Rebranding Menopause: From A Dreaded Event To Life’s New Journey

One of the hugest changes that a woman goes through in her life is also one that’s not spoken about openly, especially in our country. Menopause – that end-of-your-periods event that starts 12 months after one’s last period and can last for several years, affects women physically, emotionally, physiologically and even mentally (hello, brain fog!). But what if it didn’t have to be as terrible as it sounds? What if we could approach it differently, as a new, positive phase of life to look forward to?

Author, sexual health influencer and oral storyteller Seema Anand, who’s been through the world of hot flashes and severe mood swings herself, talks to Terrapy about her own experience with menopause, what people need to expect of it, and how we can make a difference by just speaking up about our experiences.

I actually started my perimenopause right after my third child was born. I was around 38 and the symptoms started quite early. Nobody really used to explain menopause to you. We were given absolutely no information, no knowledge. In hindsight, I just wonder how everyone thought it was okay for women to go through without any clue. Every woman in history, everybody who has reproductive organs will go through menopause – so why did it feel so unnecessary to give any education on menopause? It’s almost like a stigma.

For me, menopause started with the exhaustion, brain fog, and the hot flashes. At the height of my menopause, my biggest problem were the hot flashes – they’re like a surge of electricity going through you. It just blanks you out. You just didn't know what was happening to you. My initial reaction would be to use my hand to fan myself. And I still remember, once a woman who was not much younger than me, was one of those people who thought that showing that side of you is not good enough. She said to me, “you really need to stop doing that. It's very embarrassing. You can't do that”. I’m still horrified to this date to think that somebody could actually tell you that.

I bought myself a little handheld fan. All my friends then gave me little handheld fans. And I had one in every handbag, in every coat pocket. I went through two London winters with no warm clothes! The worst for me however was the brain fog. No one had told me about this. It’s like your brain is paralysed. You can't think, you just walk around in a daze. You can't make decisions. You can't feel anything. It sometimes made you incapable of dealing with the problems you have when menopause starts.

I think first of all, we should talk about it. I still remember sitting for high tea at the Ritz with a few people from India. When I pulled out my hand fan, I said “I'm so sorry, but I'm still menopausal”. And the daughter said to me, “Oh, my God, I can't believe you’re doing that. You're my hero.” Because in India, they don't even mention the word menopause. And I was thinking, wow, just to be able to say a word out loud – such a simple word is such a big deal.

For my kids, I would like there to be more knowledge about it, to just understand what can happen. I live in the UK, but nobody gave me any proper information on HRT (hormone replacement therapy) here. In those days, they were not very keen on prescribing HRT here. In USA, they're very keen on it. Not so much here. But later they gave it to me, and it started my bleeding again. There was no information about that happening! They changed my HRT three times. They took me off it so many times, which meant that you go through all of those hormone changes each time you come off it. It was a nightmare.

So I want people to know the fact that there are certain foods that help, that HRT helps the brain fog, that you can do certain exercises. This is the time when the muscles around the perineum become lazy. Women become incontinent. It affects your skin too. There’s all sorts of things that happen – all you need is a little bit of help and knowledge to be able to handle it well.

I think it’s about conversation. When I had my menopause, and even now – there were a lot of mood swings. You feel like you're going to cry. You feel like you're going to scream at somebody. I was ready to kill people. I was ready to howl my eyes out. And yes, it is a side effect of what I'm going through. But if, for instance, a man is extremely stressed and we know it, we give him space. There’s no shame in a man coming home saying “this is happening at work, I am so stressed”. We all tiptoe around him. We understand he’s going to have a mood swing. Then maybe one day he’s more relaxed and he’s going to be feeling happy. We accept this in a man. But a woman, it’s not just about the menopause. It’s about the conditioning – a woman is not seen as a human being. She’s an object. It’s like being a little wind-up doll. We forget that women are human beings. We have the same range of emotions. We're of the same species.

I think we just need to talk about it a lot more. We need to normalise this. There are women who go through two or three years of just being in a bad mood – it happens. Once those symptoms ease up, they’re okay. I have friends who've been through that. If we can say – like I used to say to my children – “I am going to be horrible during this time so you have to watch out for my moods because I won't be able to be reasonable at that point”, it helps. There is no easy way.

Yes! When you hit menopause, in your slightly more lucid moments, the first thing that comes to your mind is that you’re suddenly not afraid of death. At that point, you're suddenly saying ‘I can handle it fine’. And you suddenly stop caring about what somebody else thinks of you. Obviously the best thing about it is to not have periods anymore. That doesn't mean that you don't have your hormone shifts because at the time your period is supposed to come, you still have hormonal changes. So your moods will go on and off. But just the fact that you never have to worry about periods is amazing. There is definitely something that clicks into place where you feel like you’ve entered a new phase. I don't know if it’s from inside or if it is social conditioning because we have been brought up to believe that when a woman starts her period to when she finishes it, she’s ‘impure’. For me, it was a very physical shift.

Just knowing that when you have an issue, you can reach out at any point is helpful. Knowing that it happens to other people, that you're not just floating in this sea of nothingness – I think that that is the biggest thing that we can actually do for ourselves.

In terms of lifestyle changes, I think one of the biggest things to motivate yourself at that point is to exercise. In the evenings, the light changes in such a way that it can make you feel very low. You need community around you at that point. There are shifts of light that impact one’s mood, so having people around you helps a lot too. Understanding that you need people around you, somebody to talk to, and things to do, helps a lot.

More than that, something that will keep your mind busy in the nicest possible way – whether you're exercising, going to art exhibitions, reading a book or watching TV – it’s important to find something to do that gives us happiness. And I don't know how true this is because there aren’t enough studies on it, but some say that a lot of sex can help. I would like to qualify that by saying it has to be good sex. Bad sex is not going to help anybody for anything!