Living well through menopause: we didn't come into this world to suffer
My indispensable friend Imma Sust posted a video on Instagram explaining that she wasn't having a good time due to some of the symptoms of menopause. The video received a lot of comments, and what surprised us most was the number of women who had been suffering from certain health issues for years and years and the resignation with which they lived with them. Both Sust and I sought good medical advice to navigate menopause well, and it was shocking to read so many women who normalized feeling unwell. But I recently realized that no matter what I do or say, I'm not immune to a certain normalization of physical pain either.
I've had osteoarthritis and muscle and joint pain for some time now, and it comes and goes. It's not serious, and I experience it like the hum of a broken refrigerator, which you barely notice anymore because it's so constant. But it's there. And one week, when the pain was more intense and sharp, I suddenly asked myself what I was doing and why I wasn't doing anything about it. The answer was clear: I'm a woman.
Women endure physical pain as if it were an unavoidable burden. You're born and told that your period will hurt, that if you want children, giving birth will hurt. And you see what women older than you do: be available—what's now called 24/7, three hundred and sixty-five days a year—to take care of others. At home, it was a classic for my mother to self-medicate when the Christmas holidays approached. She didn't consider that she might be sick. She had to be on the front lines, no matter what. Because she was convinced that she had come into this world to suffer, and she made sure we knew it. And when my period came, and indeed, there were days when it hurt, the response was "take something and get on with it." And that, aside from the usual pill, was a good dose of resignation and endurance.
Consequently, when we complain and ask for something to be done, we're not listened to much. The system is so used to us enduring suffering that when we can't take it anymore, or simply refuse to accept it, it ignores us. All the stories of women with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue explain that for a long time, no one believed them. And the same is true for far too many women when they want to take action and improve their quality of life during menopause. Because the other perverse consequence is that we are not considered worthy of medical study. And without studies, without data, there aren't enough scientific advances to help us.
My mother had her own reasons for accepting suffering. Besides being a woman, she carried a personal history. But I didn't. That was her story. The only thing I share with her in that regard is having absorbed, through social osmosis, that being a woman also means enduring. And look, no. I refuse. And I want my daughter to refuse too. And my sisters. And nieces. And friends. I want all women to refuse. We invade medical clinics demanding care, attention, credibility, and empathy. And solutions.
