Everyone is Talking About Menopause...

In 2018, Kate and I created Launch Your Pause. When we started talking about our idea to celebrate menopause, it was like we wanted to to make people look at monkey throw-up. Sometimes when we talked about what we were doing, people snickered. Often they’d look interested, but I could tell that behind their eyes was an impatience to just move on.

But there was a small and curious group of women who wanted to jump on our weird uterus-muraled retrofit school bus and see what we were so excited about. It’s been a slow, beautiful build, and I’m grateful for all of it.

And now, suddenly in the last few years, menopause has become all the rage. There are menopause coaching programs and psilocybin journeys for menopause. Strength training for menopause and special concierge doctors for menopause. All of that is great. I’m so happy menopause is in the everyday conversation. Finally.

And yet, the very nature of being in menopause myself makes me want to turn on my heels and walk away from all this hulabaloo. I love the retreats and activities Kate and I have created and continue to build. There’s nothing more fun than trying to come up with ways to make learning about menopause appealing.

It takes every drop of imagination to envision ways to describe estrogen drop as something positive. In my humble opinion, I think we’ve done a great job. My creative friendship and business partnership with Kate is a blessing for sure. We have fun and we love what we do. Almost every day, we share research or personal interest stories or blogs or memes about menopause. People send us stuff all the time. The field is growing, and that is the dream.

You might say that women are finally having their day. But are they?

I’m not so sure. Capitalism has wrapped its gnarly claws around the theme of menopause. The shiny-fancy-bling machine is on a mission to commercialize and monetize it. And I don’t want to be part of that game. I heard a woman on a podcast yesterday say her goal was to create 20,000 menopause coaches.

I LOVE that there is a vision to help women move through menopause, but I also believe that menopause is a portal to wisdom and transformation and that we, the women going through it, know what to do. We were born knowing what to do, but the sexist, male-focused health industrial complex has all but ignored the topic of menopause and women, as a result have been left with a feeling of shame and confusion as we “rediscover” that everything about our experience is normal.

We don’t need experts. We just need a shame-free space. We need to say to ourselves, “There’s something cool happening here. Times are a’changing. Let me get on this bus and see where it goes!” At Launch Your Pause, we think it’s pretty simple. Women in menopause know what they need. We’re just creating spaces for them to connect with those needs, honor them, and share this newfound wisdom with other women.

What Kate and I have learned in our humble, very grassroots efforts is that every woman is a master of her life. And of her menopause. If we peel away all the expectations, gender- role-definitions, and patriarchal constructs, the answer is right there.

And for every woman the answer is different, and only she can know it. There is no perfect protocol, no nine steps to Nirvana. Menopause is where we will be for the rest of our lives.

Personally, I don’t want to compete. I don’t want to get on that train of selling what we don’t need, of outsourcing my strength and capacity. What menopause has taught me, more than anything, is that I am enough. Who I am and what I do is exactly that. It’s who I am and it’s what I do. No more, no less. And menopause has helped me accept and embrace the idea to not give a shit what anyone else thinks about this. It’s helped me to let go of external expectations of success.

So what’s the problem?

It sounds like I’m writing myself out of a job, but I’m not. I’m trying to work out why this menopause fad is driving me mad. There’s something in the marketing of an outside relief portal, that feels dangerous and unhelpful to me. And I worry about the message this is sending to women in menopause.

What if women were simply raised in a society in which menopause was talked about, understood, and honored? What if, as part of our biology, human sexuality, and health courses in middle and high school, we learned about menopause? What if the physical, mental and emotional effects of hormones on women’s health were part of our story from the beginning?

If that were the case, we wouldn’t need all of these widely marketed programs and providers. We’d just know that estrogen might help. That we might also need progesterone. We’d know that around 50 we should start to dial in and really listen to ourselves, that this is the time we’ll come back to something old, familiar, powerful and important.

Maybe all the menopause programs, gels, creams, and coaches are helping the vision. I hope so, but I don’t want to compete with all of these shiny new offerings. I don’t want to win. I just want to do what I love and love what I do. I want to keep creating spaces for women to find their truest selves, to emerge from the ashes of what was and step boldly into what is.

The vision of Launch Your Pause is to help create a society where older women are respected and valued for their wisdom. Menopause isn’t about staying young forever or being more supple. We’re older, wiser, and I would say, more beautiful now. And that’s a good thing.