I’m 49 years old and I work as a nurse in the trauma center of a city hospital. Even as a little girl I knew that I wanted to work in healthcare; helping other people has always been a “family matter”. I’m a woman and I love a woman. I have loved multiple women in my life; both in my family and in my circle of friends I am surrounded mainly by women. Until about a year ago I thought I knew everything there was to know about the female body, but I was wrong. Menopause and the associated physical and mental symptoms brought changes that were new even to me.

I consider myself a rational human being in every area of life. I have always thought much of science, and ever since I can remember I’ve been interested in what’s happening in and around us. It was probably this sort of all-pervading curiosity coupled with my mother’s admirable dedication to her work as a nurse that led me to choose to become a nurse myself. I couldn’t imagine myself in any other profession; the ability and need to help have been with me since my childhood. And so has openness, which also comes from my family.

I grew up in a small but loving and accepting family. My friends liked to come over to our house because of the nice atmosphere, and no matter who happened to pop by, they were always welcome. Already at 7 or 8 years old I felt that I was different from others. I wasn’t interested in colorful skirts and blouses, instead of playing tag I liked to play football with the boys, and I never wanted to let my hair grow long and wear it in a ponytail. Among girls I was more like a boy, and among boys I looked and felt rather like a girl. I clearly didn’t fit in, but it took time to understand what was happening to me. My parents and aunt stood by my side in my search for identity; I could talk to them about anything, there were no taboos. Nobody was surprised when on a Sunday I appeared at the family lunch with a girl that I introduced as my love.

Until about a year ago I thought I knew everything there was to know about the female body, but I was wrong. First, I noticed the changes in my cycle and the ensuing mood swings, but for a relatively long time I put them down to PMS. My mood was fluctuating and I felt an unexplainable tension, neither of which had been characteristic of me before. Emotionally hard days started to become more and more common and prolonged, gradually morphing into episodes of depression. When nervousness and apathy became obstacles to my daily work, I asked for a psychiatrist’s help. She diagnosed me with mild depression and suggested that I take a mild antidepressant. After adjusting the dosage of the drug, my physical symptoms subsided somewhat, but aging, which had reached me too no matter how young I considered myself, started to take over my thoughts. It took me long months of therapy to make peace with the fact of menopause.

I have a close relationship with the women in my family and they were also part of the changes in and around me. I couldn’t, nor did I want to hide from them the thoughts I entertained because of the changes in my body and my health, so menopause and our personal stories became a major topic of discussion between me, my mother and her sisters. It was strange to me at first that this hadn’t come up in conversations among them before, but it’s true that in my parents’ generation it wasn’t customary to talk about such things. The open communication in my family helped me a lot. I had felt alone before, but it soon turned out that the change of life is part of every woman’s life, and we all have our own experiences and stories. It was easier to learn about and accept it than to fight defiantly against the laws of nature to keep up the appearance of youth. These deep conversations have definitely brought us closer together; it was nice to listen to the others and feel that I wasn’t alone.

I know that I am very lucky to have a family like this and that such deep and honest conversations and connections are not a given for every woman. That’s why I believe it’s very important to talk more about menopause on the internet and in mainstream media, and to have easy-to-understand information available to everyone that can prepare us for this period and answer our questions. We need reliable sources of information because in my experience many women are on the wrong path when it comes to learning about the possible ways of treatment. My medical experience and excellent connections in healthcare helped me a lot in understanding my situation, but menopause is a common cause for every woman. Step by step, we need to tear down the walls built around the topic and refute the myths in plain English with everyone involved.