Why women shouldn’t fear menopause

Don’t fear the menopause, don’t dread it; it’s releasing, surely. Liberating us from the gaze of men, from the function of Woman as Sexual Object, writes Nikki Gemmell. Picture: iStock

The girl child accuses my stomach of being a water bed. 2020 has not started well. She plunges her face into the depths of the belly and laughs. It’s disturbing that her entire visage could be buried in this. Not because she could suffocate, although that’s a distinct possibility, but because the girth has widened so luxuriously from the tautness it once was.

I tell her that four children have emerged from this mysterious region; six times it tried brewing them. I explain it’s quite magnificent what this belly has managed to do over the years. But all she’s interested in is the giggly spread of the softness. This is Mother. Comfort. Punching bag. Ancient mystery of a thing. Meanwhile I despair at the irrepressible thickening of belly, shoulders, thighs and breasts, the change to the profile, the loss of the swan neck.

But why does the dreaded menopause have to be just that, dreaded? I can’t wait for the liberations existing on the other side, even though I seem to be lagging behind peers; having a child at 44 may have resulted in some infuriating delaying process. A mate tells me her mother had a regular menstrual cycle until she was 58 and I groan in horror. Please no.

Recent news that surgeons have found a way to delay the menopause is wonderful for any women who have medical reasons for needing it – but the rest of us? I’d like it done and dusted as soon as possible, thank you. Don’t fear the menopause, don’t dread it; it’s releasing, surely. Liberating us from the gaze of men, from the function of Woman as Sexual Object, releasing us to be who we really want to be, perhaps. Louder and more brazen, less careful.

So the wedding ring’s no longer worn – it’s too uncomfortable because of swelling fingers. The skin’s drier, and for the first time in adult life there are no spots. The past few years have seen a strange unsettledness; what is this agitation that’s taken over my body, calm, optimism? It’s hard to be myself. There’s a thieving restlessness, an unevenness, and I was never this. Then there’s the sleeplessness. Forgetfulness. Loss of confidence. The feeling I’m shifting to the side of myself and it’s a scattier, looser being coming to the fore; I need to regain firmness, somehow. Find ballast. Blaze again.

Then there’s the anger. Watch out, principals and teachers, for the volcanic rage of the older mother. I blame lots of us having kids later now, and whereas a primary school mum might’ve been in her 30s a generation back, now they’re in their 40s and 50s and fierce with it, vocal and angry. I’ve learnt through the early mothering years to let go; to not fire off that explosive email at 11pm, to temper the rising rage, but it’s taken a good while to refrain, to loosen. The character Marmee, in Greta Gerwig’s recent film of Little Women, tells her fiery Jo she’s been angry nearly every day of her life.

I catch a glimpse in the bathroom mirror now of an older self, the face fallen in an unguarded moment, unready, un-perked, vulnerable. It’s a shock. It’s ahead and it’s now. Yet I can’t wait for the vast freeing of menopause. To be liberated from that monthly drag of menstruation, my life held hostage to the great felling tiredness and the hormonal migraines, still, as the body undergoes its regular, deeply female rhythm. Forty years of it – and what a relief when it will finally be gone.

Naomi Wolf in The Beauty Myth says the Victorian woman became her ovaries and today’s woman has become her beauty. I think today’s older woman has become her voice. We’re no longer rendered invisible and silent as we age; and if we feel that, fight it. “Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age,” Gloria Steinem said. And more honest. I am no longer afraid.