In The Pines: Mid-life ladies at the library

Suppose you’re in your late 30s. Or well into your 40s. Or, heaven help you, mid-50s. Let us also suppose you have a uterus and ovaries, and you’re still menstruating.

Even if you don’t have that apparatus, or you’re freaked out by the word “menstruating,” keep reading. What follows may help you navigate a world that’s composed of over 50 percent women.*

There’s this wild, destabilizing thing that happens around mid-life. Our hormones go absolutely wild. It’s called perimenopause.

What does it bring many of us? A mind-boggling array of changes, most of which—to put it in medical terms—suck the big wazoo.

Rage. Physical aches. Joint pain. Loss of bone density, sex drive, apparent sanity, and willingness to tolerate BS. Rearrangement of our body’s shape and therefore our wardrobes.

Struggling with “brain fog,” organization, finding our keys, and coming up with everyday, uhh, what do you call them? Wait. Right. Everyday words.

Periods that become irregular and/or turn into uncontrollable floods; donate those white jeans to Habitat.

Mood swings. Disrupted sleep. Insomnia. Night sweats. Watch out, easily embarrassed people, here come “vaginal thinning” and “vaginal atrophy.” (Thanks, medical world, for the mellifluous terminology.)

We may be fertile and terrified of getting pregnant. We may yearn for a baby but not be in a position to raise one. We may investigate the research on pregnancy at age 47 and decide the risks are too high.

For GenX and some Millennials, these changes come at a particularly inconvenient time. We’re the Sandwich Generation, raising kids while caregiving and otherwise helping our aging parents. Maybe working, volunteering, and pursuing other life dreams such as writing a novel, traveling the world, or launching our hand-stitched clothing line.****

In fourth grade, the school nurse may have given us an introduction to periods and adolescence. Alas, a similar talk did not precede perimenopause.

Loads of women rarely speak of The Change — as my grandmother occasionally referenced it, to the howling laughter of my aunts and mom — much less describe it in detail.

Some believe that speaking about mid-life changes increases discrimination against women in the workplace. I reckon that’s true in some cases.

I also reckon people have the smarts and decency to find solutions and workarounds. In the UK, New Zealand, and Australia, a strong movement is underway to normalize peri- and menopause at work and in society at large.

The perimenopause and menopause process is sufficiently rocky and life-changing that it’s often compared to adolescence. Society acknowledges the vagaries of puberty and the teen years.

We understand that kids will change a whole bunch as they adapt to their new bodies and their families adjust to new hormone-driven behaviors. We know it’ll hit each teen differently at different times: they may act moody, risk-taking, self-conscious, withdrawn, goofy, disorganized, lacking in common sense, obsessed with fitting in, rebellious, whatever.

We generally give ‘em a little slack and sympathy. Perhaps we remember our own painful moments and irrational jackassery from back in the day.

Our mid-life friends, wives, co-workers, maybe ourselves: do we cut ‘em some slack, too? Do we even know what’s going on with them, with us?

Perimenopause is often lumped in with the term “menopause.” In a definition that could have been invented only by a man, technically menopause denotes the moment at which a woman has not had her menstrual period for one year.**

After that, the woman is deemed “post-menopausal.” Since all this authoritative science-speak is about as user-friendly as the latest update of iOS, the whole shebang is referred to colloquially as menopause.

Some women sail right through it with few symptoms. They go off the pill or wake up one day and ta-da! No more periods.

If your 40-something partner gives a howl of frustration and envy upon reading the preceding paragraph and/or bursts into tears,*** give ’em a hug.

Unless they’re in one of those perimenopausal phases where they absolutely don’t want to be touched by anybody, thank you very much, in which case try a wan smile and “I’m gonna go rake those pine needles. If you need me, I’ll be here for you.”

Alarmed? Feeling a bit ignorant? You’re not alone. Consider heading to the Sisters Library for a talk called Menopause 101 with Dr. Erin LeGrand and Dr. Sarah Hellmann, Wednesday, November 20, from 6 to 7 p.m. See you there.

*Gender terminology is in flux. As used here, the umbrella terms “woman” and semi-ironic “ladies” refer to those with female reproductive organs and the hormones that come with them, rendering them susceptible to the difficulties of perimenopause regardless of gender identity.

****Ha ha! Just kidding. Approximately 97.3 percent of us will not pull all this off simultaneously, or maybe ever, because we’re exhausted and overwhelmed and still can’t find our keys, or even put our asterisk-laden footnotes in the right order.

**Dude named Dr. Charles Negrier coined the term menopause in 1821.

***Not that I’d know anything about this. Nosirree Bob.