2 hours Ago By Aimee Meade
While I’m all for talking about the menopause – increased awareness of what women go through has been a good thing – it’s become too big a subject now, if you ask me. It feels sometimes as if we are being bombarded by advice from everyone with a platform to stand on and mouth to spout from and we can’t tell the chaff from the wheat.So many celebs, on both sides of the pond, have jumped on the menopause bandwagon to give us their experience of it, share advice and in some cases try to sell us products to help.
It all feels so disingenuous. Moreover, I have even heard bloggers, podcasters and household names refer to the menopause as a “blessing” and have equated it to a “superpower”. Really? if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }For too many women going through the menopause, who are having to work through an eight-hour shift after a night of poor sleep (probably unlike these “experts”) or are so embarrassed to be sweating out water like the Fountains of Bellagio, or trying not to cry/fly into a rage for absolutely no reason, it couldn’t feel less like a superpower if it tried.
I thought I was going through it fine. Not one single hot sweat. Okay, I couldn’t string a sentence together, or sleep.
I was making irrational decisions, couldn’t pin a thought down with a pitchfork, I was bursting into tears for fun, worrying about everything, but this was all natural – right? In the end it was the insomnia that sent me to the doctor. I asked about HRT, but she shut that down when I told her I hadn’t had a period for five years and she packed me off with some anti-depressants instead that turned me into a zombie.It was only when a fellow novelist friend of mine told me about the positive effect of her HRT and another confessing she’d had a similar rebuff and so went to a private clinic “and I must ring them”, that I reconsidered getting myself on it.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }“I thought all these symptoms were just par for the course,” I told the doctor there. “They are,” she said, “but you don’t have to put up with them.”I’m a different woman for that HRT patch on my buttock twice-weekly.
I honestly marvel at how I can hold conversations again without getting lost mid-sentence. Normal life worries are not automatically stretched into irrational anxieties. I’ve rediscovered lost energy and zest.
Both the friend who led me to the clinic, and the doctor there, gave me my life back. No exaggeration.I am thankful for the proliferation of menopause chat online in some ways.
It has removed the stigma and taboo and allowed more open conversations with the women in my life.It had to be demystified because it’s almost been a dirty secret until recently, with women reduced to angry, sweat-damp creatures, the butt of “the change” jokes for too long. Dialogue can strip away so much of the fear surrounding it.
It certainly helped that I had no concerns about ringing or meeting up with someone I knew would give me some old-friend honesty, tempered with kindness, that yes, I need to take a breath; yes, I was getting things out of perspective; yes, this too will pass. And then the week after, I’d give her the same speech when she needed to hear a voice of reason.How many of us have thought that getting our words muddled was actually the start of dementia? Quite a lot as it happens when I’ve asked around – because what we are going through almost always crops up during a meal out with pals.
It’s scary to have that brake pulled hard on what you were about to say – scarier still on live TV during a morning newspaper review. Trust me, done that, bought the..
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adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l2"}); }#color-context-related-article-3479631 {--inews-color-primary: #3759B7;--inews-color-secondary: #EFF2FA;--inews-color-tertiary: #3759B7;} Read Next square CHERRY HEALEY The menopause made me break up with my ex - and I'm gladRead MoreMy insomnia is still a work in progress. The stupidly expensive capsules I invested in after reading that a celeb used them didn’t help, but the cheap-as-chips magnesium spray a pal recommended did.
I benefit ed from her acquired knowledge that a high price tag does not guarantee success. Listen to your mates, ladies. They are the ones driven by kindness before any financial gain.
It’s all very well having frank, open discussions about the menopause, but the transparency starts to get a little cloudy when you realise that many influencers and personalities are paid to push you towards those wonder products.After all, the menopause is a lucrative business with all of us desperate to relieve their sweats, anguishes, over-active bladders, sleep deprivations, itches, aches et al. So many problems, so many opportunities to cash in on them all.
So while the menopause might not list as a superpower to me, I have discovered a wonderful strain of strength in going through it collectively with my peers, trading our learned wisdoms, being supportive and supported, offloading and being offloaded to in turn. It’s a time in our lives where female solidarity comes into his own. Maybe this is our real superpower, our blessing, nature’s compensation prize for the toll of periods and pregnancies and now the big “M”: our ability to connect with each other so deeply, so primally.
Women’s friendship – what a truly formidable, powerful and beautiful force it is. Same Time Next Week by Milly Johnson is out now from Simon and Schuster UK, HB £16.99This week I have been.
..Celebrating.
.. my 61st trip around the sun.
I love a birthday, I always have a cake and champagne and treat myself to something I don’t need but want. I find it easier to spend money on other people, but I’m getting better at having the odd indulgence – after all, I work hard enough for my wage. There is always another handbag to be bought and in doing so we are supporting an industry.
This is what I tell myself to make buying things easier. Interviewing..
. I was asked if I’d do a Michael Parkinson and interview Jane McDonald and her pal Sue Ravey for an event to raise money for Wakefield hospice in front of an audience of 500 people in Jane’s hometown of Wakefield. I was truly out of my comfort zone, but it’s good to do that occasionally, because you never know what you are capable of until you leave the prison of a safe harbour.
Everyone had a ball and it raised over £26,000 in one night for the charity, so well worth the nerves and stress. They’re lovely, chatty women and made it very easy for me.Watching.
.. Reacher.
Goodness, what a beast of a man. He’s certainly cast in a better mould than Tom Cruise for the role but is maybe too good-looking for how Lee Child envisaged him. Trust me though, I’m in no way complaining.
Signing...
It’s my main book launch period so I’ve been all over the country signing my newly released books. What a privilege it is to have people queueing to meet you to have your signature on their book and their photos taken with you as a souvenir. I still have dreadful imposter syndrome.
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