Here's how the list started:

I was thinking about this yesterday - I really wish someone had added "surges of empathy towards other meno women" to the list of symptoms of peri  :-)  Sometimes, when I see a post-meno woman living a full and bold and beautiful life I feel a terrific ... ?pride? ?respect? ?love? ... I don't know what the emotion is but it brings a *huge* smile to my face :-))  And a fellow peri woman's trials brings me out in a terrible urge to <<<hug.  I used to be quite a cool fish really - but I rather like myself better this way <G. (Silver)

       This is such a great idea. Think of what we do to introduce women to menopause on asm. We send them to look at the List of 33 which starts out by telling them all the things that can go haywire at menopause. That tells a powerful story right there. We need to develop a List of 33 that shares all the good things that happen as well.  Let's start with yours as number one. (Joan)
 
1. Surges of empathy towards other meno women
2. Freedom from monthly periods.
3. No more worry about getting pregnant
4. Flashes of deep creativity and insight
5. Discovering new approaches to old problems - logical folks becoming more intuitive, or vice versa. 
6. Sense of deep autonomy. Ceasing to be a docile 'yes-girl' and becoming a fully fledged woman. Yes, yes, yes......I stick up for myself now!
7. Feeling far more grounded in the present moment, than dwelling in the past or obsessing about the future
8. Hot flashes sometimes act as pointers to underlying stress. One woman finds they shed feelings of angst and stress  from the body, rather than internalizing those feelings. 
9. Need for less sleep giving more hours in the day, thereby extending life during good productive years and giving time to ourselves when the rest of the household is fast asleep.
10. New surges of emotions that enliven and energize and lead to new risk taking adventures and rewards
11. Increased awareness of one's own body and how it works. 
12. Menofog: Brief vacations for the busy brain. A growing ability to react to one's momentary slips and foibles with laughter instead of tears ("How the heck did that bra get in the freezer?") In spite of menofog or, perhaps, because of it, the ability to pare things down to their essence and think logically.
13. The growing knowledge that one has less time left can prompt one to make better (deeper, more profound) use of that time, paring away the trivia in favor of what really counts
14. (OK, this is a little wicked): The ability to get away with behavior that once would have brought scorn or criticism from others. I think of this as the "Oh, well, she's getting old, you know" syndrome, and I intend to take full advantage of it.
15. Wisdom (ok, I haven't got it yet BUT I read in a recent post (1) that Wisdom is 95% fatigue   :-)
16. A sense of closeness with nature
17. Enriching of SO relationships
18. Beneficial reassessment of lifestyle, habits and diet
19. Desire to clear out/up the accumulated emotional baggage to date
20. Flashes of inspiration on the blindingly obvious (e.g. the world won't end if the windows don't sparkle).
21. Recovering past joys, past interests .. Appreciation for some things, (misplaced but now recovered) that you had previously taken for granted
22. A definite Good Thing for me is dreams. I never used to remember my dreams but now they're full scale productions with me as the star of the show. And I remember them in vivid detail...This may be about being more in touch with myself, but it is a plus - I enjoy my dreams.
23. "Sudden tears" -- this has actually been a plus for me. Suddenly finding myself bursting into tears at the drop of a hat (no-one else find dropped hats a moving experience?) is pretty damn liberating for me -- I had no idea that tears were such a release.
24. The disappearance of hormonal migraines. 
25. Greater freedom to do what *we* choose - fewer responsibilities for others.  "Since I am not so

involved with raising my children and with lusting in my heart, I can now concentrate on improving my mind through continuing my education."
26. I also think your ability to examine yourself with some degree of objectivity increases as you approach meno!  I mean the ability to step back from yourself.  To accept who you are.  To take your own inventory and stop taking other people's.
27. Greater willingness to accept oneself as an authority. I can't seem to shut up when I'm in a group whether male or female and something is being discussed that I feel I know something about.  This, however, is something that is a pretty recent development as I used to be very shy and timid.
28. I've just begun to notice it: strangers open up to me more than they used to. It is the best thing yet about having a grandmother face, perhaps. 
29.  Admitting to our weaknesses and problems is, IMHO, a 'good thing'. It bonds the sexes closer together and is another thing which was well worth waiting for.
30. There's a lot that's uncertain about getting older, and personally, I've found that getting used to the strangeness of what passes for my cycles now has made me sort of ... relax ... about a lot of things in my life. I'm less obsessive about planning things out, more willing to take what comes. Maybe I'm just making lemonade from lemons, but in my own case, this has been a Good thing.



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And a few lighter ones...
• Hey,   I got one.....my hair got curlier and has some body now, yey
• I forgot what I wanted to say here..so, maybe fewer words are better
• Reassessment of the importance of immaculate appearance (yeah, I know that's not for everyone - but these are mine <g. Fibroids can do a lot for your view on the fashionableness of elastic waistbands)
• My heating bills are lower in the winter!
(1) "I've also decided that wisdom is ninety-five percent fatigue; you get so tired of dealing with inconsequential things that don't really matter that you just drop them from your psyche as not being worthy of attention any-more." (Quote from unnamed post meno woman in _The Women's Wheel of Life_, Elizabeth Davis and Carol Leonard, Viking 1996. UP

Positive aspects of menopause. A qualitative study.
Hvas L.
Maturitas. 2001 Jul 25;39(1):11-7.
Department of General Practice and Central Research Unit, Panum Institute, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 3, DK-2200, Copenhagen N, Denmark

Methods: In a questionnaire, sent to a random sample of 51 year-old Danish women, there was included an open-ended question concerning the course of menopause. A qualitative approach has been used in the analyses. Results: 393 women have answered the open-ended question. One hundred and ninety four women did describe positive aspects of menopause. The total number of different quotations with a positive content was 268. 

The answers varied from unspecific statements describing a period of well-being or simply a statement of not having problems at all, and concrete descriptions which primarily dealt with the relief of ending menstruating and attached problems, such as PMS and fear of pregnancy.

Finally they dealt with the possibility of personal growth and freedom to concentrate on own requirements.
PMID: 11451616 [PubMed - in process]

An examination of women's transition through menopause provides a remarkable example of nursing's contributions to feminist scholarship. The predominant biomedical model perpetuates the idea that menopause is a deficiency disease, whereas feminist and nurse scholars have deconstructed this paradigm and have reclaimed menopause as a part of mid life women's developmental stage. <snip> 

We reviewed 10 studies in the area of "women reclaiming menopause" and found that over all women believe the menopausal transition is a normal developmental stage. <snip>

... researchers must take into consideration the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that impact women's experience of the menopause transition.

PMID: 11439785 [PubMed - in process]