Before the Stopping Starts (menopause)

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Before the Stopping Starts (menopause)
PUBLISHED 3/2/2024 by Lizzie Roberts
Things will get weirder and weirder before your period stops—something every woman should know before the stopping starts.



(suteishi / Getty Images)

Maybe it was around the time your mother took up flamenco dancing. She might have cut off her hair and dyed it purple, or started dressing like Stevie Nicks. Maybe she divorced your father or came out, embarked on a serious relationship with yoga or ceramics. Whatever she was up to, it was clear something was going on. But no one was going to talk about it—at least not in public. You might have overheard a whisper: the Change. The Change sounded like one of those black-and-white horror movies. I had to make the wire coat hanger antenna touch the windowsill for Channel 50’s Creature Feature to come in. Soon a monster would appear in the doorway with yellow fangs, brittle claws and wiry hair, asking if I wanted to join her for a performance of her friend Deborah’s avant-garde marching band.

My grandmother thought she was dying when she got her first period. We were watching The Thorn Birds on TV, shoulder to shoulder in bed, when she told me that she had been away at boarding school and no one had told her a thing. I knew it wasn’t fatal, but menstruation was still tinged with shame in the 1980s, when I was in middle school. Ads for ‘sanitary protection’ featured blue liquid poured from beakers. With clandestine glances, we checked one another for spots on our pants, passing tampons and pads with elaborate handshakes. We used the euphemisms “on the rag” or “time of the month.” But whatever our mothers were going through—if we had perceived it at all—was unmentionable.

While periods are out in the open now, The Change is still a monster hiding in the dark, creeping up on many women silently. I didn’t think I was going to die, but for a while, I thought I was losing my mind. Perhaps the invitation to Deborah’s avant-garde marching band was my mother’s way of trying to tell me something back then. I was too busy singing along with “Like a Virgin” to listen. And unless it happens to them, the whole business is still a bad joke to most people, like the women ‘of a certain age’ frantically fanning themselves in sitcoms. I had imbibed the misogynist notion that The Change makes women become “difficult,” but all I really knew about menopause before I hit 40 was that hormones and hot flashes were involved.

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If you’re not one of those unicorns, you might supplement your supplements by demanding action from your gynecologist. There will be patches and gels, pills, and yes, more herbal tea. Eventually you will get used to the weirdness and make it your own, just as you did with your period, because there was no other choice. Then something else will happen. You will begin to notice a large chunk of the world, nearly invisible until now: an army of cool, older women, the ones who have emerged on the other side and flourished. In their eyes you will catch a glimpse of the person you want to become. You will do away with pretense then, giving up whatever is keeping you from beginning to live the rest of your life. And this is where the flamenco dancing might come in.

https://msmagazine.com/2024/03/02/menopause-perimenopause-period-stops-older-women-aging/