Are you in your 'millenopause' era?
Plus: 💡 creativity 🎤 Sabrina Carpenter 🗣️ fighting well with friends
Information is power, but when it comes to perimenopause, that can be complicated.
In recent years, there has been an explosion of women talking about their experience of menopause online, in books and on podcasts. Taboos are being shattered in a welcome shift.
But as the oldest millennials (those in their late 30s and early 40s) start to enter perimenopause - in what’s been dubbed the ‘millenopause’ - they are feeling anxious about the horror stories that catch our attention online, and the overwhelming amount of advice - not all of it trustworthy.
Luckily, the reality is far less dreadful than it may seem, and seven simple steps can help you feel prepared, not scared, as Emma Thomas writes in our feature article below.
In this issue of Take The Lead, we’re also talking about the Grammys, creativity, and how to fight well with a friend.
Enjoy, and please share your thoughts with us by commenting or replying directly to this email.
The Female Lead Team
We’re talking about…
🎵 Girl Grammys: Women dominated Sunday night’s Grammys. Beyoncé *finally* won Album of the Year and dedicated her victory to trailblazing country singer Linda Martell. Chappell Roan called for better working conditions for artists, and Charli XCX donated unused underwear from her performance to domestic violence survivors.
💡 Creativity crossroads: A new study suggests men and women express creativity differently, with men leaning into risk-taking and women leveraging empathy. It also found empathy can be a more powerful driver of creativity than risk-taking.
💼 Early exposure: Exposure to entrepreneurs makes teens more likely to become entrepreneurs later, a large study reports. And women who got that exposure when young had more successful businesses than those who did not.
🤸♀️ Workout win: Women feel safer and more empowered in fitness spaces where – no surprise – performance is prioritised over how they look, according to new research. They said they tended to find this in private or specialised gyms.
💰 Business boost: Visa Foundation has launched a three-year initiative to support women-led small businesses in the UK. ‘Catalyse Her’ will include training, community-building and micro-grants for 500 female founders.
Inspire me…
“Female artists have been shamed forever. In the Noughties it was Rihanna, in the Nineties it was Britney Spears, in the Eighties it was Madonna – and now it’s me.
“It is totally regressive.”
Sabrina Carpenter after being criticised for “setting back women’s rights” with her raunchy performances
Millennials are hitting perimenopause - and they are seriously anxious about it
By Emma Thomas, coach and founder of Managing the Menopause
It feels like we can’t move for celebrities talking about their experiences of perimenopause – from Naomi Watts and Drew Barrymore in the US to Davina McCall in the UK.
It’s because Gen Xers like me (those aged 45-60) are the first generation who refused to just ‘suck it up’ and not talk about menopause, like our mothers were expected to. Over the past five years, many of us have been at the forefront of tilting the taboos around menopause. We have embraced the opportunities presented by social media and podcasting to share our experiences and in so doing, feel less alone.
Now, millennials (those aged between 29 and 44) are starting to enter perimenopause territory. The term ‘millenopause’ describes this and was first used on X in 2020 according to Wiktionary, then written about in this article in 2022.
You’d think that the increased openness and information-sharing of the generation before them would mean millennials have a more happy experience of perimenopause. But one side-effect of all the public discussion is increased anxiety about exactly what they have coming.
Toolbox: How to fight well with a friend
From Terri Apter, psychologist and author of The Female Lead’s Disrupt Your Feed research
🤔 Why: Most of us avoid conflict with female friends. It can be especially hard because we ask a lot of these friendships. Ideally, we’d always root for one another and never feel competitive or let down. But conflict is not necessarily inconsistent with good friendship.
🔧 How: If something’s gone wrong, put aside the expectation that you’ll always be in harmony and speak up.
Identify the very specific thing your friend said or did that breaches your expectations of friendship, then you can begin a constructive conversation: ‘This is how I experienced our interchange. I was hurt/felt let down because usually I feel supported by you and I value that. What was happening from your perspective?’
Hopefully, your friend will respond to this request for a genuine conversation. She may be gobsmacked to hear she hurt you. Reassure her that you are listening to her side. Don’t interrupt or repeat how things seemed to you.
It’s possible that now your friend feels hurt. Whether or not you are convinced by what she tells you, you can explain, “Our friendship is so important to me. I didn’t want to bottle it up. I’m glad we spoke.”
Terri Apter will be speaking about her new book, Grandparenting, on February 12 in London.
Final thought
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