Essay: Postmenopause—On Arriving
Fucking Finally!
Read also: Menopause is Shit. Menopause is Amazing
And: The Power and Glory of Menopause
If I were a postmenopausal killer whale, I would be the outcast, transient kind. The restless kind. The kind that hunts seals and eats their livers.
I like to think that there is a postmenopausal transient killer whale out there in the Pacific Northwest, where they roam and I once lived, who imagines that were she a postmenopausal human, she would be the restless kind.
The kind who at this time exactly 20 years ago was in her car, on an 18-day solo road trip from the Pacific Northwest–Seattle to be precise–to New York City because she self-outcasted from a disastrous marriage; she never could call herself a wife.
The kind whose perimenopause–the years leading up to menopause–almost drove her to hunting living beings and eating their livers.
The kind who celebrated menopause–that one day that marks 12 months since the last menstrual cycle–by telling the whole world she had fucking finally reached this life milestone and treating herself to lunch at a fancy restaurant’s sidewalk hut on a rainy day in New York City, the only place that could possibly contain her restlessness.
And then she danced to celebrate her freedom.
I am finally postmenopausal–the years that follow that one day, menopause–and it has gone to my head. In the best possible way.
The postmenopausal killer whales are not flights of my postmenopausal delirium, however. Humans and killer whales (and the short finned pilot whale) are the only species who go through menopause.
And we really don’t know why. Yes, really.
I’m walking taller. Is there a placebo effect of postmenopause? The way I move through the world has expanded. Or is it because I am a postmenopausal killer whale who will eat your liver?
The theories that abound mostly revolve around the notion that we are here to reproduce. It’s either the “granny effect” or the “stop competing” with younger females theory.
I like the “After Menopause, Killer Whale Moms Become Pod Leaders,” but I am childfree by choice. I have signaled to the universe that I am not here to reproduce. So these theories are a moot point for me. I am nobody’s mother and will not be granny to anyone either. My offspring and the survival of their offspring should not be my price of admission to leadership.
Hiroya Minakuchi/Minden Pictures/Corbis via The Smithsonian
Scientists might not know why we live so long after we cease to reproduce but I do: to be Mona. Not mother, not grandmother. Just Mona. This is my time. I am here to be known.
And that is why when we “lose” the ability to reproduce as postmenopausal people–read: patriarchy loses its control over us–we gain what we want our lives to be. That’s my theory. And it is precisely at this point, when patriarchy loses and we gain, that patriarchy feeds us that nonsense that we are “invisible” and it is precisely why this point in our lives is shrouded in so much shame and silence, stigma and taboo.
How dare we!
Scientists might not know why we live so long after we cease to reproduce but I do: to be Mona. Not mother, not grandmother. Just Mona. This is my time. I am here to be known.
So I claim the right to imagine my menopause transition as a road trip. I outdrove the shame and silence, stigma and taboo to arrive here, finally.
Imagine if we congratulated each other on becoming postmenopausal. Finally, finally.
I’m walking taller. Is there a placebo effect of postmenopause? The way I move through the world has expanded. Or am I walking taller because I finally followed the advice of Dr. Stacy Sims–”LIFT HEAVY!”–and I started powerlifting and when I leave the gym after my sessions with my trainer Jeana Fanelli, I feel my body understands the assignment and walks with power.
Or is it because I am a postmenopausal killer whale who will eat your liver? The transient kind that is not ooohd and aaaahd over by humans because it eats seals, unlike the more popular resident kind that eats salmon.
“In the Friday Harbor whale museum on San Juan Island, a small sign contrasts the feeding habits of transients and residents. The mammal eaters are said to be “attacking” their prey, while the fish eaters are merely “eating.” But no matter their culture, their goals are the same: to fill their bellies and have more babies. The whales don’t know that humans see one act of eating as more violent than the other,” writes Katherine Gammon.
The transient kind is thriving because humans have made the world a better one for seals, thus increasing the transient’s food supply, and have overfished salmon, leading to the dying out of residents. Take from that lesson what you will.
Of course, transient killer whales are having babies too. But there is a danger to their story that appeals to my postmenopause. What is menopause for those of us who opted out of the milestones and is menopause the great leveler because we end up at the same place anyway?
I claim the right to imagine my menopause transition as a road trip. I outdrove the shame and silence, stigma and taboo to arrive here, finally. Imagine if we congratulated each other on becoming postmenopausal. Finally, finally.
Of course I had to become postmenopausal in November. If my life were ever made into a film, it would be called Everything Happens to Mona in November, and I would be played by a killer whale.
I used to type a big P in my smartphone calendar to mark the start of my menstrual cycle. The last P was on November 11, 2021. So I had an inkling when my M Day would be. But in 2021, I had gone 10 months without a period and thought I was almost there, and then I had to add another P into my calendar. I was not taking anything for granted.
Everything Happens to Mona in November. If history is indeed written by the winners, I am the winner of my story and in my story, all the previous Novembers led to this one; menopause as muscle memory.
My first abortion, the “illegal” one in Cairo, was in November 1996.
I got my first period when I was 11 and a half and here I am, 55 and a quarter, at its “official” end, part of me thinking fucking finally, the other part wistful at the ending of the longest relationship after the one I have with my parents and the elder of my two siblings.
