What If Menopause Isn't What You Think It Is?
- Cortney
- Aug 18
- 9 min read
Updated: Aug 19
Can I ask you something?
What do you believe happens to a woman when she gets older?
Really.
Not what you know intellectually. Not what you would say if you were trying to give the enlightened answer.
What do you actually believe?
Do you believe your body gets harder to manage? That you'll gain weight? Lose energy? Stop sleeping? Become less attractive? Less relevant? That your hormones will betray you? (ooooh, that’s a big one). That menopause is something you have to survive before emerging slightly sweatier on the other side?
Because I think that's worth paying attention to.
I believe your truth gets reflected back to you.
And if that's true, I'd be very careful about the story you're telling yourself about what it means to become a woman in her forties and fifties.
Especially because there's something fascinating happening when you look around the world.
Women everywhere go through menopause.
But women everywhere do not experience it, describe it or even think about it in exactly the same way.
Why Isn’t the Menopause Experience Universal?
Obviously, the biological transition is real.
Your hormones change. Your reproductive years end.
But the story around those changes?
That's where things get really interesting.
Decades of cross-cultural research have found substantial differences in what women report during menopause, which symptoms they associate with it, how disruptive they perceive the transition to be and what menopause itself means to them.
Even the World Health Organization acknowledges that women's experiences of menopause are influenced by familial and sociocultural factors—including how menopause and female aging are viewed within their culture and their social circles.
Read that again.
How female aging is viewed in your culture and social circles may influence your experience of it.
Well...
Now you've got my attention!
Because suddenly I have another question.
What have our culture and social circles taught us to expect?
Somewhere Along the Way, We Made Menopause the Enemy
Think about the language surrounding women and aging in Western culture.
Anti-aging. Age-defying. Turn back the clock. Fight menopause. Beat belly fat. Get your old body back. Look ten years younger.
Apparently we're in an all-out war against Tuesday eventually becoming Wednesday.
And I'm not sure why we can't just embrace Wednesday?
😂
And I'm not judging you if you use the creams. I use the creams. (Thanks, Gigi!)
I'm just wondering when getting older became something we were supposed to constantly correct.
Because what if you aren't supposed to get your old body back?
What if you're not supposed to get your old life back?
What if you're not supposed to become the 35-year-old version of yourself with better supplements?
What if menopause isn't decline at all?
What if it's a new expression? An expansion…
And what if the reason this transition can feel so uncomfortable is because we're trying to drag an old version of ourselves into a life that's asking us to become someone new?
You guys!!!
That feels very different to me.
Then I Started Reading About Japan
This is where I went down the rabbit hole.
Anthropologist Margaret Lock spent years studying menopause in Japan, and her work challenged the assumption that menopause has one universal meaning.
In her research, Japanese women regarded menopause as a natural life-cycle transition—not the devil we need to wrestle to the ground and kill. And, surprise - symptom reporting was low, and women didn't connect common midlife complaints specifically to menopause like we do in the US.
There's even a Japanese concept—kōnenki—that encompasses a broader midlife transition rather than simply your periods stopped, welcome to menopause.
I love that.
Not because I think we should all move to Japan. Although, considering Japan has already brought me some of my favorite things like Reiki and Shinrin Yoku, I'm certainly willing to hear them out.
😂
But because it reminds me that the meaning we've attached to menopause isn't the only meaning available.
Different women. Different cultures. Different expectations. Different stories.
And very different experiences.
Now we're having the conversation I want to have.
Maybe You Inherited Your Truth
Before you ever experienced a hot flash, you probably knew what one was.
You probably were also told you wouldn't sleep, you'd forget everything, your metabolism would pack its bags and leave, and somehow a mysterious belly would arrive despite you apparently doing absolutely nothing differently.
You knew the story before you ever lived the story.
Think about that.
You were taught what menopause meant before you ever had the opportunity to experience it for yourself.
From your mother. Your friends. Television. Doctors. Social media. Advertisements.
And don't even get me started on that last one.
Menopause has become a multibillion-dollar global industry. And I'm not saying there aren't wonderful products, treatments and resources available to women—there absolutely are.
But businesses need a problem to solve.
And there's a lot more money to be made convincing you that something is wrong with you than reminding you that you're moving through a natural transition in your life. (boring, they say)
Then there's the woman in your social circles who announced that menopause destroyed her sleep, metabolism, sex life and ability to remember why she walked upstairs.
Some of those stories may become yours.
But do all of them have to?
I don't think so.
Because here's the part I believe deeply:
You are allowed to choose your truth.
And Apparently Beliefs About Aging Are Pretty Powerful
Yale researcher Becca Levy followed older adults whose beliefs about aging had been measured years earlier. Those with more positive self-perceptions of aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer than those with less positive perceptions.
Seven and a half years.
Excuse me?!
Now, I'm not telling you that thinking happy thoughts adds precisely 7.5 years to your life.
I'm telling you that I find it very interesting that what we believe about aging keeps showing up in conversations about how we experience aging.
Because I don't think our beliefs are innocent.
I think they become instructions.
And personally?
I'm becoming much more selective about the instructions I'm willing to give myself.
I'm Not Interested in "Getting Back to Normal"
I hear this phrase constantly around midlife.
"I just want to feel like myself again."
I understand it.
But lately I've been wondering...
Which self?
The woman you were at 25?
35?
42?
Why are we assuming she's the gold standard?
I think this is where I should probably tell you a little about my own experience.
I was fully in menopause by 46. Years earlier, I had promised myself I wasn't going to buy into all the stories I'd heard about what was supposed to happen to me when I got here. And honestly? For the most part, I think I've done pretty well with that. Even my primary care doctor once told me that of all her patients, I seemed to experience the fewest menopause "symptoms."
