I tried hormonal IUDs and wasn't a great fit for them (hormones have always been really difficult for my body to handle) but I LOVED copper IUDs for many years. I've known so many women who raved about hormonal IUDs...lighter periods, reliable birth control--what's not to love!?

So happy your IUD works for you. I shout from the rooftops any time I'm able to about IUDs. Best birth control ever!

I'm glad to hear that your medication is so helpful for you! I am also (mostly) estranged from my mother and understand what it is like to navigate all of this without a mom. It's so strange, trying to piece together clues from what I know of her experience and then match them up to my own to see if we are the same, if I'm her daughter in the way I experience perimenopause while not really being her daughter in so many other ways.

I'm sorry menopause caused your mother to take such a turn. I bet she's really far from alone in that. It seems to have such profound emotional and mental health effects on some women. I'm lucky that age dulled my mother's edges, even if our past and the person she used to be makes it impossible for me to trust or be close with her now. At least she settled into something more peaceful with age--your mother sounds so miserable and emotionally dangerous.

Thanks again for sharing your experience. I'm so proud to take part in these conversations! We are not alone and what's happening to our bodies is not strange or bad. We deserve care when we are struggling and camaraderie as we adjust to new seasons of life. I'm so happy for all women who feel comfortable sharing, and for those who lurk and learn and feel less alone because of the women who share!

<3 <3 <3 <3

Anyone who wants to come is more than welcome to 🥰 It’s not terribly active at the moment. I would love for more people to come and participate in whatever conversations people find valuable.

I love this! Thank you for posting!

First, “Medical anthropologist”—what a fascinating field of study! I feel like we need more of these people!

Second, a heartbreaking read. Nowhere is institutional racism more evidently harmful than it is in the institution of medicine. It’s shocking and disappointing that with the mountains of evidence that this is happening, nothing is being done.

Follow-up thought, regarding your comment about faces: as a mother, I always wonder what the impact is on children of having a mother who is sometimes allowed to move about freely/uncovered, and other times is completely covered. To cover someone’s face even to their own children. That’s something.

Yes, all of this…you’ve put an interesting thought in my head, re: a blank slate for others to project on. I’m a “movie person” and love watching on a projector/screen. Obviously people project onto others all the time in a figurative sense, but it’s a pretty poignant remark to note that completely covered women could literally be projected onto. The level of erasure is pretty stunning, but the idea that you could not only erase but literally protect anything you wanted onto these women. Wow.

I need some really talented artist to create an art installation where different things are being projected onto covered women.

ALL.

I agree completely. Thriving instead of surviving is where we need to be focused across the board. Most people are hanging on by a thread in at least one area of their lives…medically, mentally, in terms of balance/workload, in their relationships, financially. For many women, Menopause becomes a foundational health crisis for this reason.

It wouldn’t be SO bad if you could….stop working, had the money to drastically change your diet and eat what you need to, could easily get the help of professionals dedicated to women’s health issues, weren’t struggling with the cultural phenomenon of “Women’s Guilt” and all the ways that effects how we asses and address our medical experiences, had the support you need to focus on your health without your home and family management machine (you, in many cases) breaking down…and on and on.

It’s a societal issue rooted just as much in culture/patriarchy/etc as it is in a lack of medical research. A more holistic approach to understanding this phase of life is going to be so critical…and, I fear, is very far away.

I think this is another one of those things where, if you chase the reasons “why not?” back to the root, the actual reason we can’t have more funded studies into women’s health issues (holistically or otherwise) is the same reason, increasingly, that we can’t have anything nice.

Shareholder capitalism has a stranglehold on our culture and systems (of governance, scientific discovery, etc). Until we move past this way of living, humanity will continue to struggle with things like funding important research, the masses not having the support and medical interventions they need, etc.

When we eventually move beyond a system that is built to satisfy shareholders, and start prioritizing the human experience and putting everything we’ve got behind improving it, we’ll be able to take a more holistic look at what could become a truly incredible phase of life for all women: beyond child bearing years, turned more to self, wiser, ready to create in a new way.

I don’t know that I will see this future, but I am happy to think about it existing at some point. Humanity is ready to move past our biological imperative “produce more people until you’re old, then die.” With the right methodology and incentives in place, our medical and technological advances could be put to the service of human kind to such delightful ends.

100% correct. Incentives matter. Advertising delights no one and skews incentives hard.

I am so excited by this news. Menopause is not talked about enough, and is not well enough understood. It’s so life shattering for many women (my own mother has been through so so much, it hurt to watch and be able to do nothing).

As a woman who is almost forty and has just this year been experiencing my first real health concerns in her life, the prospect of making decisions around hormone treatments has been quite frightening. The choice has felt like “oh, shrivel into a miserable husk of who you once were” OR “have fun with breast cancer!”—what kind of choice is this?

I’m pretty sure I’m going to delete my three year and ten year accounts and just walk away for good. Honestly I was a little sad all day today, because I have a few hobbies I’m really crazy about and the cooking, baking, gemstone, and gardening communities have felt like home for a long time…but just using lemmy for a tiny little bit, I’m actually really excited! I’m having a much simpler experience here that’s refreshing. I like the content I’m reading.