It’s been in the media a lot lately. Menopause. Celebrities are nailing their colours to the let’s-talk-about-it mast, you can download chatty, info-packed podcasts on the subject and recently, there was a public consultation as to whether one particular form of HRT should be available over the counter.

Even a few years back, when I was going through menopause, the conversation was nowhere near as newsy and loud, while in my mum’s day the topic was hardly aired at all. Women would whisper about ‘the change’. Some even mouthed it like Miranda Hart’s sitcom namesake, who used to give the silent treatment to the word ‘sex’.

It’s great we’re acknowledging it more openly because it’s a part of life, like reaching any other milestone, and for many, it isn’t always an easy journey, physically or psychologically. Genuine support and understanding can only help. That said, it would be a mistake to throw a negative net over the entire experience. It can also usher in a sense of freedom. The start of a new chapter.

For me, the first symptom was that my face, without warning, would fire up as if powered by a portable furnace. However, the emotional consequence, although less visible, was every bit as unsettling, and that was accepting that nature was officially waving the chequered flag on having children. In my early 40s, living alone, I’d largely come to terms with being childless. But still, the finality prompted a moment of reflection. Remembering what my younger self had already mourned. That I would never kiss my newborn’s head. Never sew ribbons into ballet shoes or name tags into rugby shirts, help conjugate French verbs or confiscate cheap sweets.

Not that I’d endured hope-crushing rounds of failed IVF. As I far as I knew, I had no fertility issues. My childless state was shaped entirely by circumstance. In my long-term relationships, I just hadn’t been with anyone who wanted babies at the same time as me. And I certainly hadn’t applied pressure. I’d got on with earning a living.

So when, at the time, fertility experts wrote in the BMJ that women, in attempting to have it all, were defying nature by delaying motherhood, I wrote an article in reply, acknowledging their valid points but explaining that not all attempts to conceive later in life were the direct result of career-oriented deferral strategies. That if having a child is a major life event, often, so is not having one. And for me, my chance for a family had always felt like something I was trying to grasp underwater, which in slow motion had eluded me before finally slipping away.

Vogue ran the piece, albeit without fanfare. No visuals. No PR push. But others in the press picked it up. Big time. Then Lorraine Kelly invited me on to her show, as did Sky News. I declined the latter because I had a ticket for the ballet that evening – and thank goodness I didn’t cancel because that’s the night I met my now-husband, who like me had gone to the performance alone. Kind of poetic, really.