The End of Menopause

Everything gets better after the period

Life changes. That’s a fact. I’ve personally entered a new phase. One that involves going back to school and returning to something I love. One that involves an empty nest. One that involves getting older. And one that involves the best thing that has ever happened to me. Let me explain.

Having your period is nuts. From around 12 years old on, in the days leading up to your monthly cycle—and I don’t want to sugarcoat it or stereotype but—most women turn into a raging bitch. Take me for example. For 50 years, I was trapped on a hamster wheel, spending five days feeling fantastic about myself. Followed by two days of feeling overwhelmed, raging against everything in the world, and crying (lots and lots of crying), then a momentary relief. Only to be followed by five to seven days of getting punched in the stomach repeatedly and bleeding my guts out. Then I’d spend the next few weeks trying to build back up the sense of self that nature tore down, only to start the whole damn thing over again. Month after month after month. Year after year after year. And this is the first world experience. I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who menstruate with no medical care, access to feminine hygiene products, running water, a support system, etc. etc.

I think most women would cop to the above. It sucks.

I remember being in junior high. Having to find ways to take a tampon to the bathroom during class without any of the boys seeing it because god forbid, designers put pockets in anything. We recently had a young female guest in our home who left her hygiene products out in the bathroom, and I was thrilled to see that maybe girlhood today isn’t as wrought with humiliations as it was back in 1980-something. Why hide something that happens to all of us?

Then, one day, sometime in your 40s or 50s—out of seemingly nowhere—you start to think you are losing your mind. That all the minor mental health issues you’ve fought off your entire life have caught up to you. You’ve lost the battle, and you begin spiraling down a sometimes suicidal path. Your life is over; nothing means anything. All while being drenched in sweat, paranoid, and unable to remember what everyday objects are called. Unless you have a fabulous doctor who has personally been through it (FYI, only around 20 percent of OB/GYN residency programs provide any menopause training, and most of those doctors receive only 1–2 hours of education), no one is going to tell you that you are not losing your mind. By the time you realize what it might be and you need to read up on the subject, it’s probably already too late.

That said, the fact that zillions of women have gone through this crap month after month for a gazillion years getting mocked (oh, she’s just on the rag), never calling in sick, putting up with it just because we have to it, and in some cultures, locked away and shunned by society on the regular is bullshit. But let’s move on.

A good friend of mine once sat across the table from me at lunch and glowed that after 50, everything changes. At the time, I thought she was full of it. She didn’t draw the connection between her newfound inner peace and menopause, but in retrospect, I now understand what was happening to her.

I spent Covid in menopause. Because everyone was hiding from the world, I skipped going to my GYNO for a few years. I started complaining to my regular doctor that something was wrong with me. That I was suddenly more sad than I’d ever been in my whole life. I felt like I was getting early-onset dementia. I couldn’t remember what the things I wore on my face to see were called. It was like having PMS but ALL THE TIME. I was sad and angry. Lost in my phone. Unable to get off the couch. My doctor told me I needed antidepressants. When those didn’t work, she suggested I might be bipolar.

Even though I was of age and had recently stopped having my period, the word menopause never came out of her mouth.

Now, I can wax poetic all day about the beauty of childbirth, the miracle of life, and the amazing ability to grow another human thing within myself. But at the end of the day, the trauma women experience every 20-some days to have the ability to create that life is something worth celebrating when it’s over. I mean, let’s throw a goddamn party-level celebration.

And that’s kind of what happens.

Once the menopause recedes, it’s like all the questions, frustrations, and setbacks in life go away, and you are just you. No more excruciating monthly pain. No more accidents. No more moody drama. The emotional rollercoaster you’ve been riding your whole life simply shuts down. You get off.

Now, what I am describing is the ideal situation. I understand that this is the romantic, privileged version of post-menopause. I am taking out of the equation other issues, mental and physical health separate from female issues, financial and circumstantial conflicts, abuse, and repression.

So, let’s do that for a moment. If you take all that away, all the other obstacles life puts in your way, being in your 50s as a woman means you can breathe again, in some cases for the first time ever. A sense of calm comes over everything. You are mostly invisible, except when you don’t want to be, which, for me, is the best part of all. I’m clear-headed. I am able to react offensively instead of defensively. I know what I want to do with the time I have left. I know who I am. Sure, my chances of osteoporosis, cancer, and heart attacks have gone way up, and I am that much closer to death. But who cares. I’m the nicest I’ve ever been.

Especially to myself.

I recently unpacked some boxes that I’d taped up from my office that spring of 2020 when the world shut down. Inside was this.

A blast from the past. A true time capsule of antiquated necessity. The person who used those is almost unrecognizable to me now.

Thank god.