I’m not sure when I first heard the word menopause, but I’m sure I never heard it referred to in anything other than a negative sense. It was something horrible women were to dread.

As I grew older – again not remembering any specific conversations about it, just a general impression gathered – it came to mean a time when women “lost something.” In menopause, you would lose your youth and vitality. You would be subject to a body out of control. (Insert picture of a woman swooning onto a “fainting couch” while suffering “the vapors.”) You would be a “dried up” old woman.

You would never again be able to procreate, and even if you were past the time in your life where you would desire to do so, it still would be a horribly sad day for you. Something to mourn. A part of your identity so precious…