The word no one wants to admit to

I don’t think I heard the word menopause until I was an adult. In the 1970’s and 80’s menopause wasn’t spoken about in the public domain (or in my home). We grew up watching ads for tampons that showed women in long, white dresses frolicking through flowery meadows. An actual period was barely mentioned and no dared to bring up the fact that one day your period stops completely with a lot of fanfare.

No one spoke about the stopping. No one spoke about the fanfare.

As I got older and neared the age of my own menopause, I became grateful to the women who were starting to speak about the changing body. I became aware of conversations around hormone changes, hot flushes, insomnia, brain fog etc. It’s been a brilliant leap forward — menopause became very much part of the discussion.

But not really. It’s Peri-menopause that’s leading the discussion.

If you are of a certain age (50’s) you will be inundated with conversations about dropping estrogen levels, social media will feed you articles on belly fat and hot flushes and your friends will be talking about how they sleep at night (hint — they don’t). But hardly any of these conversations or articles, podcasts or talks will talk about menopause.

Everyone has peri-menopause. Have you noticed that?

It’s become like a weird holding on to youth thing where people will admit to peri-menopause and sometimes, if they are much older, post-menopause but no-one want to say I AM IN MENOPAUSE.

It’s like admitting out loud — I am ageing. And for some reason people want to try and pretend that’s not happening. But you can’t trick biology, it doesn’t matter what clothes you wear, what you put on (or in) your face, what music you listen to, how much time you spend on TikTok or BeReal, we are all getting older every day.

And some of us are, dare I say it — old and menopausal.

Of course age is a relative thing. My mother is in her 80’s she doesn’t think I am old. My son is in his 20’s and he knows I’m old. And I can almost hear you saying ‘but you’re not old’ like being old is a bad thing.

But I don’t think it’s bad to be old, some would say it’s a privilege.

Admitting to age is not admitting to sin — it’s simple maths. I have been on the planet for 54 years which, according to life expectancy data means I have lived more years than I have left. I have lived a lot of years which makes me old, it doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot of years left, but certainly less than say — a young person.

Even my body is telling me it’s old. It’s not peri-menopausal — it’s actual menopausal, maybe even verging on the post-menopausal. It doesn’t mean I am a dried-up husk or that I am on death’s door, it doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot to contribute and a lot to learn — it just means that I have reached an age where my body is too old to bear babies (not that it was great at doing that in my child-bearing years but that’s a discussion for another day).

I wonder when saying ‘I am old’ will sound like an uncontested fact, a badge of honour rather than a bad thing. I wonder when we’ll start talking about menopause rather than jazzing it up with the word peri so that it sounds younger and cooler. I wonder if it’s menopause that’s making me cranky that nobody wants to talk about menopause without the peri…