Menopause is Not a Disease

In September I attended a big menopause symposium in Seattle. I was excited to be in a room full of women my age, seeking a deeper understanding of the changes and opportunities experienced by women and people with uteruses at this time. I was quickly dismayed by the growing list of medications, therapies, treatments that were advised by the “expert” practitioners, none of them covered by insurance. Thirteen minutes into the conference we were already focused on libido. It was a strangely heteronormative theme that came up again and again over the 8 hours. There was lots of talk about people’s husbands and testosterone. There were no clinical research trials cited for anything. The Longevity Medical Clinic was there to recommend 4-5 different hormone therapies, started as soon as possible for everyone. A woman stood up and asked if 70 was too late to start hormone therapy. One of the doctors on the panel stood up, pounded on his abs, I swear to God, and told this audience of 150-ish women how he’s 78 and  has the hormones of a 25 year old. He proudly told us how he is married to a woman 30 years younger than him, and his youngest kid is 13. He married his wife when he was 57 and she was 27, and they “put her on hormones” when she was 31. And now, the question for them is, “Will we ever let her go through menopause?”

I came home traumatized by this misogynistic depiction of menopause as pathology, something to be heavily medicated and maybe prevented if possible. I showered it off and got into bed (figuratively) with Jen Gunter, author of The Menopause Manifesto and The Vajenda blog, and that was just what the doctor ordered. Jen reminded me that menopause is not a disease. It’s a normal physiological event involving hormones, like puberty and childbirth. This is why the healthcare professional community refers to hormone therapy or menopause hormone therapy, HT or MHT,  and not hormone replacement therapy, because HRT implies pathology, an abnormal condition. Menopause is not abnormal! Dr. Gunter elaborates that of course this doesn’t imply that it should be a walk in the park, just like puberty and child birth can be accompanied by varying degrees of complications and unpleasant or awful experiences. Gunter says: “There are an infinite number of permutations and combinations of (menopause) experiences. This isn’t about medical-condition-oneupwomanship, we can hold space for many things and offer therapy when needed, regardless of where someone is on their menstrual spectrum.” The key is to understand our bodies and be able to ask questions and advocate for ourselves when we need support, medical or otherwise. And this is no small task, given the under-researched “barrage of shoulds” that we encounter these days in the menoverse! 

Underneath all the symposium’s overtones of metabolic dysfunction, complicated medical and exercise regimens, there was a recurring footnote for people to find connection, and seek out their collective. No one offered any protocols for this, they just said how important it is. I felt proud that this is the work of Launch Your Pause. We dig into these social connections and peer support spaces: the lowering of cortisol by sharing our experience with each other, the oxytocin released by pinging mirror neurons when we feel like we belong.  Many of us are looking for relief in this time of our lives, and that can take many forms. Telling our stories is one form of relief. Menopause is something to live, it is rich stories and narratives of people in a time of transformation. It is an evolution, a physiological event unique to females of only a few animal species. What a juicy story.