In today’s episode, journalist and author Sam Baker talks to fellow writer Kate Spicer about her latest book The Shift. Join Sam and Kate as they discuss the cultural silence around menopause, the invisibility of women past child-bearing age and the
freedom, power and confidence of life after menopause.
The Birmingham Lit Fest Presents... podcast brings writers and readers together to discuss some of 2020’s best books. Each Thursday across the next few months we’ll be releasing new episodes of the podcast, including wonderful discussions
about writing, poetry, big ideas and social issues. Join us each week for exciting and inspiring conversations with new, and familiar, writers from the Midlands and beyond.
Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/.
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Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Guest Curator: Kit de Waal
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands
TRANSCRIPT
BLF Podcast Transcription, Episode 7 – Sam Baker in conversation with Kate Spicer
Kit de Waal
Welcome to the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast series. I’m Kit de Waal and I’ve worked with the Festival Director, Shantel Edwards, as Guest Curator of this year’s podcast series. Each Thursday across the next few months we’ll be releasing new episodes of the podcast, including wonderful discussions about writing, poetry, big ideas and social issues. In today’s episode, journalist and author Sam Baker talks to fellow writer Kate Spicer about her latest book The Shift. Part memoir and part feminist manifesto, The Shift redefines the narrative around menopause and makes visible the lives and experiences of women over 40. In this podcast, Sam and Kate discuss the cultural silence around menopause, the invisibility of women past child-bearing age and the freedom, power and confidence of life after menopause.
Kate Spicer
Hello, and welcome to the Birmingham Literature Festival. My name is Kate Spicer and I'm here with Sam Baker. Sam started her career in journalism and was the editor of some very significant British women's magazines including Just 17, Company, Cosmopolitan, Red. She went on to edit an internet magazine called The Pool, which was multiple award winning and generally recognized as changing the way women's journalism was done online. She's also written five novels, and now is the author of The Shift her first nonfiction book and a podcast of the same name. This is an extraordinary book and I would expect no less from a woman who was once my editor. It is very deep, very wide, it bears her soul, her guts, and also, I should say, her vagina.
Sam Baker
Thanks Kate!
Kate Spicer
It’s one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read about the menopause, because it is so incredibly fearless, and also refuses to get too boring on the technical stuff. Sam, can you start, can we start with a reading?
Sam Baker
Yeah, we can start with a reading and hopefully one that doesn't mention my vagina. I'm just going to read from the very beginning of the book.
‘It dawned on me that something wasn't right around the time I was 46. It could have been earlier, but after a lifetime of gynaecological chaos, I didn't pay much attention when my periods dribbled more or less to a halt. My confidence crashed. Not ideal when you've just ditched a high-profile job to start a business that depends, at least in part, on your capacity for self-belief. And now you're standing in the kitchen howling that you're a failure and resigning was a terrible mistake. Where once I would have bulldozed straight on, confident on the outside, if not inside, now I simply couldn't see a way through. On top of that came the depression, which was less a matter of highs and lows than a case of lows and lowers. I had less than ever to be depressed about I just was. Then came the sweats. Oh Lord, the sweats. I'm not sure which was worse. The hot flushes during the day when you could at least feel them roaring in and try to get to the nearest loo to lie down, body pressed to the cold and inevitably vile tiled floor until they passed or the night sweats. Often, I’d wake in a puddle, skin-soaked, hair slicked to my body, sheet and duvet drenched. I seriously worried I’d started wetting the bed. What the hell was going on? Then my good friend the flesh duvet moved in and decided to stay. Indefinitely. Of course, I had a suspicion, but I couldn't bear to accept it. I wasn't old enough was I? I was 46 going on, I don't know 30. I looked young for my age people always said. I felt young, wasn't menopause something that happened to old people? Was I old?
Despite the countless blogs and Facebook groups and self-help books, I didn't really know where to turn. None of my friends would admit to being perimenopausal yet and seeking help on social media felt like a public admission of aging, which sounds ridiculous now, but then, only a few years ago, when no one would even whisper the word menopause, it felt like a huge deal. Eventually, unable to carry on in the body and brain of someone I hardly recognised, I barged into the office of the gynaecologist who's helped me with my endless problems yelling “help give me all the drugs!” Brushing aside her futile attempts to talk me through a leaflet that explained the link between HRT and breast cancer, I left triumphant with a prescription and the leaflet. I never did read the leaflet. Right then I didn't care about the potential risks or side effects. All I cared about was taking a magic pill to bring me back to me. I took it and lucky for me, it worked. Slowly I started to re-emerge. As months passed, I began to be able to identify other women with that faintly deranged “what the fuck is happening to me” look in their eyes, and a tendency to suddenly overheat. It didn't happen overnight. After all, it's not as if you can go up to complete strangers and say, “oh, I noticed you were looking a bit hot”, and at work I was surrounded by women who were up to 20 years younger than me. Their conversation was all about whether they would ever be able to afford to buy a flat and if or when to start trying for a baby. Why would they care about someone so ancient that their eggs, and plenty of other bits, were drying up? If I'd known then what I know now, I would have approached the whole thing totally differently. I wouldn't have spent precious hours hunting down other women who looked a bit hot and irritable and kept tugging uncomfortably at their clothes. Instead, I would have developed a radar for the rare, relaxed older woman you see very occasionally in the streets, in cafes, at work dos. Rumour has it they're more plentiful in certain parts of America but in the UK, you have to look pretty hard to spot them and, on finding them, I would have begged them to share their wisdom. How did they get there? And what was it like on the other side? How did they shift ...
