Aisling Grimley was 47 years old when she first started noticing symptoms like sore breasts and low mood.
Thinking she was too young to be going through menopause, she worried she might be pregnant.
“I was in my late 40s and already had four daughters, so pregnancy wasn’t something I would have welcomed,” she told RSVP Magazine. “I thought menopause was something that happened to women who were old and grey, but eventually I figured out that that’s what I was going through.”
The now 57-year-old Dubliner counts herself lucky that she didn’t have to endure hot flushes or night sweats, though her mental health did suffer.
“I was feeling down a lot and struggling with a lack of confidence,” she explained.
“I used to get really angry when I was making the dinner, and I realised ‘OK I’m actually really frustrated by some parts of my life.’
“I had been loving being a stay-at-home mum but I had been mainly at home for about 13 years and I realised I wanted a change.”
She started to do some research around menopause, and found that a lot of the discourse online was very negative. Her findings, coupled with her new urge to do something different with her time, led her to create a website called My Second Spring.
“This was back in 2013 and it was a bit taboo or risqué to be talking about the menopause!” she laughed.
“I just wanted to open the topic up. I thought ‘Half the population of the world are going through this, why is no-one talking about it?’
“Even friends were backing away from me as if I had a contagious disease when I started mentioning it. Or sometimes older women would act like it was no big deal, that they just breezed through it.
“I think women put themselves under pressure to be fabulous all the time because everyone else looks like they are doing that. If you’re allowed to admit that there’s something going on, then you can get help."
Aisling’s website is now visited by women all around the world, and she says attitudes to menopause have massively changed since she set it up.
“It’s so much more open now, even Joe Duffy is talking about it!” she went on.
“Perimenopause wasn’t really a known phrase when I set up the website. I thought menopause was when your periods stopped.
“I was going through menopause for six years. During that time my cycle was changing, I might go six months without a period. Then I got one, and I felt like a fraud because I had set up this menopause website!”
Although she stopped having periods altogether at age 54, she still suffers some symptoms she thinks might be linked to being post-menopausal.
“At the moment I’m having trouble sleeping and I’m wondering if it’s post-menopausal, it’s hard to know these things,” she explained.
She credits changing her lifestyle with helping her to manage the hormonal changes.
“I found the menopause very motivating. There aren’t many things in life that are guaranteed in terms of health issues, whereas menopause is. I found it was worth investing in my mental health, taking regular exercise, doing strength exercises and improving my diet. I tried to be in the best shape I could be during the crazy transition and I think that helped me.”
Visit www.mysecondspring.ie for information
