Meno Chat // Life On The Other Side - Of Reproduction

“I thought I hated my periods… until I lost them.”

“Kiss your period while it’s there… when it goes away, everything dries up.”

As a psychologist specialised in women’s reproductive health, I often have the privilege of listening to patients - and friends, going through this intricate life stage that is Menopause. Premenopause, Perimepause, Menopause, are complex physiological and psychological transitions that can span over a certain number of years and mark the end of a woman’s reproductive era. They are accompanied by a number of objective and subjective symptoms that can vary in severity but impact a woman’s everyday life in a multitude of ways. 

While every woman’s experience is unique, menopause is typically marked by a collection of symptoms - both visible and invisible. These can include hot flashes, night sweats, irregular or absent periods, weight fluctuations, sleep disturbances, vaginal dryness, changes in libido, and joint or muscle pain. But just as impactful are the less spoken about symptoms: mood swings, anxiety, depression, brain fog, and a sense of emotional instability that can feel uncanny. Triggered by more or less subtle hormonal shifts, these symptoms can affect everything from relationships to self-esteem to professional performance.

As familiar as these menopausal symptoms might sound, there are three psychological components that particularly mark Perimenopause, that I would like to focus on, namely the grief of losing fertility forever, the transition into the Third Age, and the frequent coinciding of a mother’s menopause with a daughter’s beginning of menses.

// The Inextricable Grief of Losing Fertility Forever

Even when a woman has never actively pursued motherhood, the biological closing of that door can carry a surprising weight. Fertility isn’t just about having children; it is also about potential. The potential for life. The capacity to create, nurture, and bring something into being — literally and metaphorically.

The moment that potential disappears, a subtle yet deep grief can surface. For some, it is acute and overwhelming. For others, it is rather a quiet, persistent ache; a sense of something intangible slipping away. In therapy, I often hear women say: “I didn’t think I would care… but I do.” Or: “I thought I was done, but now it feels like my body has made the decision for me.”

For those of us who are mothers already, parting with the idea of having another baby can trigger a deep sense of nostalgia and grief; nostalgia for the physicality of those early newborn cuddles and smells, especially as our older children grow in independence, grief for our glorious younger bodies, carrying pregnancies to term.

This natural response to a profound biological shift causes a sense of grief rarely spoken about openly. Many women might even internalize it as shame or failure. And as any form of mourning, this one too calls for acknowledgement and space.

// The Shift to the Third Age and the Loss of Youthfulness

A socio-cultural imperative ties a woman’s worth to her youth, her fertility, and her physical allure. Menopause, then, can feel like an erasure of visibility, of sexual agency, of social relevance. As estrogen declines, so too can the sense of being seen - by partners, by the workplace, by society at large.

Women in midlife often describe feeling “out of place” in spaces that once felt natural. Clothes no longer fit the same, energy levels are different, desire changes. This often coincides with a deep re-evaluation of one’s identity and purpose. What once defined us — the roles of mother, lover, nurturer, may no longer apply in the same way. Who are we becoming?

But within this disruption lies opportunity. The “third age” is not just the end of youth; it can be the beginning of a more self-defined life. Freed from hormonal cycles and societal expectations placed on younger women, many women find a new creative energy, a genuine form of self-confidence, and clarity as to their goals and aspirations.

// When Menopause and Puberty Meet in the Same Household

One of the most under-discussed aspects of midlife womanhood is that menopause often coincides with our daughters entering puberty. It is a moment of biological poetry or irony: one body is winding down, just as another is revving up.

For mothers and daughters, this can create both deep connection and sharp friction. Hormones are flying in opposite directions. One is craving space, the other, stability. One is beginning to bleed, while the other is bleeding for the last time.

I have worked with women who say this time is both beautiful and brutal:

“I was buying her first pads while packing away my last.”“We were both crying at dinner — and neither of us knew why.”“She’s asking me all these questions about her developing womanhood. Mine is fading away.”

This shared yet divergent path can create a profound emotional mirror. The daughter reminds the mother of the body she once inhabited. The mother, in turn, becomes a future the daughter isn’t yet ready to face. Navigating this with compassion and openness, can be healing for both; but only if the mother’s transition is acknowledged as equally important, equally worthy of attention and care.

Cloaked in silence far too long or diminished to a cliché, Menopause is merely a developmental life stage; it is a deeply human transition deserving of understanding, compassion, and voice. As women cross this threshold - whether with resistance, relief or both - we must honour the complexity of the experience. Because life on the other side of reproduction is not an ending, but a different kind of becoming.

// Dr Vassiliki Simoglou, Counseling Psychologist PhD. - Thrive Wellbeing Centre