Dec 17, 2023·edited Dec 17, 2023Liked by Allyson Shaw
Grinding through it. Relate to all of this, comments too. Thank you for hosting this conversation. Thank you everyone else for sharing. 53 yo, patches and pills for the last couple, no clue about my cycle (crime scenes; ghost periods; ghosted, period...rinse repeat). Ntm the sudden out of body spells of rage that irradiate all in my presence...and then flash out as quickly as they flare up, everyone in cinders.
That dismissiveness from the doctors is its own special kind of hell. And I mean beyond the basic burnout brushoff that I do understand and for which I have so much compassion. I mean that unique disdain reserved for the Aging Woman. Even from female doctors, which surprised me until I realized they'd probably had the feminine beaten out of them to ride with the Big Boys. This moment, when I was in my mid-40s: "My period's been really weird, first really heavy and then not there at all, which is the case at the moment, and I'm pretty sure I'm not pregnant—" A harsh bark of a laugh cut me off as her eyes rolled practically out of her head, her meaning clear. I had been about to tell her my husband had a vasectomy, but that I was obviously too ancient to even conceive conceiving was her go-to assumption, effectively silencing me with shame. Another memory you've (all) reminded me of: a friend of mine has fibro, and she once told me how, in LA, where we lived at the time, it's called Brentwood Wives Disease. (For those not familiar: Brentwood is a ritzy neighborhood in LA. But you can replace Brentwood with any fancy location. It's a very flexible slam.) It also didn't need explaining that this meant anyone saying they had it was bored, lazy, spoiled, faking it for advantage. Jagged shades of "Aw honey, you just need some attention, don't you?" (h/t Jessica Knoll)
Here's another one: I was in my late 30s and hadn't gotten my period for a couple months but kept failing the pregnancy tests (this was pre-V Section). Went to see a doctor who didn't even examine me, barely letting me speak before sighing and informing me it was because I was fat. "Lose some weight, and that period'll come right back," he said, patting his belly with an oily wink. A year later, when I had my Mirena IUD removed, my period returned. And I'd told him about the IUD.
Same thing happens a lot with my knees, both of them utterly hosed from having been a competitive downhill ski racer in my teens, three knee surgeries by the time I was 21, the first at 15. Whenever I burn into a new town, I'm foolishly hopeful I'll finally find a decent orthopod. But either it's the "don't tell /me/ what you think is the problem" (as though I might not perhaps be the expert on my own fucking body) "like you're the doctor" (despite one after another contradicting each other with their deranged treatment plans). Or it's the weight (and I'm not obese) (but even if I were). Proper treatment is reserved for the paunchy ex-footballer gone-to-seed dudes, who might even get some high fives, commiseration and actual treatment. It doesn't matter that I'd been scouted for the national team right before that last big crash. Or that I do daily yoga. And hike. Except when I can't, because my knees. It's just: lose weight. Do more physio. (And please, I beg you, fuck off out of here.) (That last part doesn't have to be spoken aloud, but it's there, in neon.)
It's worse now that I'm visibly no longer in my reproductive years. It's like you all say: there's a special kind of hatred reserved for older women who "complain" about their ailments. The worst part is I'm not immune to it myself. Their disregard hits all the harder for how much I agree with them, way back in that inward-facing, ugly corner of my psyche. I remember how, as a kid a teen a young woman, I used to join my then-stepfather and his own father in mocking my then-stepgrandmother behind her back for her endless doctors appointments, her presumed hypochondria and old lady pathetic need to be seen, even as I'd flinch at the harsh way they spoke to her. The memory curdles me with shame.
But what if that part's true too? What if we /do/ want, need, crave attention? Is that so bad? And is it any surprise? And how does it invalidate the physical need, the only one legitimized, even as it's discarded, along with our value, out of which we've aged? Allyson, you're so right about the resilience it takes to press on, the need to not give up, to keep seeking answers despite the infantilising attitudes. Mine feels crumbly at the moment, but I have to keep reminding myself to "behave" or I might be cut off from treatment completely. I recognize I don't hold the institutional power. That's perhaps the most mortifying part: having to appease the ones dehumanizing me, so angry but also so scared. And I'm a cis-gender white woman in a majority white, semi-Victorian space. I can only imagine how much worse it is for our sisterz of color and fluidity.
