The menopause has long remained a near medical mystery, something taboo that was never supposed to come to the front of patriarchal society. Although this narrative is being rewritten, it still seems like a complete unknown to the many young people destined to go through it. In an intimate interview, this barrier is able to break down a little.
We’re in the car in late September when it’s brought up. It wasn’t exactly the first time I’d heard the word. Menopause. After all, my mum had been experiencing bits and pieces of symptoms for over a year, heavy bleeding and a looming lowness in the way she carried herself but today was different. Today, I start to think I might actually understand.
If you were anything like me, the process of learning about periods was daunting. The next 30 years of your life stretching out in front of you like a long, narrow tunnel of cramps, spots, and ruined underwear. So, when I first heard about the menopause, I thought “Thank God, one day it’ll end”.
At no point in my extremely limited reproductive health class (Catholic school, what can I say?) did anyone ever delve into what that transition period actually meant. As far as I was concerned, one day I’d wake up and never bleed again, and that would be that! To put it plainly, 13-year-old me, doubled over an owl-shaped heat pack, was buzzing. It wasn’t until my mother started feeling its burn that I thought of paying attention.
“… And then the rage came”
Medically speaking, the term menopause specifically refers to the day of your last period. Of course, it’s rather difficult to know it’s your last period until you simply don’t get another one, so it’s typically used to describe the 12 months after your last period.
In a 2020 TED Talk, Dr Lisa Mosconi, a neurologist and feminist, discussed the many misconceptions that the menopause carries. She detailed that the lead up to your final period can last about 7 to 14 years on average, in a transitional stage called the perimenopause. This is when the body begins to slow down its production of estrogen and progesterone, causing a wide range of levels in the body.
These varying hormones are what lead to a variety of different symptoms as your system attempts to adjust, although, no two experiences are the same. Estrogen produces energy for the brain, and when this slows down, perimenopausal people can suffer from severe brain fog (cognitive performance scientifically remains the same, though – thank you, Dr Mosconi), which can leave them feeling confused and overwhelmed by the changes they’re experiencing.
To make matters worse, GPs aren’t always entirely useful. In some cases, Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) is offered to patients to help with their symptoms, providing a bit more of a general balance to the system. However, it isn’t a guarantee, and a lot of people are left without it. This uncertainty can put a lot of people off seeking help with this transitional period at all, as sometimes the fear of medical rejection and judgement appears to outweigh the risks.
“It’s a postcode lottery.” My mother noted when I brought it up to her after our weekly Wednesday gym session. “It’s easy to get HRT for it in some places, and in others, you can’t get it at all”.
This conversation with her left me wondering why I was so clueless on the subject; in all honesty, I didn’t know anything about what she was experiencing at all. It was alienating, the idea that she was going through so much and that, one day, the same would happen to me. The more research I did, the more questions I had.
I wanted to know what she wished she knew before this whole ordeal began. So, I asked.
The kitchen counter glows against the February darkness, illuminated by the warmth of the hob light. A bottle of wine sits between us; a quarter drained and dispersed amongst the glasses. Behind my mother, on the wall, is a framed collage of our family trips to Disneyland Florida in 2014. 12 years later and her smile finds itself copied and pasted, brightened by the decade that she, my father, my brother, and I have been lucky enough to share since.
“You weren’t taught about it in school, definitely didn’t have it with my mother, my sisters didnae have the conversations with me”
I started by asking her about her symptoms, enquiring what it was that first tipped her off that anything was wrong. She took a sip of her wine, considering. “Moods. Mood changes, mood swings. Really dark moods, rather than…rather than mood swings, really heavy darkness. I’d never understood depression before until I had… until menopause hit. That’s how I knew there was something no right. And I kept a diary, and it would come just about the same sorta time as my periods, and as soon as I started bleeding, my mood would lighten. So, I kept a note, and I went to go speak to the doctor about it… And then the rage came, and I could only describe that as seeing red. Literally. Seeing red, no reason, no rhyme for it.”
Through my research, I had heard a lot about mood swings, but I was unfamiliar with the blinding anger she described. It just shows the lack of practical research into the subject. In an attempt to improve her dark and angry spells, upon her first appointment with the GP, my mother was recommended antidepressants. She shook her head as she told me.
“Yeah, antidepressants was first, they wanted to prescribe me antidepressants. But I had been watching Davina McColl, so I’d watched her documentary. She gave quite good tips for when you were going to speak to the GP, and there was quite a lot of tips online as well. I told the GP straight away I didnae want antidepressants, I’ve never needed antidepressants, and it was more of a hormonal thing than anything else.”
A lot of people who are going through, or have gone through, menopause have reported a sense of isolation around the experience. It seems it’s not just our generation who know next to nothing about what’s next for us and our bodies.
“No, there’s something no right with you”
“You weren’t taught about it in school, definitely didn’t have it with my mother, my sisters didnae have the conversations with me, so no. It is only something that’s… I mean, I’ve had the conversation with my friends, when we’d been out walking and discussing where we were, how we were feeling and things. It was one of my friends that had said, “Do you think you might be perimenopausal?””.
Theory confirmed. Menopause education has been left up to word of mouth, a warning we must pass to those fighting through the brush after us. This begs the question: if we don’t know what’s happening in our own bodies, how in the dark must men be? My mother and I had entered a comfortable flow of the topic, and I pondered if we were the first in my house to have such a conversation, asking if she thought that the men in her life understood what she was going through. She shook her head.
“Hmmm no, no, definitely not. Dad didn’t think I was going through perimenopause; he didn’t think that was a thing. It was “in my head”, I’d “too many of these TikTok things were coming up on my phone”. Not until he seen the rage, not until he actually felt the… the wrath, did he think “No, there’s something no right with you”.”
There was a shared laughter between us when I asked the slight rhetorical question of whether it would be beneficial for more men to understand exactly what menopause is.
“Yeah, for the men, for their own sake. For their own sake, definitely. Aye, it should be something that is covered in school, because it’s not just… they seem to think that if you’re under 45, that you can’t be perimenopausal, but we don’t all fit in the one box. So, people go through it at different stages in their lives. Some go through it really early, and they’ve got nae idea what they’re going through.”
We ended our conversation with the clink of our glasses, and a plea for any final parting words to the youth.
“Just do your research into it. I suppose they’re still doing research into it because it wasn’t spoken about with my mother. Their generation didn’t talk about it. So, a lot of them probably didn’t know. So, yeah, do your research and start supplements early. And don’t be scared to try the different supplements that are out there.”
The next week rolls around, and we sit by the mirrors in the gym changing room. Our hair dripping with water and chlorine. Side by side, movement by movement, we did what we do best. We laughed, we gossiped, we existed in a space that seems only ours in the time it takes us to get ready. She straightened her hair; I scrunched mine mercilessly into a diffuser. I look up, catching her eye in the mirror, and I smile. Even with all she’d told me, I still want to be just like her when I grew up.
