Essay: The Monapause

Tattoos and Photo: Mugen

Menopause fucked me sideways. 

First it went for my vagina. Then it came for my words. Sex and writing. Oof. It felt particularly cruel for menopause to be so fucking bespoke: to so fashion its challenges to fit exactly what I feared the most. 

Menopause Fucked Me Sideways

(i’m punching the air right now because I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed writing; enjoyed a turn of phrase I came up with that reminded me why I am a writer; that reminded me that I love life)

This is the first essay I’ve written in eight months. 

I am able to write it because I started Menopause Hormone Therapy (MHT)--something I had long resisted–at the end of January. It has calmed the anxiety that has had me in a chokehold for more than five years, helped me sleep without my nightly dose of CBD and/or THC. I love cannabis–but I’d rather use it recreationally than necessarily. And in so doing, it has turned my mind from a place deserted of ideas and which no longer welcomed me, into a place excited to once again create sentences and weave together thoughts that so excite me that I must pull my phone out on walks to capture my ideas as voice notes.

I am sharing some of those voice notes throughout the essay with you. They were recorded during walks in the park.

I am lucky because my GYN neither pushed MHT nor withheld it from me. She explained to me my options, patiently and with great detail, just before I became postmenopausal in 2022. I chose at the time not to start MHT. When I told her earlier this year that I could not work or focus and that I felt deflated and wanted relief, she explained the various therapies available to me.

She herself is on MHT, understood immediately when I told her I could not write, and shared her own menopause struggles.

Menopause fucked me sideways. First it went for my vagina. Then it came for my words. Sex and writing. Oof. It felt particularly cruel for menopause to be so fucking bespoke: to so fashion its challenges to fit exactly what I feared the most. 

This essay is not to persuade you to start or not start MHT. That is a conversation that I hope you can have with your healthcare provider and it is a decision that is only yours to make. I want, instead, to continue an openness around my menopause transition, to fracture any shame or stigma around a stage of life for anyone who has ever had a uterus and ovaries. So much of that shame and stigma around the menopause transition is impossible to detangle from sexism and ageism, in a world that is unforgiving to anyone who is not a white, able-bodied and affluent cisgender heterosexual man. To even tiptoe onto the shore of vulnerability in such a world when you are not those things is to invite derision if you’re lucky and destruction the rest of the time. 

There is a reason that so many women leave the workforce during the menopause transition. That reason is why so many who are going through the menopause transition in positions of power say nothing about it. We know how lack of workplace accomodation during the menopause transition can impact career. That is the reason that I am telling you that I have not been able to work and have barely made a living since last summer because of my menopause transition. 

I Invite derision, destruction, and shamelessness that leaves me accountable to no one but a self (mine, me) that I owe a powerful and tender love.

A cisgender woman must be able to say “This is hard. This has tested me to the limits” without being considered weak or worthless in this world built by and for (white, able-bodied and affluent cisgender heterosexual) men.

So much of that shame and stigma around the menopause transition is impossible to detangle from sexism and ageism, in a world that is unforgiving to anyone who is not a white, able-bodied and affluent cisgender heterosexual man.

Since last summer, I have not been able to write anything that is longer than an email or a tweet/instagram caption or to read anything for pleasure that is longer than a tweet/instagram caption. I would read essays I’d written in 2020, when I launched FEMINIST GIANT, with wonder and awe. I wrote an essay a week back then! I envied whoever that Mona was and her ability to write so effortlessly. I envied people reading on the subway, wistful for the days I’d miss my station because I was so lost in a book. In 2019, I set and met the challenge of reading a book per week. What? Who was that?!

Books I read in 2019 (I gave four away during travels) Photo: Robert E. Rutledge

I became convinced I had read and written so much in those last few years of perimenopause because something within me knew we would run out of words–like Joseph convincing the ancient Egyptians to stock up before the famine. Or an animal preparing to hibernate, stocking up on words like food, as if I knew I would go into a fast from words and I needed to eat all the words to keep me full until the new ones came.

But when? I was terrified. Would they ever return? 

It became a challenge to myself to tell anyone who would listen that I was the writer who could no longer write. I was trying to deflate the terror but all I deflated was me

If I did not work for myself, I would have resigned. I effectively have. Content for FEMINIST GIANT since last summer is thanks to excellent weekly curations by contributors Samiha Hossain and Inaara Merani of feminist resistance from around the world. Without them this newsletter would have shut down. The halt in new essays by me has led to a massive decrease in paid subscriptions to FEMINIST GIANT and an even more drastic decrease in supporters of my Patreon, where I have not been able to deliver on my monthly tiers that subscribers pledge for. 