I find hope in what Carolena said in response to your original post, reframing this encroaching invisibility of cronery as our "cloak of spells." I love that so much. I think that may be the lesson. To learn to harness that Force, to inhabit it, as you said, stealthily, with quiet grace and wicked ferocity.
Hi MJ--thank you so much for sharing your story here--It's incredible to hear other's resilience in the face of such negligence and ineptitude from the medical establishment. I din't know about the "Brentwood Disease"-- here it's the same except there's a belief you want 'attention' from the NHS. I mean, I do want medical attention--nothing more. That we somehow have to wait until we are in a body that is 'acceptable'--white, straight, middle class, BMI-index conforming-- in order to get treatment is deeply troubling, too. May this all get easier the more we talk and are heard.
Thank you for writing about your own experiences, Allyson. Menopause is normal and I can’t understand why it has become this unspoken topic!
I am a whisker off forty, so not yet menopausal. I likely will experience menopause earlier than the norm, due to my medical history. I am in perimenopause- I do have hot flushes and in the past few years started having migraines, which were new for me.
It feels like most of my life has been absolutely dominated by hormones. I had undiagnosed endometriosis and my life felt like nothing but periods and attempting to recover from them. I was diagnosed and I had surgery in 2021 and am now on medication that stops my body growing endometrium, and it changed my life. Interestingly, the medication I take is also used as HRT. I’m not sure what menopause will hold for me, but I have hope that it will become less and less of a taboo topic and that more women can share their experiences.
Blake, thatnks for talking about your perimenopausal experience. I hope that things are rapidly changing and that more options will be available when you need them. I have heard from other women that when you are through the storm, it gets so much easier. I am looking forward to that. I hope you can find help for the migraines--they can be really debilitating.
Ally, thank you SO MUCH for writing about your experience and for amplifying it again this year. You're absolutely right about the way most healthcare providers ignore what should be addressed about how hormones affect and interact with bodies and brains. Menopause happens to everyone who menstruates, eventually--you'd think it wouldn't be such a medical mystery. You'd think! Same as with autoimmune diseases. I am now in the process of trying to see a rheumatologist myself, and am on a long waiting list. I expect very little actual treatment, because I know that autoimmune conditions tend to affect women more than men--speaking in terms of biological sex, anyway--and I know there are few medical interventions. When I tried to find help for Raynaud's phenomenon, for example, the advice? "Don't get cold."
I menopaused early (age 49) and have been on HRT since age 50; I'm 54 now. I couldn't use the patch because I'm allergic to the adhesive, but I wish I could, because I think that short time I was on the patch was the best I'd felt since... maybe since I started my period, but at least since the worst of perimenopause set in during my thirties. I now take oral estrogen and progesterone every day. These help particularly with the worst menopausal symptoms I had, insomnia and hot flashes, but don't do much to pull up my mood. I had PMDD pretty much all of my menstruating life (crushing depression, occasional migraines) and the worst part of menopause is that I still cycle through periods of depression and brain fog--I just don't have any way to track when it might come on now. Depression got so bad for me that I finally started taking an antidepressant, a treatment I've been refusing since I was first prescribed it at age 19.
I owe a great deal to having seen a woman doctor and a naturopath at that. She acknowledged right away that HRT could help me and worked with me to find a medication that agreed with me and that I could afford. I agree with you that HRT changed my life--maybe even saved it.
The year I menopaused (2018; my last period was in October 2017) was a year of huge upheaval--it was also the year my fifteen-year-long relationship ended and my ex-partner moved out, and the year Kat died of cancer. I was also in a car accident (not my fault, but my car was totaled and I sustained a lower back injury). So I was going through an emotional wringer and barely even thought what menopause might have to do with it. I lost 40 pounds, lost another close friend who very reasonably didn't want to deal with me dumping on her all the time, had anxiety attacks and fantasies of suicide. I felt so chaotic I left town for a while and went to stay at my mother's, where I rented a bicycle and revisited places I had good memories of as a child! That whole year was wild. I was furious, hungry, full of myself, full of self-hatred... just in a heightened state of everything. I decided to take yoga teacher training with a group that turned out to be connected to a cult formed by a con man and sex abuser. I started sex relationships with two different men and ended up cheating on both of them. I went camping alone, took long road trips alone. Just... chaos, and a combination of self-care and self-sabotage, with my self-esteem in ruins. To be honest, I hadn't really considered menopause as another chaos agent during this whole time of my life... when it almost certainly was.
