During a recent appearance on This Morning, Strictly judge Shirley Ballas was very candid about her experience of a very pertinent topic – menopause.
October is Menopause Awareness Month, with World Menopause Day falling on October 18. While it’s positive to have a month dedicated to menopause and perimenopause, it’s important to keep the conversation going surrounding something that has such a huge and sometimes debilitating effect on women.
Shirley is one of a number of celebrities choosing to share their menopause stories, which is of comfort and support for those navigating this difficult time of life.
Initially, Shirley felt she had nobody to talk about her symptoms with, which included anxiety, mood swings, and feelings of hopelessness. She eventually confided in her son when she “really felt in a dark place”.
Revealing that her own mother didn’t experience any menopause issues, Shirley felt underprepared for what happened when her body went through menopause changes.
“Nobody seemed to understand me,” Shirley said, adding, “I’d go to work every day, I was sharper with everyone.”
It took for somebody to take Shirley to one side and tell her she was no longer the person they were used to, for her to get professional help.
“That was the wake-up call,” she shares, adding that once she’d seen a doctor and was started on the right medication, her life “changed forever”.
When presenter Cat Deeley asked if the treatment pulled her out of the dark place, Shirley explained that her body had been found to be “way unbalanced.”
The Strictly star, now 65, still has a yearly check of her hormones to make sure “everything is working and functioning.”
According to The Mirror, Shirley also shares her experience with the menopause in her memoir, Best Foot Forward.
In the memoir, she likens the menopause to falling into a hole you can’t get of, scratching at the sides in a bid to get, but never really getting there.
Before getting help from a doctor, the star recalls self-medicating with alcohol and other methods.
“I’d been trying to manage the ‘situation’ myself with antidepressants, sleeping tablets, more medication to wake myself up and, I have to say this, alcohol,” she wrote.
Until discussing her symptoms with a doctor, Shirley hadn’t considered they could be related to menopause. When she started treatment, she recalls, “The change took several weeks, but over that time I felt a shift, began to feel like my old self again.”
Speaking about why she chose to reveal such candid information about her experience, the star is very clear – she doesn’t want other women to suffer as she did.
“I’d say to every woman, please don’t suffer in silence. I can’t stress enough how important it is to get your hormones checked and I wish I’d asked for help sooner,” she concludes.
