Issue #11. The Crone Club Guide to overcoming FOM - Fear Of Menopause.
Do you have a sister, granddaughter, niece, aunty, and/or or do you know anyone who is afraid of menopause or getting older? 10 ways to overcome fear. #TrainingForAgeing
Someone once told me that FEAR stood for:
FOREVER
EXPECTING
AWFUL
RESULTS.
..and when I entered ‘peri-menopause’ (who even knew that was a thing?!) I was, quite frankly, shitting it.
Initially I felt afraid because of the lack of information about what was going to happen to me (this is over six years ago now), but like the good GenXs we were, we kicked up a fuss and set about filling the void ourselves.
Early out of the traps in 2018 was Mariella Frostrup’s documentary, ‘The Truth about the Menopause’ (BBC), followed three years later by Davina’s documentary, ‘Sex, Myths and the Menopause’ May 2021 (Channel 4) and the advertising hoarding which she dragged around Britain featuring ‘that list’ of terrifying symptoms many women face.
Much as I was grateful to our celebrity sisters getting it into mainstream discussion, and even having an impact on policy and workplaces 🙌, I noticed that it wasn’t helping with my knot of fear. In fact, this medicalised focus on an ever growing list of horrifying symptoms made it worse.
As a creative/community freelancer, even if I was just to get two symptoms from that list, I wouldn’t be able to work. Being wide awake at 2am, dripping in sweat, the thought of becoming homeless suddenly felt like a very real prospect.
Like many autistic people with a secret stash of ‘hidden’ disabilities (shameful things, such as not being able to tell the time), I’d lived most of my life in fear. I’d be damned if I was just going to sit quietly while society dragged me back into fear AND shame!
Add to this, the fact my social media was ramping up horrific ‘anti-ageing’ adverts and menopause fat-shaming, I was absolutely FURIOUS that society, and even well-meaning sisters, were making me feel fearful all over again.
So three years ago, I invited a handful of female friends to join a Private Facebook Group - The Crone Club Private Members Group, with the aim of flooding our own social media feeds with POSITIVE stories about female ageing, focussing on the joy and freedom that can come in later life, and so we could considerately ‘cheer each other on’ through the scary stuff of midlife.
Three years on, it’s grown to over 600 members from around the around the world and led to events, creative collaborations, meet ups, crone talks, and 1 year ago (thanks to your support), this e-magazine. But best of all, it started to make us feel better.
In the lukewarm wake of ‘World Menopause Day’ last Friday, I was nervous about writing a piece about menopause. Even our Crone Club assignment on Instagram asking folk to share what they’d wish they’d known about menopause, had the least engagement of any post ever!
So why am I writing about it today? I’m writing because the fear of female ageing and menopause is still REAL. And FEAR is damaging. Suicide because of menopause is REAL. Fear of losing your job, your partner, your home, your identity, your mind… IS REAL. So, if FEAR IS YOU RIGHT NOW, or if someone you know is ‘moving the way fear makes you move’, please share.
Much love, sisterhood and croneage,
Juzza
xxx
1. Seek out a sisterhood that makes you smile.
As the saying goes, one twig is easy to snap, but just try breaking a bundle!
Find your sisters. Your tribe. Your army! Make mischief and laugh until wee comes out (which, let’s face it, is the quickest item you’ll tick off your ‘to do list’ ever).
I loved a post by a crone in the Facebook group last week about her ‘Little Book Of Painfully Bad Menopause Poems’ where she rightly pointed out that although many women can’t afford counselling and coaching, laughter is free. (Or £6 if you’d like to support Crone Stephanie - link at the end!)
2. Role model older women who are rocking this ageing shizz.
Surround yourself with positive role models and seek out your Crone Crush! Over the last three years in the group , we’ve shared so many different types of older women, (or ‘Crone Archetypes’, as we call them) including Nature Crone, Sporty Crone, Adventure Crone, Art Crone, Spiritual Crone, Creative Crone and current trending favourite, ZeroFksGiven Crone. I notice that I feel drawn to different ones at different times, depending where I am on my own, ahem, ‘Crone Journey’.
After my Adventure Crone phase, I became an avid collector of ‘Style Crones’ - beautiful older women with long silver hair, effortless style and distinctive clothes. It was so rare at the time to see women with natural greying hair - and to see women rocking that look felt naively subversive.