I've been in therapy and in recovery since 2019, along with taking HRT. I'm still working on healing and repairing a lot of trauma and a lot of damage--what happened to me, and what I did to myself and others! I have expressed anger, resistance, and raw need in some ways that have really done a lot of harm, not because I intended to do harm, but because I didn't know what else to do. I feel like going through menopause at this time is no coincidence and is actually a kind of rebirth, or a second chance to become myself. I imagine the Crone as a wise woman. She knows herself, she is true to herself, she knows when to hold her ground and when to give no fucks. I'm on the other side of the 'pause, on Her side. I am learning to listen to her.
That's part of my story. Thank you for asking. I love you!
Carolee, thank you for this—I knew some of it but not all. Seeing the chronology is powerful—I have often thought of perimenopause—which is lingering for me—as a Tower moment in life, and perhaps it’s been going on for over a decade, so maybe not the sudden lightning bolt but still the overthrow and chaos in perpetuity.
I hope you can get some help with Reynaud’s. It’s the blow-off that is so injurious—I get it they have no clue, they are ignorant and can’t know everything, but there is a deep suspicion here too, a suggestion that you are malingering and wasting their time. The doctor in front of you in that moment could say—I don’t know, or we are learning about this—if that’s even true. Instead they infantilise you and diminish your suffering without offering any answers. It takes so much resilience to keep trying to get help from doctors—something I feel I no longer have and that’s a dangerous place to be.
It’s amazing to me that when we go out in the world to change ourselves up,we can end up in some kind of misogynist cage fighting area where long-time predators have held court in ‘secret.’ This is the Patriarchy having a much needed Tower moment—but without the self-awareness. We're caught in the blow-back.
I wish the suffering we have endured wasn’t part of this, but maybe the chaos is necessary. Looking at your story I’m thinking—of course there would be raging desire, fury, and consuming anger. It makes perfect sense even if our culture has not made space for it. If that’s not directed outwardly it will good into us…and no one could survive that.
HRT saved my life, too. I’m so grateful we have survived.
Grinding through it. Relate to all of this, comments too. Thank you for hosting this conversation. Thank you everyone else for sharing. 53 yo, patches and pills for the last couple, no clue about my cycle (crime scenes; ghost periods; ghosted, period...rinse repeat). Ntm the sudden out of body spells of rage that irradiate all in my presence...and then flash out as quickly as they flare up, everyone in cinders.
That dismissiveness from the doctors is its own special kind of hell. And I mean beyond the basic burnout brushoff that I do understand and for which I have so much compassion. I mean that unique disdain reserved for the Aging Woman. Even from female doctors, which surprised me until I realized they'd probably had the feminine beaten out of them to ride with the Big Boys. This moment, when I was in my mid-40s: "My period's been really weird, first really heavy and then not there at all, which is the case at the moment, and I'm pretty sure I'm not pregnant—" A harsh bark of a laugh cut me off as her eyes rolled practically out of her head, her meaning clear. I had been about to tell her my husband had a vasectomy, but that I was obviously too ancient to even conceive conceiving was her go-to assumption, effectively silencing me with shame. Another memory you've (all) reminded me of: a friend of mine has fibro, and she once told me how, in LA, where we lived at the time, it's called Brentwood Wives Disease. (For those not familiar: Brentwood is a ritzy neighborhood in LA. But you can replace Brentwood with any fancy location. It's a very flexible slam.) It also didn't need explaining that this meant anyone saying they had it was bored, lazy, spoiled, faking it for advantage. Jagged shades of "Aw honey, you just need some attention, don't you?" (h/t Jessica Knoll)
Here's another one: I was in my late 30s and hadn't gotten my period for a couple months but kept failing the pregnancy tests (this was pre-V Section). Went to see a doctor who didn't even examine me, barely letting me speak before sighing and informing me it was because I was fat. "Lose some weight, and that period'll come right back," he said, patting his belly with an oily wink. A year later, when I had my Mirena IUD removed, my period returned. And I'd told him about the IUD.
