In The Middlepause Benjamin deftly and brilliantly examines the
losses and unexpected gains she experienced in menopause. Menopause is a
mind and body shift as monumental and universal as puberty, yet far less
often discussed, especially in public, which is what makes Benjamin's
work here so urgently necessary. --Kate Tuttle, The Los Angeles
Times
The Middlepause offers a vision of contentment in middle age, without
sentiment or delusion. Marina Benjamin weighs the losses and
opportunities of our middle years, taking inspiration from literature,
science, philosophy, and her own experience. Spurred by her surgical
propulsion into a sudden menopause, she finds ways to move forward while
maintaining clear-eyed acknowledgment of the challenges of aging.
Attending to complicated elderly parents and a teenaged daughter,
experiencing bereavement, her own health woes, and a fresh impetus to
give, Benjamin emerges into a new definition of herself as daughter,
mother, citizen, and woman.
Among The Middlepause's many wise observations about no longer being
young: I am discovering that I care less about what other people think.
My needs are leaner and my storehouse fuller. It is not possible to
fully appreciate what it means to age without attending to what the body
knows. . . . I have always had a knee-jerk distaste for the idea that
age is all in the mind. You need a cohort of peers to go through the
aging process with you. A cackle of crones! A cavalry! Marina Benjamin's
memoir will serve as a comfort, a companion to women going through the
too-seldom-spoken of physical and mental changes in middle age and
beyond.
