I interviewed the famous makeup artist and businesswoman Bobbi Brown the year she was turning 50 (I was 37). When I asked her how she felt about it, and expecting dread, or something negative, there was a long pause.

She asked how old I was. Then she said: “Ann Marie – you are going to love it.”

She told me everything gets easier. She said all the things she knew I was worrying about at that moment would go away. She told me it felt amazing.

I was shocked. This was completely different from everything I’d heard about getting older up until this point. I was terrified of it. But Bobbi Brown calmed me down that day, and I have thought about what she said often.

And would’t you know it? Everything she has said about it has turned out to be true.

And while I’m not saying menopause is a walk in the park, (perimenopause isn’t either), don’t believe all the negativity.

Because once you wrap your head around it, if you can keep your eye on the prize, there is a lot to love about this time of life. But first, the basics.

Menopause gets a bad rap because…

There has been a push to medicalize menopause ever since hormone therapy appeared on the scene almost 100 years ago. Whenever you hear the words “disease” or “deficiency” around menopause, you know someone is trying to make money. It’s simply not true: this is nature’s planned end of fertility. That’s it.

Also, the fear of aging is steeped into our culture, no matter where you are. And the two are always linked. And so this has fed into the shame and stigma.

But this notion that somehow we become irrelevant is not true.

We even have an evolutionary theory for why women go through menopause, and it’s called the Grandmother Theory. It’s seen in the animal kingdom, in whales and giraffes and probably a lot of other creatures, and it describes menopause as an evolutionary necessity, because women are so useful to their tribes after they are done raising their kids.

The good thing is, everything about this is changing. Older women are shaking off the stereotypes and I’ll tell you something: once you decide you are okay with it, everything else gets better.

Perimenopause is…

Menopause is really only a moment in time when you haven’t had your period for one full year. Perimenopause is all the time before that, and it can start without you really knowing it because your periods are still regular. 

Sleep problems and mood issues can be the first signs, and they can start in your late 30s, because perimenopause can last for more than a decade. No one really knows how many symptoms there are because hormones affect all our systems. 

As an endocrinologist told me: “Stop counting. It’s infinite.”

The best way to help yourself through all of it is… 

Get a good team: that includes friends (online or in person, or both) to lean on when things get hard. It’s great to get a doctor you can trust, maybe a therapist, maybe a complementary practitioner who can do acupuncture or massage or something like that. Eating whole foods, making sure to walk and lift weights – walking has been shown to be one of the most effective exercises in study after study, and we need to lift weights to keep our bones strong – getting good sleep, managing stress, addressing any childhood trauma and working on those bad habits like drinking or smoking will help.

A lot of doctors don’t know very much about this whole transition, believe it or not. Some of them never studied it in medical school, some only for a few hours. So we have to learn to be the CEO, director, sleuth, best friend, sister and mama to our menopause experience. There’s just no other way around it.

No one else is going to do this for us: it’s the ultimate passage to adulthood.

What women need to know about menopause..

Menopause isn’t scary. Menopause is simply a moment in time, when you haven’t had your period for a year. No one can predict when it will happen - it’s  a little bit like getting your period for the first time.

People sometimes call it second puberty, and in parts of the world it’s called the Second Spring. It’s a natural process and it does sometimes require a lot of changes to deal with. There’s hormone therapy,  supplements, nutritional overhauls, stress management techniques and much more. Once you know what’s happening and make some of those changes, it’s actually pretty manageable.

You also want to make sure that you don’t have any other issues: we can become really vulnerable in this transition and develop a series of health problems, including insulin resistance, thyroid problems and other autoimmune disorders, all which exacerbate things and increase our risks for disease.

Always make sure you do your research, take the opinion of more than one trusted expert, do what feels right for you and remember: this doesn’t last forever and it’s going somewhere good. (The rest of your life!) 

Then there’s that menopause gold rush…

We’ve already seen menopause blow open in the US: there was a menopause commercial at the Super Bowl! Another tipping point is coming: By 2025, it is estimated that 1.1 billion women are going to be going through menopause, more than ever before.

This is so big Anu Duggal, a founding partner in the new venture capital Female Founders Fund, has called menopause “the next fertility”.

We are a $600 billion dollar business opportunity – if not more.

Each week new startups are entering the space, working to make this transition easier and smoother, offering everything from psychedelic biotech to red light therapy for vaginal rejuvenation CBD and THC to symptom-tracking apps, tiny magnets, skin and hair care. 

Menopause is the next big thing in women’s health, and you can expect to see that in your pop culture, in your supermarkets, maybe even on billboards around town. There is a lot of concern that this will take advantage of women when they are vulnerable by bombarding them with messaging, marketing and false promises.

We get that in every other part of our life, so at least we will be somewhat prepared for the onslaught.

One good thing: after the dearth of attention paid to this transition, and all the shame and the stigma, we are finally looking to the light. And that means we have more options for getting through it – and on to the rest of our lives – than anyone else who came before us.