You can read more about Style Crones in Issue 3.
Music Crone Patti Smith was one of my early Crone Crushes, and has stood the Crone Crush test of time. I think that’s because she’s a combination of pretty much every desirable Crone quality one could aspire to - a hugely talented creative, a twinkle of mischief, a humility, a wisdom and a generosity in all she does. And of course, she’s Patti Smith.
In addition to Crone Social Media Stalking, keep an eye out for events and spaces that may provide a rich stomping ground for opportunities for connecting with, and learning from, older women. And if intergenerational spaces don’t exist - create them! This is what we aimed to do with our Crone Spoken Library event in partnership with the University of Sheffield, where we held the space for 20 younger women to listen to the individual life stories of 20 older women. You can read about our Crone Spoken Library on the Crone Club website here. (A digital library of some of the conversations is now in development! Thank you Dr Pam Mckinney. 👏)
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, it’s no surprise that society hasn’t made it easy for women to get together to share their stories - as Crone Legend Audre Lorde said:
“The generation gap is an important tool for any repressive society.”
Victoria Smith in her book ‘Hags - the demonisation of midlife women’ agrees, adding:
“Younger women are being disadvantaged by the relationships they will not form, and the stories they will not hear.”
So, if you’re not hearing the stories, create the spaces for this magic to happen. And if you get cancelled. Do it again.
3. Ritual.
The beautiful author John O’Donahue writes in his book about ‘soul friendship’, ‘Anam Cara’:
“We desperately need a new and gentle light where the soul can shelter and reveal its ancient belonging.”
Ritual helps us connect with, honour and learn from the past generations of women who came before us, and holds the space and ‘gentle light’ for us to reflect on the qualities we want to aspire to in our Third Act. As I’ve said before, when my pal sent me a link to a blog about ‘Crone Crowning’, just reading it made my fear lift, and having a Croning Crowning Ceremony for my 50th birthday jump-started my transition from fear into something that felt more akin with love.
4. Create a social media echo chamber that makes you feel GOOD.
Take notice of the content that makes your heart sink and of the content that makes it soar. Then flood your social media channels with the latter. Simples.
5. Double down on healthy routines that help you ‘be present’.
Prioritise the good stuff to help you be present and in the moment, rather than worrying about things that may or may not happen (some Crone Club members said they were lucky and sailed through menopause!)
We all know what a ‘healthy routine’ looks like for us by now. But if you’re struggling through peri-menopause, the chances are you probably just don’t feel like doing it. If you’re struggling to prioritise the good stuff to keep you in the present, try joining a group like our monthly meet-ups - which give you the ‘excuse’ to prioritise that stuff, plus, there are some useful links at the end of this article. Also, see point 10.
6. Re-ignite your feminism and use your rage for good.
Reframe your (r)age. I love this post by the Crone Poet, Donna Ashworth.
The older I get, the more I realise that all this talk of women having 'gone mad' is actually just women waking up one day, smelling the coffee and feeling furious...
Furious that they twisted themselves like a pretzel all these years trying to conform to what others wanted them to be.
Furious that they didn't say ‘no’ more, or more to the point, that they didn't say 'hell no' more.
Furious that they didn't say ‘yes’ more, that they didn't feel they could put themselves first.
Furious that their feelings, their emotions and their desires were branded as 'hormonal' all these years, as a lame excuse to fob them off and not face up to bad behaviour.
And no, this is not just the menopause.
This is called awakening.
The older I get the more I realise that, no, women are not going mad.
In fact, they are becoming very, very sane indeed.
Donna Ashworth
7. Creativity - get curious and keep learning.
Creativity has always got me out of a fear-sized hole - whether it was making myself laugh through writing short stories, or exploring my rage through my (deeply troubling 😱) teenage diaries. Now I’m stepping into my Cronedom, writing has saved me again, and helped create a gap to see the humour and beauty in some really grim situations. (See Issue 4. When your parent gets a terminal diagnosis, what beauty can be found?)
I’ve also found that ‘getting curious’ about Crone Qualities, and books that give you a sense there’s so much more to learn and ‘get into training for’, have really helped. Crones Don’t Whine by Dr Jean Shinoda Bolen was my entry-level crone-book-drug-of-choice. (Please suggest other books in comments!)
