Why We Need To Talk About Menopause
In 1993, shortly before her fiftieth birthday, my mum started to go through menopause. There must have been a myriad of symptoms, but the hot flushes were the only one she owned up to, primarily because it was impossible to hide them: apropos of nothing, she’d break out into a sweat, removing her cardigan and reaching for the Daily Mirror with which she would vigorously fan herself. The moment would pass, and the beads of sweat on her brow and neck would evaporate. Until the next episode.
I grew up in a large extended family that was overrepresented by women. My mum had four sisters and a sister-in-law, all younger than she was. Every Sunday we’d get together, and throughout the evening, my mum would be visited by the hot flushes, which were no respecter of company. Off would come the cardigan, and my mum would quickly grab the nearest magazine. My aunts and uncles found her episodes funny. My mum laughed along as well. As far as I remember, she was very matter-of-fact about what was happening, but few if any conversations took place about the changes she was going through. They simply braced themselves when my mum gave the signal and laughed.
Eventually, she was prescribed hormone replacement therapy. I’d left home and settled down in London, so, bar the occasional references to the menopause, I don’t know really know how it played out for her. As far as I know, she suffered in relative silence as most women of her generation did.
As I began my own journey into womanhood – marriage, pregnancy, and motherhood – I didn’t give menopause another thought. After all, I was in my twenties, and the change of life was decades away. But the thing about your twenties is that they tend to fly by, in my case in a haze of work and nappy-changing. Before I knew it, I was in my thirties and my reproductive system was on autopilot. Menopause? Moi? I didn’t start to consider it until I was about forty-eight and I started missing periods. By then there were no female elders around for me to discuss the changes with.
The subject first came up about four years ago. In 2012, I had the idea of getting together with a few friends every month for ‘Couscous Night’, and a tradition was born. It was a ladies’ night, infiltrated only by the young son of one of my friends who would come along for the ride. By the time he was thirteen, however, the novelty had worn off, and so we were a group of six women, ranging from our forties to the mid-teens (my daughter and the daughter of a member of the group).
The years went by, the monthly meet-ups continued and we all got older: the girls went off to university and us oldies contemplated middle age.
It was Nancy (not her real name) who first brought up the conversation. Now in her mid-fifties, she is refreshingly honest and made no secret of the fact that the menopause had come knocking at her door. At the beginning of her journey, she shared her experiences openly and gave us a flavour of what was to come: frequent urinary tract infections, brain fog, and mood swings, to name a few of the thirty plus symptoms. It sounded grim. I hoped – naively – that the end of my monthly cycle would herald the beginning of a life of unalloyed joy, but clearly, there was more to this than I realised.
In the four years we’ve been talking about it, Nancy has been a fountain of knowledge for me, but more than that, her lack of filter meant that these conversations continued even when the younger women, now in their early twenties were home from university. A kind of intergenerational sisterhood had developed among us, and the girls were way more aware of the menopause than I ever was. They’d sit listening as we compared notes: who was having hot flushes, who was experiencing mood swings. We discussed the merits of taking HRT and what natural remedies that might be available. I must be honest with you: I laughed about my hot flushes when they began in 2019. It was like a reproductive switch flipped when I turned fifty.
There was no warning, no easing into it, just bam, and in my own, inimitable way, I was able to find the humour in it, but it’s no laughing matter. I understood how my must have felt when, one minute her body was a furnace, and the next, she was freezing. Although I have experienced some of the other symptoms – weight gain, joint pain, and disruptive sleep – I’ve been spared others, like mood swings, depression, and panic attacks. My daughter gets regular, blow-by-blow accounts of the progress of my ‘menopause belly’ and my marathon, five-month-long period.
There’s definitely been a shift in the way we communicate with the younger generation about life experiences. I was very close to my mum in my adult life, but growing up, I squirmed whenever she mentioned periods (which wasn’t often). I wouldn’t dream of talking about boys, and what little I knew about relationships came from observing her marriage to my dad and watching Hollywood movies.
I wanted my daughter to feel comfortable talking to me. Nothing was taboo. The conversations between my small group of friends have acted as a springboard for us, and I like to think they have demystified a normal phase in a woman’s journey to eldership. While we don’t spend every waking hour talking about it, menopause is an open topic, one we pick up whenever it feels natural to do so. Perhaps it’s the ease with which we both feel able to discuss ‘the change’ that normalises it.
The changes that occur in a woman’s body have never been a cause for celebration in the West, and I have no doubt that has everything to do with the way women have been demonised throughout history, from being executed as witches to being portrayed as ‘whores’. Who’s old enough to remember when periods were euphemistically called ‘the curse’?
There’s no doubt that for millions of women, menopause can be an unbelievably distressing time. In the midst of memory loss and sleepless nights, it can be hard to see what we’re becoming and lean into the experience, but I want my daughter and her contemporaries to see menopause as a woman’s transition to becoming elders, members of the community who use their wealth of experience to teach younger generations, share stories of their youth, and pass on practices and values that are timeless.
We need to talk about menopause and find see it as a change that is worthy of celebration and an opportunity to reflect on who we want to be as we enter the third age.
Fiction and Poetry
Written by Laurie O'Garro
Laurie has recently come out as a writer of poetry, flash fiction, including her hilarious 'God Monologues', and articles. She has lived in London for twenty-seven years, having moved to the capital to take up her first teaching job.
Laurie's hobby is string art which she discovered off the back of a childhood art from the 70s. The craft is best compared to embroidery, except it's done on card. And it's funkier. Her plan is to go global with string art and turn her creations into clothing and other accessories that people will fall in love with.