Everything but a Pause

Thinking about it against the backdrop of the vertigo of city life, of the worship of youth, of painkiller ads that tell you that when you think you can't go on, you can, is a challenge. The five-minute pause to have a cup of tea comes from prehistoric times; it was one of the first warnings of the acceleration that was on its way.

The information is out there, presented from different angles. Menopause has come out of the closet, and there are those who fight it and those who accept it.

While the avalanches of raw data kept coming at me, I couldn't quite grasp what the algorithm was trying to tell me: it was imminent, I was 50, I was the target. But never, never had I considered that the moment would actually arrive. Then, from one day to the next, my period stopped and imposed a pause on me, but I wanted anything but a pause.

Menopause runs against the culture; in the past it was the announcement of the end, the moment to retire and slip quietly offstage. With time still ahead of us, today it's a new way of stepping into the spotlight. The biological clock doesn't stop, it has plenty of winding left, but our subjective experience of time takes a blow that's better not to face alone. Between taboo and excessive exposure, we need to find spaces where we can make intelligent use of the information, spaces that let us have a say in the process and, now yes, take a pause, make ourselves a cup of tea, and contribute to the shift in paradigm that going through menopause today entails.