I’ve always felt that the things we get ‘trained’ in are rather random as there’s very little in the way of ‘training for ageing.’ In fact I’m claiming that phrase -#TrainingForAgeing. You heard it here first. 😂
8. Focus on summat bigger.
The moon’ll do. Or if that doesn’t work, there’s always the Universe.
9. Show up, have fun, and don’t be too attached to the end result.
I’m paraphrasing a few people above, but yeh, do that. 👆🏽
10. If you can’t do any of the above, get help.
If you’re experiencing menopausal symptoms that are debilitating and preventing you from working or making you feel suicidal or simply make doing any of the previous actions feel impossible - get help.
For me, that help came in the form of HRT.
So many Crones in our group were suffering from not being able to do ANYTHING due to extreme fatigue, whilst also being hit with multiple pressures of midlife - the grind of the big job or running multiple jobs, caring for ageing parents, dealing with death, health scares…
As we all know, doing the good stuff is easy when you’re feeling well but, for many in our group, implementing ANY of the previous points before HRT felt impossible.
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that there are no prizes for ‘riding it out’. The second I’d lathered up in the ‘magic gel’, I slept all night for the first time in years. And I’m not alone. The comment below shared in our Facebook group sums up the lived experience feelings of many GenXers in the group.
“HRT literally saved my life. LITERALLY. Been on it for about seven years now and they will have to prise it out of my cold, dead hand to take it off me.”
I guess only time will tell what the true outcomes of my generation’s love affair with HRT will be, and whether it was the right path to go down long-term. Indeed, there’s plenty of interesting debate about whether it’s a ‘deficiency’ at all…
But that’s a discussion for another issue! (DM me if you’d like to get involved in that one.)
<<Waiver: Nothing in this issue constitutes ‘official medical advice’. When considering HRT, seek advice of a medical professional, etc, etc. (Erm, good luck with that 😬 😳)>>
Over to you!
So that’s my top 10 of stuff I’ve found helpful for combatting the Fear of Menopause and Ageing, but I’d love to hear yours. Anything I’ve missed? PLEASE SHARE IN COMMENTS BELOW. 👇🏽 As always, thank you for reading and please do share this with anyone you think it might help.
Links:
(Note, a paid subscriber unsubscribed last month 💔, stating the reason as ‘advertising’ when I don’t actually earn any money from advertising - shouting about other Crone’s work and projects is part of what The Crone Club is all about. So I just want to re-affirm that the links below are supplied to either give a richer experience on any specific areas you find interesting and/or to help promote the work of another Crone. Most definitely not advertising!)
Laughter:
‘The Little Book of Painfully Bad Menopause Poems’ is available to buy from Crone Stephanie on Amazon.
The Change (Channel 4) by comedian Bridget Christie made loads of us laugh. New series coming soon!
Soul Friendship:
‘Anam Cara - spiritual wisdom from the Celtic World’ by John O Donohue.
Crone Qualities:
‘Crones Don’t Whine’ by Dr Jean Shinoda Bolen. What would your 13 Crone Qualities to aspire to be?
Role modelling:
Crone Legend Patti Smith is on Substack you can follow her here.
Ritual:
‘The Art of Gathering’ by Pria Parker - is a book recommended by legend Laura Lightfinch after reading Crone Ann’s fabulous Crone Crowning blog. 👇🏽
Issue 8. The Bat Shit Crazy Joy Of Croning Ceremonies by Ann Blackburn.
Re-ignite your Feminism:
‘Hags. The Demonisation of middle-aged women.’ By Victoria Smith (link to Guardian Review).
Prioritise the good stuff:
‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear - gave me some really helpful micro-tactics to help me prioritise the stuff that keeps me well.
Overcoming sticky fear-driven thoughts:
I also found this podcast by our Tara Brach really useful practice for ‘leaning in’ to our vulnerability as a coping strategy for negative ‘sticky’ thoughts. 😘
Great post. Can I just say that the number one thing I LOVE about menopause is not having periods? After the best part of 40 years of agonising monthly cramps - actually, cramps doesn’t come near as I would frequently vomit with the pain - to be free of that whole rigmarole is truly liberating.
Love all of this! I think there's another that needs including, and that's to speak frankly, factually and without shame about peri/menopause/symptoms to everyone, to make it the normal and natural thing it is! And without wanting to be mean, this needs to particularly include those who want us NOT to talk about all of this 💖💖💖