Hilary - Sheffield

Lives in Sheffield

Age 50

Executive Producer of theatre company, Mother

Playing poo sticks

Climbing a tree

I’m probably still peri menopausal, and it’s hard to know where you’re at once you start interventions, because that kind of masks it, so you don’t know where you are. I’m struggling a bit with the positives of the menopause right now, and I’d probably need some help unpicking what is specifically related to the menopause.

One of the positives is that you worry significantly less about being pregnant, and one of the positives – which I haven’t quite got to yet - is for me is that I was very negatively affected by my hormones in a monthly cycle. I got very bad PMS, which now retrospectively can be explained by the fact that I am neurodivergent, and that seems to be an experience that is recognised by a lot of women – they experience more dramatic mood swings, and it’s harder to manage – so even that just being managed by medication is a help. Menopause is a process and for some people it’s significantly longer than others, it feels like it’s the final stage, of properly settling into your own skin, and it started for me in my thirties.

Something inbetween a positive and a negative is realising you are peri menopausal and then suddenly having your eyes opened to others experience means that you can look back over the last 12 months and go ‘Oh God that’s what was going on!’then the negative of that is ‘why the hell didn’t I know?’. How is menopause education and information so appalling that intelligent, educated women who usually have access to this stuff are thinking they are losing their minds, their confidence and leaving their jobs, and having difficulties with their relationships and not understanding what’s going on? It has a lot of dramatic effects beyond hot flushes,if you don’t have friends ten years ahead of you who are going through it, then how do you know?

I had an older friend who had sought out a lot of information – so I benefitted massively from that. But then learning that neuro-divergent women can experience those things in a much more extreme, sometimes disabling way, also then put another piece of the puzzle together.

I feel like the positives of it are that at least we have choice as to how to address it, again that is a privilege as not all women have access to great health care, or can talk to GP’s in a way that they will pay attention and take them seriously. What happens if you’ve recently arrived? Or you’re in insecure housing and you’re not registered with a GP? You know there’s all of those issues as well aren’t there?The health service often dismisses women’s concerns, pains and experiences.