Early Menopause: One Woman Reflects on Periods, Stress, and Life

A little-known cause of early menopause is extreme stress. One woman reflects on the family crisis that shocked her world, and then her body, to the core.

I knew a woman whose family fled the Soviet Union in 1985, when she was 7. At the train station just before the border, her mother was taken into custody by Soviet guards. In the 24 hours they held her mother, a circle of hair from the child’s scalp simply fell out. Her mother was released, they made it to Italy, and by the time they had settled in Baltimore, her hair had grown back. The story always stayed with me. What the fear of losing her mother will do to the child’s body in a matter of hours.

In my case, it was the inverse. I was in my early 40s when, out of the blue, we had a very sick child. I didn’t lose my hair all at once, but my body changed, almost overnight. We went from being a normal enough family to one in a constant state of crisis. I spent hours every day filling out forms in waiting rooms, arguing with arrogant doctors and insurance companies, pleading with kindly ones, alternating all-night vigils with my husband. I became a desperate comber of articles, medical papers, and blogs. I arranged meetings with friends of friends (of friends) who might have a lead; anything to grab hold of some invisible steering wheel that would give us the illusion of control.

My husband and I were like harried army medics, and as nothing upon nothing worked, the wonderful us we had been just faded into two exhausted housemates who happened to share children. Mounting terror and disagreement slowly calcified into resentment. I tried to keep dates with friends, and if I made it to the appointed place at the appointed time, I tried not to cry. And often failed. The best people stuck around, but many others fell away.

I was also still trying to keep our other child’s life humming. School events, volleyball tournaments, birthday parties, appointments, mother-daughter dates. In theory, I was a machine and killing it. And looking back with empathy for that woman in her early 40s, I do see a fierce warrior queen who swam people to shore with one arm tied behind her back. The gift of motherhood is that you believe you can actually lift a car if needed. Even with life sliding quickly from a recognizable path, you tell yourself you will find a solution and you will fix everything for everyone.

But something always gives.

This time it was my body that gave. In spite of a pretty healthy lifestyle, I gained 25 pounds. Parts of my body I’d never thought could expand seemed almost cartoonish as they bulged and stretched. Like puberty on fast-forward, if you added another set of breasts on top of the ones already there. A once thick mane of hair was now diminished, collecting around the shower drain seemingly by the handful with each washing. Every morning I awoke to the imprint of a sweat-drenched body on my sheets, like a chalk outline of a formerly functioning self. At the cocktail parties I dragged myself to to maintain some semblance of a social life—even as I knew an emergency call would drag me home minutes after arriving—I flushed hot as the earth’s iron core from the inside out with the first glass of red wine or if conversation got awkward. “Is it hot in here?” I wondered aloud as I peeled off as many layers as I politely could mid-party. Everything was bone on bone. Noises. People.

Even worse, a once wonderful, fun, close, and happy sex life disappeared. I had always loved men, and most especially the one I’d chosen. Suddenly, I was meh. And so we moved further apart still. It must be stress, I thought. A smart friend wasn’t buying it and recommended I get checked for an autoimmune condition or a thyroid issue. After 18 tubes of blood were processed, the answer came back that I was, by the numbers, menopausal.

“But I haven’t even experienced perimenopause,” I said, somewhat dazed.

When was my last period? (I didn’t remember; too busy.) When did your mother experience it? (Later.)

“Usually it tracks,” the doctor said. She asked me if there was anything unusual going on. She had a kind, concerned look on her face. I told her the same way I told everyone then. A litany of sad details repeated so often to doctors and specialists that it sounded like a school prayer or a mantra. A series of lines that had come to define us.

She nodded as she kept steady eye contact and told me that extreme stress can accelerate menopause.

I thought of my friend who’d lost her hair when she thought she’d lost her mother. Was my body so on the nose, such a cliché, that any threat to its offspring would flip my reproductive kill switch?

I came home stunned. And a little relieved. After languishing in the soupy, hellish limbo of no real answers or solutions in every other aspect of life, this was, at least, tangible. And by now, I was an expert, PhD-level researcher. I was going to slay menopause, at least. I told my husband almost as an afterthought, with a sort of get-a-load-of-this-style bewilderment.

He barely registered it. “Huh... Funny.” And on to putting out the next fire.

