WHY I MADE THIS

Last March I thought I was losing my mind. High anxiety, sweating, waking up with a startle in the night and couldn’t remember basic words in the day. This project reflects my experience with the dawning realization that I was in perimenopause and could no longer brush off these “climacteric symptoms” or just take them in stride.

I consulted with friends, doctors, and the internet about what to do. I tried an online virtual nurse who wanted me to get pages and pages of bloodwork. I considered and rejected most supplements. I got a meditation app. I exercised more and grilled my medically trained friends. I tried toughing it out. To paraphrase one friend: I was off kilter and just needed to recalibrate. In November, I finally met with my long-time obgyn doctor, who gave me a list of resources to read and listen to, and prescribed a “whiff” of menopause hormone therapy (low dose estrogen patch and progesterone pills). I started sleeping, stopped hot flashing, and my brain moved from leaning forward/always-on buzz to leaning back. It was such a relief. I felt like myself again, like I had finally re-entered my own body.

With a regimen of changing my patch twice a week and taking progesterone for the first 12 days of each month I started accumulating prescription packaging. I interviewed more friends to understand how they felt they were being treated medically, socially, and emotionally as they go through the menopause transition. Many of those quotes are on this sculpture. I also started looking closely at the packaging inserts filled with tiny print including that “black box” warning you may have read about, a hangover from the controversial Women’s Health Initiative study. 

With the confluence of the rise in social media influencer culture, limited access to informed medical professionals, and the very urgent need to understand our own bodies, this sculpture is the embodiment of the mental and physical ideals we and society hold ourselves to, the overwhelming morass of information available, and the interventions we use to keep ourselves together as we imagine a new ideal.

I am creating several pieces for this project. I hope they spark more conversation.

-Lauren Schiller