“Beauty” Full – Control Your Physical, Mental and Spiritual Self Through Menopause is written for women, and provides what men need to know about menopause.
Mabel Kane’s mission is to educate as many men as women on taking charge of their health – physically and spiritually. This stems from her personal journey in dealing with the turmoil of menopause.
She is a wife, a mother, and a grandmother of a 20-month old.
Here is her story…
Yes, basically this is who I am…plus author and health professional with a Masters. I also do nursing on this side.
Menopause is the complete cessation or stopping of your period 12 full months That’s it. That is the book definition – it stops completely. If you’re spotting or having a little period here and there…or if you have a period this month and then another period the next month, you are not in menopause. You can become pregnant while you are having irregular periods but a woman can’t get pregnant after 12 months of amenorrhea (no periods).
There are three phases of menopause. There is peri-menopausal, menopausal and post-menopausal. After a woman reaches her first period, she is in one of these phases. – she could be considered pre-menopausal.
It is remarkably interesting to note, when you start your first period, you’re (according to the textbook) considered to be pre-menopausal. What is happening is you have already lost some of your eggs. Actually, it’s quite scary when you of think it.
Be Prepared to Be Unprepared for Menopause
When I transitioned through menopause to the full completion, the full cessation of my periods, I was unfit. I wasn’t ready okay. What this book does is it takes a young person (from 35 up until 65 or after) safely through perimenopause all the way to and through menopause and post-menopause. Therefore, I make the analogy of the guide as a fit bit. I did skip the pre-menopausal because teenagers do not want to know they are pre-menopausal.
A Battle with Self-Esteem
Three of my goals in writing this book are to:
- remove the reticence and shame that surround menopause
- reassure each woman that she is not alone
- articulate the inevitability of menopause
The predominant emotion I experienced is shame. This shame existed with my first period. I hid it from my mother. I don’t know why really. Because I never knew anything about having a period. But I just felt shame. So, when I reached the age of menopause, I also felt shame.
Here I was with symptoms like anxiety, especially feeling aware of being labelled the proverbial anxiety-stricken woman screaming at things when I wasn’t like that before.
As a result, I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. I felt shame because I thought my husband would think I am no longer sexy. I felt shame because I could no longer reproduce…I couldn’t have children anymore. I felt shame because I was getting old. I felt shame because my hair started to gray.
I felt shame because my vaginal secretion started to dry up. There is a saying in my country about ‘she’s a dried-up’ woman. So, I felt like I was dried out. All these feelings made me feel bad about going through menopause. I sort of had an idea about menstrual cycles. I’m a voracious reader. As a child, I read this book in my house called Becoming a Woman. It’s an incredibly old book, part of it was torn out (my older sisters must have read it). It was there so I read it and knew I was going to have it. However, I did not connect the two – I didn’t connect sexual maturity with having a period. So, I was ashamed.
It's Time To Talk About Menopause
You know, growing up my house is very, very, very extraordinarily conservative. Nobody talked about sex or where babies came from. Just imagine, as a small girl, my mother had my last brother. I was about six years old at the time going to pre-school. I told somebody this other lady had come over to help my mother. I saw her with the baby. I said, Ms. Emmy has a baby. And the girl in school said “no, it’s your mother’s baby.” What?! I was six – that’s bad, tragic this kind of information is held back from you.
This can lead to also feeling alone. I think a big part of it is personal denial. And you may not even know you are denying it. I’m not sure if it’s a mixture of shame. Look at men, for example. About the same time in their lives, men begin to have sexual dysfunction. They don’t talk about it either.
All these things that are happening to us, as human beings, are taboo.
No One Sought to Get to the Bottom of My Distress
In addition to the symptoms of unrelenting anxiety, no one even tried to help me understand the complexities of menopause. As a result, I was treated with Ativan and other antidepressants as I was still ovulating.
It must be noted here that not all women have a bad experience, yet, why did I need to suffer needlessly when information is available? When we talk about research dollars, for example, now you can get Cialis and all those kinds of things and they advertise on TV. I still haven’t seen any ads about menopause and when it is supposed to start. Menopause is hidden – still a secret.
The statistics show only 10% of women know what to expect before they reach menopause. Ten percent is tragic, but I think it is willful even though women don’t know that they’re hiding.
If women want to get the information, they can get the information.
“Beauty-full” is for all women, everywhere, precisely because all women experience menopause. What I did, is I put the book together so you don’t have to search all over the internet. You can find everything in one spot, or if you purchased, or if someone loaned the book to you, then you will have all you need to navigate the period of menopause.
Despair Can Push Loved Ones Away
On my Facebook page, a woman reached out stating she is going to spend a weekend with her husband. She’s worried as she no longer has vaginal secretions (very dry), no longer feeling sexy and feeling pain with intercourse. These are things which goes
through our heads and we feel alone in this. Everyday 6000 women go through menopause in the U.S. There is no need to feel alone, it’s like being alone in a crowd.
As we age, menopause is an inevitable part of our journey. This is not something that you need to be afraid of, nothing to be ashamed of or feel like we are in this by ourselves.
You are in control of your body, nobody else is, okay. Other than being a physical body, there is also a mental self and spiritual self. The idea is to harmonize all those parts of yourself so that you can be at peace with who you are as you go through the transitions of life.
Give Yourself Permission to Be Truly You
Nobody is here to live forever. No one is going to be young forever, and nobody is going to be perpetually healthy. So, get used to the program. You need to get used to connecting with your physical health, mental health, and spiritual health- this is what “beautiful” is all about.
Now, a lot of people I do not know regardless of what you think about each, I’m going to skip the other two and focus on spiritual health as this seems to be the most difficult to comprehend. Spiritual health – this is where your religion or your relationship with God comes in.
I know that I’m created in the image of God. It means, I am not like God in my flesh- for God is Spirit. I have a spirit. I now need to connect my physical, my mental, and my spiritual self to have homeostasis.
Homeostasis is the medical term for balance. When you’re reading about homeostasis, the crazy thing is, they don’t include spiritual self in science books.
You’re more than just flesh and blood, and a brain. You are spirit. That part of you connects with the creator. That’s why you have to get in touch with it. My book tells you how to connect with the spirit that is already in you because, especially being a woman, you are not only a part of His creation, but you are also co-creator with God.
Click here to watch Mabel’s full interview.
Her Story: Strength comes from having full knowledge as you navigate your menopause journey towards self-discovery.