Don’t try this alone.

By Dr. Kate Beyrer, Chief Medical Officer, AfterShock

There is a magic conversation that happens among women all the time. Magical because it sprouts up organically, without preparation or planning. A communion of kindred spirits and shared experiences. Women tend to reach out to one another in times of distress, or confusion. They are natural caregivers and uplifters. Not only for their own children but for their entire tribe.

Women in menopause need that magic conversation more than ever before, because there is no way to get through it alone. The menopausal woman needs a dialogue. She needs a guru, a teacher, a mentor, a friend – someone who can see, hear and understand her. She needs to share what is happening to her. Because she has questions. And she has a new feeling – a dawning awareness.  

In menopause, so many things that had for years been effortless and instinctual are not anymore. Her steroidal depletion (less estrogen and unopposed testosterone) means that she’s experiencing a host of unplanned for biological symptoms. Her body, mind and mood are all changing, yet, underneath there is something else, something evolutionary, nudging her awake.

She sees with clear eyes all that she is and all she has accomplished, and frankly, she is reluctant to engage in the ways she had in the past. She is free. It is exhilarating. And she wants to talk about it.

I often compare women to Spiderman. Peter Parker, a student at Columbia, gets bit by a spider and overnight he can spin webs, climb walls and jump buildings. After a woman has a baby, an explosion of steroids takes over her body. She makes milk, she’s hyper vigilant, she can stay up all night, and she develops a Spidey sense about caring for this baby. She may have never seen a baby before, yet she instinctively knows what her child needs. But even though this mother is, overnight, a superhero, we know that she will fare much better, as will her children, when she is supported. When she taps into the power of the tribe. That adage of it taking a village to raise a child is based on centuries-old wisdom from every corner of the world.

Now in menopause this woman goes through a similarly wild change. It is extraordinarily potent. It is going to permanently change her (again). And more than anything else she needs to be heard. It’s an instinctive, evolutionary need. When something drastic happens to us, we need community. To be seen, heard, listened to, supported and loved.

Dialogue matters. Information is everything. Sharing is essential. The one thing I tell women facing menopause is this: don’t try to do it alone.