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"&amp;quot;Menopause has indeed made me into a nicer person,&amp;quot; writes Roseanne Barr in a recent Newsweek essay. &amp;quot;After menopause, I discovered the joy of drinking wine, and of sinking deeply into writing and time alone,&amp;quot; she states. If you haven&amp;#039;t read the piece that everyone is talking about and quoting from (including me) it&amp;#039;s here. At 59, Barr writes from the other side of menopause, the time when she says she&amp;#039;s through with the tyranny of Mother Nature and done with all that. She&amp;#039;s calmer. Older. Wiser. More accepting. Sex drive diminished, she&amp;#039;s, &amp;quot;ready to come into [her] full destiny \u2026 as Neo-Amazonian Pirate Queen of [her] own vessel.&amp;quot; No more chasing after men. No more being victim to hormonal tides that rule our lives as women.  Though she paints a rather grim picture of physical decline -- &amp;quot;fifty-three is the year when everything starts to go to crap,&amp;quot; she states \u2013 her piece is funny, even though I don&amp;#039;t agree with her about the inevitable and steep physical downward slope.  I look at some of the women I know, not famous singers like Madonna, who are physically active and limber in their 60s, 70s, and even 80s. My Qigong teacher, who mediates every day, is near 80 but could pass for closer to 50. She came to Qigong at midlife because of the very things Barr writes about \u2013 depression, bodily changes, mood swings \u2013 and she&amp;#039;s in better shape now than she was then. As for decreasing sex drives, while vaginal atrophy is a real problem for menopausal women, there are treatments, like estrogen cream, that work. What&amp;#039;s more, at least one study shows that it&amp;#039;s the quality of relationships not biology that interferes with women&amp;#039;s desire at midlife.  While I&amp;#039;m not quite sure I can say, as Barr does, that, &amp;quot;Menopause is the victory lap over the curse of being born female!&amp;quot; I admire her candor. And it&amp;#039;s one more view from the other side. We need more essays like these. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/a46484/joys-menopause/>