Silent Passage: Menopause: Silent Passage: Menopause

Chapters are short and easy to read. This book deals not only with the technical aspects that most books do, but primarily with particular women's experiences with those various aspects--especially their feelings. This is what is left out of most of the other books. I recommend this book together with a more techinical book. But if you can only buy one book, buy this one instead. The main thing this book left me with was a feeling that instead of menopause being something that will just happen to me, there are a lot of things I can do, in a proactive sense, to manage the menopause. This is the most positive book I have seen on the subject, and helps me decide about all the questions to discuss with my doctor. Without reading this book, instead of being ready with a list of questions for my doctor, I would have passively listened to whatever he said, and thought that was it.

I nodded; I smiled in sympatico; I grimaced in the knowledge that I too have experienced the same swings she describes. This book, like her others, tunes into the women's viewpoint. I have followed her career and her publications since Passages was first released and I believe her to be such a wonderful advocate for women's well-being both physical and psychological. What an asset we have. What seems to be this new realm of natural products and herbal supplements has become a great breakthrough for women's health. Just dosing yourself with a high powered birth control pill and "hoping for the best" is no longer the only option. It should go the way of male gynocologists. The Silent Passage should be a joyful one without fear of brittle bones or of cancer. A site that gives additional links and documentation to the use of herbals and natural supplements for all the areas of women's health is iHerb. They give women their due respect in offering products and good service and substantuating it all with documentation. This isn't just a store on line - it is a reader's resource as well.

As I read "The Silent Passage," I found myself nodding in agreement, or stopping in amazement. Sheehy presents solid information in a straight-forward manner, that neither patronizes nor editorializes. Her only advocacy is informed choice, and she stresses that options are always available. I urge all women to read this book. Even if you think you're past The Change, there is information and reassurance that is useful no matter what stage of life you're in. My younger sisters, and younger friends, are going to find copies of this book in their mailboxes as "just because" gifts. I won't wait for an occasion.

Having read "Silent Passage" I now realize that I have been in the perimenopausal stage for about two years. I knew my body was behaving differently and when I did mention the possibility of menopause to my doctor he told me I wasn't there yet. No mention was made of the perimenopausal stage. For the next year I tried to ignore what was happening and I was miserable. The symptoms got worse and just recently I reached for Sheehy's book and started reading. The information in this book is incredible, and I thank her for writing it. Not only did I learn that I've been perimenopausal for two years but I now have learned how to view the changes going on and how to intelligently handle them. Having the knowledge gives me back the control I felt that I lost. I can't stop what's happening to my body but I can work to get through the changes with humor - thanks to Gail. Her book also has provided me with more information on HRT than I've gotten anywhere else. If any woman is trying to decide whether to go on HRT she needs to read this book and learn the pros and cons. You'll learn when it is time to consider HRT. As I write this I'm trying to get across to the reader my overall sense of peace that I feel after having read Sheehy's book. We women need to know about menopause, talk about it, write about, read about it and not be afraid of it. Sheehy helps us to do that. I recommend this book to any woman who wants to know a lot about the stages of menopause. I would recommend that husbands also read this book. Sheehy teaches you what is happening, why it is happening and how to handle it. Her book also helps you to accept what you cannot change, courage to handle the changes, and the knowledge to make decisions.

As the Baby Boomers reach menopause in record numbers, books on the subject have begun to proliferate as well. I've read many of them in the course of traversing this "passage" myself, and Sheehy's is by far the most levelheaded, sensible, and informative of the lot. In the era in which we grew up, the normal processes of female life (such as childbirth), which had been successfully negotiated by our foremothers for centuries, had become "pathologized" into matters requiring a doctor's intervention -- if not hospitalization, surgery, or prolonged use of drugs. Now that women are reclaiming their own health, it's become far too easy for writers with a political agenda to capitalize on women's (understandable) anti-doctor sentiment and err in the opposite direction. Sheehy, a thorough and down-to-earth person (as her other books show), has researched the subject of menopause in detail. While encouraging women to take responsibility for their own health, she avoids the extreme of insisting that "real women do it all NATURALLY without hormones." And, while she gives the medical establishment no quarter, she also makes it clear that their informed assistance can help a woman negotiate menopause with considerably less discomfort than we were led to believe was inevitable. I was impressed with the good sense she showed in the first edition, and am encouraged that she's updated the book with recent information. If you buy only one book on menopause, this is the one to get.