Harsimran kaur ON  Nov 21, 2023, IN BOOK REVIEW,MENOPAUSING: The Positive Roadmap to Your Second Innings BY Davina McCall with DR Naomi Potter/–NON FICTION

Rating: 4/5

An end to life’s paen, and now bemused by the insatiable-self wandering incoherently; Menopause has left many wondering if perpetuity is a blatant lie? Look at how the putrescent hormones that once belonged to a body, erudite and enterprising, have slipped in a coarse melodrama of sinuous conflicts? I would call it the eschatology of a woman’s body serrated by the dilly-dally Estrogen and the devilry of Progesterone; a dejure in dehisce.

One can talk about ‘Menopause’ in length but nobody wants to! ‘Shame’, ‘neglect’ and ‘denial’ come in cropper insitu seeming like an interminable virtue; let’s be the ‘good woman’ bearing the pain and be stoic thereby making it an inviolable enemy.

Isn’t Menopause an implacable battlement that we all fear?

It’s actually made to look like a demon in the den ready to detonate a series of intemperate hostilities with our own body. What follows are desultory conversations impinging on ‘survival strategies’; the belly looks as if it can never dance without the dewlap of tires around the mid-section. We anyhow start living with it. The wretched feeling leaves us not and all we learn is to survive.

Is it that bad? Is it like putting your head on the chopping block? Or a formidable wind that we must bend to?

It’s nothing short of a chicanery—of the hormones ingratiated by every woman;

“Please have mercy, remain in balance. Any incoherence makes us futile and caterwaul. Be in harmony and don’t ricochet off to make us disenchanting and disempowered.” 

I bet it is a feeling all women go through in the 40’s—Premenopausal or Menopausal. The trick is to flow with the tide demystifying the copious camoflouge of tearful shadows, and definitely not run against it.

This is what exactly the book ‘Menopausing: The Positive Roadmap to Your Second Spring’ by Davina McCall with DR Naomi Potter’ talks about; to take the Menopause journey head on, be prepared for when the dung hits the fan, and for God’s sake stop fighting the smoke and shadows. Menopause is for ‘real’ and is there to stay!

Davina McCall is a well-known television celebrity and is famous for presenting ‘Big Brother’ ‘The Masked Singer’ and ‘Long Lost Family’. It was her unceremonious tryst with Premenopause, the debilitating symptoms that eventually emboldened her cause for ‘Menopause Matters’. Along with DR Naomi Potter, a specialist in the ‘British Menopause Society’, Davina has written this comprehensive and enlightening book that goes beyond the functionality of Menopause, talking in length about its dissensions and awareness in desideratum with self-care.

Davina has all her heart for HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy). In contrast to the bewildering ideologue of ‘HRT’ causes Breast Cancer, the author has imperturbably validated that HRT is no lour. On the flip side, it has many advantages that can help to overcome the grotty and is definitely a ‘messiah’ for the beleaguered.

The battering ram of ‘Menopause’ swinging a plethora of symptoms is bleak and profoundly batters self-confidence—you find all this in the book; the ill-disposed hot flushes, the unapologetic vaginal dryness and the parochial brain fog. The ineluctable skin lethargy is a despondent companion. The flutter of heart rustles recklessly making the beat dance in cavort—all this and much more inchoate to reach an imponderable disarray, either happening in isolation or en bloc.

‘Menopausing’ is definitely an eye-opener! However, it is somewhat appalling to see how we women grapple to the idea of Menopause—a cow ready to be slaughtered. We all act indiscernible, not ready to accept that this journey intertwines our emotions, fragility and confidence in a tight knot skewed and churned into a hornets’ nest. We are judged often for our impressionistic fault lines, and c’mon how the hell this lunatic impropriety proffered on us—it makes us clueless? In the end, what all we do is ask for impunity. 

In the book, as you go on to read more reliable stuff, you have the eyes for the Menopause battles of the ‘woman warriors’. One deems to think that yes! It’s so necessary to be aware of one’s body, and how you and only you can decide to take care of it. With medicine burgeoning to greater heights, the Hormone Replacement Therapy has gradually cut the carpet to fit the corner stone. It has starkly changed the Menopause journey;

• ‘Who wants to be hag ridden by impolitic memory loss’?
•  ‘Get close to the execrable skin spots and experience the perfidy that was never thought of; the loose and pendulous skin speaks volumes of low self-confidence’  
• ‘The incapacitated mind and body has a different story to tell; women fatigued and loss of libido—all hampering the espousal of the already lived life’

HRT has come out as a miraculous hedge-hammer! Certainly, plenty of experiences to swear by. Other therapies like CBT, herbal medicines and mindfulness play a deep role to calm the already raging body during the transition period. 

For all the women out there going through Premenopause and Menopause, the book is a Bible. ‘You are not alone’—a feeling that morally falls in place, and urges to bury inure and disinter the gaiety and the rip-roar.

TAKE AWAY

Engaging and illuminating…