Esther D. Rothblum

Menopausal Memoir

Ellen Cole, Esther D. Rothblum, Anne C. Herrmann

2014

The only extended, first-person narrative about menopause, A Menopausal Memoir: Letters from Another Climate explores the connection between menopause, mourning, and memory through nine fictional letters written to different addressees. The letters explain the author’s own experience of having a hysterectomy (without her permission) during surgery for endometriosis and being thrown into instant menopause. Herrmann expresses her experiences differently in each letter based on the recipient’s gender, sexual identity, and age, revealing the complexities of accepting menopause. Psychotherapists, psychologists, physicians, medical students, academics, and those interested in women’s health and women’s studies will receive insight into one woman’s experience and will learn how our bodies mold our sexual identity and shape many aspects of our lives.Writing these letters from the point of view of a scholar engaged in personal narrative but not in the familiar narrative of a woman married with children, Herrmann examines her journey of loss, recovery, and healing through feminist theory. The letters in A Menopausal Memoir reveal many other issues, including: the relationship between the female body and the meanings attached to it the different ways women tell their stories about difficult experiences negotiating the relationship between growing older and sexual identity the body’s response(s) to the loss of organs that form/inform its history the connection between body, identity, and disease A highly personal, yet theoretical, approach to the experience of menopause, A Menopausal Memoir explores how changes in the body affect your sexual identity, your relationships, and your feelings as a woman.

Menopause, Me and You

Ellen Cole, Esther D. Rothblum, Ann M. Voda

2013

Menopause, Me and You will help you put menopause in proper perspective--as a normal and natural developmental process in the lives of women, not as a disorder or state that causes disease. This informative book gives you self-monitoring tools for collecting information and monitoring changes in your body during menopause. These tools will also help you understand the dynamics of the change process. A guideline as to how to best use this information when interacting with care providers--especially those who view menopause as a disorder to be treated--is also included.Menopause, Me and You is filled with information-gathering tools, scientific facts, and stories from the true “experts” on menopause--the women themselves who have experienced or are experiencing menopause. In chapter after chapter, you’ll gain valuable information for viewing menopause from a woman-centered perspective. Specifically, the book includes: detailed information on conception and fertilization, reconceptualizing these events from a woman-centered, feminist perspective a description and reconceptualization of the menstrual cycle and menstruation, providing the knowledge base--the physiological, endrocrinological, and biochemical mechanisms that regulate the menstrual cycle and menstruation--to understand menopause as the closure of menstrual life and not the end of life a journey into the steroid hormone target cell--shows, at a scientific level, that women were genetically programmed to end the production of reproductive hormones a description and clarification of some of the terms used to describe menopause common menopausal changes and diseases attributed to being estrogen-deficient tools for gathering information, for “discovering knowledge,” about yourself--a menstrual calendar card, hot flash body diagrams, a basal body temperature record, a body composition record, a menstrual bleeding scale, and factors to consider when choosing a care providerThe women who share their experiences in