As I talk with other women in peri-menopause, menopause, or even post-menopause I’m hearing a lot of angst about how our bodies are changing and all the negativity that comes with no longer being of reproductive age. There are some drawbacks, but the benefit of menopause far outweighs them in my book. What is the main benefit of menopause?

NO PERIODS!!!!!!

Or so I hear, I wouldn’t know as I’m 50 and still very much menstrual. I’ve been bleeding since I was 12. I cannot express….just how much I hate periods. I remember life before this monthly pain and grossness. It was GRAND. To live without recurring pain, nausea, bloating, and blood just randomly leaking, clotting, splooging out of my genitals.

The randomness of it all is one of the worst aspects. Even as a teenager when I still had nice, regular, little girl periods and could predict the day it would start, I still never knew what time it would start. So I’d wear a pad to school just in case it started, but then it wouldn’t start until after school. So next time I’d not do that, but it would start at school and I’d have to run to the bathroom. That’s if I was lucky enough to start with a splooge, if it was a leak I might not feel it. So I had a few accidents and have to wear a sweater or something wrapped around my waist the rest of the day.

THEN as I got older, ‘regular’ became less like clockwork and more like, ‘around that time’. I went from 28 day cycles in my teens and 20s to 28-30ish day cycles in my 30s and 40s. By late 40s it was ‘whenever my body feels like it’ cycles, with heavy, flooding bleeding and massive clots. I’m 2 months into 50 and guess what?? Second period hit right at 28 days. So I guess nature hates me so much it’s attempting to give me regular periods again, in a last ditch attempt at forcing me to get pregnant. Jokes on you nature!! My husband is fixed!

Anyway, so that is the benefit to menopause. No more periods, and if you’re lucky you get a few decades of bodily freedom before you croak.