About this event
We welcome you to the second Trauma & Menopause Conference hosted by Onlinevents with Fabienne Chazeaux and Aneesh de Vos whose training and research explores The Collision of Trauma and Menopause.
This year, the day conference will focus on how relationships can differ and change during the menopause years. Within our community setting we can both share and explore what relationships mean and why the changes occur.
A panel discussion will take place in the morning after which there will be various workshops offered by a diverse group of presenters. Their lived experience remains at the forefront of the day which we hope is relatable to you. Academic and theoretical research will be offered too to help you make sense of the how and why relationships are an important part of the intersection of trauma and menopause.
We continue to work together to foster a sense of connection where all stories are respected. Through recognition of each other’s experience our aim for the day is to continue to build a narrative reflective of individuality and community.
PRESENTATIONS:
Two gals and a hot flash: Navigating Menopause together – Genie Crow & Kelly Holmes
Join us for this workshop exploring the impacts of trauma and the experience of menopause as seen through the lens of a lesbian couple. Sexual minority women experience greater adverse experiences than heterosexual women, with 34.1% of lesbian women and 43.8% of bisexual women experiencing 4 or more ACES, versus 22.6% of heterosexual women experiencing the same. This ultimately puts them at greater risk of developing increased symptoms of menopause.
In this workshop, we will share each of our stories of menopause from our upbringings, as well as the impact of messages about sexual identity and sexuality. The discomfort felt with our own sexuality during adolescence, seemed to negatively impact openness to ask questions about female sexual development, puberty, sexual health and even menopause. We will look at research about lesbian/same sex relationships during menopause and compare this to our personal experiences and/or experiences shared within the LGBTQ+ community.
We will also discuss what types of support have been missing and what types of support have been most helpful from each other, from other women and from providers. Finally, we will examine how the common experience of menopause has helped us feel more connected with women as a community regardless of sexual orientations.
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Black Women and Menopause: Relationships and Lived Experiences – Nina Kuypers & Anita Powell
Founded by Nina and Anita, Black Women in Menopause creates space for open conversations about menopause, particularly its impact on relationships and the lived experiences of Black women.
Menopause and Relationships
Menopause affects romantic, social, and family relationships:
- Romantic Partnerships: Symptoms like mood changes and low libido can challenge intimacy, especially when menopause remains a taboo topic in many Black communities.
- Friendships: While some friendships strengthen through shared experiences, others may strain due to a lack of understanding. Support groups provide much-needed sisterhood.
- Family Dynamics: Many Black women juggle caregiving roles, often neglecting their own health due to cultural expectations of resilience.
Lived Experiences of Black Women
Black women often face:
- Medical Disparities: Earlier menopause onset, severe symptoms, and limited support from healthcare providers.
- Cultural Silence: A lack of open discussion leaves many unprepared and isolated.
- Strength vs. Vulnerability: The expectation to always “be strong” makes seeking help difficult.
Through advocacy, storytelling, and expert guidance, Black Women in Menopause works to break the silence, foster understanding, and empower women to prioritize their well-being.
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How Does Islam Empower the Menopausal Woman – Tayba Azim
In this experiential workshop Tayba will discuss the connection and relationship of the womb to self, others and most importantly to Allah. Tayba will also discuss the connection between trauma and the womb/ menopause, followed by some trauma release exercises. The workshop will give a historical overview of the significance of the physical, spiritual and energetic womb from birth to menopause, and discuss how the Womb(an) in Islam is truly empowered and given a high status and recognition in this life and the Hereafter.
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My Mother’s Menopause: Spiritual Lessons of Our Lineage – Lynda Wisdo
In this workshop, we’ll explore the ways in which our mothers’ experiences with menopause affected us during that time as well the influence they have on how we feel about our own midlife transitions today. Were our mothers’ lives affected only slightly by a few hot flashes and night sweats? Or were they thrown completely off course by severe mood swings, depression, anxiety, or even mental illness? Did they discuss these changes with us and how did this affect our views about this stage of womanhood? We’ll use this opportunity to also look more deeply at the spiritual aspects of this major life transition through our connections not only with our mothers but with other elder women who may have influenced how we respond to this powerful feminine threshold—sisters, aunts, grandmothers, friends. We’ll also take a look at how menopause was viewed by women in days of yore and the changes in perception we are experiencing today. The workshop will include a brief Power Point Presentation, discussion, journaling prompts, and, if time allows, a guided meditation to meet with our inner elder Wise Woman.
