THIS LIFE Menopause is so often portrayed negatively but maybe we can reclaim it, see it as a gain

I’ve always wondered what the point of menopause was. Although, it’s probably more accurate to say I’ve wondered about it over the last couple of years as it’s become apparent that it has me in its sights. Prior to this delightful phase of female experience I now inhabit – known as perimenopause – I believed that, similar to old age and death, menopause was a vague, perhaps even mythical state, something that would happen to other people, never myself.

I had never even heard of perimenopause until a few years ago when I Googled, ‘Why now in my 40s do I suddenly feel so utterly crap?’ and discovered that my symptoms were not peculiar to me. Perimenopause is not a term I ever heard my mother reference either. I just presumed she was in a bad mood for ten years.

Now, the 3am anxiety attacks, unpredictable menstrual cycle, unattractive night sweats, and sudden and depressing wine intolerance all point towards its irrefutable arrival.

Menopause is a state that’s almost unique to humans. Why would evolution – or God, if you’re that way inclined – treat us so cruelly? There are some (men) who would posit the theory that it’s because of better health and medical care and that post-menopausal women are simply alive beyond their evolutionarily prescribed time. However this depressing theory is being debunked and it’s due in part to orcas.

Like humans – and unlike nearly every other species on the planet – orcas live long post-reproductive lives. That’s clearly nothing to do with advances in healthcare.

Like us, they can live into their 80s and beyond and, like us, stop breeding when they are about 40. There are different theories as to why this happens but interestingly, in orca family groups, it is the elder female that fulfils the important leadership roles. She is the guide, the repository of knowledge, able to pinpoint places to hunt salmon or other major sources of food.

She is the wise elder, able to summon the other whales from miles away simply by slapping her tail on the water.

I’m not sure, meanwhile, what the elder males are contributing. Still chasing younger females maybe?

I’ve been pondering this later in life contribution lately. Fast approaching 50, I am only now realising my dream of being a published author.

Perhaps this is no coincidence. As a young girl I yearned to be a writer. But this ambition got lost when I entered my teens, attention-seeking oestrogen entered my body, and boys, discos and alcohol entered my consciousness. Despite studying English literature in university, after I graduated, I took a temporary job in a bank and through sheer lack of ambition plodded along in that industry until the birth of my first child.

I viewed my job as simply a vehicle to earn enough money to do the things I really cared about, like going out, drinking and having new clothes. My 20s were a blur of inebriation, bad choices and remorse; my 30s of pregnancy and breastfeeding and sleep deprivation.

There are, of course, many writers who start early in life and by their 20s and 30s are producing stunning work. I have looked at these ingenues and I’ll admit at times wondered what life may have been if I’d held more ambition. But that just wasn’t for me.

Approaching 40, with my youngest off to school, the slumbering dream resurfaced. I wonder now if, in fact, the changing hormones in my body, this rewiring that takes place over the middle years, somehow reconnected me with the inner girl who pre-puberty and pre-oestrogen had dreams. A little girl with imagination and vision who was yet to be distracted by boys and sex. Perhaps once my literal procreative years had finished, only then could I turn my attention to other creative pursuits.

Menopause is so often portrayed negatively. Something to be hidden, to never be talked about, to be suffered in hot and shameful silence. But maybe we can reclaim it. See it not as a loss but a gain. An energetic time where our lack of focus on coupling or reproducing or not reproducing means we can give ourselves over to other pursuits.

Youth, for me anyway, was a time of intense self-absorption. Perhaps older age means we can become more outwardfacing. My own mother, once her four children were raised, became involved in charity work. Along with a small group of women, she helped to set up Navan’s Women’s Refuge. It took considerable drive and tenacity from those women to be able to do that and most of them would have been in middle age. I wonder now if that was a redirecting of the energy that had been focused elsewhere for three decades. Perhaps some of us can only reach our true potential once all that distracting oestrogen has left our bodies. Whether that be doing something creative. Or being involved in philanthropy. Or slapping our tales on the water to summon the pod.

Like the female orca, as women, we are infinitely more than our ability to reproduce. And, happily, we have so much more to give of ourselves in the second act of our lives.