Menopause Journal

**WildChild** · 01-01-2011 09:18 PM

I am peri menopausal.
There I said it!

Actually I've been on the edges of it for a couple years. I've had mixed feelings about this. My mother died long before she got to it, so I have no one to set any expectations for me. I had always envisioned this as the time when life really settled down, kids grown or nearly so, a stable relationship with enough financial security to be able to do more together and rediscover or reignite love and passion. Instead, within a couple years I will be truly alone, my kids grown and gone, with no one else in my life. Like many people my finances are currently in worse shape than they when I was 21.

In some ways things are rather scary right now and hormone changes don't seem very helpful. LOL. I let myself slip into some depression BUT, I've slapped myself around a bit and decided that I have to use the storm to water the garden, find the silver lining, see a rainbow and create something lush and wonderful. I know it will take some serious work and time. I've always been a hard worker, in the past few years I've let stress and trouble turn me into a procrastinator and that has to stop.

I am by no means the only woman dealing with this. The baby boomers are the largest wave ever of menopausal and pre-menopausal women that world has ever experienced and we WILL change the world.

I'm starting this thread as a peri menopause journal. I intend to educate myself (I have started) to read, attend semminars, talk to professionals and share what I can of what I learn and provide a wider discussion and support in this area than we have had previously. I invite all of you to join in and we can explore this together. If you are female you will live through it and if you live on the planet you are surrounded by women who are dealing with or have been through it.

**ItsASecret** · 01-01-2011 09:28 PM

The baby boomers are the largest wave ever of menopausal and pre-menopausal women that world has ever experienced and we WILL change the world.

How will these women change the world?

**CHANDLERS WISH** · 01-01-2011 09:44 PM

I think that it's excellent WC, that your intent is to help all women of all ages that have to go through Menapause, another gift to women, unfortunately but not one we can't jump over...

Thank you...

CW

**WildChild** · 01-01-2011 10:44 PM

Originally Posted by ItsASecret

How will these women change the world?

Well Sweetie, the changes that women go through in this process are profound. We have more resources at our fingertips than any group of women have probably ever had before. We are educated, in general we control a vast amount of money, we have time and skills at our disposal. We can communicate across the globe and while you are a student and your young mind is quick and sharp, we have a collective of lifetimes of experience and understanding that informs our concerns and choices. We have not just mature bodies but mature minds and emotions. We live longer and healthier than any previous generations, we are active and involved in life. We are no longer relegrated to knitting and pottering about in the garden.

**ItsASecret** · 01-02-2011 08:46 AM

Okay experience, but what changes are going to be made? Just a round table discussion, via Skype, of what it is like to have menopause? I do not understand what exactly could be done. In my group of young quick sharp minded individuals our progression through life with our growing educational knowledge will shape where people go, how people live, and what people do simply due to our creations in technology. One could say this said younger generation, though not as much life experience, could potentially have a greater influence in even a mere 10 years.

**Little.Chuck** · 01-02-2011 09:27 AM

Originally Posted by ItsASecret

In my group of young quick sharp minded individuals our progression through life with our growing educational knowledge will shape where people go, how people live, and what people do simply due to our creations in technology. One could say this said younger generation, though not as much life experience, could potentially have a greater influence in even a mere 10 years.

Hmm, I thought the same thing. Although surely there has to be a limit to how many creations in technology can be made? Won't people run out of ideas? Menopause isn't going anywhere.

**WildChild** · 01-02-2011 09:27 AM

You know, you are the same age as my daughter and bright as you all are, you just don't know what you don't know. This is not something you will understand until you are much older and look at young people.

The world you live in, for all it's mess and problems, offers you options that women barely dreamed of, or didn't even realize they could dream of, a generation or two ago. Many older women have had struggles and made sacrifices and broke ground in ways you will never have to. In many cases they didn't know that was what they were doing, they were just trying to learn something that fired their passion, earn a living, play a sport, or solve a problem. Because of those women, you are able to choose to study and work in a field that was once essentially a boys club.

