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MenoGrowth: The Menopause Transition

The word itself

Meno·Growth

meno-
From the Greek mēn, meaning month — the same root that gives us menstrual.
growth
Not the growth of menopause. Growth during the season that begins when menstruation ends.

The months stop. The woman does not.

A season, not a passage

Menopause is spoken about as something a woman goes through and leaves behind — a rough few years, a door she walks out of. That is not what happens.

The hormonal changes that begin in the transition continue to shape a woman's cardiovascular, metabolic, bone, brain, sexual, and emotional health for the rest of her life. There is no other side to reach. There is a season to live well in, and it lasts decades.

  • Cardiovascular

    Blood pressure, cholesterol, and heart risk shift after the transition.

  • Metabolic

    How the body handles glucose, weight, and insulin changes with it.

  • Bone

    Bone density declines fastest in the years around the final period.

  • Brain

    Memory, focus, and sleep architecture are affected, not imagined.

  • Sexual

    Tissue, comfort, and desire change — and stay changed without care.

  • Emotional

    Mood and resilience move with hormones, not with willpower.

If it lasts the rest of her life, it deserves more than a shrug and a follow-up in six months.

Loss, or growth

Two stories are told about this season. A woman has usually only been handed one of them.

The cultural story

The MenoGrowth story

The end of usefulness.

The beginning of a season you get to author.

Something to get through quietly.

Something to understand out loud.

A passage with an exit.

A lifelong season that deserves lifelong care.

Your body failing you.

Your body telling you what it now needs.

Symptoms to endure.

Evidence to bring.

Aging as decline.

Aging as accumulation — of wisdom, and of standing.

Body, soul, and spirit

A woman is not a set of separate systems that take turns. What happens in her body moves through her mind and her faith, and what she carries in her spirit shows up in her sleep, her blood pressure, and her patience.

Treat one and leave the other two unattended, and she is still unwell. She just has fewer words for it.

  • Body

    The measurable part. Labs, sleep, bone, heart, the things a clinician can act on when she is given something to act on.

  • Soul

    Mind, will, and emotion. The grief of a changing body, the identity shift, the anger at being dismissed.

  • Spirit

    Meaning and faith. For many women, the part told to carry everything alone — pray about it, and say nothing else.

Whole care, or it isn't care.

Four ways in

Wherever you are in this season, there is a place to begin.