Dear Dixie, I'm going through early menopause — how can I still feel part of the sisterhood?

By Dixie Laite, Age Against the Machine columnist

Dear Dixie,

I started going through menopause early. I think I officially entered menopause at 46, one year after my period stopped for good. Before this, I was a regular heavy bleeder. I don’t exactly miss my period, but it has been a part of my identity since I was 12! 

I am angry that it stopped early — partly because I feel like perimenopause and menopause are glossed over unlike getting your first period or pregnancy when it comes to women’s health. It’s just as much of a transition and milestone as your first period. Instead, the healthcare system seems to go immediately to HRT and vaginal atrophy. Ugh, it sounds horrible to think of your vagina atrophying, like it’s going to fall off and die! 

I know our periods aren’t what make us women, but when you are defined in medical terms, it feels like you aren’t worthy anymore. I look for early menopause support groups and I find nothing. The only person I can talk to about this is my cousin who is experiencing something similar. It honestly sucks! I feel ashamed that I went through menopause on the early side. I still want to feel like part of the sisterhood complaining about cramps and crazy periods. It’s silly, but I feel like my body betrayed me and if we were living in The Handmaid’s Tale, I would be sent to the colonies. I wish there was more info out there about early menopause and that I didn’t feel like I need to discuss it in hushed tones like something I should be embarrassed about! 

Ms. My Period 

Dear Ms. My Period,

I completely understand how you feel. Until recently our society was very hush-hush about the whole menopause thing. (It’s made it even more invisible than older women.) Certainly my mother and older female relatives never mentioned it or prepared me for its coming, like they had menstruation. I never heard much about menopause, or even the word perimenopause, until it happened to me. Even then it was, as you said, all about HRT and a shrug about its inevitability. I had some vague idea about my period stopping and hot flashes, but that was it. No one told me about how poorly I’d be sleeping, mood swings, severe vaginal dryness, and painful intercourse. Watching TV, I’d wonder how come Blanche Deveraux on The Golden Girls or Samantha on Sex and the City were apparently able to have all kinds of sex without wincing.

I’m 60 and I wasn’t lucky enough to have things like Jumble & Flow to turn to for deets, advice, or empathy. But luckily, you do. There is lots of information out there and lots of women online and IRL to talk to. There is absolutely no need to feel you have to use hushed tones. In fact, we women should refuse to talk about menopause in hushed tones. It’s something that happens to half of the population and there should be no need to keep it a taboo topic. Personally, I think it’s our obligation as women to discuss it openly, for ourselves and for the younger women who will be facing it one day.

If you’re not the type to scream from the rooftops about vaginal atrophy, at least know that there are a growing number of women and places you can turn to for medicinal and non-medicinal options — and sisterhood. We recommend checking out suggestions here in The Perimenopause List. I also think it’s important to talk about the upside of growing older, which I try to do with my pieces in “Age Against the Machine” here at Jumble & Flow.

And speaking of flow, I miss my period too! It used to make me sad, so I totally understand where you’re coming from. I don’t feel like less of a woman, and as I’ve said in other posts, in many ways with age I’ve stepped into my power by gaining wisdom and dropping insecurities. But menstruating does have a messy way of reminding you you’re a woman with an insistent regularity. Still, just as we are not our livers or our pancreases (pancreasi?), we are not our ovaries and we are not our uteruses. We are strong, savvy human beings with growing experience and insights. What I miss is the way having my period was a way of marking time, not allowing days and months to slip by without a marker. And what’s so strange about missing something we lived with for decades? Periods were a pain in the ass, but they were a pain in the ass who visited monthly, a recurring, reliable companion of sorts. The familiarity didn’t breed contempt, though it sometimes did literally breed.

The Ishango bone, discovered in 1960, was a famous archaeological find. The baboon bone is at least 20,000 years old with engraved notches which archaeologists have long considered to be one of the first examples of humans counting, using numbers. (For some perspective, agriculture is understood to have been around for maybe 7,000 years.) But ah, just what were these early humans counting, these archaeologists wondered? MALE archaeologists wondered. Today many theorize the bone markings track lunar cycles, and in fact these grooves in the bone may have been made to keep track of a menstrual cycle. This makes prehistoric women the world’s first mathematicians. For hundreds of thousands of years, females have been marking time via their periods, a recurring event often in line with the lunar cycle. Is it any wonder you and I might miss this age-old, vaguely astronomical part of life?

But while it’s natural to our periods, have those periods end, and then mourn the days when we had those periods, we mustn’t let the absence of our menstrual cycles mean an end to our womanhood. There are all kinds of women and all kinds of ways to be women and express and womanliness. Lean in to finding yours.

Xoxo, 

Dixie

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About Dixie Laite

Dixie Laite has been a second-grade teacher and mechanical bull operator, and for the past 25 years she’s worked for a variety of TV networks as a writer, editorial director, trainer, advice columnist, even an on-air personality. But primarily she’s trotted around New York City in one cowboy shirt or another, lurking around flea markets, gyms, and anywhere they’ll hand her French toast. Currently she lounges around her apartment with one husband, one dog, five parrots, and roughly 2,000 pairs of shoes. Dixie is the main lady behind Age Against the Machine, a column about empowering women over 50. Read the free archive of Age Against the Machine on jumbleandflow.com.

Follow Dixie on Instagram @dixielaite

Email Dixie at dixie@jumbleandflow.com