I have changed enormously since going through menopause. The woman I am today is profoundly different from the woman I was before it. I know myself differently. I question more. I trust myself more. But menopause didn’t simply do that to me.
I have always been someone who wants to understand what life is showing me. And when menopause brought change — physically, emotionally and in the way I began to see myself and my life — I chose to work with it. That meant being willing to look at how I was changing, to release what no longer fitted, and to do the work that this transition asked of me.
Because change alone wasn’t what transformed me. What I did with it did.
And as I moved through these years, something else became increasingly clear to me. I didn’t feel as though I was moving towards less. Quite the opposite.
By the time I reached 60, I had an extraordinarily strong sense that I still had so much to say, so much I wanted to create and explore, and so much life still asking to be lived. And that made me curious about the story we are given about menopause in the first place.
The story we inherit
For many of us, menopause arrives already carrying a meaning. Long before we experience it ourselves, we have heard about the symptoms, the hormonal changes, the physical and emotional upheaval and everything we may have to endure as we move through it.
The emphasis is overwhelmingly on what happens to us. But what if the biological reality of menopause and the meaning we give it are not quite the same thing? What if some of what we believe about this transition has also been shaped by the culture in which we experience it?
Menopause across different cultures
Research into menopause across different cultures offers a fascinating perspective. Although the biological transition is universal, the way women understand and describe it is not.
Anthropologist Margaret Lock’s influential work comparing women in Japan and North America, for example, challenged the assumption that there is one universal menopausal experience. Japanese women did not necessarily organise or describe their experiences in the same way as North American women, and even the symptoms associated with menopause differed.
Research in China has similarly found culturally distinct ways of understanding menopause and female midlife, including women who welcome the end of menstruation rather than experiencing it primarily as a loss. Research involving Indigenous women has also described traditions in which later female life can bring increased respect, wisdom, authority and cultural or spiritual significance.
None of this gives us another universal story about menopause. And perhaps that’s precisely the point. There isn’t one. The biological transition may be shared, but the meaning attached to it can be influenced by culture, language, expectations and the stories women hear about themselves as they age. And once we recognise that, we also create the possibility of questioning the story we have inherited.
What can menopause mean for you?
Questioning the accepted cultural narrative around menopause doesn’t require replacing it with another one. There is no new version of the woman you are supposed to become.
Instead, there is an opportunity to become curious about your own experience. To notice what is changing within you. To recognise what no longer fits. And to allow yourself to discover what this transition might make possible in your own life.
Menopause doesn’t have to come with a predetermined meaning. You are allowed to discover that meaning for yourself.
The Gifts of Menopause
It was my own experience of this transition — and everything it led me to question — that inspired me to create The Gifts of Menopause, a new eleven-lesson online audio course.
The course makes room for a different conversation about these years: one that begins by questioning some of the stories and expectations surrounding menopause before exploring what else may become possible when you allow yourself to see this transition differently.
It isn’t another definition of what menopause should look like. It is an invitation to explore what it might mean for you. Because the story of menopause isn’t already written. You get to participate in writing what comes next.
