On Saturday, a small group of women gathered to watch the second episode of the Balance docuseries and open up a conversation about perimenopause and midlife.
This episode focused more on the medicalisation of menopause, including the impact of the Women’s Health Initiative study, and how its legacy continues to shape the information women receive today.
What followed was a more intimate and, at times, more charged conversation.
There was a shared recognition that women are often not given information in a way that allows them to make informed decisions about their own health. And alongside that, a growing awareness that this is part of something bigger… a long history of women’s bodies, cycles, and transitions being misunderstood, medicalised, or quietly dismissed.
What emerged in the conversation
Some of the themes that came up during the discussion included:
The need not only for individual support, but for change within the medical system and public understanding.ome of the themes that came up during the discussion included:
The frustration and anger many women feel when they realise how little accessible, balanced information they have been given about menopause and HRT.
A sense that the silence and taboo surrounding menopause are part of a wider pattern of women’s cyclical nature being overlooked or devalued.
The loss of rites of passage that once marked transitions in a woman’s life… and a growing desire to consciously reclaim them.
The importance of widening the conversation beyond women, so that partners, families, and society at large can better understand and support this stage of life.
- The relief of realising that many of the changes women experience in menopause and midlife are shared, not something we are navigating alone.
- The importance of having spaces where menopause and midlife can be spoken about openly and without judgment.
- The sense that this stage of life often brings deeper questions about identity, purpose, and what is changing internally.
- How powerful it can be to simply listen to each other and recognise our experiences in someone else’s story.
Moments that stayed with me
There was a moment in the conversation where I shared my own experience of having to advocate for myself within the public health system… and the long path to eventually receiving HRT on prescription.
It opened something in the room.
Not just recognition, but a shared sense of this shouldn’t be this hard.
There was anger. Frustration. And also a quiet but steady sense that something is beginning to shift… that these conversations are part of that change.
Voices in the room
Thank you again, a very interesting and enlightening afternoon!
— One of the women in the room, Balance screening
Why spaces like this matter
Conversations like this don’t just offer information.
They create space for women to question what they’ve been told, to share their lived experience, and to begin making sense of it in their own way.
When women come together like this, something deeper happens.
There is recognition, but also a re-claiming… of voice, of knowledge, and of the right to be informed and supported through this stage of life.
It doesn’t end here
This conversation also connects to something that is still unfolding.
The association currently being developed is rooted in many of the themes that came up in the room — the need for better education, for wider awareness, and for support not just for women, but for the people around them too.
If you would like to be part of future conversations like this, you are warmly welcome to join The Menopause Club, where we continue exploring these themes together each month.