How it all started: My own journey to being a menopause champion
From crippling anxiety to anger to feeling compelled to advocate for others… Lynda Bailey, Founder of Making Menopause Work, tells her personal story of menopause awareness and how it moved her to start to campaign for more support in the workplace.
When I first started experiencing menopause symptoms, I had no idea what they were. I really thought I’d lost it and this was how my life was now going to be.
I hated it. And I didn’t like the person I had become either. I couldn’t find joy in anything, I was afraid to go out of the house and I suffered crippling levels of anxiety.
It also meant that I couldn’t do the job I loved – being an Inspector with West Midlands Police – a career I had been giving everything to for over 20 years.
It took a while to establish what was going on. Now, I realise it’s a familiar story.
When I was experiencing heart palpitations, my doctor sent me to a cardiologist, wearing a heart monitor, only to be told there was nothing wrong with my heart. The cardiologist told me he was surprised to be seeing a lot of women my age through such referrals and, in fact, his wife had started to experience the same. So it was back to the doctor, who promptly gave me a prescription for anti-depressants – which I didn’t take.
Eventually after much research, upset and heartache, I found out that what I was experiencing was perimenopause.
In one sense, it was a relief to finally have an answer.
But the anger swiftly followed.
I was angry because why did I not know about this? And why did the medical profession not recognise my symptoms and support me correctly?
Through all this time, I was not at work – I was off sick, for 3 months. That in itself was shocking! The only time I had ever been off for such a length of time was when I took 3 months’ maternity leave.
When I eventually went back to work, I felt I needed to have a standard response for what would I tell people when they asked how I was. So I decided to be honest and tell them it was menopause. (After all, I’m known for my straight talking.)
It was an interesting time. Nobody was talking about this and no-one seemed to know anything. To top it all, the organisation had NOTHING in place to support menopausal employees.
So for the first time in my service, I joined the women’s network. Mainly because they were listening and I felt they offered an established platform from which to conduct operations and get in front of the right people to start some menopause conversations.
I also put the feelers out… Because I knew I couldn’t be the only woman in a workforce of 11,000 to be experiencing this.
What resulted was a strong group of 20 (still nowhere near the reality, I’m sure, but a good start). We were the first menopause support group and we were the first champions in our organisation to be taking action.
And take action we did! Full conferences, talking to the Chief, showing up at DEI meetings, speaking to the Head of HR, providing training to others, the list goes on…
We were activists and we were making a difference.
This is why I feel so passionate about menopause champions today. And this is exactly why we set up our MMW Menopause Champion Network.
Male or female, menopause champions are the people on the ground who understand the challenges that this natural life stage can bring to women everywhere. They’re the ones who are willing to go that extra bit further to make a difference, to take a stand and talk about organisations offering appropriate support – while others stand by, shuffling under the weight of embarrassment, shame or even taboo.
Our Menopause Champion Network provides continuous support because it’s the continuity of what we do that is going to make a difference.
We know that women don’t want special treatment. We just want to be able to get on with our jobs.
That’s why normalising menopause in the workplace is our mission. And why my work also continues…