Same thing happens a lot with my knees, both of them utterly hosed from having been a competitive downhill ski racer in my teens, three knee surgeries by the time I was 21, the first at 15. Whenever I burn into a new town, I'm foolishly hopeful I'll finally find a decent orthopod. But either it's the "don't tell /me/ what you think is the problem" (as though I might not perhaps be the expert on my own fucking body) "like you're the doctor" (despite one after another contradicting each other with their deranged treatment plans). Or it's the weight (and I'm not obese) (but even if I were). Proper treatment is reserved for the paunchy ex-footballer gone-to-seed dudes, who might even get some high fives, commiseration and actual treatment. It doesn't matter that I'd been scouted for the national team right before that last big crash. Or that I do daily yoga. And hike. Except when I can't, because my knees. It's just: lose weight. Do more physio. (And please, I beg you, fuck off out of here.) (That last part doesn't have to be spoken aloud, but it's there, in neon.)
It's worse now that I'm visibly no longer in my reproductive years. It's like you all say: there's a special kind of hatred reserved for older women who "complain" about their ailments. The worst part is I'm not immune to it myself. Their disregard hits all the harder for how much I agree with them, way back in that inward-facing, ugly corner of my psyche. I remember how, as a kid a teen a young woman, I used to join my then-stepfather and his own father in mocking my then-stepgrandmother behind her back for her endless doctors appointments, her presumed hypochondria and old lady pathetic need to be seen, even as I'd flinch at the harsh way they spoke to her. The memory curdles me with shame.
But what if that part's true too? What if we /do/ want, need, crave attention? Is that so bad? And is it any surprise? And how does it invalidate the physical need, the only one legitimized, even as it's discarded, along with our value, out of which we've aged? Allyson, you're so right about the resilience it takes to press on, the need to not give up, to keep seeking answers despite the infantilising attitudes. Mine feels crumbly at the moment, but I have to keep reminding myself to "behave" or I might be cut off from treatment completely. I recognize I don't hold the institutional power. That's perhaps the most mortifying part: having to appease the ones dehumanizing me, so angry but also so scared. And I'm a cis-gender white woman in a majority white, semi-Victorian space. I can only imagine how much worse it is for our sisterz of color and fluidity.
I find hope in what Carolena said in response to your original post, reframing this encroaching invisibility of cronery as our "cloak of spells." I love that so much. I think that may be the lesson. To learn to harness that Force, to inhabit it, as you said, stealthily, with quiet grace and wicked ferocity.
Hi MJ--thank you so much for sharing your story here--It's incredible to hear other's resilience in the face of such negligence and ineptitude from the medical establishment. I din't know about the "Brentwood Disease"-- here it's the same except there's a belief you want 'attention' from the NHS. I mean, I do want medical attention--nothing more. That we somehow have to wait until we are in a body that is 'acceptable'--white, straight, middle class, BMI-index conforming-- in order to get treatment is deeply troubling, too. May this all get easier the more we talk and are heard.
Thank you for writing about your own experiences, Allyson. Menopause is normal and I can’t understand why it has become this unspoken topic!
I am a whisker off forty, so not yet menopausal. I likely will experience menopause earlier than the norm, due to my medical history. I am in perimenopause- I do have hot flushes and in the past few years started having migraines, which were new for me.
It feels like most of my life has been absolutely dominated by hormones. I had undiagnosed endometriosis and my life felt like nothing but periods and attempting to recover from them. I was diagnosed and I had surgery in 2021 and am now on medication that stops my body growing endometrium, and it changed my life. Interestingly, the medication I take is also used as HRT. I’m not sure what menopause will hold for me, but I have hope that it will become less and less of a taboo topic and that more women can share their experiences.
Blake, thatnks for talking about your perimenopausal experience. I hope that things are rapidly changing and that more options will be available when you need them. I have heard from other women that when you are through the storm, it gets so much easier. I am looking forward to that. I hope you can find help for the migraines--they can be really debilitating.
Ally, thank you SO MUCH for writing about your experience and for amplifying it again this year. You're absolutely right about the way most healthcare providers ignore what should be addressed about how hormones affect and interact with bodies and brains. Menopause happens to everyone who menstruates, eventually--you'd think it wouldn't be such a medical mystery. You'd think! Same as with autoimmune diseases. I am now in the process of trying to see a rheumatologist myself, and am on a long waiting list. I expect very little actual treatment, because I know that autoimmune conditions tend to affect women more than men--speaking in terms of biological sex, anyway--and I know there are few medical interventions. When I tried to find help for Raynaud's phenomenon, for example, the advice? "Don't get cold."
