Alyssa Milano and Jeannie Mai are ready to spark a conversation about perimenopause.
“One of the symptoms is being forgetful. Another one of the symptoms is not having the calmness that you had in your 30s,” Mai, 47, exclusively shared with Us Weekly at the Los Angeles premiere of the upcoming 4-part docuseries Balance: A Perimenopause Journey on January 13. “Sometimes it looks like panic attacks or anxiety attacks. Sometimes it looks like an insecurity within yourself. I like to compare menopause as puberty backwards, and the same way we have space and language around teens, we should have that language around women in their midlife.”
After Milano, 53, welcomed her daughter Elizabella in 2014, the actress — who also shares Milo, 14, with husband David Bugliari — noticed a change in her mental health.
“For me, I gave birth to my daughter when I was 41 so I think that what I thought was postpartum anxiety was actually perimenopause,” she shared with Us. “Where does that sort of cross? Where’s that crossover? Because women are having babies later and later in their lives. How many of them are going through perimenopause while pregnant?
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According to the Mayo Clinic, perimenopause is the time before menopause when a woman’s body is preparing to no longer menstruate. Some women notice changes as early as their 30s or as late as their 50s.
Other common symptoms include mood changes, sleep problems, hot flashes and irregular periods.
In Balance: A Perimenopause Journey, monks and codirectors Sadhvi Siddhali Shree and Sadhvi Anubhuti take on the challenge of combatting misinformation, fighting medical injustice and educating women on how to make the best choices to live the lives they deserve.
Both Mai and Milano, who serve as executive producers, wanted to be part of the project in hopes of making the conversation surrounding perimenopause more accessible to women and those who love them.
“Perimenopause is not just a one gender conversation,” Mai explained to Us. “With women going through perimenopause, all men and all family members and partners should all be a part of the conversation so that we learn what it is like to work together and make space for women who need that conversation to be normal. We’re all in this together.”
Milano added, “I really think we’re going to see a lot of change, hopefully, in the next 10 years. It’s amazing to me that something that affects a woman for 10 years, we don’t have more answers. It’s a decade of our lives. It’s so nuts to me.”
As viewers prepare to watch Balance: A Perimenopause Journey, the executive producers hope the raw, personal stories of struggle, resilience and discovery will inspire women to feel excited about the future.
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According to Mai, life is only just beginning.
“Women have — for far too long because of society standards — felt regretful about getting older or reaching the stage of this life,” she claimed. “But they should feel empowered by having earned their way here, and they should feel educated and deserving of the education that should be available to them. That’s why this film is here.”
Balance: A Perimenopause Journey is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV, beginning Friday, January 30.
