Not Pausing

By Ariela Nerubay Turndorf

Not Pausing: Redefining Women After Forty is a transformative exploration of the often-overlooked journey through perimenopause and beyond. In this empowering and enlightening book, the author weaves together a tapestry of personal narratives, insightful interviews, meticulously researched facts, and a touch of lighthearted humor to red

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manuscripts LLC
• Release date: Feb 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798885043656

Book preview

Contents

Introduction

Peri, Meno, Post-menopause… What is it anyway?

Unwelcomed to Perimenopause

The Three Stages

The Symptoms Blizzard

Anxie-tea: Brewing Empathy in a Pot of Nerves

Yes, I’m Still Hot. It Just Comes in Flashes.

Three A.M. Energy Boost, Three P.M. Energy Bust

From Gloom to Bloom

Fog with No Chance of Rain

You Are What You Eat

It’s Not You. It’s Me.

A Hairy Tale

But Wait, There Is More!

The as Good as it Gets Solutions

Baby-Making Countdown

Drink, Lift Weights, Repeat

To HRT, or Not to HRT… That’s the Question

A New Way

Let’s Change This!

Perimenopause Empathy Toolkit

Resources to Help You Not Pause!

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Introduction

The guest sticker for the hospital in Thousand Oaks is still glued to my computer with the date 10/07/22. It was a Friday, the day I visited Robin, my friend and future business partner, at the hospital and for the first time saw someone in a coma. She looked pale and lifeless, plugged to a million tubes. That dreaded sound of the heart monitor reminded me that my friend was battling for her life with every beep.

I had to see her looking like that to believe it. When I got the call from Alex, Robin’s husband, I thought it was a bad dream. I was in complete denial, hoping it was a mistake or an exaggeration of the situation. In my mind, it could not be possible for someone I was just having dinner with a couple of days prior to be, for all purposes, gone.

Holding Robin’s hand, I kept thinking, How in the world did this happen? How is a fifty-five-year-old wife and mother—smart, driven, and a successful business owner—battling to stay alive from one day to the next?

Robin is the kind of gal everyone loves. Before this happened, she was fun, goofy, and full of life. During our last dinner together, she casually mentioned, between laughs, that the doctor had found an aneurysm in her brain, and she was going to have surgery in a couple of days. She said, It’s nothing to worry about.

Sitting by my computer and looking at the hospital guest sticker, I realized it had been a year since Robin had her surgery and woke up from her coma unable to recognize anyone or speak clearly. Even though she is technically still here, I miss my friend.

Ten months before Robin entered her coma, we had been discussing various business ideas to develop. Only one had special significance to both of us as it was directly related to a life stage we were going through—menopause.

As middle-aged female executives, we were both experiencing menopause symptoms differently. While Robin was struggling with hormone-provoked weight gain, anxiety, and depression, my discomfort came from a massive wardrobe reduction driven by my growing midsection and disruptive hourly hot flashes. I had a rather restricted range of options when it came to pants, mainly limited to those equipped with elastic belts along with zip-up sweaters that I could quickly remove at the earliest indication of my internal fire blazing.

Robin and I had been facing the impacts of menopause privately for a few years. One day over lunch, one of my hot flashes ignited not only my body but our conversation about our menopause journeys. We shared our stories about how midlife changes had impacted our relationships with our husbands, our work, and our bodies.

We exchanged laughs and tears as we realized how private our journeys had been and how much easier they would have been if we’d only thought of talking to each other, raising a hand, and asking for advice or help. We realized how important it is for women to have menopause conversations and for beauty and health companies to develop products that work and can help manage the more than thirty-four symptoms currently identified as menopause related.1

We began researching the space and quickly discovered that women our age, experiencing a variety of symptoms, were hugely underserved, overlooked, and underestimated as a viable market. We learned that nearly 70 percent of doctors did not discuss menopause as a reproductive health topic with menopause-age patients, and as a result, women are left alone to figure out how to manage their symptoms, choosing natural supplements as a go-to solution representing a significant majority of menopause treatment sales.2 We found out that globally, women spend more than sixteen billion dollars on menopause-related products.3

We were very familiar with the frustration and confusion that comes with trying to navigate the menopause supplement and product market, and we wanted to find a way to make symptom relief accessible and truly effective for women like us. This was it. The golden pot at the end of the rainbow. The great sleeping giant. The business opportunity no one was looking at, and we were going to tap into it. We’d found the opportunity. Now we needed to decide what to do with it.

I left the hospital, holding back my tears to let the river of emotions flow once I sat in my car. I sat in the driver’s seat, held the steering wheel as hard as I could, and sobbed. I cried for a long time until I ran out of tears. I couldn’t remember the last time I cried that much and felt so hopeless. The thing is, I was not only crying about the possibility of losing a friend, but for the first time in my life I was also crying because I was terrified of dying. Robin’s hospitalization was a wakeup call and realization that being in my fifties I was closer to the end than the beginning of my life.