I menopaused early (age 49) and have been on HRT since age 50; I'm 54 now. I couldn't use the patch because I'm allergic to the adhesive, but I wish I could, because I think that short time I was on the patch was the best I'd felt since... maybe since I started my period, but at least since the worst of perimenopause set in during my thirties. I now take oral estrogen and progesterone every day. These help particularly with the worst menopausal symptoms I had, insomnia and hot flashes, but don't do much to pull up my mood. I had PMDD pretty much all of my menstruating life (crushing depression, occasional migraines) and the worst part of menopause is that I still cycle through periods of depression and brain fog--I just don't have any way to track when it might come on now. Depression got so bad for me that I finally started taking an antidepressant, a treatment I've been refusing since I was first prescribed it at age 19.
I owe a great deal to having seen a woman doctor and a naturopath at that. She acknowledged right away that HRT could help me and worked with me to find a medication that agreed with me and that I could afford. I agree with you that HRT changed my life--maybe even saved it.
The year I menopaused (2018; my last period was in October 2017) was a year of huge upheaval--it was also the year my fifteen-year-long relationship ended and my ex-partner moved out, and the year Kat died of cancer. I was also in a car accident (not my fault, but my car was totaled and I sustained a lower back injury). So I was going through an emotional wringer and barely even thought what menopause might have to do with it. I lost 40 pounds, lost another close friend who very reasonably didn't want to deal with me dumping on her all the time, had anxiety attacks and fantasies of suicide. I felt so chaotic I left town for a while and went to stay at my mother's, where I rented a bicycle and revisited places I had good memories of as a child! That whole year was wild. I was furious, hungry, full of myself, full of self-hatred... just in a heightened state of everything. I decided to take yoga teacher training with a group that turned out to be connected to a cult formed by a con man and sex abuser. I started sex relationships with two different men and ended up cheating on both of them. I went camping alone, took long road trips alone. Just... chaos, and a combination of self-care and self-sabotage, with my self-esteem in ruins. To be honest, I hadn't really considered menopause as another chaos agent during this whole time of my life... when it almost certainly was.
I've been in therapy and in recovery since 2019, along with taking HRT. I'm still working on healing and repairing a lot of trauma and a lot of damage--what happened to me, and what I did to myself and others! I have expressed anger, resistance, and raw need in some ways that have really done a lot of harm, not because I intended to do harm, but because I didn't know what else to do. I feel like going through menopause at this time is no coincidence and is actually a kind of rebirth, or a second chance to become myself. I imagine the Crone as a wise woman. She knows herself, she is true to herself, she knows when to hold her ground and when to give no fucks. I'm on the other side of the 'pause, on Her side. I am learning to listen to her.
That's part of my story. Thank you for asking. I love you!
Carolee, thank you for this—I knew some of it but not all. Seeing the chronology is powerful—I have often thought of perimenopause—which is lingering for me—as a Tower moment in life, and perhaps it’s been going on for over a decade, so maybe not the sudden lightning bolt but still the overthrow and chaos in perpetuity.
I hope you can get some help with Reynaud’s. It’s the blow-off that is so injurious—I get it they have no clue, they are ignorant and can’t know everything, but there is a deep suspicion here too, a suggestion that you are malingering and wasting their time. The doctor in front of you in that moment could say—I don’t know, or we are learning about this—if that’s even true. Instead they infantilise you and diminish your suffering without offering any answers. It takes so much resilience to keep trying to get help from doctors—something I feel I no longer have and that’s a dangerous place to be.
It’s amazing to me that when we go out in the world to change ourselves up,we can end up in some kind of misogynist cage fighting area where long-time predators have held court in ‘secret.’ This is the Patriarchy having a much needed Tower moment—but without the self-awareness. We're caught in the blow-back.
I wish the suffering we have endured wasn’t part of this, but maybe the chaos is necessary. Looking at your story I’m thinking—of course there would be raging desire, fury, and consuming anger. It makes perfect sense even if our culture has not made space for it. If that’s not directed outwardly it will good into us…and no one could survive that.
HRT saved my life, too. I’m so grateful we have survived.