When Naomi Watts was 36 years old and wanted to start a family but didn’t want to get pregnant, she was “shocked” when her doctor told her she was close to menopause.
“I really had to concentrate on getting pregnant. I had to be a mother or I would become some kind of failure of a woman,” she said Sunday while speaking on a women’s health panel at Hello Sunshine’s Shine Away, connected by AT&T, event in Los Angeles. “That’s ridiculous and absurd. There are plenty of ways to be a parent if you want to, but I fell into a spiral of shame and fear.”
Watts said that’s when a “light bulb went off.” She remembered that her own mother had entered menopause early and had her last menstrual period at the age of 45.
“I didn’t know any detail about it,” Watts said, “that [my mom] had a multitude of symptoms that were bothering her in some way. It was just something that wasn’t talked about in detail.”
She continued, “I said to my mom on the phone, ‘Why didn’t you tell me more?’ And she said, ‘Well, these are the things I haven’t told you because my mother never told me.’ And I thought, ‘But that just doesn’t make sense.’ We are half the population. Why is this a secret? Who signed this oath of silence and agrees that we should all just be quiet?”
According to the Mayo Clinic, menopause is the time when menstruation “stops for good” for a full twelve months. While this can happen when someone is in their 40s or 50s, the average age in the US is 51. Common symptoms include hot flashes, sleep disruption and vaginal dryness – the result of hormone fluctuations, which can begin in perimenopause, the time leading up to menopause.
What was especially frustrating for Watts was that she had tried freezing her eggs at age 33, three years before she wanted to start a family, to ensure she would be ready as soon as she could take a break of her work.
“It was right at the point where my career was taking off,” she explained. “I tried it, and things blew up and I thought, ‘Let me get on top of this, because I’m pretty sure I’m going to be working for the next five years.’ And I also had something in the back of my mind: ‘In Hollywood, everything is over at 40,’ because that’s what they told us.
Watts said she went to a “very well-known doctor” in Los Angeles and asked to freeze her eggs.
“He actually laughed at me,” she recalled. ‘He said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re 33. You’ll be fine. No problem.'”
She added: “I was quite shocked, especially when you had that conversation three years later and discovered you were close to menopause.”
Because of her experience, Watts, who went on to have two children she shares with former partner Liev Schreiber, decided to launch her own wellness company, Stripes, in 2022, with a focus on menopausal health.
“I wanted to build a company that really spoke to a woman who is going through this, from perimenopause all the way down, to help with solutions, one of which is hydration, but also education and community, because we need to be better prepared for it. And the advocacy part was crucial for me,” she said.
This comes at a time when other Hollywood actresses over 40, or even 50, like Halle Berry, are also speaking out about menopause and the lack of education on the subject.
For Watts, the launch of Stripes “wasn’t just about another beauty brand.”
“It was: ‘How do we come together and feel relevant, visible and powerful?’ This is actually a great time in life,” she said. “So many things can happen after the age of fifty. It’s something to be proud of, and you have to hold your head high.”
Watts is committed to continuing the conversation and even has a book on the subject, Dare I say it: everything I wish I knew about menopausewhich will be released in January.
“Thank God we can have these conversations with each other, with our families, in the workplace, just by owning it,” Watts said.
“I’ve been in situations at airports or on the street, where women come up to me and I’m like, ‘Oh God, they’re going to ask for a selfie and I don’t have my lippie on.’ They don’t want a selfie. They want to say with tears in their eyes, ‘Thank you for giving me the language to discuss this with my partner or my child,’ and that is meaningful to me.
