Signage referring to menopause symptoms at the Atlantic Menopause Show's 'Cool Zone.' The conference, which is one of many nationwide, brings women together to hear the latest research.Carolina Andrade/The Globe and Mail
The day started with a joke about losing your glasses and ended with a reminder to moisturize your vagina.
At one of the breakout sessions, smartphones popped up in the audience, like lighters at an 80s concert, to grab a photo of the lusty items on a PowerPoint slide called “Sexual Menu.”
During breaks, Cyndi Lauper belted from the speakers about girls just wanting to have fun while participants stuffed their purses with free lubricant-filled Pleasure Pods shaped like half an egg shell.
Hundreds of people attended the Halifax conference.Carolina Andrade/The Globe and Mail
This was the scene at the first Atlantic Menopause Show, one of a growing number of conventions happening across the country to bring women together to hear the latest research on mood changes and brain fog, hormone therapy and lube, and all the other symptoms and treatments for the natural and inevitable life stage their mothers used to call “the Change” with red-faced whispers.
The sold-out crowd of 700 in Halifax did not buy a $50 ticket to whisper. When keynote speaker Ardelle Piper, an Ottawa gynecologist and menopause specialist, referenced hormone-induced rage during perimenopause – “this chili has some spice” – a collective laughter rippled across the packed room of middle-aged women. A call for better menopause care received enthusiastic applause. So did a foreplay joke about long runways required for airplane take off.
The topics in the small-group sessions included coping with mental-health issues, how to handle menopause issues at work and what food or fitness might improve your symptoms. In the crowded sleep lecture, the audience was advised to restrict naps, breathe more fresh air and get out of bed at night when they’re tossing and turning, until they feel sleepy again.
Down the hall, at the afternoon sexual-health session, Toronto doctor Sarah Naomi Shaw explained that women were often made to feel broken in menopause, when the real culprit was a lack of education, research and understanding in both culture and science. Even doctors, she said, “weren’t taught how to look at vulvas.”
On the large screen at the front of the room, she clicked to an inside-and-out sketch of the clitoris that unexpectedly resembled a praying mantis. “This is a very impressive organ,” she gushed, as smartphones captured the image.
For further education, she recommended a book called Becoming Cliterate. Pass it on to your sons, she advised. “Their future girlfriends will be so happy.” Click, click went the room.
All this education was useful, more than one participant said. But the sense of community was even better, akin to receiving a group hug from hundreds of girlfriends who know exactly what you’re going through.
Some attendees of the sold-out conference select breakout session. Tickets went for $50 a piece.Carolina Andrade/The Globe and Mail
Marie Tortola Conway, 82, sat with her eldest daughter, Judy Rockett, 58, experiencing this kind of community for the first time. Her own mother, Ms. Tortola Conway said, never spoke the word sex in her presence, let alone menopause. Her girlfriends knew as little as she did. And the men, “they didn’t have a clue.”
Friends Darlene Corbett and Scarlett Jess with their Pleasure Pods at the Atlantic Menopause Show.Carolina Andrade/The Globe and Mail
But it’s never too late, Ms. Tortola Conway decided after watching a clip about the conference on the evening news. “This is the most I’ve heard the word menopause in my life,” she said, admitting with regret that she’d never discussed the subject earlier with her four daughters. “If you’d talked to us,” Ms. Rockett pointed out, “we would have understood why you were so cranky.”
Her mother shrugged. “I was taught to just get through it.” Thankfully, she said, this next generation of women received a more empowering message.
A few tables away, Scarlett Jess, a medical receptionist at Canadian Forces Base Greenwood was finishing the gluten and dairy-free chicken lunch with a handful of the 40 other women who bussed the 150 kilometres from the base for the conference.
“We’re all struggling,” Ms. Jess, 57, observed. She feels old and crusty. Her best friend Darlene, she volunteered, goes “completely crazy” sometimes.
“It’s true,” admitted Darlene Corbett, who happened to be listening from the other side of the table. “I did think I was going crazy.”
André Picard: Hormone replacement therapy has a role to play in treating menopause symptoms
A few years ago, Ms. Corbett, 58, was barely sleeping. Her thinning hair made her weep, the too-hot sun made her rage. She had an embarrassing public meltdown over a small inconvenience. At work, she forgot the word for filing cabinet. Her husband spent more than his usual time fixing the tractor in the barn of their hobby farm. “I think I had every symptom,” she said, “I didn’t know how to get help.”
Dr. Maria Migas is one of the leading advocates for menopause awareness.Carolina Andrade/The Globe and Mail
Ms. Corbett was finally prescribed hormone replacement therapy. She’s sleeping better and raging less. But last February, she reluctantly quit her job, because her brain fog made it too hard to focus. She’s been waiting a year already to see a gynecologist.
For both women, the gift of this day is learning they aren’t alone. “My husband is amazing,” Ms. Jess said, “but I would rather give birth than have sex.” She now knows this is normal, and there are treatments such as pelvic floor therapy to help.
In the trade show area, where you could buy a purple snake-like device to shore up that aforementioned pelvic floor, a team from the IWK Foundation displayed the results of a recent survey. More than 27,000 Maritime women identified menopause-related issues as their top health priority.
Family physician Maria Migas, co-founder of the Menopause Society of Nova Scotia and one of the conference organizers, has a vision for the future: patients with access to free menopause clinics; the topic openly discussed in schools and government; nobody telling women to suck it up. The future we might already have, she suggested, if men got hot flashes.
Until then, there’s female solidarity. At the end of the day, with a disco beat thumping in the main room, Ms. Corbett and Ms. Jess have hopped up to dance. They’re already planning to return next year. The conference resolved that “is this just me?” worry, Ms. Jess said. “I feel more confident to ask, ‘what’s your experience?’ Because it’s everybody.”
A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Sarah Naomi Shaw as a Halifax doctor. This has been corrected.
