Gabrielle Union started perimenopause in her 30s. Here’s what she wants you to know
We recently had a chance to chat with Union-Wade about all things menopause, from how she’s managed to parenting through it.
Table of Contents
Gabrielle Union-Wade has filmed plenty of love scenes. During one of them, opposite a co-star 20-some years younger, a hot flash hit right as the camera rolled.
“The way it was reading to other people was like I was scared or nervous, and honey, I am old hat at this,” she says. She was menopausal, on the clock, with nowhere to hide.
She’s since made it a priority to bring attention to this wildly under-discussed stage, lately through Bayer’s “Life Doesn’t Stop for a Hot Flash” campaign. An estimated 2 million American women hit menopause every year, and hot flashes can drag on for up to a decade.
We recently had a chance to chat with Union-Wade about all things menopause, from how she’s managed to parenting through it. Backing her up on the clinical side is women’s health nurse practitioner Barbara Dehn, better known as Nurse Barb. Here’s what the two of them want you to know.
1. Ask about perimenopause earlier than you think you need to
Union-Wade was perimenopausal in her late 30s, way ahead of her friends, and it only came to her attention because fertility bloodwork flagged it. Until then, menopause hadn’t really crossed her mind.
“I just felt like I had more time,” she says. Then the first hot flash showed up severe and unmistakable. “This cannot be life,” she thought.
Other surprises were smaller but irritating nonetheless, like the chin hairs that sprout overnight—the reason she now keeps tweezers in every car. (She is all of us, it turns out.)
If you feel off and can’t name why, ask your provider. The symptoms don’t always announce themselves and can sometimes be attributed to other things, Nurse Barb says. “It’s more like that clammy feeling in the back of your neck when you wake up. That’s typically a night sweat.”
2. Expect a hot flash to show up without warning
No tip-off, countdown, or graceful way to exit. That’s brutal on a film set. “Time is money, money is time,” she says. “I don’t get to take a beat.”
Portable fans bought a little relief, and she started stashing sprained-ankle cold packs in her bra. Both were helpful in the moment, but the real fix came from her doctor.
“I can’t be a nonstop sweaty mess. That’s not sexy. What are our options?” They settled on Lynkuet, a hormone-free option for moderate to severe hot flashes, and it worked. What helps is different for everyone, Nurse Barb says, which is why the conversation beats any one product.
3. Keep looking until a provider takes you seriously
Hot flashes get the headlines, but menopause comes with a long tail of other symptoms, and women who raise them with medical providers still sometimes get waved off.
“So many women have been dismissed. They’ve been minimized,” Nurse Barb says.
Part of it is a knowledge gap. By her account there still aren’t nearly enough providers trained to manage menopause, which leaves a lot of women to figure it out alone. Keep going, back to the same provider or on to a new one, until someone actually helps, because the symptoms are treatable and worth treating.
4. Talk about it with your friends
If you’re in your forties or higher, there’s a good chance you have at least one group chat that regularly compares notes on peri- and menopause woes. It’s a shift from the way generations prior have often suffered in silence.
The good news is the isolation cracks the second women start sharing experiences. Union-Wade does it, too. “I’ll drop some knowledge in my normally very crass group chats.” Casual beats preachy. “We’re all low-key struggling with something.” The one move she talks friends out of is blaming themselves. “It’s not a choice, it’s biology.”
5. Let your kids see what you’re going through
Union-Wade has been parenting through all of this with her young daughter watching. When a hot flash hit at home, her daughter Kaavia, a self-appointed helper, would show up with ice water and a towel, asking, “Mommy, what can I do?”
In the house she and Dwyane Wade run, a body doing a normal thing isn’t a secret to keep. Union-Wade is raising Kaavia to ask about anything and get an honest, age-appropriate answer . “Nothing should be taboo, nothing shrouded in shame or embarrassment,” she says.
She learned that from her own mother and is handing it down, betting that a girl who watches her mom name this out loud becomes a woman who does the same with her friends. Kids clock how we treat our own bodies long before they have the words for it.
6. Hold on to the fact that you’re still you
People love to tell Union-Wade she doesn’t “look like” she’s in menopause, as if there’s a uniform. “Going through menopause doesn’t mean you’re less sexy,” she says.
It doesn’t make a woman less sharp, less wanted or less deserving of the promotion, either. She’s not shrinking into anyone’s idea of a menopausal woman. “I’m still me. And as you go through menopause, you’re still you.”
Her advice for a struggling friend is the same thing she tells herself: “You’re not alone. This isn’t the end. This is a new beginning. It’s a spring awakening. This is your power, claim it. And you’re going to be all right.”
On set, the crew mistook her heat for fear. The thing she keeps telling everyone, her friends, her daughter, herself, is that there was never anything to be scared of.
Related articles