As I drove away from the hospital, I realized it was time to reevaluate priorities and choose where I was going to focus my precious time. How was I going to choose to live and what did such choices imply? At that moment, I made the decision not to pause. I decided to move forward and embrace this decade as one where I would make every day count. I would further strengthen the bond with my husband and children, planning trips and experiences that created memories. I would get healthier by changing my diet and restarting my exercise routine. I would write a book that could help women prepare for perimenopause and beyond so they are not caught by surprise, uninformed, and left feeling alone. I would become the living proof that women midlife are thriving, achieving, and continuing to grow every day.

Based on my reading, experience, hunches, and interviews, I believe women in perimenopause are as young as forty, sexually active, and are thriving. They are leading organizations, launching new businesses, and are starting new beginnings every day. Women in peri and post-menopause today are engaged with the world around them and are feeling and acting the most alive of any generation before them, and for sure… they are most definitely… not pausing.

Nearly everyone thinks or believes that women in menopause are old, emotional, gray-haired ladies who are no longer interested in sex and on the road to irrelevance or retirement. People say women in menopause are starting the beginning of their end. According to the Mayo Clinic in 2023, the average age of women in menopause in the United States is fifty-one.4 A study from Harvard Health Publishing in 2020 confirmed that research has clearly linked menopause to depression,5 and Bonafide’s State of Menopause Study in 2021 confirms that when menopause symptoms set in, women’s sexual intercourse (defined as penetrative sex) with their partner(s) fizzles out.6 Lastly, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College the average retirement age for a woman today is sixty-two years old.7

I was forty-four years young when I began experiencing menopause symptoms, only two years after giving birth to my third child. I remember the confusion from the emotional outbursts I was experiencing at the time, crying every day to and from work, feeling anxious, and confusing post-partum hormonal unbalance with what was soon confirmed to be the beginnings of perimenopause. Two years later, I was experiencing a series of recurring and disrupting hot flashes that impacted every aspect of my life—from how I dressed to how I set up my home and office with ventilators and manual fans to relieve the sudden bursts.

Today, I am a fifty-two years young. I am in the post-menopause stage and thriving as a chief marketing officer at a regional retailer while having a parallel career as an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California. I sit on the board of a nonprofit and manage a five-star rated Airbnb. In the last twelve months, I have been writing this book focused on empowering women over forty, all while raising a young family and maintaining a sexually active, loving connection with my husband and love of twenty years.

One just needs to look at Hollywood’s Gen-Xers leading actresses to get a new perspective. One example is Gwyneth Paltrow, in her fifties, currently in menopause, a working actress and founder of online high-end beauty site GOOP. Another is Naomi Watts, also in her fifties. She began perimenopause in her early forties. She also is a working actress and founder of Stripes, an online beauty site with products specifically designed for women in menopause.

Menopause aside, Jennifer Lopez has completely redefined what women in their fifties can look like, and she’s certainly not the only Hollywood woman doing that. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jennifer Aniston, Salma Hayek, and Halle Berry, all in their fifties, are also driving the conversation around menopause and shifting beauty standards.8 The list of women living with peri and post-menopause symptoms who are vibrant, and thriving is extensive.

This book offers an intimate look at peri and post-menopause, told by women from different backgrounds, who have experienced it in completely different ways and at different ages.

This book has been written for women in their late thirties to early forties. It serves as an important guide to fully prepare you for perimenopause and beyond. It will provide you with medically backed information, personal tips, and an intimate view at real women’s stories of what perimenopause is all about.

For women already in perimenopause, this book will provide you with a sense of community and important advice and guidance to help manage your symptoms and prepare you for the post-menopause phase.

For post-menopausal women, this book will provide you with a sense of community, aspiration, and connection while offering you a platform to make a change for the generations of women who follow. The book will also empower you to make positive changes to help improve your quality of life for the years ahead.

For spouses, family, friends, or any person supporting a woman during her peri or post-menopausal journey, this book will provide compassionate understanding of what your loved one is experiencing along with the tools to support her.

Why should you read it?

Because you need to be prepared if you want to endure less suffering, if you want to improve the quality of your life, and if you want to feel part of a community of women who are going through the same challenges you are going through. You need to read it so you can be part of the change and part of the movement to rename, reposition, and rebrand our grown woman’s journey without the stigma currently attached to the M word.

Part One:

Peri, Meno, Post-menopause… What is it anyway?

Chapter 1.

Unwelcomed to Perimenopause

So you are in your forties, and when you look in the mirror you see the same person as in your thirties. No change in your mind. Right? Your body still feels the same, you have your regular periods and high energy levels, and you’re probably busier than ever. If you are married with children, this is the time when your weekends are packed with your kids’ school and extracurricular activities. If you are a working woman, single or married, add your after hours and weekend work, business evening events, conferences, and extensive travel to the equation. In your forties, life is in high gear.

You are going so fast you don’t realize, although you feel the same, the