Hi ,
I've written and posted before about my own experience of starting perimenopause in my 40s, and the hormonal shifts, mood swings, and the strange sense of feeling different about myself and my place in the world. It made me think about what I'd absorbed about menopause growing up, watching my mother go through it.
Menopause wasn't really spoken about then. It was alluded to, covered up, something women went through quietly, almost in secret. On TV it was mostly jokes: women being "mad," hot flushes, being grumpy. I know my mother felt it meant she was no longer really a woman. I watched her struggle silently.