Hot Takes & Cool Truths
Lately, I’ve been drawn more and more to the quiet threshold of menopause—not just as a clinical interest, but as a space of deep personal reflection. Though I’m not yet in that phase myself, I feel its outline approaching. I feel it in the stories patients bring into the treatment room. I see it in the sudden shift of sleep patterns, in the flush of heat that arrives without warning, in the pause that so often precedes a new kind of voice emerging.
Chinese medicine offers a language for this transition that feels expansive and respectful. Rather than a decline, it sees menopause as a transformation—a shifting of internal tides. The Kidney system, which governs growth, reproduction, and wisdom, becomes the central focus. The loss of the menstrual cycle is not viewed as an absence, but as a redirection of energy, a time when the body moves inward, toward cultivation rather than creation.
There is grief here, yes—but also potential. Menopause can be uncomfortable, even disorienting, but it can also be clarifying. A distillation. A sharpening of what matters. For many, it is the first time the body asks for care that cannot be postponed. And in answering that call, something new becomes possible.
Culturally, though, we do not offer much in the way of support. Menopause is often reduced to a punchline or brushed aside as an inconvenience. The experience becomes something to endure quietly, or manage privately, rather than something to be marked, honored, and explored. There is little collective language for what this phase requires, and even less for what it offers. I often wonder what would happen if we made more space for this in our communal imagination—if menopause were framed not as a loss, but as a kind of initiation.
In clinic, I try to hold that space. To make room for the full complexity of the experience. There is no single path through it, just as there is no single picture of health. Some people want relief from night sweats and anxiety. Others want to understand how to live in a body that feels unfamiliar. Some want both. Often, what’s needed is permission—to slow down, to listen more closely, to tend.
My role as a practitioner is to accompany—not to fix, but to witness, to support, to gently guide. Acupuncture can ease hot flashes, calm the nervous system, and restore sleep. But more than that, it creates space. A place to be seen, to soften, to return to one’s own pace.
In my own learning, I’ve found myself in conversations with those further along in the process—patients, peers, elders—about what this stage demands and what it reveals. The stories vary, but one thing remains clear: menopause is not just a physiological shift. It is a cultural blind spot, and perhaps one of our most neglected rites of passage. Naming it, supporting it, and making it visible feels like a necessary act of care.
This is an invitation to meet menopause not just as an ending, but as a beginning. A reclamation. A shift in rhythm, in power, in presence. Whether you are approaching it, in the thick of it, or reflecting on the other side, there is something here worth honoring.
And we can begin with curiosity and tenderness.
