Apparently menopause lasts one day. You could have fooled me.
I thought it was the chapter title for this weird bloaty, flushy, foggy, angry, teary decade of my life. But apparently menopause only describes the day, 12 months after your last period when you are no longer peri-menopausal. Which by the way, no doctor I saw ever mentioned was a thing. And perimenopause can go for a decade. And postmenopausal goes for the rest of your life.
Perimenopause comes with some fun symptoms like poor concentration, tiredness, poor memory, lowered confidence, sleepiness and hot flushes. And that’s just the good days.
Oh and you can expect a bit of weight gain. Yippee! Who doesn’t love a bit of weight gain!
It’s so much fun being a woman! It’s like a theme park! Welcome to Hormone World! You start off sad and insecure and finish fat and angry!
But wait, there’s more!
You can also get anxiety, depression, decreased libido, vaginal dryness, insomnia, difficulty concentrating and night sweats. Oh, and while this happens you’ll have teenagers, ageing parents, a full-time job and a mortgage. One woman in a writing workshop I ran once, came up to me at break time and told me about vaginal atrophy. It was the horror story I wished I’d never heard. It is the thinning and drying of the vaginal walls due to low estrogen levels. She told me it was so painful she had difficulty walking. No wonder perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms have been kept silent. They’re terrifying.
So while our bodies, geared for biological 3D printing, get ready to cease the ink supply for making tiny humans, we have to keep going. In fact, generally we’re at the peak of our work life. In an article I found inThe Guardian, it said that one million women in the UK have left their jobs because of menopausal symptoms. Others talk about discrimination; aren’t given support, and they’re mocked. I’m not sure of the exact numbers here in Australia, but I’d imagine we’re in the same leaky estrogen boat.
No wonder we end up in poverty, or headed for homelessness.
It’s hard to function at your peak levels when your hormones are running the show. It’s why women are wanting menopause leave. Yes it takes years, but sometimes it’s about getting the treatment that suits you to get you functioning at your pre-perimenopausal levels again.
I noticed how I changed.
Menopause made me angry. Things I tolerated before – like stupidity, laziness, incompetence, really set me off. But injustice was my trigger point. When I saw someone being treated unfairly my blood would boil. I couldn’t look away. I had to intervene. I looked around at community organisations, not-for-profits, the people who ran the homelessness kitchens, the forest activists, and I realised, they were predominantly menopausal women.
Hang on, could menopausal women save the world?
Are hot, angry, sad women coming to save us?
Forget the image of a young, buff super hero. The real heroes are chubby, sweaty, middle-aged women in three-quarter pants. And they have a super power: invisibility! Do you hear women complain of being invisible? No? Then obviously you weren’t listening. Older women disappear all the time. In the patriarchy we cease to be relevant. We’re here one day and gone the next! Yes it sucks, but hey, there’s some ‘unseen’ opportunities…
In Switzerland, 2,400 Swiss women over the age of 64 won a landmark climate case when the court agreed that the government had failed to comply with its duties to combat climate change. Older women are more likely to die from planetary heating. They are called the KlimaSeniorinnen and they are superheroes. They are holding governments accountable for generations they won’t live to see.
Menopausal women will save the world.
We’re hot. We’re angry. And we don’t need your approval or your compliments. We’re sick of the bullshit and we’re coming. Maybe not in the bedroom… but definitely in the boardroom. It’s not called ‘the change’ for nothing.
Earlier this year there was a Senate inquiry into perimenopause and menopause – want to hear the results? Women Like Us (Ellen Briggs and me) are joined by Senator Larissa Waters who chaired the inquiry to record a podcast on the big M – its impacts, what’s happened for you, what would have been better, and how we, the angry, hot women of this generation can make it better for those to come!
Join us for a fierce and fabulous chat!
Burringbar Hall on Monday, 11 Nov! Tickets $10 from www.womenlikeus.com.au
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox column has appeared in The Echo for almost 23 years. The personal and the political often meet here; she’s also been the Greens federal candidate since before the last federal election. The Echo’s coverage of political issues will remain as comprehensive and fair as it has ever been, outside this opinion column which, as always, contains Mandy’s personal opinions only.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
