Andrea McLean shared her own story at the event and recalled memories of her mum’s experience of the menopause when Andrea was a teen.
This is not the first time the 53-year-old former GMTV and Loose Women presenter has revealed how having a hysterectomy in 2016 led to her experiencing menopausal symptoms. Andrea has already written a book about it – Confessions Of A Menopausal Woman – and in 2018 she also launched the website This Girl Is On Fire that tackles the menopause and other subjects important to women.
“It’s a community for women, to help them build up their self-belief and their self-love,” says mother-of-two Andrea, at the Menopause Monologues Boots event, about the website. “I help women every single day – not just menopausal women, all women, and I love it.”
Andrea’s own menopause journey began in September 2016 following years of suffering with endometriosis. She was preparing to take an break from presenting ITV’s Loose Women so she could be admitted to hospital for a full hysterectomy.
“It was just before my last show for a while, and I’m sitting with Linda Robson and she said, ‘What are you going to say?’ and I said, ‘I’m not going to say anything,’” she remembers. “Linda said, ‘sweetheart, you’ve got to say something because people will think you’ve been fired.’
“So fast forward an hour or so, and we’re live on air. We’re coming to the last 30 seconds of the show and it’s live telly, and Linda Robson can see I’m totally fudging it and she knows I’m not going to say anything. So she leans over and says, ‘never mind all that, you’ve got something to say, ain’t ya?’
“So I had no choice, I had to drop my H-bomb. So I said, ‘OK, tomorrow I’m having a full hysterectomy’ – or at least that is what I meant to say but I was so discombobulated that what I actually said was: ‘tomorrow, I’m having a full hysterical-ectomy.’
“I’m actually going to petition for that to become a word, as it is exactly how I felt in that moment.”
The next day, Andrea had surgery, and tried not to think about her on-air revelation.
“I didn’t give it much more thought, other than the fact I was a bit embarrassed,” she says. “Now everybody knew my business. Even though it was just six years ago, it still felt like we were in another time where you just didn’t mention things like that, it was too private and too shameful.”
It was when she was recovering from surgery that Andrea discovered the public had reacted positively to her news. “I’m in hospital and I’m recovering from the operation and overnight, everything changed. Not only had I had my entire engine removed, but in those 24 hours, 10,000 women got in touch. My Instagram DMs were pinging off the hook, and my producers called and told me they had had a tsunami of women contacting the show.
“Being dobbed in by Linda Robson live on mainstream TV was a game-changer,” she laughs.
At a time when no one talked about the menopause, it seemed there were thousands of women who did want to talk about it, and many reached out to Andrea over the following weeks.
“There were so few places for women to find answers to their questions, so I became obsessed with answering as many as I could,” she adds.
At a time when no one talked about the menopause, it seemed there were thousands of women who did want to talk about it – and many reached out to Andrea over the following weeks.
“There were so few places for women to find answers to their questions, so I became obsessed with answering as many as I could,” she adds. Realising the best way to help would be to answer all the questions in one place, Andrea decided to write Confessions Of A Menopausal Woman with the help of Dr Tina Peers, despite some resistance from her own agent.
“When I told him, he said writing a book on the menopause would make people think I was old and insignificant,” she says. “It was, he said, career suicide. So I thought about what he said, got the book published and fired him.”
And Andrea soon realised the best way to do this would be to answer all the questions in one place. So she decided to write Confessions Of A Menopausal Woman with the help of her doctor Tina Peers.
Andrea’s husband Nick Feeney has been incredibly supportive. The couple, who met on a blind date in 2014 and married in November 2017, run This Girl Is On Fire together. Andrea, who is mum to Amy Jane, 16, and son Finlay John, 21, is also stepmum to Nick’s daughters Tia-Lily, 20, and Sienna, 17.
“My husband knows all about women’s fertility,” Andrea says. “If he’s popping out to the shops, he will shout upstairs to see if the girls need any sanitary products. It’s as normal to him as buying a pint of milk. That is progress, that is knowledge. And that makes me happy.”
Nick and Andrea’s knowledge and attitude to the menopause is worlds away from Andrea’s own experiences of her mother going through the same thing in 1985, when Andrea was 16.
“My mum was having pretty wild mood swings,” she says, recalling an incident when her mum lost her temper in the family car. After the shouting stopped and my mum sat staring furiously out of the window, my big, Scottish dad stopped the car, leaned round and said, ‘now girls, we need to be patient around Mum – she’s going through The Change.’
“I had no idea what The Change was – I just knew that Michael J Fox had been through something similar in a film I had just watched,” she laughs, referring a Teen Wolf.
“So I assumed my mum was about to grow fangs, facial hair and get uncharacteristically good at basketball [as Fox’s character does in the movie]. That is as much information as I had – it was the only change that I had seen.”
Andrea is relieved her own daughter “knows I won’t grow fangs!” as she looks ahead to a better understanding of the issue. “Let’s make it easier for women to talk to people, let’s make it accessible, let’s make it normal,” she says.
Andrea's mindset app This Girl is On Fire can help you navigate the menopause, visit thisgirlisonfire.com
READ MORE
Chris Moyles ‘joins I’m A Celeb’ line-up alongside Loose Women and Love Island star
Kate Middleton told she’s not ‘in her own country’ as she’s confronted in Belfast
Cheryl's ex Liam Payne supports her at ball in honour of late bandmate Sarah Harding
Olly Murs fell for fiancée when she 'saw him at his worst' after Caroline Flack’s death
To read the very best of today’s OK! content from breaking news to Royals and TV – CLICK HERE
Source: Read Full Article