Normalising the menopause still has a long way to go, but thankfully, we’re now living in times where struggling with the symptoms of the menopause can at least be spoken about without embarrassment
This is comforting, considering 50% of the population go through this completely normal life event!
Big name personalities have recently been opening up the conversation around the menopause and each one that does, makes us at home living a non-celebrity life feel that bit more normal when the mood swings, hot flushes and brain fog drag us down. In short, it’s comforting to know that when we are struggling, we’re not alone.
Now, we can take comfort from the fact that even members of the royal family struggle with the symptoms of the menopause
Sophie, Countess of Wessex has been talking about her experience of the menopause, and there aren’t many of us that don’t think, “I hear you, sister” when she described it as like “someone coming along and taking your brain”.
She’s the first royal to openly discuss the menopause and has said, “We should be celebrating the fact that we don’t have to have periods anymore. It should be a liberation.”
But as we all know; difficult menopausal symptoms don’t often feel like cause for celebration. Added to that is the fact that reaching the menopause is somehow seen as something negative and ‘old’.
The countess has discussed how difficult royal engagements were for her when she simply felt like “someone has just gone and taken your brain out”
“When you suddenly can’t remember what on earth it was you were talking about. Try being on an engagement when that happens. Your words just go. And you’re standing there going, ‘Hang on, I thought I was a reasonably intelligent person.’ What has just happened to me?”
“It’s like someone has just gone and taken your brain out for however long before they pop it back in again, and you try and pick up the pieces and carry on.”
She’s urged for more “openness, conversation and education” around the menopause. We couldn’t agree more!
“We all talk about having babies. Nobody talks about periods. Nobody talks about the menopause. Why not? It’s something that happens to us 12 times a year; it’s something that’s incredibly normal, but it’s something that is very hidden. And I think it’s time to say, ‘Enough!’”
The conversation was a video engagement as part of her new role as the Royal Patron of the Wellbeing of Women, a charity dedicated to saving and changing the lives of women, girls and babies.
