Quotes & Sayings About Menopause

I am not going to give you disclaimers about what you can expect to find in my story. I went through menopause recently and find I don't much care about anyone's sensibilities anymore. I am called BadSquirrel for a reason. Considering how incredibly rude and grouchy I have become, I expect all of you to be extremely grateful to the QMBG (Queen Mother Bitch Goddess for those of you who haven't kept up) for all of the good warm fuzzy bits of my story. If you like it, it's because she went through it and took out all the really disturbing parts and made me behave. — BadSquirrel

Menopause, perimenopause, childbirth and breast-feeding can all cause a woman's sex drive to shut down. — Drew Pinsky

I certainly hope I'm not still answering child-star questions by the time I reach menopause. — Christina Ricci

When I was going through menopause, I didn't sleep. I didn't sleep for two years and ended up blowing out my thyroid, and I became nonfunctional. It's difficult to remain fully present if I'm not getting enough sleep, so I work at getting enough. — Oprah Winfrey

My mother, of course, had a different opinion.
'They're driving me crazy!' she said, swatting at them with her beige Coach handbag.
'How can you tell?' my dad asked. 'Between your menopause craziness and your turning fifty craziness and everything else?'
'Forty-eight!' my mom cried.
Dad groaned. 'Have you forgotten who you're lying to? — Megan McCafferty

Acting feels different. I'm not sure exactly what that is, but it used to mean a lot more. Maybe that sounds like I'm throwing it away and I'm not, I'll still do the best damn job I can, but it doesn't mean the same thing. I'm going to get the answer for myself one of these days. It's the male menopause, that's what it is. — Mel Gibson

If men went through menopause, we'd know everything about it, but we still don't even know if we should be taking hormones. — Joycelyn Elders

The first indication of menopause is a broken thermostat. It's either that or your weight. In any case, if you don't do something, you could be dead by August.
God, middle age is an unending insult. — Dorothea Benton Frank

Hurt of this magnitude is like menopause," Phyllis tells me. I've just wiped my nose with one of the hats. She takes it from me and hands me a tissue. "Comes in hot flashes. Just when you feel like you can't take it anymore, it passes for a bit. But it comes back, boy does it. — Tarryn Fisher

When I was suddenly thrust into what everyone calls menopause (Orchids) earlier than my body planned, I decided someone needed to take charge on so many levels. It was time to not only change the vernacular, but to speak up and say Hey! This isn't an old lady's disease! We aren't old! We are strong and dammit, we are beautiful and sexy too! — Lisa Jey Davis

If you make some comment even obliquely alluding to menstruation or menopause and its effect on my judgment," Murphy interrupted, "I will break your arm in eleven places. — Jim Butcher

A married guy is responsible for everything, no matter what. Women, thanks to their having been oppressed all these years, are blameless, free as birds, and all the dirt they do is the result of premenstrual syndrome or postmenstrual stress or menopause or emotional disempowerment by their fathers or low expectations by their teachers or latent unspoken sexual harassment in the workplace, or some other airy excuse. The guy alone is responsible for every day of marriage that is less than marvelous and meaningful. — Garrison Keillor

On a planet where for thousands of years, even today, a woman's worth has been judged exclusively by the productivity of her womb, what the hell is the point of a barren woman? — Elissa Stein And Susan Kim

with a woman's life expectancy at eighty-four years, it is reasonable to expect that she will not only live thirty to forty years beyond menopause, but be vibrant, sharp, and influential as well. The menopause you will experience is not your mother's (or grandmother's) menopause. — Christiane Northrup

Women have always been seen as waiting: waited to be asked, waiting for our menses, in fear lest they do or do not come, waiting for men to come home from wars, or from work, waiting for children to grow up, or for the birth of a new child, or for menopause. — Adrienne Rich

No, we're not getting married," I told my mother on the phone when she asked. "He's going to California and I'm staying here." Usually she doesn't phone. Usually she just does things like send me notes with histrionic scrawlings that read, "Well, you know, I can't use these," and along with the notes she encloses coupons for Kotex or Midol. — Lorrie Moore

Dorothy is the only woman in history who has had her menopause in public and made it pay. — Alice Roosevelt Longworth