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Mothering Teenage Daughters Through the Menopause – Joan Palmer
With the perimenopause sometimes described as a woman’s second puberty because of the once again turbulent behaviour of hormones, this could become an explosive time of emotions if you’re going through this life phase with teenage girls in the house!
There’s plenty of information to read about what’s happening with the physiology within these phases, but nothing on combining the two together and how it might play out within a household, so now is the time to consider this.
This workshop is based on my experiential knowledge of this phase. I’m now 53, a single mum, and have two teenage girls with very different characters, so getting through the teenage years hasn’t been a rinse and repeat process!
I will be providing you with some of the scenarios I have faced and managed, share the things I have learnt from the outcomes and in turn ask you to reflect on how you are managing and how you might further navigate you and your teenagers through this potential turbulent time.
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Capacity: The Challenges of Trauma, Menopause and Parenting Young Children – Our Changed Capacity – What Can We Do – Emily Haslam-Jones
Ever felt overwhelmed? Grizzly and running on empty? Like you’re burning out? Ever felt like you could have handled a situation with your kids or others better? Have you ever wondered where your capacity for dealing with others went with the menopause activating trauma and wondered if you could improve the way you deal with what life throws at you? Parenting is one of the hardest jobs and it just got harder! How we face challenge and adversity predicts our mental and physical health outcomes so finding our way parenting young kids during the peri and menopause is essential to us and those we love. This is a practical session, taking a polyvagal perspective but also informed by lived experience of the challenges of parenting with perimenopause, ADHD and PTSD. Emily will talk you through how to improve your relationships using simple and immediately actionable plan. In the session we will build a Capacity Cache that you can begin to apply immediately. You will need paper, coloured pens or pencils, anything else for decorating (glitter, stickers, paint, sticky notes, whatever kind of effort you would like to make, and your diary, paper or electronic or wall calendar, whatever you use to track your appointments. Participants will then be able to experience how this approach improves relationships, dealing with difficult conversations and challenging situations.
Key Takeaways participants will be able to
- Identify the factors are depleting your capacity (yep- trauma, the menopause and more)
- Participants build their Capacity Cache to improve quality of life
- Participants apply this plan to improve coping and communication and coregulation
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How We Embrace Change Together – Jacqui McGinn & Tony Spencer
Tony and Jacqui will share their lived experiences of navigating menopause together, highlighting the relational dynamics and growth it has brought to their partnership. Through their unique blend of creativity and therapeutic practices, they will guide participants in practical activities designed to inspire deeper, more authentic conversations and foster healing connections.
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The Wisdom of Change: Navigating Menopause Through the Spiritual Lens of Kabbalah (Judaism) – Dr Kalanit Ben-Ari
In this enlightening session, we will explore the intersection of menopause and spirituality through the profound teachings of Kabbalah and Judaism. Drawing from ancient wisdom, we will examine how this life transition can be seen as a sacred and transformative process, offering deep spiritual insights. Through the lens of Kabbalah, we’ll uncover the spiritual significance of change, growth, and renewal, offering a framework for embracing menopause as an opportunity for inner strength, wisdom, and connection to the Divine. This talk will provide practical tools for navigating this powerful phase of life with spiritual mindfulness, empowering women to honour their bodies and souls during this transformative journey.
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Grounding in Groundlessness – Dr Stella Duffy
An experiential workshop in attending to the embodied experience of the menopausal transition into postmenopause, our vital third act.
Stella Duffy has been postmenopausal since her mid 30s when chemotherapy for her first cancer made her menopausal, infertile and childless-not-by-choice. Queer and happily out for over forty years, living with chronic pain for decades, Stella is especially interested in making space for our losses so that we can choose to agree with the life we have, rather than fighting against it.
