'One day it will happen to you’: My mother tried to warn me about menopause
Like a lot of women, comedian Jennifer Whalen was unprepared for the changes that came with middle age
One day when I was 16, my mother came into my room and plopped down a newsletter called A Friend Indeed, by Canadian health educator Janine O’Leary Cobb. “It’s about menopause,” she said. “You should read it.”
It was a natural evolution for us. When I was eight, she gave me Where Did I Come From?, a book that explained the facts of life to kids. It had a kind of 1970s groovy vibe. The main thing I remember about it was that it explained an orgasm as feeling like a nice sneeze. To this day I feel weird about sneezing in public.
When I was 12, she gave me The Ms. Guide to a Woman’s Health and Our Bodies, Our Selves. Pre-internet, the combo of these two books made me the most informed kid at my Catholic grade school and replaced my previous method of sexual education: flipping through my parent’s Judith Krantz novels to find the “good bits.”
Menopause: 'One day it will happen to you'
As I considered A Friend Indeed, my mom explained that I should read it because, “one day it will happen to you.” Doubtful, I thought. I looked at the newsletter with suspicion. At the time, my mom was sipping from her “I’d rather be 40 than pregnant” coffee mug which was funny to her but confusing to me, as she was both 40 and pregnant. Why would a pregnant woman subscribe to a newsletter about menopause? “So I can be prepared,” she said darkly, before leaving me to it.
I only read one story from A Friend Indeed and it is seared into my mind. It was about a woman who had a hysterectomy, crashed into menopause and, in my memory, immediately grew a beard. I was not prepared for that. Horrified, I hurled the newsletter across the room. It was the last time I gave any thought to menopause until it happened to me.
There are a thousand movies about puberty and being a teen. Why not about perimenopause and midlife?- Jennifer Whalen
And when it did, despite my mom’s best efforts to give me a complete overview of the female reproductive system, I was shocked at how little I knew, how unprepared I was for “The Change.”
The connection between menopause and anxiety
What I’ve learned since then about menopause is… a lot. Too much for any one show. The biggest surprise was learning about menopause and anxiety.
When I was 47, I started waking up every night at 3 a.m., suffused with anxiety. At the time, I thought I was falling apart. Not dealing well with life and The-Extremely-Stressful-State-Of-The-World. To soothe myself, I would compile a list of Terrible Men: politicians and billionaire bro-dudes. Then I would mentally drop them on a deserted island with no supplies to fight it out … to the death. Sometimes it worked and I would fall asleep, sometimes it backfired and I would get anxiously involved in the logistics. Do I give them food? Shelter? One really shitty tent and a bag of that orange and black Halloween candy no one likes?
I know now that anxiety is a symptom of perimenopause. It affects so many women and so many women are completely unprepared for it. It’s an issue we explore in Season 2 of Small Achievable Goals. Had I known anxiety was a thing at this time of life, I’m not sure I would have been prepared for it, but I would have been a lot less hard on myself.
Celebrating menopause
Maybe the best way to prepare for menopause is to celebrate it. There are a thousand movies about puberty and being a teen. Why not about perimenopause and midlife? Or, as the experience is so different for everyone, maybe a Law & Order-type procedural? “In the criminal justice system, the people with uteruses are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the medical system who under-investigate menopause and the sufferers who have burning mouths / frozen shoulders / hot flashes / night sweats /itchy ears / achy feet / one stinky armpit for some f**ked up reason / can’t sleep and are trying to keep it together while raising families, working, dating and taking care of elderly parents. These are their stories.”
Okay, I admit that list does not make one feel like celebrating. But there are things to celebrate. It’s a time of shedding all the things that you’ve outgrown. The things that no longer suit you. It’s not about losing womanhood, it’s about gaining personhood. An unshakable sense of self. And I am totally prepared to do that.
Watch Jennifer Whalen on Small Achievable Goals, now streaming on CBC Gem.
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