-old artist daughter, Emelia.