Alongside her lived experience of the profound difficulties of involuntary transition – physical, emotional, spiritual – and using existential thinking as a guide to possibility, Stella now understands menopause as an experience of awakening to our mortality, which offers the possibility of creating our own ground within the groundlessness of constant change.
As well as sharing thinking from her research and the experience of her diverse group of postmenopausal participants, Stella will offer creative writing exercises to gently consider the possibilities around menopause as a transitional space for revisioning our future and developing a life in which we can creatively live-towards-death.
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My Story of My Perimenopause Journey – Chris Oxborrow
The single woman’s menopausal journey:
- Our bodies and our health (symptoms, HRT, changes, wellbeing, self care)
- The impact of peri on relationships (a significant cause of singleness)
- Medical bias and male centric health approaches
- Sex as a single woman (physical impact, needs, desires and adaptations, dating, patriarchy)
The journey inward and onward
- Our relationship with Self
- Our one precious life – meaning and purpose
- Restoration, reevaluation and rebirth
- Self-advocacy, advocacy and the Athena archetype ‘’[# (the goddess of war and wisdom)
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Death & Its Impact During the Menopause Years – Aneesh de Vos
In this workshop Aneesh will bring her own lived experience through an autoethnographic framework to share death’s impact. She will explore how the death of those she loves/d during the menopause has not only been a physical loss, but also a profound emotional and psychological experience that interacted with the changes happening in her own body and life.
Aneesh will gently take the time to connect our understanding of deep grief and reflect on how personally and culturally this emotive – often avoided – subject can reignite adverse childhood experiences. Reflections on how, for many women, it can be a complex time of mourning not just for others, but for themselves and the life they have lived up to this point will be an important part of the discourse.
By opening this conversation within an informative and experiential workshop Aneesh hopes that it will support participants to gain new perspectives on life, legacy, and identity, as well as prompt a re-evaluation of relationships and one’s place in the world.
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Reflections on the Role and Experiences of a Male Counsellor in the Address of the Intersection of Trauma and Menopause – David Buckler
What happened to you? As opposed to, what is wrong with you?
Advocates the need for empathic understanding of emotional response to adverse experiences, rather than categorisation and/or diagnoses, and consequently, the medication of supposed disorders. This discussion invites participants to consider the question that we have become so accepting of the formalised address of psychological distress that the causes often remain unexamined.
This must surely be the case for trauma response to the difficulties experienced during menopause, given the absence of understanding, and reluctance, particularly from a male perspective.
In practice, I have never been approached directly for support in the case of menopause, and its varied and distressing symptoms, hardly surprising; however, it has been the case on occasion that this has been the direction therapy.
The influence of feminism, societally, and as a positive movement in counselling and psychotherapy has been fundamental to my own practice. The feminist writers of the counselling and psychotherapy world offer a definitive alternative to the established bastions of hierarchy within the professions, and particularly, in my opinion, the understanding and elucidation of psychological trauma, eminently applicable here. I believe that this is necessary to address informed balance in terms of knowledge and application. This influences my own practice relationally, and philosophical.
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CONFERENCE HOSTS
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TICKETS
Choose your ticket price. Each ticket provides access to the LIVE event on Zoom & the conference Recording. Choose the fee that works for you: £25.00, £37.50, or £50.00.
CPD CERTIFICATE
After attending the LIVE conference, your CPD certificate will be emailed to you.
If you watch the event on catch-up, you can download your certificate from the Onlinevents CPD Library.
RECORDING
This conference will be recorded and the recordings are included in the live admission tickets. This will be useful for colleagues who are not able to attend the event live and also for those who attend the event live and want to watch it again.
ZOOM
This workshop will be hosted on the Zoom meeting platform where we will use our cameras and microphones to interact with each other as a group.
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All the colleagues at ONLINEVENTS and the presenters we collaborate with are committed to working in a manner consistent with the BACP Ethical Framework, which can be accessed on the link below. When registering for this event you are agreeing to be present and interact in a manner that is consistent with this Framework.
