The volcano within: a study of women’s lived experience of the journey through natural menopause

Abstract

Background: The Office of National Statistics 2011 census reported 8,585600 women living in the United Kingdom (UK) between the ages of 45 and 59 years old. The natural menopause affects midlife women who have not experienced surgical or chemical interventions with the average age for menopause in the UK being 51 years. Menopause related changes are suggested to occur for
some women before their final menstrual period and can continue for a significant time after the cessation of menses. The aim of this study was to explore women's lived experience of menopause, how they made sense of their experience and to what extent experiences and perspectives were shared.

Methodology and methods: interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was applied to explore the lived experiences of nine women aged 45-60 years old. Data were collected via semi structured interviews and analysis guided by the idiographic, phenomenological and hermeneutic principles of IPA.

Findings: data analysis generated eight super-ordinate themes: Physical losses, emotional losses, loss of traditional notions of feminine identity, liberation from biological restrictions, liberation from social expectations, "sisterhood": a shared female experience, making social comparisons with other women and women's knowledge. Three higher order concepts were developed encapsulating the super-ordinate themes and capturing the bio psychosocial experiences of the
women who participated in this study: Losses: “I kind of assumed that it was something that lasted for a year or two and then it went and you went back to normal” (Kate:36), Liberation: Freedom from “cultural baggage...to feel that you’re becoming yourself finally” (Kate:486) and Women’s Business: The “stuff of legend” that only can be experienced and shared by women (Rose:278).

Conclusion: findings challenge the dominant Western cultural narrative which explains menopause in terms of a transition. The language of menopause with its focus on 'symptoms', encouraged women to view and experience menopause in a negative way perpetuating Western cultural ideals situating youth as desirable and rendering older women invisible. This study offers an in-depth nuanced understanding of the complex, individualised nature of the natural
menopause for a specific group of women and how their lived experience results in a new 'normal' and an acceptance of the changing me: “You just get on with it” (Rose:347).

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Identifiers

ORCID for Yvonne Middlewick: orcid.org/0000-0003-4691-9090

ORCID for Tracy Long-Sutehall: orcid.org/0000-0002-6661-9215

ORCID for Michelle Myall: orcid.org/0000-0001-8733-7412

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