It's such a cold night and it's the only time I've actively been grateful for menopause. I've been entirely comfortable. — Emma Thompson

Rock and menopause do not mix. It is not good, it sucks and every day I fight it to the death, or, at the very least, not let it take me over. — Stevie Nicks

I'm enjoying my life, post-menopause, so much. It's just so great to grow into yourself, and not be bothered with all that tyranny of biology. — Roseanne Barr

I think that my life changed at 50. Many things happened. Menopause, the end of youth and my daughter died that year after being a whole year in a coma. So I think that I changed and I became an elder at 50. — Isabel Allende

At her first bleeding a woman meets her power.
During her bleeding years she practices it.
At menopause she becomes it.
Traditional Native American saying — Lucy H. Pearce

Nona had been bonkers since I could remember. Dad said it was menopause, but I had looked that up once, and I highly doubted that was the case. — Holly Hood

As women, most interactions from around age eight on teach us to keep things cool so no one is inspired to, God forbid, call us the U or F words: "ugly" or "fat." I'm not the first to point out how women are taught that our value comes from how we look, and that it takes a lifetime (or at least until menopause) for most women to undo this awful lie. As — Amy Schumer

It's okay to talk about birth, okay - then menstruation. I first started my advocacy for women's health in the field of reproductive freedom, and the next stage would be bringing menopause out of the closet. — Cybill Shepherd

I had a bit of a male menopause. It started at the age of 18 and continued until I was 45. — Ian McShane

I have a friend named Doris who argues, on good authority, that the single biggest cause of global warming is menopause. — Dave Barry

Hello, my sister, Libby, also your daughter, is snogging a potato in my bed. What are you going to do about it?' Dad started yelling uncontrollably. I wonder if he is having the male menopause? If he starts growing breasts, I will definitely be running away with the circus. — Louise Rennison

I'd closed my ears to my friends' horror stories about married life. "Ha! Now you get to argue about who should change the diapers." Or "What kind of food makes a woman stop giving blow jobs? Wedding cake!" Or "Oh boy, wait until she hits menopause." I paid no attention to any of that. "Just let me stumble into it," I told them. "I don't want to be forewarned. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

You go into the book store, there's the cut-out of Dr. Phil, and then the dreaded women's health section where every book, instead of the menopause book with the fanged Medusa head on the cover that might be more pertinent, you always see a flower and a poppy and a daisy and a stethoscope. — Sandra Tsing Loh

The neighborhood had gotten really into pastel the last few years. It started when Alfred's wife painted their whole house a soft pink during menopause. Looks Like Linen it was called. People raved. A magazine came, made the family hold up a rotisserie chicken, and then photographed it. A few months later, Mrs. Trenton's house was Mint Leaf. Ours became Celery Powder. The Resnicks' house turned Yellow Feather. — Alison Espach

Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. — Terry Pratchett

It's one thing for a rape victim to speak up, or a woman with a wanted pregnancy that has turned into a medical catastrophe. But why can't a woman just say, This wasn't the right time for me? Or two children (or one, or none) are enough? Why must the woman apologize for not having a baby just because she happened to get pregnant? It's as if we think motherhood is the default setting for a woman's life from first period to menopause, — Katha Pollitt

If you're not a sex symbol, you're in trouble. — Helen Gurley Brown

Menopause. A pause while you reconsider men. — Margaret Atwood

Women know when they've got the menopause but men don't quite know. They know it afterwards. — Omar Sharif

Together, the hypothalamus, pituitary, and ovary form a trio that plays a wonderful song of fertility from puberty to menopause. — Trisha Gura

Shouldn't he want to know about something that has happened to his mother, that will happen to his wife, his sisters, his daughter and, I went on morosely, if ever he has an affair, even to his mistress? — Azar Nafisi

With so many forty- and fifty something mums and dads in Converse stalking the streets, I can see why there's a slew of books about the menopause and middle age, the most recent addition being David Bainbridge's plucky, glass-half-full meditation or, as he calls it, 'natural history.' — Rachel Johnson

Other people get moody in their forties and fifties - men get the male menopause. I missed the whole thing. I was just really happy. — Rik Mayall

What you believe can change your experience. — Staness Jonekos

What has gotten into you lately? Save a little craziness for menopause! — Woody Allen

