Sandra Tsing Loh knows exactly what it’s like to go through menopause — and how to laugh through it. The writer, radio host, and actor has been through the fire, and now she’s bringing her brand of witty — and sometimes acerbic — humor to other women, to let them know that there is hope with her book The Madwoman in the Volvo.
The memoir accurately and humorously portrays the harrowing journey through menopause, especially for women in today’s fast-paced world, women who are part of what Loh calls “The Sandwich Generation,” multitasking women who are at the age in which they’re caring for their children and their parents.
The Madwoman in the Volvo is the year in the life of that menopausal woman, in which “every mood is admitted to. Maybe that can establish a conversation,” Loh says. “People tend to tell me that they laugh through it and go ‘Oh, that’s me; I’ve already experienced way more horrible things,’ and I think that sets the context for a pretty safe conversation.”
Now, Loh is bringing that conversation to the Endocrine Society’s Hormone Health Network, partnering with the organization to tout the Menopause Map, an interactive, peerto-peer support tool for women in the throes of menopause. The Madwoman in the Volvo and the Menopause Map together are fostering that conversation for women whose self-help menopause books and five-minute doctor’s office visits offer little help or comfort.
“When I first started going through perimenopause,” Loh says, “I experienced really severe mood swings, and I think women find that embarrassing, when you just wake up and cry, and I think that’s a hard thing to admit to anyone.”
The symptoms of this embarrassment are everywhere, says Loh. Most menopause books have nice, soft, white covers with flowers, instead of what should be there, the “the howling Medusa mask.” When a woman walks into a bank, and the teller asks how her Wednesday is going, most woman just smile and say fine, when they really want to curse the teller out. “We’re a polite society,” Loh says.
And those same menopause books all give identical medical advice — cut out alcohol, sugar, and caffeine; drink plenty of water; do yoga stretches before bed to help fight insomnia. “They’re just more tasks for you to do,” Loh says, “especially for women in the Sandwich Generation, if you’re the multitasking mom.” And for Loh, the alcohol, sugar, and caffeine go hand-in-hand with those precious few moments of the day a menopausal woman can get to herself, when she can have a glass of wine or a cup of coffee or a piece of chocolate. Ironically, Loh says, all the menopausal books give basically the same advice to women that pregnancy books give.
Faced with no help from the bookstore aisles, Loh decided it was best to look at menopause from a woman’s point of view, women who are afraid to talk about what they’re going through and whose doctors only talk with them for fi ve minutes before sending them on their way.
The Menopause Map is a handy tool for women to educate themselves before going to see their endocrinologists and get the most out of those visits, “rather than have their doctor lecture them on the basics of menopause,” Loh says. “If you can orient yourself first with the Menopause Map and get a lay of the land, that will save time at the doctor’s office so that you can talk more freely about your various symptoms.” The Menopause Map takes about five minutes to complete (“It’s not like a DMV test,” says Loh), and women can go to their doctors armed with the knowledge they gain using this tool.
It’s also important for women to know that they’re not going through menopause alone, which can be a common, shared feeling, even though menopause is a natural process. Still, menopause can make women feel like they’re entering a “creepy club,” a “team” they want no part of, because they already have too many other things to do.
But menopausal women are far from alone, and that team is growing. In fact, by 2015, almost half of all U.S. women will be menopausal, while more than half — the majority of women — will be age 45 and older, according to Loh. It makes sense; women are living longer now than ever before.
In the early 1900s, the average life expectancy for a woman was 48. Women now live into their 80s and 90s, “and our oldest citizen is a 116-year-old woman,” Loh says. “[Women] are fertility machines and longevity machines. We can make children and outlive [men]. We’re evolutionary rock stars.”
For Loh, menopause is like a “welcome home party” for women, a return to their hormone levels before they hit puberty and became fertile. “It’s reframing the whole discussion,” she says. “Instead of menopause being ‘the change,’ because we live so much longer, we’re only fertile that middle third of our lives. So menopause isn’t the change. Fertility is the change. Menopause is a return to where you were before the fertility cloud came down.”
And although menopause does have its drawbacks and negative connotations, it can ultimately be a “joyous time,” Loh says, full of things to look forward to (an empty nest, grandchildren, the next season of Downton Abbey), so long as women can laugh about it and keep a positive attitude. “Everyone’s going to get through this,” she says. “There are many wonderful things about being a woman at this particular time in life. We have almost half our lives ahead of us. It’s a wonderful time to be in this day and age, to see what the next decade or two or three will bring.”
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