But it’s important to understand what’s happening in your body and embrace the next chapter of your life with self-compassion. And as you enter uncharted territory, it’s comforting to know many women before you have navigated the same course, and emerged stronger and wiser on the other side. Here are 50 empowering, and often funny, quotes from women about menopause and the process of getting older.
Menopause quotes
- “So many women I’ve talked to see menopause as an ending. But I’ve discovered this is your moment to reinvent yourself after years of focusing on the needs of everyone else. It’s your opportunity to get clear about what matters to you and then to pursue that with all of your energy, time and talent.” — Oprah Winfrey
- “I see menopause as the start of the next fabulous phase of life as a woman. Now is a time to ‘tune in’ to our bodies and embrace this new chapter. If anything, I feel more myself and love my body more now, at 58 years old, than ever before.” – Kim Cattrall, actress
- “All of a sudden I don’t mind saying to people, ‘You know what? Get out of my life. You’re not right for me.’ It’s wonderful and liberating.” – Whoopi Goldberg, TV personality
- “If you deal with it in a healthy fashion then I think you come out the other side a better person. I’ve got so much more energy now than I ever had in my early 50s before the menopause."— Julie Walters, actress
- “I believe whole-heartedly that age is a mindset. Biological age is what it is, but I truly believe it’s more about how you feel—how you feel in your body and how you feel about your body.” – Jennifer Grey
- “The very best way that you can help yourself is to develop and sustain a positive attitude. The way you think and feel about everything will make all the difference to your experience.” – Caroline Carr, author of Menopause: The Guide for Real Women
- “I’m enjoying my life, post-menopause, so much. It’s just so great to grow into yourself, and not be bothered with all that tyranny of biology.” – Roseanne Barr, actress and comedian
- “When you’re young, there’s so much now that you can’t take it in. It’s pouring over you like a waterfall. When you’re older, it’s less intense, but you’re able to reach out and drink it. I love being older.” — Sigourney Weaver, actress
- “Menopause. A pause while you reconsider men.” – Margaret Atwood, author
- “A study says owning a dog makes you 10 years younger. My first thought was to rescue two more, but I don’t want to go through menopause again.” – Joan Rivers
- “Women are always being tested … but ultimately, each of us has to define who we are individually and then do the very best job we can to grow into it.” – Hillary Clinton
- “If I wanted to be prettier, fillers, Botox and a neck lift might help — but I think I’m past all that. My feelings come out in my face and show who I am inside in ways that words can’t express. In fact, I’m confused by what ‘authentic’ is; am I less authentic because I wear ‘eccentric’ clothes and hats? No. I look at my contemporaries who have had ‘good work’ done; are they less authentic? No! And neither are the women who’ve had procedures that went awry.” – Diane Keaton
- “One thing I love about aging—and I do love aging—I’ve got a wisdom that no young person can buy. You earn it.” — Suzanne Somers
- “You have to sit down and take a good look at yourself, particularly as you grow older and your face changes. People are afraid of changing; that they’re losing something. They don’t understand that they are also gaining something.” — Sharon Stone
- “Here’s what I know: I’m a better person at fifty than I was at forty-eight … and better at fifty-two than I was at fifty. I’m calmer, easier to live with. All this stuff is in my soul forever. Just don’t get lazy. Work at your relationships all the time. Take care of friendships, hold people you love close to you, take advantage of birthdays to celebrate fiercely. It’s the worrying—not the years themselves—that will make you less of a woman.” – Patti Labelle
- “Fifty was a shock, because it was the end of the center period of life. But once I got over that, 60 was great. Seventy was great. And I loved, I seriously loved aging. I found myself thinking things like: ‘I don’t want anything I don’t have.’…80 is about mortality, not aging. Or not just aging.” – Gloria Steinem
- “I don’t think about my life in terms of numbers. First of all, I ain’t never gonna be old because I ain’t got time to be old. I can’t stop long enough to grow old.” – Dolly Parton
- “And the beauty of a woman, with passing years only grows!”— Audrey Hepburn
- “The changes, the highs and lows, and the hormonal shifts, there is power in that. But we were taught to be ashamed of it and to not even seek to understand it or explore it for our own edification, let alone to help the next generation.” — Michelle Obama
- “I think menopause gets a really bad rap and needs a bit of a rebranding. I don’t think we have in our society a great example of an aspirational menopausal woman.” — Gwyneth Paltrow
- “You start out happy that you have no hips or boobs. All of a sudden you get them, and it feels sloppy. Then just when you start liking them, they start drooping.” ― Cindy Crawford, model and TV personality
- “As our body journeys through life, and life journeys on our body…. life will leave marks on us too. From the creases of our wrinkles to the birthmarks on our bodies to the tattoos we decide to place.” ― Lauren Klarfeld, author
