What is it???

The menopause and women's wellbeing

This week we feature a blog post by a new guest author from North Powys. The author writes about the impact of the menopause on women's daily lives.

The menopause is part of the natural ageing process for women. Commonly known as ‘the change.’

What is it? Not the physiological process, but …..what is it? Do we know? Women experience it in isolation, in silence and pretend to others around them that it is not even happening. Resulting in us all ‘going it alone’ and often thinking we are useless, incompetent, weak and always petrified someone will find out that we are not coping so well and on some days not coping at all!

So, why am I talking about this now? I am nearing the end of the process and watching other women around me going through it. All the signs are there to see - the mood swings, women being snappy, tearful or even displaying a strange vagueness when normally this is not the way they are. Then there is the loss of names of people or the names of everyday objects, general tiredness and the dreaded FLUSHES - like someone has lit a match inside you and the heat spreads and spreads until its unbearable!

And what do we do?…. we LIE!

We pretend we are OK.

We ignore it and in doing so, it becomes TABOO and not only is it hidden, we don’t support one another. Sometimes just to hear another women mentioning some silly thing that happened to them like -  “I couldn’t remember the word for hairbrush” - makes menopausal women feel better. Then they know this happens. Otherwise the silly thing becomes an enormous thing and women begin to think they have some type of dementia or a brain tumour or worse. You think I am being dramatic? I promise you I am not.

Grieving for your reproductive abilities, even if you never wanted children, or you didn’t want any more babies anyway!

And more...

• Writing endless lists because we are petrified our memory will fail us at work. 
• Dealing with all the physical things, like bleeding, sometimes for weeks, until finally your periods stop. Vaginal dryness, painful sex, hot flushes, brain fog, breast tenderness, lower sex drive, fatigue, feeling old and even urine leakage when coughing or sneezing. OH what it is to be a woman! 
• Dealing with the sadness, a depression that seems to have no cause, even when everything else in your life seems just fine. 

I have cried a lot, and still do some days. I was lucky, I had very few physical symptoms, but my memory was shot to pieces! The doctor told me it would return and you know what? It is… returning, even though I still look at someone I have known for years and think: “OH no, I can’t remember their name.”

Every woman experiences the menopause differently. Some have a terrible time, while some appear to sail through it, but what we all have in common is the "secretness". I do not even know if that is a real word but it’s how I describe society making women feel - ashamed of a natural process and trying desperately to hide it and then...  inadvertently not enabling us to help other women understand that what is happening to them is perfectly NORMAL.

The menopause needs to be regarded as a normal part of life, like pregnancy is, not a taboo subject. Little conversations about the menopause could normalise and encourage understanding of the subject and make life at work (and home) so much better.

So, celebrate your womanhood, celebrate your strength, even celebrate ‘the change’. Tell people about it. Oh, they might get embarrassed but they will have learnt something new about wonderful, amazing women and, you never know, one woman might go home thinking “Thank goodness, I am not going insane.” And one man might leave the building – thinking…

.... and here I am hiding in plain sight ANON.

“It is only in our darkest hours that we may discover the true strength of the brilliant light within ourselves that can never, ever, be dimmed.” 

– Doe Zantamata

In 2017 The Wales TUC published its new report ‘The Menopause: a workplace issue’. The report, based on a survey of almost 4000 workers, found that 88% of women workers who've experienced the menopause felt it has an effect on working life, while around 6 in 10 had witnessed the issue being treated as a joke in the workplace. The survey also showed that only a very small number of workplaces have policies in place to support women who experience difficulties during the menopause.

If you need support around the menopause, check out the charity Women's Health Concern, which is the patient arm of the British Menopause Society.