Suzette is a storyteller who daylights as a healthcare manager. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, she’s lived in the UK for over 30 years. Always happy to have a strong coffee and a great book, Suzette is outnumbered in her house by a Ghanaian husband and two dynamic sons, 16 and 10. Suzette talks about the taboo of the menopause in different cultures.

Until the age of five I lived in a house of women, with Mummy, Ma (great-grandmother), Aunty Tazy (great aunt) and Nenny (godmother), who was my mum’s cousin and daughter of my great aunt.

I remember Aunty Tazy as always mopping her brow or neck with a flannel, saying how weary she felt, entering and exiting a room several times as she had forgotten what she was searching for, difficulty in recalling the names of friends or family members and despite being an accomplished seamstress, losing her confidence after making several sewing errors.

A precocious child, I possessed a vocabulary beyond my years. I knew metamorphosis and measles but never once heard the word menopause mentioned. Now, as I navigate the waves of perimenopause, I wish I could return to that time to see if Aunty Tazy was offered help or reassurance, and I am glad that there is more awareness about this normal phase in a woman’s life.

As a recovering perfectionist, anxiety and depression have been constant companions. However, every day, the snuggling in my bed became an increasingly seductive preference. No one is ever going to die from a meal I cook, neither are they going to rave about it. I’ve been known to kill cacti, and my personal style of dressing and decorating may never be featured in a magazine. And that’s okay. I have always prided myself on my intellect; the ability to create calm from the chaos, develop and execute a plan, write a persuasive report and to do it with panache.

I would be grossly understating when I say that the brain fog and memory lapses, characterised by struggling to understand simple facts, grasping for names of colleagues, and pausing mid-sentence in meetings – have been devasting.

This woolly-headedness is almost bested by the rage. I have always had a temper; I struggled with it in my teens, and in my twenties and thirties I learnt how to respond and not react, how to self-soothe, to ask for help and to delegate. This revamped rage is fuelled by anything and everything and ready to consume all, including me, if I am not dissolved by the tsunami of tears I shed. And as for the weight gain, I am not even ready to deal.

I am grateful that the first time I met Debs Crelly, I had the conviction to say that I was not okay in response to her asking how I was. Within a few sentences, she strongly suggested that I may be perimenopausal and invited me to join the MyPause chats. This community has been my safe space, from which I learnt from experts by experience and by training, as peers shared symptoms and suggested solutions. We also had talks by specialists including a urogynaecological nurse, dermatologist, herbalist, and clinical psychologist.

These sessions have empowered and equipped me:

• with the language to speak to my doctor about HRT, and when the patches didn’t work to return and ask for tablets
• to seek out nutritional support
• to dedicate time and money to therapy and getting a personal trainer
• to re-commit to meditation, reflection, and journaling
• to explain to my husband and sons (16 and 10 – never too young to know) and encourage them to understand and provide me with support
• to discuss with my mum and female elders who were reticent at first, given the Trinbagonian tendency to not talk about ‘those things’
• to raise awareness among my family and friends, some of whom have also self-identified as perimenopausal
• to have the confidence to undergo training to become a workplace menopause advocate
• to interact online with other menopause advocates such as the wonderful Nina Kuypers from Black Women in Menopause (you can listen to her talk on the Diverse Minds podcast). This led to her sending me several copies of the book Black and Menopausal.

Additionally, I have had the blessing of a super supportive manager and the importance of this cannot be emphasised enough.

As I reminisce about Aunty Tazy, I am empathetic, and I extend that compassion to myself and all who find themselves in the ever-changing sea that is this time of life.