✨Menopaussible✨
Menopause doesn't just change your body. It changes the questions you're willing to ask. Menopaussible is a bi-weekly newsletter for performance-driven women who want the science, the straight talk, and a clear-eyed look at what comes next.
Aug 04 • 3 min read • Real Talk
What Have You Been Trying Not to Notice?
What Have You Been Trying Not to Notice?PLUS: A study that treats menopause as the turning point it actually is Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes Welcome to the August 4th edition of Menopaussible—bringing you the news you can use and the ⚡ energy ⚡ you need to support your menopause journey. I'm Maria Caracci Ciccolella—mindset coach and menopause advocate. (Connect with me on IG or LinkedIn!) Perimenopause has a way of making you pay attention.To your body. To your sleep. To the way a room feels too hot when no one else is sweating. To the things you've been tolerating, the things you've been postponing, the quiet voice you've gotten very good at talking over. It's inconvenient. It's also, if you let it be, remarkably clarifying. Which is exactly what brought me to Margaret Atwood's memoir, Book of Lives, recently—and why I haven't stopped thinking about her since. Margaret Atwood has spent a lifetime paying attention on purpose. Not just to the world around her, but to the texture of it, the contradiction of it, the parts most people scroll past. She didn't just live a remarkable life. She noticed it. Relentlessly. And then she made something of it. The Woman Behind the Work Atwood is one of the most decorated writers of our time—Booker Prize winner, co-founder of PEN Canada, author of over 50 titles spanning poetry, essays, and fiction—not to mention children's books and graphic novels. You likely know her for The Handmaid's Tale. What you may not know is what authored her. Behind that impressive CV is a woman who spent much of her life living nomadically, in unfamiliar and often inhospitable environments. To Atwood, all of it was an invitation—to be, to explore, to observe, and ultimately, to create. A Life That Became Material At nearly 600 pages, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts is more than a trip down memory lane—it's a window into the creative process. Atwood traces the timeline of her life with a storyteller's precision: settings, objects, family, friends, acquaintances (some named, some deliberately not—though acknowledged: "you know who you are"). Throughout, she connects lived experience to the art it later inspired—observations saved, mulled over, put to work with intention. Consider just a few of the experiences she gathered along the way:
Everything gathered. Nothing wasted. All the Paussibilities Atwood's practice isn't just a writer's practice—it's a midlife practice. The menopause transition does something beyond the physical. It makes you stand up and take notice of what's happening in your body. It also makes you acutely aware of time—of what's been left unsaid, undone, unacted on. Of what you've been quietly observing for decades without doing anything about it. That low-grade dissatisfaction sitting somewhere in your chest, the lack of motivation, sometimes even a dread of the very things you've spent years building—it's uncomfortable, but it's also information. The question isn't can you write about it? It's: what have you been noticing? And more importantly—what are you going to do with that information?
And then ask yourself the harder question:
Whatever comes up—that's your material.
PLUS: NEWS ITEMS What Actual Good Care Looks Like The Vajenda's Dr. Jen Gunter flags a new study that just opened enrollment to answer a question that should've been asked decades ago: what happens when women in midlife get real, comprehensive, guideline-based care—blood pressure and cholesterol managed properly, sleep and activity tracked, hormone therapy considered where it fits? Researchers are treating menopause as the cardiometabolic turning point it actually is, not a symptom list to manage in isolation. The trial is recruiting through University of Colorado, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and Virginia Commonwealth University, with monthly telehealth visits. It's a rare piece of menopause news that isn't about a gap—it's about someone finally building the thing that fills it. |
Menopause doesn't just change your body. It changes the questions you're willing to ask. Menopaussible is a bi-weekly newsletter for performance-driven women who want the science, the straight talk, and a clear-eyed look at what comes next.