That night it occurred to me that this was the end of something. And that I had no clue what the other thing after the something was going to be. For about three days, I fixated on this shift in identity. Who was I without my period?

Would I still be attractive, sexy, juicy?

Was it something to be grieved? All the physical discomfort aside, something felt like it was being wrested from me against my will. The end of fertility felt like the end of me. Or of some secret, special vibrancy accorded me by the slightly miraculous alchemy my body performed each month.

The Dylan line comes to mind: “Ah, but I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now.”

God, I was earnest and misguided. And I took the idea of fertility so seriously, even though I was finished with having kids.

In a way, the ongoing, high-stakes juggling act I was engaged in was helpful. I would say that I mourned my idée fixe of my fruitfulness and sexiness for about a minute. I was aware of the thought, and then life just needed me to move on, fast. I did have to deal with the very real symptoms. On top of the body going wonky, I found myself standing in front of my desk, at the bottom of the stairs, in my child’s room, rooted in place wondering what I was doing there. Had I filled out this form, returned that call, picked up food? It was like trying to grasp at mist. On the other end of the spectrum, things like the wrong, non-organic milk made me want to stuff my fist in my mouth and scream into the void. The extremes were unbearable bedfellows. They were disruptive and not helping me be the person I needed to be. A true child of the 1970s, I researched and tried every tea and herb and modality out there. Nothing helped enough. I learned Vedic meditation. That helped with a lot of other things. (Thank you, Robert Hammond.) I ate only the good nutritious things. I did yoga. (Thank you, Kula Yoga.) But I was still trying to function with what felt like giant ballasts pulling me below the waterline after each attempt to clear it. And the messaging from the profit-generating world of how to be a better woman was telegraphing that if I only did more, ate less, purchased more powders and creams, I would be in control of my destiny. Finally, after much research about the misleading Women’s Health Initiative study from 2002 that scared a generation of women off hormone replacement therapy, and consultation with my doctor, I started bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. The best way to describe what happened once that kicked in is that you could throw a refrigerator at me and I would catch it, no sweat. Maybe even while holding an inexpert but informed conversation about nuclear fission on the side.

Eventually, I switched to regular hormone replacement therapy—my executive function skills are just too lacking for the bioidentical rigmarole. There was some thinking that we might stimulate my system enough to get it all back.

It never did come back.

But here’s the funny thing. Now, at 50 and watching all my close friends get thrown into the spin cycle: What a gift. A release. A deliverance, too. I love being done. I love the benefits of being post-menopausal. Beyond the freedom from the monthly piece. Other things happened. I got calmer. Stronger. Wiser. Less risible. My perspective on people, things, life got longer and kinder.

More important than anything at all: Our kid got better. I know to be grateful for it every single minute of every day. My husband came closer again. We decided to ditch the alienated-housemate thing and remember that we fell in love way back in the early 1990s for some excellent reasons. I’m grateful for that, too. I missed him. The desire came back. More intentional and sweet in the passion.

I also learned that most people are only there for the good times, and they disappear fast in the bad. It sounds like a terrible and awfully disappointing lesson. Ultimately, it wasn’t. It makes you absolutely cherish the ones who stick around even when you’re faltering and breaking. You end up feeling very rich in human kindness and generosity. Grateful. It’s a pretty my-cup-runneth-over feeling.

I didn’t stop existing when I went through menopause unexpectedly early. It’s like I got to walk through a secret door. I am still a woman, I am still sexual, but a lot of the noise is gone. I am less distracted. By now it’s a worn cliché, but you really do care less about what other people think. There’s a contentment that grows deeper roots. It isn’t a giving up or settling for less, per se. It’s an even wilder thing. It opens up whole worlds you’d otherwise never have noticed. Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly grateful for all this change wrought, that old “Maybe it’s Maybelline” ad runs through my head and I picture myself and my brilliant, wise, funny friends looking resplendently our age, gallivanting across a city street, and I replace the tagline with “Maybe it’s menopause.”

Any content published by Oprah Daily is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. It should not be regarded as a substitute for professional guidance from your healthcare provider.

In a refreshingly candid conversation with Oprah Daily Insiders, Oprah, Maria Shriver, Drew Barrymore, and doctors Sharon Malone, Heather Hirsch, and Judith Joseph, we set the record straight on all things menopause. Become an Oprah Daily Insider now to get access to this conversation and the full “The Life You Want” Class library.

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