- “Growing into your future with health and grace and beauty doesn’t have to take all your time. It rather requires a dedication to caring for yourself as if you were rare and precious, which you are, and regarding all life around you as equally so, which it is.” - Victoria Moran, author
- “I have to start loving what comes next and stop hating it. I won’t be a part of it.” — Linda Robinson, author
- “Be proud of how you show up every day, feeling comfortable in your own skin, being your magnificent you.” – Bonnie Marcus, author
- “One of the ideas we must agree on and continue to forge with individual and collective vigor is that a woman’s life goes uphill at forty.” – Marianne Williamson, spiritual teacher and author
- “Fear of dying is human. Fear of aging is cultural.” ― Ashton Applewhite, author
- “In the end, the real wisdom of menopause may be in questioning how fun or even sane this chore wheel called modern life actually is.” – Sandra Tsing Loh
- “Listen, I had two kids—one when I was 40, one when I was 45. I breastfed for one year, which means I was breastfeeding four years ago. I’m going to move from giving birth to menopause without realizing it.” – Monica Belluci, actress and model
- “A woman must wait for her ovaries to die before she can get her rightful personality back. Post-menstrual is the same as pre-menstrual; I am once again what I was before the age of twelve: a female human being who knows that a month has thirty days, not twenty-five, and who can spend every one of them free of the shackles of that defect of body and mind known as femininity.” ― Florence King
- “In the safest of places, there is death, divorce, economic recessions, and cancer. Accepting this fact helps you not know any better than to risk adventure in the second half of life.” — Cheryl Bridges Johns, author
- “What you believe can change your experience.”—- Staness Jonekos, author
- “Our mothers were largely silent about what happened to them as they passed through this midlife change. But a new generation of women has already started to break the wall of silence.” – Trisha Posner
- “You can do this—this thing, where your body will cease to produce hormones and your skin, hair, muscles and bones … basically every part of you will notice, go into withdrawals, and stage a coup. Be prepared for this mentally, and you’ll own this ’thing.’” – Lisa Jey Davis, author
- “Confidence comes with age, and looking beautiful comes from the confidence someone has in themselves.” – Kate Winslet
- “I think our bodies are beautiful, and I think celebrating them and being comfortable in them—no matter what age you are—is important. There shouldn’t be any kind of shame or discomfort around it.” – Jennifer Aniston
- “I don’t think of getting older as looking better or worse; it’s just different. You change, and that’s okay.” – Heidi Klum
- “The freedom that comes from no longer being fertile is huge.” — Cynthia Nixon
- “When I turned 40, I was like, huh. I accept myself more now. It was much more comforting.” — Jennifer Lopez
- “Menopause, it’s the best form of birth control. Face it graciously and brag about it. It’s great.” – S.F., quotes in Menstruation and Menopause by Paula Weidager
- “Gravity and wrinkles are fine with me. They’re a small price to pay for the new wisdom inside my head and my heart.” – Drew Barrymore
- “And for her true womanhood arrived here there is no growing old. Age refines and enriches, warms and illuminates, expands and exalts her. She is more and more Woman through it; not less and less. The noble life that has let her hither is her grand cosmetic. Her intellect, loosed from the golden bonds of corporeal Maternity, rises to the grasp of higher truths.” – Eliza W. Farnham
- “One should remember that the menopause is a normal and natural process, and it should not be dreaded. Realizing that the condition is a natural occurrence which all women experience—if they live long enough—and a philosophical calm acceptance of this fact, will help lessen the nervous symptoms.” – Lulu Hunt Peters, M.D.
- “My belief is that it’s a privilege to get older. Not everybody gets to get older.” — Cameron Diaz
- “The trick is to age honestly and gracefully and make it look great so that everyone looks forward to it.” – Emma Thompson
- “For many women who have been caring for and putting others first, midlife is the time when there’s finally space to start thinking about you. You may feel compelled to make room for you, to live with greater purpose, or to answer the call to do something big in the world. It’s during this time that we can begin to define what legacy we want to leave.” – Terri Hanson
- “One night in December 2018, the Tony-winning actress and singer Tonya Pinkins talked onstage about her experience of menopause, adding: ‘Things are so much better than they were decades ago, but they can be bad and better at the same time.’ ‘Bad and better’ is one way to think about our prospects at this stage of life too.” – Ada Calhoun
- “I call the Change of Life ‘Orchids’ because menopause is such an ugly word. It’s got men in it for goddsakes.” – Lisa Jey Davis
- “We are always the same age inside.” – Gertrude Stein
- “One day you will look back and realize all along you were blooming.” – Morgan Harper Nichols Next, read up on these 33 podcasts, books, and Instagram accounts that get real about the experience of menopause.