But that doesn't mean nothing changed.
I get hot at night. Sometimes I toss and turn. And yes, I gained weight and acquired that super-fun belly fat everyone had been warning me about.
And that's where I caught myself doing the very thing I'd promised myself I wouldn't do.
"I am trying EVERYTHING and nothing works."
I said it over and over.
And weirdly enough...nothing kept working. 😂 Go figure!! (isn’t that ironic).
Then I had a rather inconvenient realization.
Apparently eating an entire bag of chips at night—which, depending on the bag, can clock in somewhere around 2,000 calories—is not particularly conducive to losing belly fat.
Who knew?
But sure.
Let's blame menopause.
😂
Once I stopped arguing for the story that my body had suddenly become impossible to manage, I could ask a much more useful question:
What does my body need from me now?
And the answer wasn't more of what used to work.
It was different.
My entire life, when I wanted to lose weight, I restricted. Crash diet. Eat less. Push harder. Basically starve myself until my jeans fit again.
My body wasn't asking me to do that anymore.
It wanted to be nourished.
Protein. Whole foods. Healthy carbohydrates. Enough food to actually support the life I was asking it to live.
And apparently I didn't need to spend an hour doing cardio with Jane Fonda in a leotard and leg warmers either.
If you're under 40, Google it.
😂
I needed to lift.
I needed muscle.
I needed strong bones.
I needed recovery.
But here's where it got really interesting.
It wasn't just my body asking me to change.
My mind was. My soul was. My spirit was. My relationships were. My work was.
It started to feel like every part of my life was asking the same question:
What do you need now?
And maybe even more importantly:
What do you want now?
That was different.
Because I realized how easy it is to wake up every morning and unconsciously regurgitate a life you created in your thirties.
Same habits. Same roles. Same relationships. Same priorities. Same expectations. Same definition of success.
And then wonder why something feels off.
YOU'RE NOT THAT WOMAN ANYMORE.
Why would her life still fit you perfectly?
Maybe your body isn't asking you to go backward.
Maybe it's asking you to pay attention.
Maybe the way you ate for the first half of your life isn't how you want to eat now. Maybe the way you exercised isn't what your body wants anymore. Maybe you need more recovery. More strength. More protein. More sleep. More boundaries. More sex. Less sex. Different sex. More time alone. More time outside. More purpose. More joy. Different relationships. Different work. A completely different definition of success.
I don't know.
That's the point.
I don't know what your next expression looks like.
But I think you do. (even if it is a quiet whisper)
And maybe menopause is one hell of an invitation to find out.
Because that's what my experience has taught me:
You can have a strong body. But maybe not by doing the same things.
You can have joy. But maybe not by finding it in the same places.
You can have an extraordinary life. But maybe not by continuing to live the one you built twenty years ago.
Menopause wasn't asking me to suffer!
It wasn't asking me to become less.
It was begging me to wake up.
Pay attention.
Something has changed.
You have changed.
And maybe that's exactly what's supposed to happen.
And here's another reason I think we should be having this conversation.
The World Health Organization describes menopause as an opportunity to reassess health, lifestyle and goals. And globally, a woman who reaches 60 can expect, on average, another 21 years of life.
Twenty-one years.
And many of us will have considerably more than that.
40, 50, 60 - That's not an ending.
That's a whole lot of life left to be lived. Enjoyed. Embraced.
I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in spending it trying to recreate the woman I used to be.
I'm much more interested in meeting the woman I'm becoming.
But What If This Already Is Your Truth?
Here's the tricky part.
Maybe you're reading this thinking, Okay Cortney, that's great, but I already believe menopause means weight gain. I already believe aging means slowing down. I already believe my best body is behind me.
Good.
Not because I want you to believe those things.
Because now you can see them.
And I think awareness is the first crack in any belief we've been carrying unconsciously.
You can't question a story you don't realize you're telling.
But once you see it?
Now you get to decide whether you want to keep it.
And here's where I think we sometimes stop too soon.
We identify the belief and say:
"I don't want to believe that anymore."
Okay.
What are you going to believe instead?
Because I don't think you simply remove a belief and leave an empty space where it used to live.
You replace it.
And not with something I prescribe for you.
Not with something your doctor, your mother, your best friend or some woman on Instagram tells you to believe.
With something you choose.
Because you don't have to inherit our culture's definition of an aging woman.
You don't have to inherit your mother's.
You don't have to inherit mine.
You get to decide.
I've chosen to believe menopause is not decline.
It's an invitation to expand.
I'm choosing to believe my body isn't becoming less intelligent. It's communicating differently. In fact, I am increasingly more intuitive.
And I'm choosing to believe the second half isn't where life starts getting smaller.
It's where I finally have enough experience, wisdom, freedom and self-awareness to stop living according to everyone else's rules.
Will my life change?
Of course.
That's kind of the point.
Because maybe menopause was never asking us to stay the same.
Maybe it was an invitation to evolve like we've never evolved before.
And if my truth is going to be reflected back to me...
that's a truth I'm very interested in living.
What truth are you interested in living?
If something surfaced while you were reading this—some belief you suddenly realized you've been carrying about menopause, aging, your body or what's possible for you now—I created something to help you work with exactly that.
The Menopause Truth Reset™ is an 18-minute Guided Integration designed to move you from contraction to expansion around menopause.
This isn't me giving you a new set of beliefs.
You are the expert on you.
I'll guide you through recognizing the negative beliefs you've been carrying, releasing what you no longer choose, and creating the space to decide what you want to believe instead.
Because recognizing the old truth is where this conversation begins.
Choosing a new one is where your experience can begin to change.
xo,
Cortney
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