It's Menopause...
you're not crazy you just need hormones
Gone are the days of ignorance and whispers of “I am menopausal” or “I’m in menopause” as it was for our mothers and grandmothers before us.
It started much like it did for my generation of girls. At girlhood sleepovers and late-night whispers of “I got my period” and “did you here who got their period and what happened” to talking about our fear of tampons and just how they worked. Thus was the life of a teenager I the 90’s.
To now being in full blown menopause in 2024. Where we are shouting it from the rooftops… “I am not crazy; its menopause!” No one told me midlife would be like this and for some of us, myself included, that it would be immediate post (radical) hysterectomy.
I was not prepared for the onslaught of immediate symptoms. My feet hurt. My feet had never hurt and how did my feet hurt I just had my uterus removed? The hot flashes and night sweats increasing drastically overnight. The fatigue, cortisol spikes and no longer producing estrogen, hormone imbalance, fatigue and brain-fog and forgetting any detail regardless of its magnitude. Feeling a complete disconnect with my own body that I had a pretty good grasp on for 39 years. Do not get me started on the weight gain, the dry skin, chronic dry eyes, flaky itchy ears, the list is endless.
Yet here we are today no longer hiding and skirting around what was once an unspoken word and what it truly means to be peri-menopausal or in menopause either surgically or naturally. Instead, we are loud and sharing it far and wide while the conversation started slowly and with whispers of "I think I’m in menopause?” we are once again setting it up for the women and girls behind us who now proudly and unfearfully announce their on their period.
I say this “I AM IN MENOPAUSE” and it is a battle, and no one will prepare you. But the conversations are happening across the world, the UK is absolutely doing incredible work on this, and help is out there but it will not come in the form of your Primary Care Physicians it will not be your OBGY the will dismiss you and hand you a anti-depressant and tell you it’s just life, your kids are busy, your husband/partner should understand if you’re not in the mood etc. They will make you believe you are crazy but I promise you are NOT! Hormone therapy has come leaps and bounds from what it was for our mothers but finding the right HRT and what your body needs will take time. HRT & BHRT becoming more assessable and known and used making it so we will not suffer like the women before us. This is once again where we as women have to fight for ourselves and Make Menopause Matter.
