Anxiety, depression and panic attacks may all be labelled as being menopausal symptoms and for some women it can be hard to sim­ply find a listening ear.

Certainly menopause can’t be blamed for every emotional upset, although some problems may be exacer­bated and long-standing problems become highlighted.

Any emotional upset of mine is brought about by contact with my adult daughter. I don’t know what the problem is – unless it’s karma for being so unfeeling toward my own mother. It’s true, it all comes back to haunt us.

I see menopause as marking the beginning of new free­dom, new choices and new challenges. My daughter sees me take one step nearer to my old age and this gives her the opportunity to try to organise my life.

I’ve just received my book package from Amazon and it includes Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story. I’ll let you know what I think of it when I finish. There may be some secret I can pick up about healthy mother-daughter relationships.

Girl Group Confidential: The Ultimate Guide to Starting, Running and Enjoying Your Own Womens’ Group

I’m hoping this will be useful for the Red Hat Chapter I try to organise.

With the book came a lovely letter and I would really like you to see what she wrote about menopause :

This is a time when we seek to re-educate ourelves, or move into a new career. It is a time to re-evaluate relationships in our lives. In this time we have come to acknowledge our strengths and rely on them. We also are familiar with our weaknesses and are more willing to work with and change them into new resources in our lives.

Transitions are as natural as breathing or walking from one room to the next. Each one brings us to a new place in our evolution and growth. Therefore menopause brings a woman into the most powerful time in her life, free from worries of pregnancy and all the responsibilities which bringing a new life into being entails

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I’ll try and keep that in mind the next time I want to kill a shop assistant.