Every woman will experience menopause, but as journalist Jennifer Nadel points out, we don’t talk about it anywhere near enough.
In a recent interview with Gillian Anderson on Lenny, Jennifer asks: “Why didn’t someone say ‘This is going to hit you like a freight train and affect every aspect of your life?'”
Explaining that at 52, when she turned up to a lecture drenched in sweat, feverish, and with no reason as to why, Jennifer realised she must be experiencing the change.
X Files star Gillian added that she was told in her late 20s that she may be going through early menopause, only for it to arrive twenty years later.
“I remember throwing my coat down on the floor in front of at least two of my children, and saying out loud ‘This sucks!’ The day hadn’t even started, but there was something about my inability to handle anything that morning that alerted me to the fact that something was up.”
Gillian added that she felt her life was “falling apart” around menopause, with she and Jenny listing memory loss, hot flushes, rage and uncontrollable emotions among many symptoms of the process.
“I was used to being able to balance a lot of things, and all of a sudden I felt like I could handle nothing. I felt completely overwhelmed,” Gillian explains.
The 48-year-old Fall star added that part of the problem with menopause was the “shame” surrounding it. Around the idea of ageing and “losing your femaleness.”
As Gillian asked her friend: “How wonderful would it be if we could get to a place where we are able to have these conversations openly and without shame.
“Admit, freely, that this is what’s going on. So we don’t feel like we’re going mad or insane or alone in any of the symptoms we are having.”
