Find Your Ground

I started this newsletter as a way to talk about aging and perimenopause and all that encompasses (or at least some of what it encompasses—it’s a big topic!). I didn’t start this newsletter to focus on politics. I’m not a political scientist or a journalist by trade. But when you discuss why certain things are as they are—why I’m worried about losing access to the hormonal contraception that keeps chronic hives at bay, for example, or why we don’t have much scientific knowledge about menopause despite its prevalence both historical and contemporary—political realities creep in.

In general, though, I want Hag to be about emotional health and new progress in the perimenopause space and how aging can be both hilarious and heartbreaking. Political machinations of this month, though, have surely penetrated even the most insulated places.

So I want to offer some…comfort, maybe? Or at least I’d like to share how I’m trying to cope with the flurry of changes and the unsettling extraordinary-ness of this time. I never thought I’d see so many people nostalgic for everyday bureaucratic banality and I’ll bet most of you haven’t, either.

Simply keeping track of the governmental disarray that’s taken place over the last few weeks is overwhelming—let alone trying to fully comprehend each action or figure out its inevitable (and avalanche-like) snowball effects. It can feel hopeless and futile to keep yourself even minimally informed. (We should all have a moment of silence for the Pendleton Act and the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, though.)

We can use joy and creativity as resistance to tyranny—we can build our local communities and inoculate ourselves against total despair by seeing the humanity in the faces of those around us. But these steps are all so…positive. And sometimes not everyone feels positive—positive resistance, after all, can take a lot of energy.

There are days when you might feel too angry to channel it into a creative outlet. Or days when you feel too scared to be on the wrong side of executive power. When you worry you aren’t one candle among many fellow flames, holding back an encroaching darkness, but instead are a hapless side character with a flashlight in a dark horror-movie basement, the audience shrieking at you to turn off your beacon and run.

Those days are tough days to write a cozy escapist novel or compose a song to recognize the beauty of love. Or even to plant some flowers in anticipation of warmer weather. Those are days when it might help, instead, to have a couple of issues you’ve followed closely and can take specific action on. No one can stand up in a meaningful, effective way for every single group, policy, and institution that’s being eroded or attacked. So pick a couple that are important to you and find ways to do some good there.

If you aren’t sure where to start (because there sure are a lot of places that need help), consider the issue of women’s health. You’re reading this, so you probably are affected in some way by the areas of: being a woman, aging, female sex hormones, menstruation, menopause, the research gap, and patriarchal inequalities. Many of those issues could be improved by more robust work on women’s health. Even if that doesn’t feel critical. Recognizing humans as equally deserving of care and notice is always critical.

At this point, the “NIH Policy on Sex as a Biological Variable” page on the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Research on Women’s Health is labeled a “Historic document published prior to January 20, 2025,” suggesting that the progress we’ve made toward including people in clinical studies who are not male may have come to a halt (and you can guess that if researchers no longer have to include more than one sex, they certainly aren’t going to try to include a variety of ethnicities).

The page explains the importance of sex as a biological variable, meaning that researchers can’t test exclusively cisgender men or male animals and call it good enough (as was done in the past). “Strong justification from the scientific literature, preliminary data, or other relevant considerations must be provided for applications proposing to study only one sex,” the page says, guidance I can only assume is no longer relevant to the current incarnation of the NIH.

The White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, Jill Biden’s effort to improve funding for and rectify the gaps in women’s health research, is probably a relic of the past, as well, remembered only by the archived site (“This is historical material ‘frozen in time’. [sic] The website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work.”).

It may seem like including a more diverse pool of people in clinical studies or continued exploration of how menopause works are pretty minor things to fight for when we’re living under the threat of greater terrors.

But recognizing the important spaces where you might be able to push back is worth something. Are there groups already formed in your area that are aligned with your cause? Are there like-minded neighbors who might join you in making local changes that further your goals? Are there advocacy groups to which you can donate?

The democratic framework instituted by the founders still exists. Call your elected representatives and encourage them to remember that theirs are not positions bestowed by birthright or bribery, but by the citizens they work for. Remind these representatives that women are half the population and any legislation that purports to benefit them should be focused on the research gap, health conditions that largely affect women (migraines and autoimmune diseases, for example), or how wage disparities negatively affect our economy.

Continue to normalize discussions and exploration of aging, menopause, and gender. If being all the change you want to see feels nauseatingly impossible, figure out one aspect that’s manageable. I want to see us keep working to close the research gap in women’s health despite our being dragged back to fewer rights and less visibility. Is that going to be easy? No. Scientists all over the world are feeling the repercussions of the last few weeks, and getting any study funded will be tough—those that include the word “woman” will be even tougher. I’m still going to look for ways to help.

I want to erode the eroders. Be one wave of many waves that wash the sandcastle of executive hubris out to sea. If you were pushing for improved women’s health last year, keep going. There are more obstacles now, yes, but we should not see as inevitable a future where the next generation of women accepts that they could die of sepsis from unviable pregnancies or suffer side effects from a dosage of medicine that’s optimized for men.

Even if you can only inflict pinpricks, continue to pierce your enemy. The strongest walls will crumble if riddled with sufficient holes—no matter how small.

Well, I’m all out of metaphors, similes, and alliteration-heavy comparisons. I’ll get back to the aging and the perimenopause and the heart of Hag next time. I think this is the last post for a while that will center on What the Fuck Is Happening. Many, many others—more qualified than I—are doing great work in that space.

And I’m still getting older, my ovaries transitioning to their final phase, regardless of what’s happening in D.C. Life moves forward—books are read, friends are made, children grow. I’m here for that part of Being Here, too.

So, until then, I remain:

Yours in encouragement of chocolate as a restorative,

That Hag

Two Easy Ways to Do Something in the Week Ahead:

1. Catch up on your vaccinations. Has it been ten years since TDaP? Get it updated. Not sure about MMR (or born before 1987)? Get it updated. Told you were “too old” for the HVP vaccine back when it came out? Go ahead and get it anyway. Are your kids nine or older? They, too, can get the HVP vaccine. Get a flu vaccine if you haven’t already this season—influenza infection is reaching highs we haven’t seen in decades and it’s still going. If you can, have your blood tested to see which other vaccines you might need. They’re widely available and largely covered by insurance…right now. Will they continue to be? I’ve already scheduled my appointments.

2. Identify your elected representatives. If it’s a lot for you to call your members of Congress, just know who they are and what their contract information is for now. If you don’t mind calling right away, go for it. But if it takes you a while to work up to talking to strangers about emotionally sensitive issues (democracy, health, etc.), just get the info and know you can use it any time. Voting is a right and also a responsibility, but I get that lots of citizens feel underinformed and overwhelmed and don’t vote. I’m not here to make you feel bad about it if that’s where you are. At this point, though, it's worth knowing who’s in D.C. representing your interests. It’s not hard to find out, and then you can put a face to the votes. And a phone number.