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📣 Great news! The Autistic Perimenopause: A Temporary Regression has been renamed Divergent Menopause. Yay!! 💕

It’s less of a mouthful, for sure.

Only the name has changed, it is still me - Sam Galloway (she/her) and my faithful ragdoll cats Harry and Toby - steering the good ship Divergent Menopause.

TL;DR

Why “Divergent”? Inclusivity.

Why “Menopause”? Verb, not noun. To cover the entire menopause transition and beyond.

Why the rename?

For the sake of inclusivity for all our differently wired neurokin.

Most autistic people have other co-occuring neurodivergent conditions, such as ADHD, sensory processing disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia etc. Although we may not be aware of them all yet…

Not all neurodivergent people will identify as autistic, but they may be having a scary old menopause transition, sharing most, if not all, of the same struggles and challenges.

Let’s build each other up!

We all know that the academic research is unable to keep up in real time with what we are uncovering daily about the ways our menopause experiences diverge from “the norm”. I believe that research will soon catch up and uncover that all of us differently wired legends share similar strengths, vulnerabilities, support needs, cognitive regressions and so on.

I also believe that in time rigorous academic research will show that neurodivergent people are more likely than neurotypicals to have hormonally sensitive bodies and minds, and that we are collapsing under the weight of extreme hormonal flux.

While they are piecing it all together, running research projects and publishing evidence that will take even longer to disseminate into supporting the everyday challenges faced by neurodivergent people, we are already gathering here.

Our stories matter.

Every time you leave a comment, reply to someone else or generously share your story in the Auti Peri Q&A (yet to be renamed…) feature, you are helping to compile the anecdotal evidence of what it means to move through the menopause transition neurodivergently.

I could not do this work without you. We are trail blazers!

This is urgent now.

Autistic midlife women are 13 times more likely to attempt suicide than non-autistics.

1 in 4 ADHD women have attempted suicide.

Compounding a lifetime of high masking neurodivergence with menopausal hormonal flux exacerbates our vulnerability. We already have lower than average life expectancy. The sooner we understand the risks our differences can present, the sooner we can engage appropriate support systems and maintain our safety.

As neurodivergent people, I believe that we need to group together rather than being siloed by our different diagnoses.

We have more in common than we have differences.

Also, and I know I am not the only one, I am BOTH autistic AND have ADHD. An AuDHDer.

Additionally, I have diagnosed anxiety, undiagnosed hypermobility/connective tissue disorder, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, and other neurodivergences that I can’t even recall right now thanks to my major menopausal and post-general anaesthetic brain fog…

In my pre-peri life, I was likely gifted which is a yet another form of neurodivergence, but my cognitive regressions have raged on and on regardless of management of other symptoms. I hope it’s reversible as I age…

Although my ADHD and autism have both been late diagnosed, when I look back over my life I can see eras where one reigned over the other. Often it was the ADHD that ramped up in times of pre-peri hormonal flux, such as during puberty. Then something about being a mother made me present more autistically overall. Yet I was multi-neurodivergent all along.

Separating my neurodivergences is fruitless, I can no longer pretend to be more one than another. They all contribute to create the mess the person who is writing these words to you right now.

It feels increasingly inauthentic to present my writing purely from an autistic perspective, when I am an AuDHDer, with astonishing levels of executive dysfunction to prove it.

I don’t want to be down on my autism, my ADHD, or on any of the other complexities that make me me who I am.

And so in renaming this community Divergent Menopause I hope that we continue growing in numbers, diversity and momentum.

There are so many things I need to iron out, but I can’t right now because my brain is mush.

Three weeks post-hysterectomy feels like an entire lifetime and a fleeting moment. I have been told by the surgeon and my primary care doctors that the recovery time is 6 to 8 weeks, and also that the general anaesthetic may take 3 months to wear off entirely.

That means I am hopeful to be pain-free, fully mobile and have clarity of mind just in time for Christmas, which will be a gift. 🎄

The reason I am calling this move a “rename” rather than a “rebrand” is because Canva looked at my efforts for a new logo and told me to stop wasting both our time.

Here are some examples *cringe*

And why have I changed the name from Perimenopause to Menopause?

Simply because I have transitioned from a perimenopausal state to a surgically induced post-menopausal state in the slice of a scalpel (well, several, I have four incisions…).

I am fully aware that the word ‘menopause’ is generally used as a noun, with the dictionary meaning of being the day that is exactly one year after a person’s final menstrual bleed. Yet menopause does not often fit into tidy little boxes.

I haven’t had a menstrual cycle since I had a Mirena IUD inserted two years ago this month, and that was only advised because I was having a constant uncontrollable bleed that lasted months. I wouldn't call that a “period”, but we don’t have words for that either. The bleeds I have had since have been short, isolated emotional bodily trauma responses. One occured at my Dad’s deathbed, the other when my Mum’s visit to stay with my family in Aotearoa New Zealand ended and she went back to the UK. My GP advised me to anticipate another bleed in the event of any future little-t trauma.

Hormones impact our emotions. Emotions impact our hormones.

We are not as straightforward as medical science would like us to be, hence decades of gross negligence into avoiding research on women’s health.

I am your classically annoying correct autistic pedant. I know that the language around the menopause transition is deliberately blurred. We descend from generations of women who were not supposed to talk about their menstrual bleeds, nor their cessation.

We may never have heard from our sisters, cousins, aunties, mothers and grandmothers on the subject of hormones and menopause, and we were socialised to be “good girls” by not asking questions.

The language of menopause, even our own anatomy, has been denied us. Our neurodivergent ways of communicating go chronically misunderstood and silenced. When we have questions in midlife, medical science does not yet offer answers to our predicaments.

None of this is our fault though, and Divergent Menopause will continue to be a safe space for us to chat about our lived experiences. This remains a community that welcomes all forms of diversity.

For all these reasons, my use of the latter word in the new name Divergent Menopause will be intended as a verb, rather than a noun.

“Menopause” as an occurrence, a state of being, a transitional time in our lives.

As for the Auti Peri Q&A, I still welcome people to please forward their responses to me if they would like to feature in the series! 🙏

The Auti Peri Q&A

I will soon be adapting the Q&A questions to open it up to all neurodivergent people who would like to share their experience of the menopause transition.

I have other grand plans: to start a proper podcast, to rebrand Divergent Menopause with Autumnal tones, and perhaps to one day train as a menopause doula.

But that is all going to have to wait until my brain is fully functioning again.🤞

I thought I would have moved on from that stage in three weeks, but I suppose major surgery is major surgery… It is reminiscent of how I was feeling whilst still in hospital. ⬇️

As I type this, my homemade hysterectomy pillow is lying across my tummy and under my arms giving me oodles of support, as I hoped it would. My laptop is balancing precariously on top of it.

I have also been building this amazing LEGO set I was gifted to build whilst recovering from surgery. The wooden tray has also been balanced precariously on the pillow during the extensive build!

I hope the name change isn’t too much of a shock. I hate surprises and change, and even I am cringing at the new name, despite it being a change I have been intending to make for many months now.

It would be great if you could please share Divergent Menopause within your networks to help us get more visibility, have a wider reach, and, in so doing, support more people to feel less alone and lost in the haze of this challenging yet unavoidable life transition.

I think it’s time for another nap…

I hope you have a restful weekend ahead. Take good care of yourself.

Cheers,

Divergent Menopause (formerly known as The Autistic Perimenopause: A Temporary Regression) is a reader-supported publication. Paid subscriptions are on a patron model. If you find my work supportive and informative, and you value advocacy work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you! 💕