As I connect with Perth-based Menopause Cafe founder Rachel Weiss via video-call, she notices a German dictionary on the bookshelves behind me.
Rachel will shortly be giving a presentation in the language at an event in Berlin, she tells me.
I start to wonder if there is anything this inspirational woman can’t do.
Her Menopause Cafe model has been exported as far afield as Kenya, Barbados and Dubai.
This October, her purple menopause ribbons will continue to smash the taboo around the subject.
“They’ve invited me to go to Berlin and do one in English, German and Turkish.
“There’s no way I can do Turkish,” she laughs, “So we’ll get an interpreter for that.”
Who is Rachel Weiss?
Born and raised in London, Rachel is the elder of two sisters in what she describes as:
“A family of refugees and immigrants. Dad’s family were from Berlin. In fact they were German Jews. The fled Berlin in the 1930s and were warmly welcomed to the UK.”
Her mother’s family came from India and she was working as a teacher in Singapore before moving to Britain.
“She came to the UK in the 60s when they were short of maths teachers.”
The family moved around a bit, and had spells in Prague and the USA thanks to her father’s work in cancer research but always returned to London.
Rising to any challenge
Rachel was also a gifted student and ahead of her game in many ways as a young woman. She went from her London state school to Plymouth aged 18 when she was the first female recipient of a computer programming scholarship.
From there she gained a place to study mathematics at Oxford University, spent a year in Berlin volunteering with Lebanese refugees and then moved to Edinburgh to study artificial intelligence.
“Then I decided to do teacher training because I realised I liked working with people and it’s a bit of a bummer if you’re good at maths and computing but you like working with people.”
Having taught in Edinburgh and then Perth, when she moved to the Fair City, she made another change in direction. “I trained as a counsellor because I felt I needed better listening skills as a teacher,” she explains.
She now runs a successful counselling service from her adopted home, Perth, where she has lived with husband Andy for 25 years.
Rachel has three daughters – one a maths teacher in Edinburgh and the younger two still at university.
She describes her home life now with a dash of humour. “Just my husband and the dying dog who is living longer than we thought possible.”
Rachel Weiss is not, it would seem, a woman who does things by half, even in the dog ownership stakes.
What sparked the Menopause Cafe idea?
She looks back to the roots of the now global Menopause Cafe movement and remembers that it was inspired by a chance viewing of a TV documentary presented by Kirsty Wark.
“I was 50, and I still had periods but I thought it’s going to happen sometime, maybe I should find out about it.”
She watched the hour-long programme with her husband and says she realised two things:
“So first, I realised that there was a lot I didn’t know – that the menopause was a whole raft of physical and emotional symptoms that people have and that it’s at that time of life where for many people you’re caring for elderly relatives or teenage children.
“You know, it’s not an easy stage of life. You’re at the peak of your career perhaps.
“But the second thing I realised was how come nobody’s told me about this?” Rachel Weiss, Founder, Menopause Cafe.
“I’ve never been taught about the menopause. So I just thought, well, my periods happen and then one day they’ll stop happening and I might get a few hot flushes.
“That was it. That’s all I knew.”
Over-sharing about everything but menopause
Rachel says her friends were comfortable sharing all kinds of other things: when they first had sex, or the experience of giving birth, but they wouldn’t talk about the menopause.
“If I’d grown up hearing people, not just my mum’s generation, but even my friends talking about it like:
“‘How do you cope with hot flushes and meetings? Or ‘I forget stuff – what do you do when that happens?’
“That might have prepared me or normalised it a bit more?”
Why a Menopause Cafe?
So why did she feel the need to host a cafe?
The format was one that Rachel knew would work. She had been involved in delivering the first Death Cafes in Perth.
She floated the idea of a similar set up with menopause as the focus on social media and immediately had an enthusiastic and slightly overwhelming response.
Two women, Lorna Fotheringham, and Gail Jack got in touch to say that they would help to organise it. Rachel’s husband Andy was also on hand to help with projects such as developing a Menopause Cafe website.
“So the Menopause Cafe idea wasn’t preconceived, I didn’t think: ‘I know – I’ll start a charity or my menopause is awful so I must help other people.’ It wasn’t that kind of classic story.”
“So then you really have to do it. It’s not just a crazy idea. If there are loads of women going, ‘yes, we want to talk about it’ you have to follow it through.”
Why don’t people talk about menopause?
Rachel believes that there are lots of reasons for the lack of discussion, but misogyny is one of them.
“Somehow men got the power and they shamed us,” she says.
“Our fertility became something shameful, you know, when we had our periods, we had to be hidden away.
“We were confined when we were pregnant, so I think that was part of the patriarchy oppressing women, making us feel ashamed of our perfectly natural monthly bodily occurrence.
“I think that’s the root of it. If we never spoke about menstruating then we’re not going to suddenly start talking about menopause, are we?”
This year’s campaign
For 2024 Rachel has once more inspired some big names to spread the word on menopause awareness.
Gabby Logan, Kirsty Wark and First Minister John Swinney will be donning purple awareness ribbons in support of Menopause Awareness Month.
But Rachel is careful not to congratulate herself on a job well done just yet.
“We have swung from silence to sensationalism. People are frightened and it’s getting commercialised and there are false facts out there.
“Everyone is sticking menopause in front of shampoo or soap or you name it.
“I mean it’s inevitable because we are a capitalist society but it’s something we need to be aware of.”
Conversation