My period kept time for me; my monthly tik tok but not of patriarchy’s imperative to reproduce, not a countdown of my “fertile” years. I never wanted any of it. I am childfree by choice–a twice-over choice. Four years after my “illegal” abortion in Cairo, I had a “legal” one in Seattle. My abortions freed me to be transient and restless, to leave when I wanted to.
Everything Happens to Mona in November.
At the start of that month exactly 20 years ago, I left Seattle and started driving towards myself. The solo road trip as metaphor for outdriving taboo, be it marrying the wrong man who was not Egyptian or Muslim or leaving him after two years. The solo road trip as my right to adventure. The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters because it does. And she deserves adventure.
Many people learn to drive as teenagers, but when I was a teenager in 1982, my family moved to Saudi Arabia, where at the time women were banned from driving.
I learned to drive when I was 33 years old. And 18 months after I learned, I drove alone across the United States, from West to East Coast. Clearly, I learned to drive just to drive away from “wife” and her short-lived marriage. And to arrive at myself.
My abortions freed me to be transient and restless, to leave when I wanted to.
I had never thought I would ever move to the U.S. I had vowed never to get married. Too many never evers and yet in 2000 I did the latter, quickly followed by the former. When I left him, I knew there was only one city in the U.S. that could possibly contain my restlessness.
And I knew I had to drive to get there. I could not imagine, divorce papers freshly signed, that I could get on a plane and five hours later start a new life in New York City. I had to take my time with the U.S. and just as importantly, with myself. I was both Thelma and Louise but I wasn’t going to drive off a cliff. I wasn’t done moving. I had things to do and to fight.
If my menopause transition was like a road trip, then perimenopause was like driving across Tennessee, seemingly never ending.
Am I being poetic or corny?
Who the fuck cares! I’m a postmenopausal killer whale and I can eat your liver!
I spent 18 days driving towards myself, and on November 18 arrived to start my biggest love story–with New York City, at home, at last.
Everything Happens to Mona in November.
On the night that straddles November 23 and 24, 2011, the Mona I used to be died so that the Mona I had to become could survive after Egyptian riot police beat her, broker her left arm and right hand, sexually assaulted her, their supervising officer threatened her with gang rape, and she was detained for six hours at the Interior Ministry and another six by Military Intelligence who blindfolded and interrogated her.
Like a greedy pacman, November has gobbled up all my trauma and it spits them out at me, testing me, challenging me. Or maybe, it too is a killer whale, feasting on the liver of my life.
Because here we are—stuffing my menopause into November’s already full drawer of Behold: Mona’s Milestones.
This isn’t a “How to survive the menopause.” Because maybe you’re not supposed to survive if survival means “going back to normal,” “be yourself again,” all those cliches that behave as if life were static, and not a transient killer whale.
We emerge. Scathed. How can we not? Our bodies seem to wink at us but when we look closer it’s just sequins and glitter stuck on our skin from our overstuffed drawer of milestones; isn’t that what a scar is?
Is talking out loud like this about all things menopause like taking ownership of words meant to shame, like bitch and cunt? Is it becoming the winners of our own history?
Surely, beyond reproduction and ensuring our genetic line survives, post menopause is the time to own our stories and adventures and say: they brought me here. I have arrived.
The solo road trip as metaphor for outdriving taboo. The solo road trip as my right to adventure. The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters because it does. And she deserves adventure.
The past five years especially of perimenopause were some of the most difficult of my life. When they say the menopause transition is like puberty in reverse, it is no lie. I remember how overwhelmed by it all 11.5 year old me was when I first got my period--the physical changes, yes, and also, just as hard, the emotional and mental changes.
When I was 13 and then when I was 16, I had my first experiences of depression. They were difficult years. And now when I look back at the past five years, especially, the exit to puberty's entrance, so to speak, it was anxiety that floored me.
I know postmenopause is not a solid line of IT'S OVER but fuck it all, I'm free!
I want to go back to 11.5 year old Mona and tell her what a fucking hero she is and will be!
I often say I shaved off all my hair during lockdown to physically honour the change the pandemic has wrought on us all and also to unbecome what I once was so that I could emerge into what I will be. It was also to circle back to Puberty Mona and say: WE FUCKING DID IT. We arrived!
And you know that shit they say about cis women becoming "invisible"? Fuck that shit. First of all, "invisible" to who? Because as I say here, I feel like running up to older women and yelling “I KNOW! I FUCKING KNOW!”
They are all I see!
I want a world where we congratulate each other on becoming postmenopausal.
You know that film Turning Red? I love it so much. I wish 11.5 year old Mona had it when she first got her period. Now, 55 and a quarter year old Mona wants a sequel about the mother's menopause transition
I had no Google Map or GPS in November 2002, during my solo road trip. I would just drive all day until it got dark. I chose various places along the way to spend a few days in e.g. Santa Fe for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Memphis because it’s named after the ancient Egyptian capital, etc.
In Santa Fe, at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, I bought a poster of this photograph by Maria Chabot of the artist hitching a ride to Abiquiu, Ghost Ranch, in 1944.
The photograph is called ”Women Who Rode Away.” It was perfect for me when I rode away from Seattle to NYC. Now, I would restage it with me and a postmenopausal killer whale, the outcast, transient kind. The restless kind. The kind that hunts seals and eats their livers. Each of us covered in sequins and glitter, winking at the world: we are free!
HELLO FROM THIS SIDE! I am finally here, at postmenopause.
I have arrived.
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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