This is where I ask you to become a paid subscriber if you can!

I am the writer who foolishly (ambitiously, deliriously) signed on to deliver two books about menopause until she could not–because of menopause. 

The first book–an anthology called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and the Political Spectrum. Other people wrote it, Easy, right? But I could not read, let alone edit, the essays that an incredible lineup of contributors had delivered to me months earlier. One extension after another allowed me to divide the reading into small chunks until I was finally able to send the book to the publisher. Thank you Aliya Sultan for your patience and understanding, and massive gratitude to all the contributors.

It got worse.

A year after signing on to write my third book, The King Herself: How Hatshepsut Helped Me Unbecome, I had to confess to my editor that I had not written a single word and that I did not know when I would be able to deliver that memoir of menopause. I had already asked for an extension to the deadline. And I had failed to meet it.

This is the email I sent to my editor.

When she called me soon after to offer support and to tell me she was extending my deadline until 2026, I was on the verge of tears in an aisle at Target. A thousand thanks, Rakia Clark. You are my forever editor. You have shown what is the workplace accommodation that so many menopausal people are urging.

And that was the moment I decided to start Menopause Hormone Therapy (MHT). 

Why did it take me so long?

Initially, my hesitation was because I hated hormonal birth control when I was younger.

A part of me wanted to just keep ploughing through menopause. To just get on with it and be as “strong” as I know I am. 

Until I couldn’t.

I wanted to age without interference, for a lack of a better term. And the menopause transition is the memo we all get that we are ageing. Again, I wanted to just slog through it. 

Until I couldn’t.

I am the writer who foolishly (ambitiously, deliriously) signed on to deliver two books about menopause until she could not–because of menopause. 

A part of me wanted to make it through the menopause transition, with all the fuckery it threw at me, without “help.” What qualifies as help is where things get interesting: I had used several non-hormonal supplements to address the fuckery that menopause threw at me. How come those weren’t “help?” What was it about hormones that made me feel like I was “giving up” or “taking an easy way out?” 

I was aware, of course, of the now reassessed study that had led so many women to stop taking hormone therapy during their menopause transition. I also did not want to start taking hormones only to have all the fuckery return again once I stopped taking them. So I thought–tough it out now and it will be better on the “other side.” But would it? And for how much longer would I be “toughing it out?”

A part of me wanted to just keep ploughing through menopause. To just get on with it and be as “strong” as I know I am. I wanted to age without interference, for a lack of a better term. And the menopause transition is the memo we all get that we are ageing. Again, I wanted to just slog through it. 

Please note the quotation marks–I’m quoting my inner Greek chorus/inner critic/any other harsh voice that makes you feel like shit. Let me show you how it works: 

I expected the wonderful acupuncturist I was seeing to judge me when I told her that I was considering going on MHT. Of course she did not because she is a wonderful healer who has never judged me for anything I’ve shared with her. She told me she had several clients who had found relief upon starting MHT.

I expected my brother and his wife–both physicians (my sister-in-law is an OBGYN) to judge me for starting MHT and regale me with warning and alarms. Of course they did not. They told me they were glad I had found relief.

I expected my parents, retired physicians, to judge me for starting MHT and warn me off it. Of course they did not. They asked me if it was helping me and said they were glad when I said it was.

I understood that the only person judging me for starting MHT was me. Seven weeks into MHT, I am still arguing with myself about MHT. 

In so many of the life narratives given or allowed to cisgender women, suffering equates strength. Those social scripts signal to us that we’ve “failed at womanhood” if we don’t plough through suffering. 

I had not taken the time to separate strength and ageing from suffering. 

It feels indulgent to talk about suffering as Israel continues its genocide in Gaza; as the suffering in Sudan and Congo and too many other places remind us again and again of the toll on those who walk through the world and are not white, able-bodied, and affluent cishet men. 

In so many of the life narratives given or allowed to cisgender women, suffering equates strength. Those social scripts signal to us that we’ve “failed at womanhood” if we don’t plough through suffering. 

What is a “strong” woman? How does a “strong” woman navigate the menopause transition? How does a feminist navigate menopause? What is a feminist menopause?

