I'm a bitch, I'm a lover
....I'm a child, I'm a mother.
*high school grad party circa 2002
My Mom is only 21 years older than me. I know. So young. When I was growing up she was always getting mistaken for an older sister because ‘you are far too young to have children this old’; which delighted her to no end. She was 39 in 2002 when the NIH published findings from the Women’s Health Initiative study stating that HRT use for menopause increased the risks of breast cancers, among other scary statistics. The findings in this study have been challenged and refuted numerous times since its publication, yet HRT use has never quite recovered from its abrupt halt. As a result, women were back to white knuckling menopause.
*If you are looking for a sign that a woman is in perimenopause here it is.
This sign hung in the kitchen of my childhood home, inside a cupboard where company couldn’t see it. And let me tell you my mother line-danced back and forth on this line; known as the bitch-sweetheart continuum. My sister and I get that from her. As a teen, I had just enough hormones to be bold enough to give her attitude but I wouldn’t dare step out of line. For a mom trying to parent teen girls a healthy dose of fear helps. At the time, I didn’t appreciate the enormity of the job she had in raising us.
Now that I find myself in perimenopause the pendulum is swinging back in favour of HRT and the women I know who are also in their 40s are on the front lines of this change. I spend time with women in their 50s and they are right there with us, looking into treatments and supports with curiosity and optimism. We have watched the older women in our lives falter under the weight of menopause and we have seen women skate through unscathed.
One thing I’ve always admired about the women, like my Mom, who are a bit further ahead in their menopausal journey is the absolutely zero fucks they have collectively about society and judgment and pressure.
No fucks. Sounds divine.
Since starting HRT myself in July 2024, I have wondered, would treating the effects of menopause dull the brashness that I so admire in older women? I worry that I could be left holding a basket full of fucks.
Will I slide too far to the sweetheart side of the continuum? Will I have the boldness that comes from being a bitch?
My husband would joke that there is no fear of that anytime soon.