You know how they say that pregnancy brain is a thing, and teenage brain is a thing—well, menopause brain is a thing too.
Looking back on my younger years, when a friend was expecting a child, we'd talk about it often. All of the details would be shared. How many weeks are you? When are you due? And if you were closer, even more particulars would be part of the conversations.
Often puberty is spoken of, and the way the brain of a younger person can be affected by the stage of life they are going through.
So, why do we not talk about menopause?
Out of all of the women I know, and have worked with over the last, say seven years, which coincidentally is the timeframe spanning my own menopausal journey, the conversation about menopause almost never comes up.
Not only is there menopause, but there is peri-menopause as well.
For me, changes started happening at the age of 37 with my periods becoming irregular. With the knowledge and understanding I now have, I'm astonished that nobody told me that this was the start of the menopause journey for me. Not my doctor. Not a friend. Not a naturopath. Nobody.
What I now know is that for the last 20 years (yes, the journey is still ongoing for me) I have been experiencing either peri-menopausal or menopausal symptoms in some way shape or form.
There have been so many experiences I have had—the scary ones of waking in the middle of the night with my heart racing and the perspiration literally dripping off me, to the craziest anxiety and thought process ever, migraines for a period of time, tingling and numbness in my face at times, extreme sensitivities to caffeine and alcohol as well as a massive range of food groups (yes, I'm normally highly sensitive but this went way beyond that), to name a few things.
Now, I can also see the crazy side of it in funny ways—like the decision I made to put eleven, yes, eleven, white Venetian blinds in our home. Yes, I love the look of them and two, three or four would have done the trick, but eleven. What was I thinking?Every time I have to clean them now I curse the day I thought it was a good idea.
Being super-aware of your thought processes during this time is helpful. If I was giving myself advice, I'd highly recommend taking longer than normal to make decisions, and getting someone to point out all of the disadvantages. Or making an advantages verses disadvantages list myself. Clearly I did not do this with the blinds.
Shortly I will write a post about the things that helped me through peri-menopause and menopause, so keep an eye out for that.
In the meantime, I'd love to hear your experience. Drop a comment below.
With love,
p.s. Please, please, please... start talking about menopause!