Our goal is to use a different language around menopause. To speak of menopause with sensitivity, kindness, care, wisdom, and respect. Changing How We Talk About Menopause
What we go through in menopause is unsettling enough. We do not need it to be labeled and looked upon as something unnatural and unhealthy. Change The Way We Talk About Menopause
The term for menopause used to be “climacteric”, which was a derogatory term describing a cranky old woman. Although this term has, thankfully, changed, menopause is still too often used to belittle us and to joke about our age and the changes we are going through.
We are also used to seeing menopause through the lens of medical categories and definitions, through the language of menopause symptoms, deficiencies, diagnoses, and treatments. We are told that something needs to be fixed or replaced, that we have lost important functions and that we are somehow not whole anymore.
Menopause symptoms
The unease and discomfort of menopause are referred to as “symptoms”, thus making this medical language about menopause one about decline, lack, and dysfunction. Our bodies are defined in terms of reproductive organs wilting, drying, or just not working anymore.
ChangingChange The Way We Talk About Menopause How We Talk About Menopause
Long lists of ailments we will “suffer” from in menopause are made, suggesting we need to cure the “unhealthy” condition we are in, as if it were not a normal phase in our lives where our bodies are going through a kind of puberty in reverse, if you like. You don’t call a teenager ‘ill’ because they have raging hormones, do you?! You know that it is a perfectly normal phase they have to go through.
No woman left behind
We wanted Womaneze to reach as many women we could, in all stages of menopause; to help them navigate this time in life by creating tools (like the app we are developing), coaching, and a community.
Our goal is to change the conversation around menopause to that of a phase in life and not an illness; to shift the language from one of symptoms and conditions to one of support and understanding.
Change The Way We Talk About Menopause
Like all changes, this chapter of life can be uncomfortable and even frightening at times, but if we educate ourselves and learn to deal with the inevitable changes, it will easier be for us and our loved ones to go through it.
Knowledge is power
It is very similar to the difference between the birth of a first and the second child. Often, when we go through the delivery of a first child, we don’t know what to expect and feel unprepared for the physical and emotional waves we experience. In contrast, we are so much better prepared for the second arrival as we know what lies ahead.
Learn about menopause
This is why all women in their 30s and 40s need to learn about the changes that await them so that they can prepare and be ready. Many women know very little about menopause until it hits. They don’t understand what is really happening to their bodies and can mislabel issues.
So ladies, let’s do this! Let us change the language and educate our younger friends, sisters, and daughters. Let’s speak Womaneze.
Change The Way We Talk About Menopause
