Demeter Press | Musings on Perimenopause and Menopause: Identity, Experience, Transition.

Price: $34.95

Page Count: 300

Publication Date: May 2021

ISBN: 978-1-77258-285-7

A woman muses about buying lovely new panties; another journeys inward and outward to redefine her life, a blogger offers information, support, and community to perimenopausal women; researchers uncover myths and misconceptions about migrant and refugee women’s experiences of menopause; a gerontology scholar extrapolates for menopause the meanings of cultural representations of childbirth; a sociologist and intersex advocate challenges her medically constructed menopause; young women’s stories inform an inquiry into the health and social repercussions of primary ovarian insufficiency—all in a collection of research papers and personal narratives that moves far beyond the idea of menopause as a mere biological marker. While biomedical and feminist researchers agree that menopause is a time of transition and border crossing, they offer diverse viewpoints about whether perimenopause and menopause signal deficiency and burden, or growth and freedom, or both. So too, contributors to this collection—influenced by factors of age, cultural background, societal context, and physical and psychological experience—vary significantly in their perspectives of this process. Research, analysis, narrative, poetry, and art intermingle to create a multi-textured montage that challenges stereotypes, probes relationships, and defies categorization. Musings on Perimenopause and Menopause: Identity, Experience, Transition, provides insight into how women think about and experience the transition to menopause in contemporary times.

Book Launch

This interdisciplinary and multi-genre collection about women’s menopausal transitions is necessary and welcome. The contributors’ collective honesty, curiosity, and conclusions about women’s transitions to the next stages of their lives—whether through poetry, visual art, literature, or their own lived experience—will be valuable for any reader wanting to know more about this topic. I recommend it certainly for people of any age who will or have gone through these transitions, but also for medical personnel and others who should seek more understanding about women’s lives.

-Nicole L Willey, Professor of English
Kent State University and editor of Feminist Fathering; Fathering Feminists

With contributions from artists, academics, and actual people; this collection of musings on menopause is like attending a multidisciplinary conference without having to leave your armchair.

- Lisa Leger, Justisse fertility educator

Musings is an engaging exploration of the menopausal transition through the kaleidoscope lens of women who’ve lived it. With its diversity of voices and refreshing departure from the idea that menopause is a biological condition to be managed, this book offers the tantalizing possibility that perimenopause and menopause are instead transformative experiences that forge new perspectives and identities.

- Lara Briden, ND, author of Hormone Repair Manual: Every Woman’s Guide to Healthy Hormones After 40.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Laura Wershler and Heather Dillaway
1. MENO-TYPICAL
The Anatomy of a Hot Flash
Beth Osnes
“Gone Girl:” The Menopause in Popular Culture
Mary Jane Lupton
Myths and Misconceptions: Migrant and Refugee Women’s Constructions and Experiences of Menopause
Jane Ussher, Alexandra Hawkey, and Janette Perz
The SWAN Study: Race, Gender, Identity, and Menopause
Mindy Fried
Slouching Toward Menopause
Joanne Gilbert
2. OUT OF STEP
Before Your Time: When Menopause Comes Too Soon
Evelina W. Sterling, Christine Eads, Starr Vuchetich, and Catherine M. Gordon
Shadow Story
Yolanda Kauffman
Just Before Menopause
Donna J. Gelagotis Lee
Patches Not Pads: An Intersex Experience with Post-Surgical (Pseudo) Menopause
Georgiann Davis and Koyel Khan
3. BLOOD RELATIONS
Waiting for Seventeen Days
Heather Dillaway
“Dear Magnolia…..Nobody Really Understands….What Can I Do?”: Reflections on a Perimenopausal Blog as Social Support
Gillian Anderson
Finding Bedrock
Marie Maccagno
Menopause Claimed
Laura Wershler
4. UNLEASHED
Harsh Blessings: On Finding Poetry at Fifty
Magali Roy-Féquière
Uninhabitable Lives: Narrative Strategies of Menopause Experience in Notes on a Scandal and Carol
Sylvie Teillay-Gambaudo
Perimenopause: The Body, Mind, and Spirit in Transition
Victoria Team
From the Crowning to the Crone: Extrapolating Judy Chicago’s Birth Project to Older Women Anne Barrett
All New Panties
Cayo Gamber
Contributor Notes

Heather Dillaway is a professor of sociology and associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Her research focuses on women's perimenopause and menopause experiences, and is published in a range of feminist journals including Gender & Society; Sex Roles; Journal of Women & Aging; Healthcare for Women International; Women and Health; Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal; and Feminist Formations. Heather’s work on this reproductive transition, as well as her research into the reproductive health experiences of women with physical disabilities, seeks to highlight women’s everyday voices and lived experiences.

Laura Wershler discovered a love for editing the words of other while earning a certificate in journalism (2011) from Mount Royal University. She brings to her editing and writing decades of experience as a sexual and reproductive health advocate, commentator, and educator. Her work has appeared in various newspapers, journals, online media, and the anthology Without Apology: Writings on Abortion in Canada (2016). Two personal essays about women’s aging will appear in other anthologies published in 2021. One is from her memoir-in-progress about her role as advocate and companion to her mother in deep old age.

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Musings on Perimenopause and Menopause: Identity, Experience, Transition.

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