This goes out to all of our UVA colleagues, alumni, parents and friends who might be riding the hormone merry-go-round called menopause. Or perimenopause. Or that one-eyed paint-peeling pony barely moving up or down, post menopause.

Look, the only thing that pauses is the period. The women themselves — you and I, sputtering towards the end of our Reproductive Era Tour — we keep on going. In fits and starts of insomnia, muscle and bone loss, visceral fat gain, heart palpitations and anxiety, we have to keep going. We want to keep going for all the people and things we love, like work, family, friends, our own sense of agency and joy.

The question for me, through all these changes, has been “who’s out there to tell me what the heck is going on with me and what I can do about it?” My mom never talked about it. Most of my friends here are a decade younger than I. It wasn’t exactly polite to corner strangers who looked around my age, to ask, “who’s helping you get sleep and stay strong and maintain your sanity as your body keeps doing all these weird things?”  

My doctors helped to a point, prescribing a smidge of HRT, various supplements and pharmaceuticals, and a hearty “good luck.” To find some sense of control, I kept running and working out, thinking, well, at least my body will stay strong. My pelvic floor and lower back had a good laugh at that one.  

So yeah, I was very much, from age 46-53, and kind of remain, now, at age 62, “Are you there, God? It’s Me, Menopausal Mary!”  

I even wrote a book about it! : ) It didn’t sell. : (

“The endorphin boost I’ve been missing, is that I’m no longer alone in the post-menopausal wilderness!”

I’m writing about this now for the Women’s Center because my friend and colleague, Margaret, also in her early 60s, and I were talking about our physical limitations — her shoulder, my osteoporotic spine. We both have been physically active our whole lives, but these past couple of decades, our bodies have been pushing back — OK, kind of falling apart, actually. We feel as curious and questing and alive as the brilliant undergraduates we engage with at the Center. But we wanted a physical reset, a boost, a starting point for helping ourselves feel as physically strong and mobile as we do emotionally and intellectually.  

Margaret and I hatched a plan: we would pivot away from a disease-oriented approach to our aging selves and would try to chart a growth-oriented path forward. We needed a starting point and accountability, so we reached out to the University’s Exercise Physiology Core Research Lab, run by the dynamic professor and athlete Lisa Farr. We signed up for fitness tests that the lab offers to community members, measuring physical capabilities like resting metabolism, body composition, and VO2 max.

Using those results as markers for ourselves, we’d embark on a journey of change, working with physical therapists, trainers, and physicians in our area who, I have learned, are actually really here! It took me a long time, but I think I have actually found caring experts who want to help women stay as strong, mobile, and vigorous as possible.  

Over the next few months, Margaret and I are going to document our work towards the shared goals of increasing our stamina, endurance, and good humor, ha ha. We’ll share our progress and any setbacks we encounter, and we will retest ourselves this summer.

The results of the initial tests were illuminating, as was the entire phenomenal testing experience, in the all-woman lab. I’m starting to work with a UVA Recreation personal trainer (Julia Moschella, who as a kinesiology graduate student worked with Lisa Farr in the Exercise Physiology Core Lab). Margaret is hard at work already with physical therapist and trainer Anne Hilton, of Therapeutic Fitness.

The exhilarating news for me, the endorphin boost I’ve been missing, is that I’m no longer alone in the post-menopausal wilderness! And Margaret and I don’t want anyone out there to be alone, either.  

So please, adult women out there in the University of Virginia community, follow along with us! As we share with you, we hope to learn from you, too. Maybe you’ve found new tricks for your old bones, too, and maybe you’re no longer spinning on that frickin’ menopausal merry-go-round.  

We’d love to hear about it, and we hope to have your company as we push on towards better health and wellness, in what Margaret and I are calling our Regenerative Eras Tour. No friendship bracelets, and please god, no compression fractures, but still, we promise to deliver a fierce and fun show.