Funny Menopause Stories All Women Can Relate To
Let’s face it: at a glance, menopause does not always scream “fun times.” With all the various changes that we going through during ‘the transition” it can be pretty easy to lose ourselves feeling down, out of control, and lonely.
But at the end of the day, menopause is just a normal part of life. And as doom-and-gloom and hushed-up as it might be in today’s society, it doesn’t have to be completely dreary! In fact, when we start to talk about it among other women going through the same things, sometimes menopause can be downright funny.
If you’re in the mood for a lighthearted laugh, read on for some hilarious menopause stories by real women going through perimenopause and/or menopause. It’s a great way to remind ourselves that, as hard as it sometimes is, perimenopause can actually be pretty funny when we think about it.
The random and unpredictable mood swings
Much like puberty and your period, menopause is often accompanied by sudden mood swings brought about in large part by fluctuating hormones. Even though they can (literally) make us want to cry sometimes, there’s admittedly a pretty funny side to having meltdowns when we let ourselves laugh about it after the fact!
A prime example of this can be found in the podcast Menopod, which describes itself as “the podcast that tackles puberty’s evil older sister.” In an episode suitably titled “The funny side of the menopause,” host Susan Lee described a moment when she was driving to work and a song from her childhood triggered a ton of unexpected emotion.
In her words: “So driving to work, packed traffic, and Julie Andrews came onto the radio being interviewed for something, and then they played ‘Feed the Birds from Mary Poppins. Sobbed. Unreasonably. I mean big snotty sobs, I don’t just mean the odd tear. I was heartbroken, ugly crying.” She wasn’t sure if it reminded her of her childhood or what, but acknowledged just how unexpected and random that triggered reaction was, and how funny the moment was after the fact as she laughed about it with her cohost. “What are you doing, crying to Mary Poppins?”
Mass hot flashes?
Hot flashes are such a pertinent reality for so many menopausal women that it can be really easy to forget that they aren’t always the source of all the heat around you. In an essay called “Who Turned Up The Heat?,” Medium writer Please Don’t Call Me Ma’am recalls a time when she thought that the heat in her office was the result of a mass hot flash between her and all the other perimenopausal women she worked with… only to realize that it was actually just the literal thermostat being turned too high when her young, male coworker also brought up how hot the room was.
The brain fog attacks
Foggy cognition and poor memory are admittedly some of the worst, most inconvenient symptoms of menopause, especially if you’re trying to do something important. But it has its hilarious sides as well!
In response to a thread asking menopausal women to share their funniest “brain fart” (read: brain fog) stories, Reddit user u/femmerockstar shared a funny anecdote of mixing up names: “I was calling for my cat in the bushes along my fence line, and my neighbor came out on her back deck and said ‘Oh I didn't realize your son was here this weekend!’ I'd been calling my son's name into the bushes in that singsongy voice you use to call animals!! I'm guessing it was my neighbor's polite way of asking why I was looking for my 5'11" adult son in the bushes.”
The many different faces of perimenopause
Finally, there’s just no way around it: menopause can be a huge roller coaster that affects a variety of aspects of our lives, from our family to our relationships and even our daily habits.
Lisa Renee wrote a hilarious and honest piece on perimenopause appropriately titled Open Letter to Women: Notes on a body’s midlife storms. In it, she describes several funny and relatable anecdotes that someone might experience while going through menopause. Some of our favorites quotes from her piece:
- “Your husband will be a rock. He will shop and cook and still love you. You will catch him, however, muttering, rolling his own eyes, and blowing air. It will really piss you off.”
- “Your doctor will look at you, a 45-year-old woman with night sweats, insomnia, anxiety, and crazy eyes, and say, ‘No, it can’t be perimenopause if your cycle is still regular.’ She will be wrong. You will hate her.”
- “You will find sex alternately mind-blowing and nonexistent, emphasis probably on the latter. This is because your brain vacillates between two messages: ‘Take me immediately,’ or ‘Touch me and die.’ With an emphasis probably, unfortunately, on the latter. Your body may scream, “Take me immediately!’ when (and if) you ovulate because biology wants you to propagate the species. Clearly, there is no real link between biology and common sense — I have propagated the species four times now and am currently just trying to keep everyone alive.”
- “You will begin reading obituaries, which will remind you of the great sport you had, years ago, ribbing your grandmother about this same activity. You will feel guilt and remorse.”
- “You will become unhinged. You will suddenly, bizarrely, love all romantic comedies.”
When it comes to menopause, laughter really is the best medicine sometimes.
There are only so many things that we can do to mitigate the symptoms of menopause, and it’s not like we can turn back the clock or stop the natural aging process. So sometimes, we just need to give ourselves permission to laugh about it all! This is why talking about menopause with other women can be so healing: it’s always helpful to remember that the world isn’t ending, we’re still essentially the same people we always were beneath the hormones, and that there’s always a silver lining when we let ourselves see it.
