The 'change' matters enough for one in four employers but not the rest

There are few elements of life these days that are certain – the guarantees are neatly encapsulated within the black and white clarity of, ‘you are born, and you die’ but for women there is another assurance – that our menstrual life will start and then just stop. That’s it – everything else is a chapter yet to be written or experienced.

My own lens on this harks back to similarities with C.S. Lewis’ - ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’ (bear with me) - it’s less fantasy fiction of course, but you can’t escape the fact that one day your feet are grounded in one world and then you pass through into an entirely different version. As a woman of a certain age, I’m also well aware that it’s not as instantaneous as the ‘wardrobe change’ with some wintery, wonderland landscapes thrown in for good measure and an Ice Queen to greet you (indeed it’s the very antonym of anything cool with all those hot flushes), and sadly it takes years, sometimes a decade to cross from one place to another yet time aside, when it does occur there is some finality when it happens.

You’ll have been living in your own wardrobe too if you have escaped all the media attention around menopause these days, from Davina McCall’s documentary that shed some much needed light on the issue to the many women’s groups that campaign to expose the realities of living with the ‘change’. I know only too well that the adjectives to describe the night sweats, hot flushes, anxiety, hormonal imbalance, the ‘rage’ (many a partner would refer to it as ‘the time to duck’) and the sleepless nights, to name but a few of the myriad symptoms, aren’t descriptive enough of what the whole process entails. Indeed, its powerful claws can send the most polished of female professionals into a downward spiral of well, ‘otherness’. I have yet to meet a lady in the peri or menopause that is all shiny and bright smiled – unless their HRT has been adjusted at least a thousand times previously which may cue a smug grin (and if so, we all need the doctor’s contacts asap).