Mimi Moon Meno founder Megan Hayward explains why women still aren’t heard

Megan Hayward says most businesses still don’t understand women and their many seasons.

As the founder of menopause movement Mimi Moon Meno, Adelaide’s Megan Hayward wants to remove the stigmas around it and perimenopause. She’s also on a mission to educate and support individuals and make workplaces more understanding and inclusive.

I was in my 30s when my husband Stephen and I were travelling overseas on the trip of a lifetime through Europe …

We were in Sintra, Portugal; an image out of a fairytale, the most stunning place with buildings that look like they’ve been painted in the hillside.

We set off in the morning and I said, ‘Something’s going on with my period’.

I went back to the room, and I was stuck on the toilet. I didn’t know but this was a flooding.

Half an hour later, I’ve sorted myself out but I’m extremely emotional.

My husband’s a nurse and we had both just had Spanish flu. He said, ‘I think it’s just that, don’t worry’, so I brushed it off.

Megan Hayward and her husband Stephen. Picture: Supplied

When we got back to Adelaide I started getting ocular migraines; not necessarily painful, but scary.

Have you ever seen people who dive in caves? My vision would go cloudy on the top of my left eye and, at the same time, my right eye would be like a kaleidoscope.

With perimenopause(editor’s note: which can last for two to 12 or more years in the lead up to menopause), it’s not one thing.

I heard someone describe it as like you are a live frog being boiled …and that’s what happened to me. There was a series of events.

Between all the bleeding and migraines, there was this constant background body pain; pelvic pain that was shooting and breathtaking and would bring tears to your eyes.

I would be in a meeting, experiencing excruciating pain in my pelvic area, and it’s not something you can just announce at a meeting. It’s also not a short-term issue that will resolve itself in a few days.

There was the insomnia – I don’t think I slept for five years – and night sweats, but I’ve never had a daytime hot flush. Doctors kept saying ‘you’re not ticking all the boxes’.

I was gaslit at work: ‘You’re the problem. It’s you. You’re aggressive.’

I got told I couldn’t handle feedback, that I wasn’t a team player. It ended in a redundancy that felt personal.

Throughout the Senate hearing into menopause this was a common theme of midlife women struggling in the workplace.

I was changing, I did not feel supported in the workplace, and I didn’t understand what was happening.

Megan Hayward struggled to find support. Picture: Supplied

Today with her pup Lucky. Picture: Supplied

I felt like an impostor in my own life.If only someone had said: ‘You’ve said you’re going through perimenopause. What do you need? How can we help you?’.

Beautiful older women in my life that I would go to and say, ‘I think I’m in perimenopause’, would tell me, ‘Can you just stop it, already? You’re not even 40’; while friends, closer to my age, would say ‘That’s what my mum is going through’.

One day my sister was walking into our house and I was like, ‘Hey, beautiful’, because I couldn’t for the life of me remember her name.

I was terrified, thinking, ‘I’m going to end up with dementia like Nan and Papa’.

Megan Hayward. Picture: Supplied

To try and combat my symptoms, I gave up caffeine, alcohol, smoking and dramatically reduced the sugar.

But even when I cleaned all of that up, my doctors kept saying, ‘no, you’re depressed, you need antidepressants’. I was like, ‘No, this is something different’.

I was blacking out, so I had iron infusions but none were sticking and my iron was decreasing. I was told, ‘We need to rule out bowel cancer’.

When I went in for the colonoscopy, of course, again, I’m having another bloody heavy period. The nurse said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve seen it all before’. I looked at the gastroenterologist and said ‘I’m so sorry’ and he’s like, ‘Just take your underwear off. It’s OK’.

As soon as I did, blood was pouring down one of my legs. He looked at me, and said, ‘You don’t have cancer, it’s perimenopause’.

Finally, doctors said, ‘You need oestrogen’.

Menopause has 44 symptoms but it’s like a fingerprint – each woman has a unique set and they are likely to experience most them during perimenopause.

Megan Hayward. Picture: Supplied

Megan Hayward supports other women through the perils of perimenopause. Picture: Supplied

I started Mimi Moon Meno to educate people about menopause and how you can support women in the workplace.

I trained with The Menopause Experts Group UK to become a menopause champion, but I call myself a menopause concierge because I want people to come to me so I can point them in the right direction. Like, going back to the really basic things, such as asking, in the workplace, if you are not sleeping, ‘how can we support you to get the sleep you need and still perform your role’?

If you don’t have conversations about menopause and you don’t normalise it, women feel isolated. By supporting women and organisations, and talking to men, I’m owning menopause. I’m doing it so that we women don’t continue having the health issues that we have and don’t continue leaving the workforce.

I don’t want anyone to ever feel the way I felt, to ever not be supported, and to ever think that there’s no one they can speak to.

mimimoonmeno.com.au

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Originally published as Mimi Moon Meno founder Megan Hayward explains why women still aren’t heard