In spite of herself, Jean Louise grinned. Alexandra could be relied upon to produce a malapropism on occasions, the most notable being her comment on the gulosity displayed by the youngest member of a Mobile Jewish family upon completing his thirteenth year: Alexandra declared that Aaron Stein was the greediest boy she had ever seen, that he ate fourteen ears of corn at his Menopause. — Harper Lee

Certainly the effort to remain unchanged, young, when the body gives so impressive a signal of change as the menopause, is gallant; but it is a stupid, self-sacrificial gallantry, better befitting a boy of twenty than a woman of forty-five or fifty. Let the athletes die young and laurel-crowned. Let the soldiers earn the Purple Hearts. Let women die old, white-crowned, with human hearts. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The literature of menopause is the saddest, the most awful, and the most medical of all genres. You're sleepless, you're anxious, you're fat, you're depressed - and the advice is always the same: take more walks, eat some kale, and drink lots of water. It didn't help. — Sandra Tsing Loh

She'd always had a short fuse but lately she was positively electric and could burst into flame anywhere, anytime ... When she was out of the shower, dry and cool, she had one of those reprieves that came regularly - she felt perfectly normal, sane and in control. Then came the inevitable guilt ... — Robyn Carr

According to the Western model, pregnancy is a disease, menopause is a disease, and even getting pregnant is a disease. Dangerous drugs and devices are given to women, but not to men- just for birth control. I've reached the conclusion that to many doctors BEING A WOMAN IS A DISEASE — Barbara Seaman

The Rose has always been the premiere symbol of female sexuality. In primitive goddess cults, the five petals represented the five stations of female life - birth, menstruation, motherhood, menopause, and death. And in modern times, the flowering rose's ties to womanhood are considered more visual. — Dan Brown

Male menopause is a lot more fun than female menopause. With female menopause you gain weight and get hot flashes. Male menopause ? you get to date young girls and drive motorcycles. — John Wayne

I did many interviews, and went out and talked to many people and went to rallies. It was the same thing with menopause. I traveled around the country on talk shows and talking to women about. — Cybill Shepherd

Why must the woman apologize for not having a baby just because she happened to get pregnant? It's as if we think motherhood is the default setting for a woman's life from first period to menopause, and she needs a note from God not to say yes to every zygote that knocks on her door. — Katha Pollitt

The problem with the word "vagina" is that vaginas seem to be just straight-out bad luck. Only a masochist would want one, because only awful things happen to them. Vaginas get torn. Vaginas get "examined.".. No. Let's clear this up right now - I don't actually have a vagina. I never have. I, personally, have a cunt. Cunt is a proper, old, historic, strong word, and it doubles up as the most potent swear word in the English language. Yeah. That's how powerful it is, guys. If I tell you what I've got down there, old ladies and clerics might faint. I like how shocked people are when you say "cunt." Compared to this, the most powerful swear word men have got out of their privates is "dick," which is frankly vanilla. In a culture where nearly everything female is still seen as squeam-inducing and/or weak - menstruation, menopause, just the sheer, simple act of calling someone "a girl" - I love that "cunt" stands on its own, as the supreme, unvanquishable word. — Caitlin Moran

So the years passed and everyone grew old and Nell's husband died and Hilda grew to be a large, angry sort of woman very high up in local government. When Nell was eighty-four Hilda retired and they went to live at a sea-side place where Hilda had had meaningful holidays during the menopause with a woman called Audrey, now dead. — Jane Gardam

If menopause is the silent passage, 'male menopause' is the unspeakable passage. It is fraught with secrecy, shame, and denial. It is much more fundamental than the ending of the fertile period of a woman's life, because it strikes at the core of what it is to be a man. — Gail Sheehy

But when mother died, Caroline was twelve, and in that queer time between childhood and nubile girlhood, when some girls seem to be wise without experience, and perhaps more clear-headed then they will be again until after their menopause. — Robertson Davies

I'm not sure anyone goes through a cancer scare unchanged. I know it changed me in so many ways. But I was fortunate to have had a rare cancer that's slow-growing and one that allowed me to skip the chemical cocktails that would have put me into early menopause. — Susan McBride

