Independence Day 2006
By Dr. Patricia Yarberry Allen, MD
I have just returned from a July 4th holiday visiting the place where I grew up. I spent wonderful hours with my 87 year old mother, brothers and sisters and mother’s cousins and sisters now all in their 80’s and 90’s.
I took my grown sons to visit my birth place, the location of my one room school house and the small white church on top of Pleasant Hill in the middle of an ancient graveyard.
I live and work in New York City, still a world away from this place, even in the 21st century. Family in Kentucky still expect that I will recover from the madness that allowed me to leave home and move to such a strange place. They are certain that I will come home again.
While I may not go home again, memories of another time in this place are always with me. In a real way I have been around menopausal women all my life. Community and family life in the mid 20th century in the rural south was always multi-generational. Great-aunts, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins and the other extended families of friends and neighbors filled our lives with stories, sometimes told and sometimes only witnessed.
Women of a certain age with flushed faces and occasional steamy complexions were always fanning themselves, winter, spring, summer and fall. “Sure is hot in here”, is a phrase I heard so often it became part of the background noise in my head. No one ever mentioned that it was odd that there was frost on the ground when the fans were moving back and forth through every church service I can recall. Thin cardboard fans adorned with a religious picture on the front and sponsored by one of the two local funeral homes with a discrete advertisement on the other side were placed for easy access in the backs of the pews next to the hymn books.
Every Sunday after church, my family joined my mother’s extended family for a noonday dinner on the farm where my mother had grown up. My grandmother had given birth to 12 children in this farmhouse. I made a great effort to sit at the long table for grown ups at these dinners since the hum of secrets was in the air just there. I knew that I needed to know what these women knew. Whispers of The Change fluttered around general conversation.
I had been given no information about any female bodily function, had seen no one undressed except infants and children, and had no idea that my first menstrual period was yet to visit me every month. I knew though that these secret conversations held by female relatives were my only source of knowledge about becoming a woman. Books on women’s health were not available.
I first addressed the issue of menopause when I was 12 years old My mother chose to correct some aspect of my adolescent behavior in the presence of my aunts and older female cousins. I responded to her admonitions by declaring to the group that they should excuse Mama’s behavior because she was going through the change. I had picked up just enough from my sleuthing to understand that the common wisdom of that time held that women were expected to be volatile and somewhat irrational during The Change. My emotionally powerful words were acknowledged by a quick slap from my mother and banishment from that afternoon’s group. One year later at 41 my mother gave birth to my youngest sister and never had another period. I knew almost nothing about menopause when I made that remark, but I knew that menopause was a taboo subject. The only acceptable response was good bye and good riddance. There was no model for new possibilities, no template for reinvention, no guidance or information for using menopause as an opportunity to take advantage of the future.
My travels this weekend filled me with wonder as I juxtaposed my memories of those women at that time and the women I know now who are certain that there is no pause in Menopause! In New York City I work with extraordinary women who have created Women’s Voices for Change to alter the perception of menopause, to correct menopausal myths and in so doing provide a much more balanced view of this important transition. We call this time The New Menopause. These 21st century women are changing the way menopause has been described by treating this life stage as one of social activism. We recognize that almost nothing ever changes for women unless women mentor other women, share information and settle for nothing less than the belief that all women over 40 can be inspired to live this half of their lives without shame, fear and denial. We believe that menopause is not to be whispered about but is to be acknowledged as an opportunity for transformation.
This blog has been created as a way to educate women, their families, communities and employers about the realities of The New Menopause. We believe that this information will expose women to options as they enter this mid-life transition.
I have just returned from a July 4th holiday visiting the place where I grew up. I spent wonderful hours with my 87 year old mother, brothers and sisters and mother’s cousins and sisters now all in their 80’s and 90’s.
I took my grown sons to visit my birth place, the location of my one room school house and the small white church on top of Pleasant Hill in the middle of an ancient graveyard.
I live and work in New York City, still a world away from this place, even in the 21st century. Family in Kentucky still expect that I will recover from the madness that allowed me to leave home and move to such a strange place. They are certain that I will come home again.
While I may not go home again, memories of another time in this place are always with me. In a real way I have been around menopausal women all my life. Community and family life in the mid 20th century in the rural south was always multi-generational. Great-aunts, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins and the other extended families of friends and neighbors filled our lives with stories, sometimes told and sometimes only witnessed.
Women of a certain age with flushed faces and occasional steamy complexions were always fanning themselves, winter, spring, summer and fall. “Sure is hot in here”, is a phrase I heard so often it became part of the background noise in my head. No one ever mentioned that it was odd that there was frost on the ground when the fans were moving back and forth through every church service I can recall. Thin cardboard fans adorned with a religious picture on the front and sponsored by one of the two local funeral homes with a discrete advertisement on the other side were placed for easy access in the backs of the pews next to the hymn books.
Every Sunday after church, my family joined my mother’s extended family for a noonday dinner on the farm where my mother had grown up. My grandmother had given birth to 12 children in this farmhouse. I made a great effort to sit at the long table for grown ups at these dinners since the hum of secrets was in the air just there. I knew that I needed to know what these women knew. Whispers of The Change fluttered around general conversation.
I had been given no information about any female bodily function, had seen no one undressed except infants and children, and had no idea that my first menstrual period was yet to visit me every month. I knew though that these secret conversations held by female relatives were my only source of knowledge about becoming a woman. Books on women’s health were not available.
I first addressed the issue of menopause when I was 12 years old My mother chose to correct some aspect of my adolescent behavior in the presence of my aunts and older female cousins. I responded to her admonitions by declaring to the group that they should excuse Mama’s behavior because she was going through the change. I had picked up just enough from my sleuthing to understand that the common wisdom of that time held that women were expected to be volatile and somewhat irrational during The Change. My emotionally powerful words were acknowledged by a quick slap from my mother and banishment from that afternoon’s group. One year later at 41 my mother gave birth to my youngest sister and never had another period. I knew almost nothing about menopause when I made that remark, but I knew that menopause was a taboo subject. The only acceptable response was good bye and good riddance. There was no model for new possibilities, no template for reinvention, no guidance or information for using menopause as an opportunity to take advantage of the future.
My travels this weekend filled me with wonder as I juxtaposed my memories of those women at that time and the women I know now who are certain that there is no pause in Menopause! In New York City I work with extraordinary women who have created Women’s Voices for Change to alter the perception of menopause, to correct menopausal myths and in so doing provide a much more balanced view of this important transition. We call this time The New Menopause. These 21st century women are changing the way menopause has been described by treating this life stage as one of social activism. We recognize that almost nothing ever changes for women unless women mentor other women, share information and settle for nothing less than the belief that all women over 40 can be inspired to live this half of their lives without shame, fear and denial. We believe that menopause is not to be whispered about but is to be acknowledged as an opportunity for transformation.
This blog has been created as a way to educate women, their families, communities and employers about the realities of The New Menopause. We believe that this information will expose women to options as they enter this mid-life transition.
posted by douglas mcintyre at 2:54 AM
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