Is it time to create your own life?
by
Aisling Grimley.
Suzanne Moore wants "a medal, a paper hat, a prize; some kind of public recognition or a rite of passage at least, involving fire-eating, chanting and mescalin. Instead I find that no one wants me even to talk about it. “It” being the menopause."
Menopause is about change and loss
I really enjoyed this thoughtful, funny, honest article by Suzanne Moore in the New Statesman where she describes her experience of menopause. She seems to have tried most approaches and she's here to report on everything from rage and identity, to HRT, BHRT and sleep hygiene. I urge you to read the full article but I've extracted some of my favourite paragraphs here:
"It’s just as well I am handling everything so well. I end my relationship because it’s bad and I end it badly because there is no other way. A process of shedding starts. Some hoard and hold on. This is not for me. Some intuition tells me that freedom will demand letting go.
At the time, I didn’t see these feelings as menopausal. But now I do. This deep sense of time passing, through one’s flesh, of not wanting more of the same, a sense of coming into the present and only the present, understanding that time is valuable and time has passed: these come through knowing that parts of my life are over. I can no longer create life – and I have created three – so now I must create my own. This self-creation is either selfish or absolutely necessary to survive. Yes, I can jump out of a plane, get a new “hobby”, rush around in a flurry of activities involving Zumba and watercolours . . . but why would I? The manic overachievement of the menopausal feels a lot like denial."
On the confusion and conflict of menopause
"The menopause is not sexy. We get it. We don’t get it. It might be ultra-sexy, actually. Hormones are druggy and – rather like in pregnancy – some women find their libido shoots up; for others, it declines and they express relief. We are all different but the truism remains that our bodies, battle-scarred as they may be, are now somewhere we ought to feel at home. To not feel at home is the source of terror. To feel the fear of where this all might be heading."
"Maybe that’s why so much cheery advice on looking younger (it’s not happening) or getting a pet or internet dating can be grating. And inane. A further denial of loss. I’ve never met a woman who misses having periods, but I know many who felt a form of mourning in middle age. The mourning is unvoiced and unsure because one of the things women learn very young is that putting yourself at the centre of things is unbecoming. The flood of feelings about life, death, ageing, sex and the whole damn shebang is easier to push away, to belittle, than to confront."
Read the full aticle in the New Statesman here.
Suzanne Moore
Suzanne Moore is a writer for the Guardian and the New Statesman. She writes the weekly “Telling Tales” column in the NS.