Menopause and Our Holistic Wellbeing: The Conversation We Need to Have More Often

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Five women chat around a wooden kitchen table with mugs, cake, and fruit in a bright cozy home.

How much did you really know about menopause before it began to affect you, or someone close to you?

For something that will touch the lives of so many women, menopause can still be a surprisingly quiet conversation.

We may know about hot flushes. We may joke about forgetting things, or feeling too warm, when everyone else is cold but how often do we talk about the wider experience of menopause and the ways it can affect how we feel emotionally, psychologically, physically and within our relationships?

As a Black woman and psychotherapist, I am particularly interested in the conversations we are not always having.

Speaking from personal experience, within Black communities, experiences will of course differ between women, families, cultures and generations but for some of us, menopause simply was not something we grew up hearing women openly talk about. We may have seen our mother, aunties and grandmothers, going through changes, without necessarily knowing what they were experiencing and when the question was asked, "why is your face so wet?", I remember being hushed very quickly, or told... "Dat anuh fi yuh bizniz." (in other words... mind your business).

Perhaps they did not have the language for it either.

And when something has rarely been spoken about from generation to generation, how do we recognise it when it begins to happen to us?

So Much More Than Physical Menopausal Symptoms

Menopause is a natural stage of life, but natural does not necessarily mean easy.

The physical symptoms can be significant, but our holistic wellbeing encompasses much more than what is happening physically.

Changes in sleep can affect our energy and patience. Changes in concentration or memory can affect confidence at work. Shifts in mood may influence relationships. Physical changes can affect how we feel about our bodies, intimacy and sexuality.

And sometimes there can be a more difficult feeling to describe:

I Just Do Not Feel Like Myself

Let us just pause there for a moment, because that can be unsettling, particularly when you cannot immediately understand why.

You may have spent years knowing how you function, how you respond emotionally and what helps you feel grounded, then suddenly, something feels different.

For some women, there may be relief in finally understanding that some of what they have been experiencing could be connected to perimenopause or menopause. For others, understanding what is happening may be only the beginning of adjusting to it.

What Else Might Be Happening At This Stage of Life?

Woman with mug sits thoughtfully at a kitchen table while family cooks and works in a bright home kitchen.

Menopause does not happen in isolation.

For many women, it arrives during a period when life itself may already be asking a great deal of them. There may be teenagers or adult children who still need support, ageing parents, caring responsibilities, changes within relationships, developed conditions and ailments, pressures at work or questions about our own ageing and what we want from the next milestone of our lives.

Some women may be navigating several of these things at once. So when we talk about emotional wellbeing during menopause, perhaps we also need to ask what else a woman is carrying. Is she exhausted because of menopause, because life is demanding, or because the two have become almost impossible to separate?

When You Are Used to Being the Strong One

This is another conversation I think is important, as what happens when you are accustomed to being the person who copes? The person people depend upon - the one who gets things done, keeps the family moving, works, cares, supports and somehow carries on.

There can be a particular difficulty in acknowledging that you are struggling, when being capable has become part of how you understand yourself and perhaps how others understand you too. Menopause can challenge that. Not because it makes us less capable, but because it may ask us to pay attention to needs we have become very skilled at placing behind everybody else's.

Perhaps tiredness needs something more than pushing through.
Perhaps irritability is telling us we are overwhelmed.
Perhaps changes in confidence deserve curiosity rather than criticism.
And perhaps asking for support does not have to mean that we are no longer strong.

That support might begin with a conversation with someone we trust or speaking with our GP about the changes we are experiencing.

Our Relationships Can Feel It Too

Menopause is experienced within relationships as well as within individuals. Partners, children, friends and colleagues may notice changes, without understanding them. A woman herself may not always understand why she feels less patient, more emotional, less interested in intimacy, or more in need of space.

And then there is sex, another part of menopause that we may not always talk about openly.

For some women, changes in desire, physical comfort, or how we feel about our changing bodies, can affect intimacy. For others, the experience can be quite different. Desire may increase, sexual confidence may grow, or this stage of life may bring a greater sense of freedom, around sex and sexuality.

Perhaps that is part of the conversation too. Not assuming that menopause means wanting sex less but recognising that our sexual selves, can change in different directions, just as other parts of us can.

Without conversation, those changes can easily be misunderstood.

This is why I think menopause needs to become something we can speak about more comfortably, not only with health professionals but with the people around us. Imagine how different the experience might feel, if women did not have to quietly work everything out for themselves.

Creating Different Conversations

Awareness months can sometimes become a flurry of information that disappears once the month is over. Therefore, I would like the conversation about menopause, to go further than that.

Six Black women chat in a cozy living room, seated around a round coffee table with mugs, warm and engaged.

I would like younger women to hear these conversations before they need them.

I would like us to be able to ask our mothers, aunties, sisters and friends,

about their experiences.

Four women chat on a cozy living room couch, holding mugs and a glass, with warm sunlight, books, and a cookie tray nearby

And within Black communities, I would particularly like us to create more spaces where women can talk openly and honestly, about menopause without embarrassment, dismissal, or the expectation, that they simply get on with it.

Not because every woman will experience menopause in the same way but precisely because we will not.

And It Is Not All One Way

As a seasoned menopausal woman myself, I also think we need to be careful that talking more openly about menopause, does not mean that we only talk about what can go wrong, because there can be another side to this stage of life too.

Four women laugh over a picnic of fruit and drinks by a lake in a sunny park.

Smiling woman sits on a yoga mat by a lake, sipping a pink smoothie; towel, water bottle, and rolled mat nearby in sunny park.

For every woman who feels less confident in her changing body, there may be another who has never felt more comfortable in hers. One woman may want less sex, while another is wondering where this new appetite came from.

Four scenes of Black women friends laughing, sharing tea, food, and drinks in a garden, park, and by the beach.

Some may feel unsettled by ageing, while others find themselves caring far less about what other people think.

There can be loss, but there can also be freedom. There can be uncertainty but also greater clarity.

Relationships may be challenged, while others become more honest. We may find ourselves questioning who we are, while at the same time becoming clearer about who we no longer need to be.

Perhaps menopause is not one story at all and maybe that is another reason we need to talk about it more.

A Final Thought

Perhaps menopause awareness is not only about recognising symptoms, it is also about recognising the woman experiencing them... Her body; her emotional wellbeing; her relationships; her responsibilities; her identity; her culture; her stage of life and all the other things she may be carrying alongside menopause.

If we really want to talk about women's wellbeing holistically, menopause cannot remain a conversation we have, quietly, or only once we are already struggling.

So perhaps this October, specifically the 18th October, for Menopause Awareness Day, there are conversations worth beginning and continuing long after October has passed.

What did the women before you teach you about menopause and what do you wish someone had told you?

At Athena Mentors CIC, we offer holistic counselling and psychotherapy services, for women, children and young people.

📩 To find out more visit athenamentors.co.uk