Age 48
Textile Production Manager
Boxing at her local club
Reading at home
The menopause started about three years ago. I was already exercising quite a bit and started feeling really tired.Taking multi-vitamins started to help, but that was quickly followed by the night sweats, which were just horrendous. I knew this wasn’t sustainable. I work full time in a good job and I was getting really narky. My family noticed and my boss asked ‘Are you alright Rachel?’. I was immediately offered anti-depressants. I was not happy about the idea of having these and I thought I’d try tweaking it with some herbal remedies. I didn’t get very far so I rang my doctor again and they offered me anti-depressants again. I rang up at the end of the course and said “These aren’t doing any good, give me some HRT”.
The HRTpatches worked really well for me up until about 9 months ago. The brain fog’s coming back a bit and I’ve been getting sweats again, so I don’t know if I need to up my dose. The hot sweats freak me out, but the brain fog is especially problematic for me. Other times I’m back to normal, so it’s really strange.
It shows in my work as well. There are projects I’ve worked on quite extensively for months and then I can’t remember where it’s dispatching to, and I’m like, “Am I going doolally?” No, it’s the happy menopause. I still don’t think the oldest end of my family understands. Growing up I was very aware that my mum would be like “Hide anything periody from your dad”. It’s not how I’d like to see the future. It’s not how it’s always been. Society sort of forces people into odd concepts of what work is, and what your commitment to that should be. It takes the humanity out of it. I think what women go through with menopause is sort of bundled up in that quite closely
I get so much support from the boxing club.Alot of the women there are about the same age as me or a bit older. We’re quite open about the menopause, we’re like a little family really. It’s always been my release, my happy place. We’re all different shapes, sizes and levels. We all train together and generally it ends up in fits of laughter. I wanted one of my pictures to be at the boxing club because it brings me a lot of clarity, it helps me clear that brain fog. Everybody there’s got their own experiences of life and we share loads of stuff.There’s loads of lasses coming through that hear us talking about it.There’s blokes there as well and they’re getting something out of talking about it.
We are all the same species aren’t we? Quite a lot of men still think that what goes on for women is some sort of mystery and secret. It shouldn’t be like that. We’re all human beings and we’re living in a world that’s not natural really. It’s not working for so many people, that’s my take on it.