Transsexualism is, basically, just another, more drastic twist on the male menopause — Julie Burchill

A woman must wait for her ovaries to die before she can get her rightful personality back. Post-menstrual is the same as pre-menstrual; I am once again what I was before the age of twelve: a female human being who knows that a month has thirty day, not twenty-five, and who can spend every one of them free of the shackles of that defect of body and mind known as femininity. — Florence King

I feel special. Most women will have only one menopause, and they will hate it. I will have two, and when the second one comes, I will know what is coming. I am having my extra menopause as a cure. I have endometriosis. — Rose George

I'm what is known as perimenopausal. "Peri", some of you may know, is a Latin prefix meaning 'SHUT YOUR FLIPPIN' PIE HOLE". — Celia Rivenbark

Right now I don't call it the menopause, I call it men-on-pause. — Marie Osmond

In the end, the real wisdom of menopause may be in questioning how fun or even sane this chore wheel called modern life actually is. — Sandra Tsing Loh

Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust. — Jean Baudrillard

So, more times than not, but not every time, it can be linked to a medical problem, such as menopause, cancer, chronic pain, it can be linked to anxiety and depression. Those are the more common causes. — Shelby Harris

Listen, I had two kids - one when I was 40, one when I was 45. I breastfed for one year, which means I was breastfeeding four years ago. I'm going to move from giving birth to menopause without really realising. — Monica Bellucci

Osteoporosis is a disease that attacks the bones in your body. It happens to really almost everyone when they get really old. But for women, after menopause, they can lose up to 30 percent of their bone mass. — Ann Richards

The greatest mischief of medicine has occurred because life was not honored. Women have been robbed of the glory of their own bodies with, in recent times, removal and mutilation of reproductive organs and breasts, and the treatment of natural passages of life -- birthing, menstruation, menopause -- as disease. — Jeanne Achterberg

Evelyn stared into the empty ice cream carton and wondered where the smiling girl in the school pictures had gone. — Fannie Flagg

The menopause is probably the least glamorous topic imaginable; and this is interesting, because it is one of the very few topics to which cling some shreds and remnants of taboo. A serious mention of menopause is usually met with uneasy silence; a sneering reference to it is usually met with relieved sniggers. Both the silence and the sniggering are pretty sure indications of taboo. — Ursula K. Le Guin

You can do this (this thing, where your body will cease to produce hormones and your skin, hair, muscles and bones ... basically every part of you will notice, go into withdrawals, and stage a coup). Be prepared for this mentally, and you'll own this thing. — Lisa Jey Davis

Menopause: it had to be the gods' ironic warning to (or just plain nasty trick on) humanity for having artificially extended the life span, — Haruki Murakami

Most of us don't notice how great we look until years, even decades later. Not long ago, I was looking at photos of myself at various ages and weights - way before the neckular deterioration began, way before the fanny pack of menopause - and I could see how gorgeous I must have looked to everyone else. — Anne Lamott

I call the Change of Life "Orchids" because menopause is such an ugly word. It's got men in it for goddsakes. — Lisa Jey Davis

Retirement is the menopause of an employee's mind and hands. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The only study that the federal government has engaged in with a vengeance is in trying to see if they can make women fertile after menopause. — Patricia Schroeder

Menopause is your return to where you were before, when your hormone levels are the same as a pre-adolescent girl's. — Sandra Tsing Loh

I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror as we glided p. I looked as eroded as the groaning lift. What had happened to the fresh-faced belle from Boston, Mass.? The woman who stared back at me was at the dreaded age between forty-five and fifty, that no-man's land of sag, oncoming wrinkle, and stealthy approach of menopause.
"I hate this elevator, too," I said grimly.
Zoe grinned and pinched my cheek.
"Mom, even Gwyneth Paltrow would look like hell in that mirror."
I had to smile. That was such a Zoe-like remark. — Tatiana De Rosnay

Rock and menopause do not mix. — Stevie Nicks

Scientists have found a way to keep middle-aged female mice from going through menopause. Now they're working on a way to keep middle-aged male mice from buying expensive sports cars. — Conan O'Brien

Sorrow is not itself evidence of maladjustment but of the adjustment process itself. — Germaine Greer