Perimenopause, WTH? Joy, sex, and experimentation in midlife

With author (and Miranda July's perimenopause guru) Heather Corinna

Photo by Guido Jansen on Unsplash

Miranda July’s bestselling novel “All Fours” moved a conversation that’s been percolating around perimenopause for years into the mainstream (including in this newsletter where we read “All Fours” as our Summer Book Club selection!)

Medical research and culture have both dismissed this massive shift in women’s lives, and women are finally demanding to know: “What is this exactly, and why are we not talking about it?!”

As the narrator in July’s novel notes, the change in a woman’s hormones at midlife is just as dramatic as the shift as puberty. A woman goes through a second metamorphosis that impacts pretty much all of society—given that more than half the population has ovaries and a uterus!

July credits author Heather Corinna and their book, “What Fresh Hell is This?” as the one that helped make sense of the nonsense around perimenopause (and the just plain void of information about it):

“It’s a great book. It’s relatable, it’s the book I would want.” – Miranda July (The Monthly). And July thanks Corinna in her book notes, too.

Allison spoke to author Heather Corinna about their book, menopause myths, lube, and centering pleasure, joy, and experimentation in midlife—instead of reproduction. (Sign me up!)

This interview is a bonus post for paid subscribers. Good news, the summer discount on annual subscriptions is continuing for a few more weeks for $39 (that’s only $3.25 a month!). Paid subscribers get access to subscriber chats, the full archive, and full access to book club and other paid content.

This is the lowest price that we will offer this year. Join us!

I’m also including a little poll here now that our online Book Club discussions of “All Fours” are wrapped up to see if we want to cap it off with a Zoom call to talk about it all. Or not! Regardless, thanks for making this an absolutely delightful (and smart and nerdy) book club! (If you missed last week’s final chat with lit scholar and gender studies director

Emily Taylor

, check it out here.)

Without further ado, here’s the interview with Heather Corinna!

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Note: This conversation is mainly about the big issues around this time in people’s lives, and less about specific tools for supporting yourself. For those kinds of details, order their book!  Interview lightly edited for length and clarity.

In your chapter, “Ya Basics,” you write, “My root concept of both menopause and myself in menopause positioned us both as burdens. When I did think about how I was going to manage it, my thoughts were focused on how I would keep our burden on others as minimal as possible. Sound familiar?”

 This did sound familiar to me, and I’m wondering: How did you unlearn that concept of yourself and menopause as burdens. Or, did you unlearn it?

I'm definitely still in that process. I feel like from early childhood on, I was positioned as a burden, and felt like a burden. Of course, if we've grown up socialized as anything but cisgender men, we also are given very clear messages that unless we're alleviating somebody else's burden, we are a burden.