A reflection on this important women's health issue by Nancy Fisher, '01
Who am I?
I’m an almost 46-year-old yoga teacher and mother of two living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the hills rise and fall like a perimenopausal woman’s hormones. You might call me the poster child for perimenopause. I’ve had it all. Painful heavy periods, heart palpitations, poor sleep, anxiety, depression, fatigue, brain fog, muscle soreness, joint pain, itchy ears, itchy skin, vaginal changes, low libido, difficulty orgasming, night sweats, numbing, and tingling in limbs. The two things I found most distressing were not knowing what was happening to me, and the dismissal by my medical provider of any symptom as mere aging to be tolerated.
The Most Obvious Resource
First, I went to the postmenopausal woman who birthed me and also happens to be a doctor. Surely she’d have knowledge to share. But when I asked her about menopause, she said she skated through without symptoms, or at least without noticing symptoms (although looking back, I think I could pick out a few). She confessed that she didn’t think she was the best, most compassionate doctor for treating menopause, since, according to her, her own experience went so smoothly.
From what I’ve learned in the past few years, passing down knowledge on menopause from one generation to the next, while seemingly helpful and natural, is not typical. Menopause, historically a shameful transition of loss, isn’t a topic women have felt comfortable discussing. My mother’s generation may have been especially hushed because of the fear around treatment generated during their transition. Furthermore, suffering has always been, more often than not, taken for granted as a feminine burden. After the brief chat (two sentences) with my mother, it was clearly time to turn elsewhere. I, for one, was not interested in grinning and bearing it. I was looking for solutions.
The Second Most Obvious but Failed Resource
My symptoms, especially the last two (ignorance and medical dismissal), pushed me to dive deep into everything and anything related to hormones. I began talking to friends in exercise classes and on hikes. I called my aunts, who didn’t have quite the same experience as my mother, some of them soaking their sheets nightly for years, but suffered without hormone therapy nevertheless because their generation and their generation’s doctors were scared off of hormones by an infamous study that falsely linked hormones to breast cancer. I’d talk to any woman of a certain age any chance I got, at the gym, at my children’s schools, at the grocery store. Although we all experienced our own special sauce of symptoms, there was a shared sense of WTF from being side-swiped with little to no warning. Wouldn’t it have been nice somewhere during my many years of formal education, including four years at Dartmouth, to have learned anything about menopause? After all, a little over half the population will experience it and will spend a third to a half of their lives there. In England, one of several countries outside the US that appears more enlightened on menopause, they teach about this phase of life in elementary school.
Hormonal Education
I began reading ferociously. Books, articles, medical journals, and studies. I listened to many, many podcasts, some of them multiple times. I was determined to turn Meno-land inside out to find the best, most accurate information. Now, over two years later, I finally feel like I have the answers I was looking for.
From cow ovaries and horse urine to “bioidentical” and transdermal. From Big Pharma to Big Natural. From Feminine Forever to Suzanne Somers to Gwyneth Paltrow to Drew Barrymore (among others). From the Nurses’ Health Study to the WHI (including an exciting 20-year follow-up just released). From HRT to MHT. From the doctor’s office to telemedicine and social media. The misinformation, the marketing, the studies, the scandals, and the science. It’s been a riveting ride.
Now I’m compelled to share what I’ve found, to dispel some untruths, and to challenge the widely accepted belief that suffering through hormonal evolution (the term I like better than menopause) is unavoidable. I love the women in my communities and want better for them and for me. A grassroots effort to help locally has evolved into a Substack newsletter to reach more people. I’m not alone in efforts to make hormone knowledge mainstream. I’ve been collecting those voices in the wilderness, the allies, heroes, leaders, and truth seekers, to share with others.
Who the heck is Zevah?
A few years ago, at a party, a friend told me she didn’t think my name suited me, without me sharing that my name had never felt like it fit. On the spot, she renamed me “Zevah,” a name that instantly felt more like home. In the renaming was an invitation to rebirth. Since then, I’ve been growing more into that glimmer she saw and I felt in me, a more ME version of me. This spontaneous evolution makes sense from what I’ve learned from people like neuroscientist and menopause expert, Dr. Lisa Mosconi. Our brains change during hormonal evolution, and it’s definitely not all brain fog. I’ve experienced some undeniable benefits during this rewiring. Somehow, I simultaneously feel more me but also more a part of all the people around me as well. More connected, more alive, more focused, more inspired.
What the heck is Zevah?
Zevah is a seeker of truth and an advocate for health. Zevah is bigger than me. Zevah is a manifesto. Zevah is a hope for a community, a…
Zone for Education, Vitality, Abundance & Health
Zevah is a Substack dedicated to our birthright.
Our Birthright:
It is our birthright to understand how hormones function in our bodies, how they change over time, and how we can best support these changes so that we may evolve into the best versions of ourselves.
Come join me on Substack!