I’m working on it!

What is a Strong Woman?

Strength training, which I started in October 2022, a month before I became postmenopausal, helped me separate “strong woman” from suffering; to point to the ever-increasing weights and say “There! I am strong,” thus liberating myself from having to prove anything…to who? To me? I am the strongest, physically, I've ever been. I can deadlift more than my body weight and I can squat close to my body weight.

Nonetheless, as exhilarating as it is to stand before a barbell that weighs more than you do and, with proper breathing and form, lift it, again and again, I could not deadlift my way to writing. I could not squat the words out of me. 

Video: Jeana Fanelli

Who was I when I was not a writer? 

Perhaps that’s exactly what menopause was designed to do all along–to force you to confront what you thought was the very essence of you, what made you you, and to let it go. Because even if you don’t let it go–can’t, won’t, don’t want to–it will let you go, set you adrift, make you pause; pause to wander–in the ellipses that separate who you thought you were and the you that is yet to come, pause to wonder–who the fuck am I now?

Menopause. Monapause.

Because when you wander and wonder, you will meet previous iterations of you, and they will excitedly ask “What have we become? Show us!” Tell them who they led you to become, the way stars once led explorers, thank them for bringing you this far, for forming the constellation of you, and let them go. 

2023, 2019, 2012. Photos: Robert E. Rutledge

And grieve. 

It is no small thing to let go of your night sky. Astronomers have invented a new term to describe the pain associated with humanity’s loss of a dark sky, stars and all, because of light pollution : "noctalgia," meaning "night grief."

We need a word (perhaps but not always one that ends in -algia, the Greek word for pain) for the grief of losing our past selves. We need a ritual that can serve as a baton connecting the ellipses between what we were and what we are becoming. My word is Monapause (i could not resist) and my ritual is tattooing (of course–have you seen me?)

Perhaps that’s exactly what menopause was designed to do–to force you to confront what you thought was the very essence of you, what made you you, and to let it go. Because even if you don’t let it go–can’t, won’t, don’t want to–it will let you go, set you adrift, make you pause; pause to wander, pause to wonder.

One day in October last year, almost a year into my postmenopause, I stood in the tattoo space of the artist Mugen as they performed a ritual smudging. As they surrounded me with the smoke of the herbs they were using for the smudging, I thanked the Mona’s who brought me thus far. I told them I loved them for all they had done and let them go. I accepted the baton they handed me across the ellipses of me and prepared for the next part of our relay.

And then Mugen tattooed into my upper back two Wadjet Eye amulets which in ancient Egypt “embodied healing power and symbolise(d) rebirth. An amulet in this shape was thought to protect its wearer and to transfer the power of regeneration onto him or her.”

Video and tattoos: Mugen

Under the eye on the right, is a lion, symbolising Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess of retribution and sex who is tattooed into my right inner forearm. Under the eye on the left is a cow, for Hathor, the goddess of love, beauty, music, and pleasure. She is at times considered the more mature aspect of Sekhmet.

They are looking at each other on my upper back: Sekhmet handing me over to Hathor, bridging the ellipses of Mona. 

By the time I was at my GYN’s clinic to start MHT, I was ready.

This essay took longer to write than usual. But I’ve learned to let “usual” fall in between the ellipses of me. And that has taught me a new way to be–to take my time. This essay is halting and faltering and raw–like the birds I heard during one of my walks in the park, whose chirping tentatively asked “Is this Spring.” All I could hear was “Listen I love you, Spring is coming.” (A riff on Kim Addonizio’s “listen I love you joy is coming,” from To The Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall)

Listen I Love You, Spring is Coming

I did not start MHT so that I could “go back to normal” or “go back to myself.” The self is not a static point in time, but rather an evolution of selves, an evolution of Mona’s that brought me to where I am now and said “Go! Live! Live well.” And I thank them for that evolution. Thank you. I’ve got it. I’ll take it from here. 

That’s what I believe Menopause Hormone Therapy has allowed to happen–for me to continue from the point where they led me to. So that I can live well in the time ahead of me. Not to go back to anything but to move forward towards what is to come. When I started MHT, I understood how sensitive I was to hormonal shifts in my body and it brought into sharp relief, through the relief it brought me, just how shit and for how long I’ve felt. 

Is this the Second Spring, as traditional Chinese medicine calls the menopause transition? 

Listen, I love you, Spring is coming.

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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.  

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