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Me.NoPause.1

Unprepared

By Lau CostantiniPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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Nothing prepares you at 41 years old to jump from being woken up at night to feed your last-born baby to being woken up by a night sweat a few days later and nothing really prepares you to being diagnosed with perimenopause a few months later when you realise those symptoms are here to stay and needs to be addressed.

Let’s be clear here that I count myself lucky. That diagnosis wasn’t life threatening and the GP I consulted was switched on and nailed it. I walked out of the surgery understanding what was happening to me, comforted that it was only the mischiefs of genetics and not something I did. I was holding in my hand the prescription for a non-invasive plant-based treatment, in line with my usual practice (I don ‘t like to take regular medications if I can find a more natural way) and that treatment worked wonders for quite a few years.

So very very lucky indeed, because most of the stories I have heard since then, 11 years later, as a friend, as a Fitness Instructor, as a member of social media support groups are so many stories of women being unheard, dismissed, misdiagnosed, abandoned, harassed and left in pain, confused, broken , broke and extremely lonely and not getting the support they need from the people supposed to produce it, whether doctors or husbands, or families and friends.

All of this because in 2021, we lack the most basic education on the subject. Menopause is a taboo. Come to think of it, periods are still a taboo, so there is some kind of very mad logic into this but really… Some women would give you a full medical detail of delivering their babies, seconded by a husband pinching in with sizes (of dilatation… not the other one) and pictures from the wrong side (yes darling, really when I’m having dinner it’s the wrong side) but would blush at the idea to ask another woman for a tampon or admit that she has a hot flush?

Yes, our society celebrates at length the result of our fertility and has absolutely no trouble showing us under every angle how to potentially make a baby (that’s where the other type of size gets in in case you haven’t been following). All other aspects are not to be shown, (fine by me), but not even discussed between women as regarded as inappropriate? Not even taught to GP supposed to take care for a western world country population where the biggest demographic group is middle aged people? Women being half, maybe a bit more of said group? Middle-aged women being the ones directly concerned by menopause? Yes, thank you, I made that face too.

Women’s talk, yes? When it touches half the bigger population group of a country day in day out, I’m sorry to say it’s more of a national talk. The matter of Menopause is Education and Transmission. Of an entire country. It’s not something women make up to get an easy way out of work, of social commitment, of having sex with her partner, of everyday life. It is not something women do. It is something that happens to them. Naturally. To all of them. Since the dawn of humanity. And it is time we stop acting like we were perpetrators of some shameful deed here and educate ourselves. It is time that we stop thinking there is never a right time for this talk with our sisters, daughters, come to think of it, our sons and our husbands too and the rest of the world, since we got started. Because as always, if we want something done, ladies, we will have to do it ourselves.

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About the Creator

Lau Costantini

Born Shamanista,Forever Islander, Daydreamer by trade, Constant learner, Bohemian by choice, Dancer to the core,

Storyteller by fate.

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