What’s in a Name??
This idea started to form during Super Bowl 2022.
I was tired from work, radiation, and coming to terms with starting a new round of treatment. I needed quiet so opted to spend time alone to finish my vision board and watch commercials—I mean the game.
I had zero intention of giving menopause a feature on my vision board. But in flipping through pages of multiple mags—which are much harder to find these days—I saw an article titled “Meno-Positive.”
I had been feeling anything BUT positive towards my new menopausal state so decided to read before flipping to the next page. The article was mostly about beauty products but words around how to accept aging resonated in a new way with me. I started cutting away like a mad woman.
Thoughts around better ways to be greeted and nurtured into this new phase starting flowing through my head. Could we celebrate this next coming of age in the same ways we have puberty, pregnancy, and marriage? I had been feeling all the way down about all of the unexpected changes my life had just started taking on but with this more positive lens I started thinking about a handful of the changes that brought unexpected joy. Like the new cute pajamas I started ordering, wearing more barely there and somewhat sexy tops, trying new CBD and THC edibles to help with new aches and nighttime hot flashes, taking baths and using facial masks more often. The latter were both things that I previously loved the idea of but rarely indulged in because they both felt like a waste of time when other things needed to be tended to. I realized that sudden menopause was making me tend to myself—and this is something we should celebrate a bit more.
I started sharing different ideas with my mom, sister and friends (also family) and they immediately affirmed and sprung into brainstorming mode with me.
Pausitive Outlook became the name that seemed to best capture this full journey. This is for the long haul—afterall women are live 1/3 to 1/2 of their lives post menopausal. It is a new state of being. Clearly, I’m now all things menopausal so my point of view and general attitude to life is going to reflect that—”pausitive outlook”.