These women of the older generation have already changed your world. Do you know women who excel in sports? When I was in school girls were limited to swimming, tennis, volleyball and some track events and those were 'intramural'. Basically recreational. Do you know any women who are studying to be architecs? In the early 70s as a girl who loved buildings, I had to get permission from the school board to take a drafting class, no girl had done it before. When I got my degree in drafting, I was the only woman in the class. How many women are in it today?

If your university has been around for a while go ask how many women were in your major 100 yrs ago? 60? 40? There is so much that you take for granted that women living today struggled to get, to do and to prove themselves in, that you can't imagine it.

There will come a time when you will recognize that your teachers and textbooks don't know it all. You will see first hand, things that you believe to be absolutes now, turn into old nonsense, disproved and discredited or there will be things you think nonsense that will be found to have some real wisdom. You will grow out of this stage, we all do. Well, there are some that don't, but I think you will.

Can you imagine that these women who have lived their lives in all sorts of ways that their mothers and grandmothers never dreamed up will simply curl up and stay in the closet because they have a few wrinkles and their hair is grey? They donate to charities, volunteer, many are still working and are shifting gears, starting businesses and organizations. Just by their exsistance and numbers their needs will drive the research that younger workers are directed into and determine where the money goes.

As you have pointed out before phara research goes where the money is, they are about numbers. Over half the population of the US is over 40 and women make up over half of that. The numbers are similar in much of the developed world. That alone will mean that these women's choices, wants and needs will have a huge impact.

**ItsASecret** · 01-02-2011 10:27 AM

You know, you are the same age as my daughter and bright as you all are, you just don't know what you don't know. This is not something you will understand until you are much older and look at young people.

I agree. I can read all the books I want on something but I simply will not really know about something if I do not experience it myself.

Although surely there has to be a limit to how many creations in technology can be made? Won't people run out of ideas?

Albert Einstein once said "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." Our advances are only limited by our imagination.

Because of those women, you are able to choose to study and work in a field that was once essentially a boys club.

I am aware of that, thank you women of the past, I would not want to be in another field and could not be if the women in the past did not argue for things.

There will come a time when you will recognize that your teachers and textbooks don't know it all. You will see first hand, things that you believe to be absolutes now, turn into old nonsense, disproved and discredited or there will be things you think nonsense that will be found to have some real wisdom. You will grow out of this stage, we all do. Well, there are some that don't, but I think you will.

Personally I live in the now, to me what is done is done the past is the past the only way to move is forward with the knowledge we gain today. Yes I am lazy and can sometimes take things for granted but that is because of the advances that are and will continue to happen. I would not want to live in the past knowing what is possible now and in the future.

Just by their exsistance and numbers their needs will drive the research that younger workers are directed into and determine where the money goes.

Yes, if there is an older woman who has amassed a fortune during her life and decides to donate to my company's laboratory projects then she could absolutely determine what could happen in the future. But research also guides other people in where they donate. One could say if you want a healthy life you need to donate to us because we are the ones that are going to giving you the syringe that keeps you alive. It happens all the time.

As you have pointed out before phara research goes where the money is, they are about numbers. Over half the population of the US is over 40 and women make up over half of that. The numbers are similar in much of the developed world. That alone will mean that these women's choices, wants and needs will have a huge impact.

Pharma research also determines what happens without the need for people's opinions. If there is more money in a pain killer like Aspirin in those millions of women rather than how to stop mood swings, even if women ask for this to be looked into, then that is where the money goes even if it could be of more benefit to have lesser amounts of women with mood swings. As a researcher I could be the one determining whether or not there is a difference in health care available in later years for these baby boomers, whether or not any new advances are made in a certain area to benefit others, if the money is not going to be there regardless of whether or not it is going to benefit the daily life of a single individual then it is not going to be followed. Money is unfortunately all that matters in today's world.

**WildChild** · 01-02-2011 11:11 AM

45 million women in the US, in or close to menopause. The numbers are there.

**ItsASecret** · 01-02-2011 11:32 AM

I would think it should be more than 45million, that is less than 15% of the population of the United States. That sort of number just doesn't seem like enough lol.