Menopause men’ō-pöz, n the ending of menstruation, change of life. [3] – adj menopaus’al of, relating to or experiencing the menopause; suffering from strange moods or behaviour in middle age. [4]

The menopause is a natural part of ageing that usually occurs between 45 and 55 years of age, as a woman's oestrogen levels decline. In the UK, the average age for a woman to reach the menopause is 51. [5]

Menopause is a red nettle
its flowers are so beautiful promising joy
when I reach out to pluck them
its soft fuzz bites me
leaves me with weals redder than its flowers
and a pain that goes right to my bones [6]

A cursory scan of the internet finds references to as many as 34 symptoms of menopause. These include hot flushes, night sweats, vaginal dryness and discomfort during sex, sleeping difficulties, low mood or anxiety, reduced libido and problems with memory and concentration. Levels of severity and impacts on everyday life can vary. [7]

If you imagine the kind of a blush you get when you’re embarrassed – it’s like that but magnified exponentially, so it was really frequent in the daytime and every time it happened I sort of felt like I’d failed myself sometimes, you know the way you feel you’ve let yourself down when you blush when you’re embarrassed, I felt like that every single time, like I’d somehow - I was failing at my own human biology. [8]

I’ve definitely had anxiety.
I’ve definitely had feelings of utter overwhelm. [9]

It’s actually been quite helpful for me to see that there is some sort of pattern to my symptoms and it’s helped reassure me that I’m not going crazy. [10]

The word menopause pinpoints the particular moment in a woman’s life when her menstrual cycle ceases. [11]

Perimenopause doesn’t appear in any dictionary I have on my bookshelf. A Google search for the term informs me that the ‘[s]ymptoms [which] usually start a few months or years before your periods stop, [are] known as the perimenopause, and can persist for some time afterwards. [12]

I don’t think I’ve yet reached menopause.
I think I’m definitely perimenopausal and I’ve had obvious symptoms, but lately I think I’ve had symptoms that I’m not sure are to do with the perimenopause. I’m not sure whether I’m going through that change. It’s a difficult one. I think with anything you think, oh god, is it that or is it something else? [13]

But It depends what doctor you talk to and the last doctor I saw at my GP practice and he basically cut me short and said, ‘you don’t start the menopause until you stop bleeding,’ and it was kind of like there was no before that, you know, it was just, I didn’t even ask him about perimenopause.
Yet a doctor that I’d seen a couple of years ago did some blood tests because she said, ‘you know you could be perimenopausal, it could be the start’.
And even though they came back as not showing the hormonal change to signal the start of it she said, ‘you know you can still be having regular periods but still be getting these symptoms’. [14]

We spend – I’m a teacher so – we spend a lot of time talking to children about feelings and preparing them for puberty and what’s going to happen and the changes in their body and this, that and the other, but no one has done that for menopause for us.

There is no, you know, there’s no lessons on it there’s no – and quite often it seems a taboo [15] subject. [16]

Some women may experience menopause early. Around 1 in 100 women experience the menopause before 40 years of age. This is known as premature menopause or premature ovarian insufficiency. Sometimes it’s caused by surgery, cancer treatments or other underlying conditions. [17]

So mine started when I was about 38 and it was a massive shock, like obviously, wasn’t expecting it at the time and – skipped a couple of periods, so I’d maybe go like six weeks and then have one, didn’t really think anything of it, certainly didn’t think it was to do with the menopause.
Went to the doctor. They – it didn’t even come up – and I was talking more about fertility because I wanted to have another child, so that was why I’d been to see them about the period issue.
And then I went back again and saw a different doctor and she said ‘it’s really unlikely to be this but we will do some blood tests’.
Then, she rang me up, eight o’clock on a Monday night – still remember the time and the day – and said ‘I’ve got your blood test results back’ and I panicked ‘cause doctors don’t normally ring at eight o’clock on a Monday night. And she said ‘absolutely, one hundred percent, it’s menopausal’. My FSH level was like through the roof, almost post-menopausal.
So I’d sort of gone, bearing in mind I had a one-year-old, I’d gone from, you know, being fully working to suddenly being almost out the other end. [18]

Menopause means women are no longer able to get pregnant naturally. [19]

Really upset about the fertility side of it – although I did have two kids at the time but it still, that was the hardest thing to deal with. [20]

For me, the bit that I’ve really struggled with is the loss of fertility because, you know, I really wanted to have children, and all that happened very late because of circumstance for me, but kind of going through IVF three times, again in my early forties so the chances of it working were going to be pretty slim.
But you know, so then your period just becomes this sort of – well every time your period comes obviously then, it’s a sign of, you know, a failed round of IVF or a failed kind of attempt to get pregnant, sort of over an 18-month period or – so now the thought of them going, even though my brain’s going ‘I’m 50, I’m not going to conceive. I haven’t been capable of conceiving for years. It’s not going to happen’.
But the absolute loss of it is the absolute end of that dream, even though realistically that was gone a long time ago. [21]

I know a lot of women feel a big loss about their fertility.
I haven’t had children and I’ve never actually wanted them, so to me it’s not really a big change in that respect. I suppose the reality is that, you know, now I never will, but actually, you know, that doesn’t bother me.
It just means that perhaps I can move on to the next stage of my life. [22]

Menopause means women are no longer able to get pregnant naturally.

You are wrapping your head round the fact that you’re going into a different stage of life, and there’s times where it’s really hard to be celebratory about that because you kind of go:
‘what is there, what is it about being a woman at this stage in life, actually, you know, how do you kind of reclaim that and make that something that’s about, yes, there’s an accumulation of wisdom and experience and all of that’.
Whereas some days it just feels like, ‘pah, my hair’s grey, my face is full of wrinkles and we’re not valued in society as older women’ and, you know, it’s just easy to accumulate all the negative stuff around that rather than to go ‘yeah, this is a new, different stage of life and actually there’s good things about that.’ Maybe I’m starting to come more round to that, that kind of sort of sense of it, or maybe I’m just determined to see it in that way rather than a whole series of losses. [23]

 But yet, you’ve got this body that’s beginning to kind of enter into decrepitude and be out of your control and I think the menopause reminds you of that, those things you can’t control, where you go ‘oh my god, what’s happening to my moods, I can’t stop this, it’s like a rollercoaster.’
And then you start to think about your own mortality and it’s a little reminder actually that that’s marching on and there’s nothing you can do about it. [24]

Well, it’s the ‘Change of life’, it’s ‘strange moods or behaviour’, a phenomenon of ‘middle age’ and it happens between 45 and 55’ when ‘women’s oestrogen levels decline’. [26]

It’s not just that you’ve never been through it before, it’s not going to be the same for any two of us.
We all have completely different experiences. I mean there are commonalities, but you find when you talk to your peers, everyone’s experience is different.’ [27]

I used to say
I don’t care what other people think of me
That was a lie
It’s still a lie, but somehow it’s more true
I care what I think of myself
Now I am actually thinking of myself [28]