I became menopausal in my thirties when chemotherapy and hormone treatment for my first breast cancer made me infertile and menopausal. Here’s some things that I didn’t know then and I’m sharing here in case they’re useful for you:

  1. Though they were dire, forty hot flushes an hour weren’t the worst of it, infertility (just at the point we were trying to have children) was the worst of it AND I am now ok about that too – I now agree with the life I have, rather than yearn for the one I did not have.
  2. Alcohol doesn’t help. It didn’t help when I thought it was helping, it didn’t help with menopause or cancer (exacerbating the problems of both) and it didn’t help later either. I love that 7.5 years ago me finally worked this out.
  3. Diet does help. Eating well is great – especially great when it’s instead of denying myself as way too many women of my generation were encouraged to do in order to attain a daft, deeply heteronormative and sexist, absurd goal of thin=beautiful.
  4. Strength training is brilliant and I SO WISH someone, anyone had whispered this to me 25 years ago. I did as much research as I could when I was early menopausal way back then but it simply wasn’t much of a public discussion and the research on the value of strength training wasn’t readily accessible and the internet in 2000 wasn’t what it is now and the cancer medics didn’t offer any non-medical suggestions and … anyway, we know better now. Lift weights.
  5. Yoga is also glorious and definitely helped my recoveries and it’s an ongoing life practice for me. And it is NOT strength training. Do both. Weights and yoga. Sorted.
  6. Yoga is also lying down and breathing. Breathing is good.
  7. Swimming makes everything better, especially when it’s in the sea or ocean.
  8. Walking is also exercise is also getting outside is also good. I say this having had to walk with sticks last weekend as I approach my third joint replacement (2023 L hip, 2024 R knee, 2025 R hip) and still, being outside, even in pain, is something I find very helpful. Maybe you might too.
  9. Learning more is brilliant, training at 55 (not ‘retraining’ because I never trained to do any of my previous careers in the first place!) to be a therapist and doing a research doctorate was especially brilliant given I thought academia was for other people, people not like me.
  10. Therapy helps – any major life change can benefit from sharing with someone whose job it is to care. I already knew this one, having taken myself to therapy back in my 20s, when I was still cleaning houses for rich people & I just knew I needed support from someone else, however much it cost. At the time, the therapist charged the same for one hour as I charged for three hours of house cleaning. It was worth it.
  11. It makes a massive difference when your peers catch up. People you love and who love you begin to understand what menopause is like for them and have an idea of what it might have been like for you and it all becomes a whole lot less lonely. Less lonely is good. (Which is why the MANY support organisations and connections and offerings that now exist make a massive difference. See Menopause and Cancer for a start)
  12. Postmenopause and ageing are both tricky in a culture that thinks we’re only valuable if we’re fertile and that youth is best BUT/AND the giving of far fewer fucks (almost to the extent of giving no fucks at all) that accompanies postmenopause and ageing is EVERYTHING.