Today is World Menopause Day

Today, is World Menopause Day until recently I didn’t know there was such a thing, but apparently each year on 18 October it happens. The fact that September 2019 was Menopause Awareness Month in the UK also passed me by, for this I’ll blame the fact that I was moving house and had a big study trip to Sweden, but in reality how well was it publicised or is it just me?

We can’t dispute that there has been a considerable increase in awareness of the menopause. It is talked about much more often and much more freely, although there does still seem to be a certain taboo around it. Over the past year or so there has been television programmes dedicated to the menopause, Woman’s Hour has had several episodes where it has been covered, TV presenters and actors and so on are stepping forward and talking about their experiences openly.

The menopause will affect every woman at some point in their life, for some it comes earlier, for some it comes forced from illness/operations and yet I hear many women not knowing what to expect, feeling isolated, feel like they’re going mad. Many will sail through it and not even notice it and others will have all kinds of symptoms the key ones that I come across in my work is memory loss, anxiety and mood swings, but there are lots of different symptoms some of them such as vaginal dryness is hardly talked about at all and some women find it just happens and they didn’t know it could happen, don’t know what to do and some feel too embarrassed to do anything.

I’ve run several workshops around the menopause and have done much training and study around it; I have my own experience and have listened to the experiences of many, many women. I hear when sat in circle the audible relief as women realise they’re not on their own, that is normal and does happen to many other women too. I know some will disagree with me here with the world normal and say that no woman should “suffer” with symptoms of the menopause and that there many things you can do to help and yes I agree with this wholeheartedly, and yet this isn’t always the case and yes sometimes medical intervention is the only option. There have of course also been the recent discussions around HRT and the effectiveness of it and the risks associated with it. Some women I’ve spoken to feel at the end of their tether and yet feel afraid of going on HRT but see no other way out.