Note: I wrote most of this post — all except the last paragraph — in November 2019. It sat in my drafts box for months before I felt ready to put it out there.
Warning: This is not a story about the transmogrification of small birds into large mammals. Actually it isn’t a story about birds at all, or even whales, sorry. It is, in fact, a story about a bunch of taboo topics, including menopause.
Two relevant definitions: Menopause: The ceasing of menstruation; the period in a woman’s life when this occurs (typically between 45 and 50 years of age; Perimenopause: The period in a woman’s life shortly before the occurrence of the menopause.
Week #9, Task#1 — Read your morning pages. Use two markers, one to mark the insights, and the other to mark action items.
Journal entry, Tuesday 21 May 2019, 540 AM: Good morning universe!! Bloody hell, I woke up to emails from Peter Small and Loretta Graziano. My serotonin bucket is full, I can die happy. And there is a new red flower in the balcony that seems to have come up overnight!
Journal entry, Tuesday, 15 October 2019, 930 AM: Good morning universe. Overslept again, feeling so annoyed with everything. It’s the kind of morning that makes you wonder what is the bloody point of anything?
Read your morning pages, says the incredible Ms Julia Cameron, in her incredible book called the Artists Way. This post is not about that book, I’m not going to be able to do justice to it just yet. It is a book that takes you through a 12-week course to understand and excavate your inner artist. I stumbled on the book in 2016, started and abandoned the course three times over the next three years, each time stopping before reaching week 6. Earlier this year, committed to breaking my patterns, I asked a friend to do the course with me. It’s a difficult book to read and work through. We stretched each week into two, sometimes three weeks, and came close to abandoning the course a few times. But somehow, we kept each other accountable and plodded through. It has some powerful tools, including one called “morning pages”, which is exactly what it sounds like — three pages of “stream of consciousness” writing, first thing every morning.
Week 9 of the course was especially tough, and we sat frozen on it for two months. I was totally stumped by the instruction to go back and read old morning pages, absolutely unable to read the confused, snarky, sometimes angry scribblings that filled up three beautiful notebooks. Until one day, when my friend gently reminded me that that our 12-week course had crossed nine months. Perhaps we could finish the course before the Christmas break? I grit my teeth and sat down to read the morning pages. It took me three mornings.
I did find some useful, actionable insights, and at least a dozen new blogging ideas. On anxiety. On freedom. On purpose.
And then, I started noticing one very curious pattern in my journal. In terms of energy, I sounded like two different people between May and September. All through May-June, I sounded like a maniacal sparrow, jumping from one aha moment to another. Getting hyper-excited about the shape of clouds as I saw from my window as I wrote the pages. One exclamation point every three sentences. And in September, I sound like an exhausted whale. Slow, full of sighs. Not one exclamation point in the three pages.
I decided to do some digging. I did another speed read through the pages — it was easier this time because of the highlights — with just one question: “does this writer sound happy?” I counted the number of days where I could say yes to that question. I noted the number of “happy-sounding days” from May to October:
May — 11
June — 8
July — 5
August — 2
September — 2
October — 0 (the transition to whale is complete)
This was an interesting pattern, and sufficiently deserving of scientific curiosity. My external world has been tangibly better this year than the last few years. I’ve moved away from full-time work to independent consulting. I’ve done interesting, non-stressful work. I exercise more regularly than ever before. The annual health check was good. Vitamins, minerals, other random supplements — check. Clean eating — check. Regular check-ins with therapist — check. Fitbit sleep scores — above average.
So if I’m nutritionally sound, sleeping well, and not clinically manic-depressive, why was I feeling so whale-like? I came up with a working hypothesis: I’m perimenopausal. To test the hypothesis, I did a quick search to see if my experiences match menopause signs. They do:
It usually starts in a woman’s 40s, but can start earlier — I celebrated my 40th birthday recently
Irregular periods for over a year — yes.
Hot flushes — off and on, including a few times in freezing January in Japan.
General fatigue — hell yeah.
Weight gain — a little bit.
Mood swings — not sure. I asked my husband if he has noticed any mood swings, and his view was that it’s hard to tell; he said my melodramatic tendencies have stayed fairly constant in the eight years that we’ve been together. Thanks, I guess?
The other list of symptoms includes such gems as urinary leakage and vaginal dryness, which I don’t have yet, but I’m sure they’re around the corner, who knows. This list of symptoms probably explains why menopause isn’t a common topic of conversation.
I realised that my working hypothesis might have some legitimacy, and also that I can’t think of one person I can discuss this with. All the women friends I spend most of my time with are in their 20s and 30s. Awkward. Where are my 40-year-old friends when I want them? I have friends who work in menstrual hygiene — to change the taboos around periods, to empower women. How come no one is addressing menopause taboos?
My first reaction at this bit of self-diagnosis was acute discomfort and sadness. My energy and drama have been my superpowers for so long. What will I be without them? I don’t want to be an old person. And what a reminder of impending mortality this whole thing is. My ovaries are dying, and one day the rest of me will die too. Dammit.
My second reaction was alright, how do I fix this? The smart thing would have been to make an appointment with a gynaecologist. The easier, less smart thing was to do a detailed web search. No prizes for guessing what I did. I read a hundred papers on menopause and joined a bunch of reddit threads on the subject. I have to confess I tried a few “natural remedies” for a few weeks — exotic names like black cohosh, St John’s wort, maca root. Did I give amazon a lot of business? Yes. Did I get my mad energy back? No.
I threw away the supplements and moved to my third stage of reaction. Do nothing. Roll with it. In the long run, we’re all dead anyway. Why fight the inevitable, why swim upstream, trying to delay ageing? It’s meant to happen. So this semi-calm acceptance is where I finally settled at. I also did the correct thing — spoke to friends. Found a wonderfully kind, non-patronizing gynecologist who did a sonogram and blood tests to confirm that indeed, I was on my way to menopause. His matter-of-factness was helpful too — apparently, enough women in their late 30s now get menopause for it to be a normal thing. He confirmed that the perimenopausal symptoms don’t last forever and encouraged me to change nothing in my lifestyle, except maybe reduce the amount of time I spend in reading up pseudo-science on ageing and menopause.
So I will continue to do only those anti-ageing things which are actually fun to do — exercise, massages, an occasional glass of wine (I absolutely insist on believing the shaky science behind this). Looking up examples of other older women who continue to kick ass in their 50s, 60s and beyond. I even share my last name with 102-year old woman marathon runner! Coincidence? I think not.
As soon as I decided to stop fighting it, it got easier. The hot flushes have become infrequent already. I do have a few bird-like manic days off and on, when I have unending energy and my morning pages have multiple exclamation marks. These days are nice, but I know they are temporary blips. I appreciate them, but I’m not clutching at them, wanting them to be a constant feature of my existence. Where’s the fun in being a bird forever? There are obvious advantages in being a whale: whales are powerful and graceful. Their brains are bigger than birds’. They move slowly yes, but they move bigger things. They are mentors and advisors, and they get things done. One of these days, I will be a post-menopausal woman. My muscle strength will be lower true, but I will run in the senior category, where the competition is lesser so I might even win some prizes.
Tuesday, 31 March 2020: The hot flushes are back, and the mood swings over the past week are putting rollercoasters to shame. I have days when I’m so filled with despair that don’t want to leave my bed. But more often, I have days when I laugh over long video calls with friends. A huge part me believes that this crisis will unite humanity like it has never been united before. We’re in this together. It’s like the entire human race is sharing my perimenopausal journey.
