Menopause

I’m quite a positive person and I like to learn new things, do new things so for me it gave me more freedom because the menopause finished sort of early fifties and I’d made my mind up to retire at 55 anyway if the business would allow it, which we did. We sold the business and moved on, so it’s all very positive for me, it just allowed me to move on to the next thing and take up new hobbies.

And what are you looking forward to most as you get older?

Travelling more. Now I haven’t got my dogs, we’ve decided we’re going to spend more time actually travelling to places we’ve never been. I’d like to see Eastern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, further away because we could never do that when I’d got family and other things here. Just learning new things.

I think I’m in a very between time. In a few years time I’ll be marrying off kids and I’ll become like the mother of the bride and then the grandmother. At a certain stage I was having babies, everybody was coming to congratulate me on having babies. I’m doing none of that now, I’m just living with the teenagers, my goodness. I think it’s a very middle time, yes.

I think it’s, I don’t know I think you have to be happy at every stage you come to and I’ve learnt that in life. At a certain stage I had lots and lots of very small children and I thought I could go mad or I could really enjoy now and go down to their level and just be a mum right now. And now I feel that I’m able to take on stuff that is not only to do with the children and that’s making me, I suppose that’s making me feel quite, yeah, quite grown up.

And I’ve also joined the Hevra Kadisha which is the group that looks after bodies after people die, because I thought now I’m a grown up and I can deal with this. And so I’ve only gone once, I’ve only been called once but I could, I mean I’m not somebody who’s frightened of sickness or whatever. So I went and did that. And I think that’s something. And I discovered that it’s the only time I’ve ever sat in a room with a group of women for years and been the youngest one present.

And here I am now and I sort of decided to give up my regular job and do something that I really wanted to do which is catering on a self-employed basis.

Oh, and have you been doing that?

I’m working with my son and we’re going to start a business up. We’re going to specialise in vegan and vegetarian food. Not that I am vegan or vegetarian. But I can cook it.

That’s great so that’s an interesting thing to happen to change your direction.

Well, yeah I’ve changed my, I’ve thought, do something that I really want to do. I’ve thought about it for a long long time and so I’ve actually given up my job and I’m going to go for it.

I’m the sort of person, I just take things as they come. It’s just another stage of life. I suppose it’s a transition towards it. You can look at it like that I guess. No, I’m not bothered by old age. I hope that I’ve got these plans that I want to do this, this and that. I hope I get to do it, probably won’t, but I have this image of me sitting painting in a beautiful garden or something like that, growing herbs and it’s probably not going to happen at all. But I hope that I keep my health and my sanity to enable me to enjoy my old age.

It is a bereavement of one’s self. It is dying to oneself. That’s what the menopause is in many ways. It’s a kind of and someone I always remember compared it to when I think of an Indian culture where a woman loses her husband she was into purdah almost. She was into a darkness and I know there’s a lovely Greek mythology which talks about the mother and daughter going underground during winter and emerging in the spring. There’s something about the menopause that is a going underground, a dying to one’s former self, a going into purdah behind the veil.

It’s all of that but all I can say is from where I am here now is that you emerge again and that it is a place of hope and renewal and refreshment and that you can look back on it. I mean certainly while you’re there nobody could tell you. Before I’d done it nobody could have told me how bad I was going to be and now that I’ve come out of it to look back on it I think, “God, that was awful. I can’t believe I am where I am now.” And I suppose that’s the one thing I can say is that it’s a wonderful place to be, to have it behind you and that you are renewed.

So how do you feel about getting older now?

I feel that at every stage in life, the steps you take are different. For example when you are 20, the paths that you take are different from the thoughts that you have when you are 50. When you are 40-50, you feel very old, I feel like I am very old now. Now I have reached 50, middle-aged, I think, wah, how quick! Now I feel less competitive and less ambitious. When I was younger, I was very competitive and wanted a career, I wasn’t afraid of hardship, but now I am 50, I get tired easily, I have less will to fight. I want a steady life – that will make me satisfied. I don’t want a career anymore, I don’t have that idea in my head anymore and I think it’s to do with my age

Westerners, I think Westerners still think they are very young when they are 60 but I think Chinese people think that 60 is very old, already a grandmother, a grandmother! That kind of feeling. But Westerners are very happy, whatever age they are, they are very youthful, very happy, make themselves look beautiful. Chinese people think red, you are 60 and you are wearing red? They are afraid of being laughed at. So Westerners wear red, so they look very youthful, like they are very happy, very optimistic, not like Chinese, who are perhaps a bit more conservative.

So do you think that Westerners’ views about the menopause might be different from Chinese people?

I don’t know what the menopause is like for Westerners, but based on my guess there shouldn’t be much difference between Chinese and Westerners. Westerners would still be very happy, laughing hee hee ha ha everyday like they have no care in the world but Chinese put all their troubles on their faces and as soon as you look at them you think this person is very unhappy. Chinese and Westerners are very different.

Why do you think that is?

I think it is because Chinese people are more conservative and don’t have that kind of courage that Westerners have so even when they have worries they put them aside but Chinese people always wear their worries on their faces.

I suppose the only regret I felt about it was that it made me feel that I’d entered the next stage of life and that I didn’t really feel particularly young any more. But again, I’ve just accepted it now and I don’t feel any older as a result of it really. When I look in the mirror I see that I am but.

I do find 60 a bit daunting, I do. That does sound awfully old to me when you’re sort of talking about a woman of 60 I think they can’t mean me, that’s not me. I’m only 25.

What are the positive things about getting older for you?

There must be some mustn’t there. I should be wiser shouldn’t I, I must be wiser. I think just talking about work for a moment, I think young people have more respect for older people. I think sometimes very young teachers get a bit of a tough time because they’re not that much older than the people they’re teaching. Whereas if you’re nearly 60 they think, look out, here comes the old bat. So I think that’s a plus point. Yes, I suppose you get certain respect just by virtue of being a bit older don’t you. Other than that I think I’d much rather be younger really, wouldn’t anybody?

One of my main problems I find is not so much how other people are treating me because I really don’t feel that there is a great deal of difference but I will stand there doing things and I don’t feel, I’m still 18, and I don’t see any need to change that.

Do you think others see you as 18?

Oh no. No.

In what ways have you noticed them treating you differently?

I don’t know perhaps if you go to the hairdressers to have your hair cut and this young girl’s doing it she has a perception of what an older person should be like and perhaps the same in the dress shops, they will also have a perception and I feel you can sort of, they say that if you wore the fashion last time round you shouldn’t be wearing it this time. And I agree with that to a great extent but I think you can take bits of the fashion and add it to other things and still make it viable whereas going into the shop and buying that sort of skimpy little top, the girl behind there being all of 16 years old and thinking what’s that old biddy doing with it.