BBC Breakfast Menopause Week

All this week BBC Breakfast have been running a feature on the menopause. I am conflicted about it.

On the one hand I am thrilled that the impacts of the menopause are being discussed by the mainstream media. Awareness and sharing is so important. It’s why I have started writing my feelings and thoughts down.

I can’t really talk about it in my everyday life. For one reason, people’s eyes glaze over if you even skirt towards it, and for another, it’s not something that comes very naturally to me. I am not very honest about my feelings. For most of my life I have pretty much air-brushed and clipped them into neat, constrained, dare I say, uptight proportions. Honesty is so important and I have started to feel about the menopause the same way I did after having my first child.

Misled.

I was absolutely livid that no-one told me how bad those first few months (years) of parenting would be.

‘No-one can ever prepare you,’ they said in their defence.

‘You said it was the most joyful experience of your fricking life!’,

‘Ah, yes, well…. didn’t want to scare you.’

See?… misled.

I feel the same way about the menopause really. The menopause is way, way more than hot flushes ( I haven’t even had one yet). Except I think I was warned. I just wasn’t listening very hard.

My Mum went a little bit mental during the menopause. Actually, not a little bit. Full on bat shit crazy. She had a breakdown. Panic attacks, severe depression and anxiety. She thought she was dying. Literally. She’d be in bed for days at a time, thinking she had a serious heart problem or cancer. Several times she forced my Dad to call the ambulance because she thought she was having a heart attack. My poor Dad. He didn’t have a clue what was happening. And neither did my siblings and I really. I just wanted her to pull herself together.

I suppose in some ways my Mum was lucky. We’re a close family and we rallied round, but it was all rather unfathomable. On the other hand a friend of hers ended up being sectioned. Imagine that. Officially nuts. What must that do to someone? I don’t think that lady has ever been the same again. Literally a broken woman. They put some of the pieces back but they never went back quite the way they were.

That to me, is terrifying.

This was 30 years ago. HRT was around but clouded with concerns about links to cancer. My Mum was never going to go there, paranoid as she was about the big C. Women of her generation had to muddle through. No, not for me thanks.

My first real recognition that the menopause was a big deal was the Jeremy Vine Radio 2 show about 2 years ago. He also did a feature on the menopause. He was looking at the most severe cases, like my Mum and her friend I suppose, where these women lives just imploded. Several women guested on the show. They were incredibly honest and very brave and they stories were HORRIFIC. They lost jobs, marriages friendships. They became women they just didn’t recognise really and there was absolutely no support or back-up available to them. HR departments would have laughed if they had cited the menopause as a mitigating factor in their dismissal, for example. I remember thinking how much I admired Jeremy Vine for giving the topic a platform. It was enlightening. I started to understand how destructive the menopause could be. And significantly I thought I recognised it in one of my colleagues. Within a few months, she’d had a massive bust up with her boss and was gone.

18 months ago, I wrote my first piece, triggered by what I heard on that radio show. And then just a few months ago, I picked up my keyboard again and started writing some more, knowing that I needed an outlet for my jumbled thoughts and feelings.

So, after watching Breakfast this week, I am also conflicted because if there was ever a better time to share these ramblings beyond me and my computer screen, the time is now. Except I’m not sure I'm quite ready. All this is still pretty new to me. Is it vanity to even think anyone else is interested? Will it be good enough? Have I revealed too much? What will people think of me? Do I care? Am I strong enough to handle any negativity?

So I am sat here bashing away at the keyboard, on the precipice of making a complete twat of myself.

Red pill or blue pill?

Cup of tea first, I think….