IN THEIR OWN WORDS

MELISSA WALL, POWERLIFTER

“There were horrific night sweats where I was literally soaked. I would wake up drenched with a little river running down my chest. I actually wrecked our mattress because there was this sweat patch where my body was.

In the middle of all this, at about forty-seven, I started powerlifting. My husband was a serving officer in the army and he was away a lot. The kids had grown up and left home. I was working full-time and I was into exercise. It was like a perfect storm. I had that “me-time”, which my mum and my granny, that generation didn’t have, and it was something I’d always thought I would do – take that time, use it.”

JULIE GRAHAM, ACTRESS AND CREATOR OF THE COMEDY DRAMA DUN’ BREEDIN

“I thought it was posttraumatic stress. The weird thing was, at that point, I was doing a job I really loved and I was with people I really loved and I’d met a new partner. So, ostensibly on the outside, everything seemed to be going great and I should have been over the moon and happy about things and moving on and all that sort of stuff. But I would just wake up with this feeling of dread. I never properly got the hot flushes. Well, I did to a certain extent in that I was much hotter than I usually am. But I would just get this uncontrollable rage. Oh my God, it would be disproportionate to the thing that had made me angry. The first time I had it I’d dropped something on my foot and it hurt and instead of going, “Ah that fucking hurt,” I just went into this rage. It tipped me over.”

VAL MCDERMID, AUTHOR

“The menopause almost passed without me noticing. There was this sudden realisation that I hadn’t had a period for three months and I remember thinking, Oh is that it?

I don’t remember having anything particularly disruptive except I did have some strange head sweats. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I would break into a sweat – just my head. My hair would be dripping wet and it would last a few minutes and then stop... That was the only real physical symptom that I felt that I had.

I’ve always been very sanguine about the idea of ageing. I think it’s the one war you can’t win. It happens. So I didn’t feel a sense of mourning my young self. Also I didn’t have the biological clock thing that so many women speak of. I didn’t have that biological imperative at all, so I didn’t feel that I’d lost anything.”

LORRAINE KELLY, TELEVISION PRESENTER

“It was on a holiday in Cordoba, Spain, that it hit me that there was something wrong. I just felt flat. I think probably I’d ignored some signs – and maybe I was feeling a little bit more tired. But, you know, you’re permanently tired if you work on breakfast telly. You get used to it. It becomes your natural state really. But this was almost like I went over a cliff. I think it had been building up – and I felt like I lost myself.

It is awful when you lose yourself, you lose that sense of who you are. It’s really scary and I can understand why a lot of women and a lot of GPs misdiagnose, saying that it’s depression or anxiety. Yes, it is actually. But it’s because you’re going through this change – it’s depression caused by the menopause and what you need to do is treat the menopause and not the depression.”

BARONESS WARSI, POLITICIAN

“Probably the most difficult thing for me is what I call head fog, the inability to think quickly and clearly. That ability was something I’d always taken for granted and I saw it as the basis for much of my success. I felt as an advocate, long before politics, that was who I am.

And because I felt I was losing that ability to articulate quickly and clearly and coherently and use language well, to use wit, all of that, I felt I was starting to lose a part of me that was integral to part of my personality. I remember my daughter turning around to me one day and saying, “We need to find the Baroness Warsi again.”

What she was effectively saying was that we needed to find that publicly strong, independent, kickass, out-there woman again.

I did find that Baroness Warsi again. The fog did clear.”

ANGIE GREAVES, RADIO PRESENTER

“I call the menopause Puberty Part Two. It’s very, very simple: Puberty Part One, you start your periods, Puberty Part Two, you stop. I came up with that phrase because I felt that menopause sounded like something so sad, dark and final.”