Writing from the heat of midlife, Burney-Scott traces how menopause sharpens time, memory and political awareness—urging her future self to age with agency, rest and purpose.
Menopause—and the conversations surrounding it—is having a moment: Celebrities are speaking out, a commercial marketplace is booming, and state legislatures have introduced a wave of reforms over the past year. But as public attention grows, so too must our scrutiny of who benefits from this surge of visibility … and who risks being left behind.
This essay is part of the latest Women & Democracy installment, Flipping the Menopause Script Is Essential to Democracy, published in the middle of Black History Month, in partnership with Black Girls’ Guide to Surviving Menopause. This series helps flip the script, building on seven years of narrative and reproductive justice work led by Black Girls’ Guide to Surviving Menopause and commemorates “Iranti Ẹ̀jẹ̀: Remembering Blood,” a 2025 intergenerational gathering in Durham, N.C., centering marginalized menopausal communities. Menopause is not only a physical transition—it is also cultural, social and political. Recognizing its full scope is essential to advancing true health and civic equity. As one contributor reminds us: “We will not disappear with age. We will arrive.”
Editor’s note: This essay is one of three “Letters to My Future Self” included in Flipping the Menopause Script Is Essential to Democracy, our Women & Democracy series created with BGG2SM. Through personal reflection, political memory and spiritual inquiry, these letters consider menopause and midlife as thresholds—moments of undoing, reckoning and renewal. Together, they invite readers to see aging not as decline, but as a site of transformation, agency and hard-won power.
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Dear Future Omi,
I am writing to you while I am still alive.
This feels important to say out loud. I am not writing from the edge of life, or from the quiet after it. I am writing from the middle. From heat. From ache. From becoming.
Mommy lived for 68 years. That sounds simple until I translate it. She lived for about 816 months. Roughly 24,820 days. More than 35 million minutes. Over two billion seconds. I carry those seconds in our body. In our hands. In the way grief still arrives without knocking.
At the time of this letter, we are 58. We have lived for about 696 months. Over 21,000 days. More than 30 million minutes. I do the math not to scare us, but to locate us. Time is not abstract anymore. It is intimate. It sits in my joints. It wakes me at night. It speaks through my hormones, my memory, my hunger, my rage, my joy.
Menopause has made time audible.
It has also made history audible.
Since we were born in 1967 (and our little sister, Georgette, in 1968—please hug her and tell her “Hello Sissy” for me), we were told, implicitly and explicitly, that we were the first generation of Black children born into the fullness of freedom promised by law. The first generation of Black women was meant to be fully protected by the government. Free to vote without obstruction. Free to be educated without limits. Free to open a bank account, hold a credit card and own property. Free to marry who we loved. Free to live without our rights being constantly renegotiated.
That was the promise we inherited.
And yet, since 2016, and even more sharply since 2025, we have watched those promises erode in real time. Voting rights hollowed out. Bodily autonomy stripped and surveilled. Education distorted and defunded. History banned. Language policed. Democracy reframed as a privilege instead of a practice.
Menopause sharpened my understanding that rights, like bodies, require attending to and care. That neglect is a political choice. That erosion is not accidental. That what happens to aging bodies mirrors what happens to democracies that refuse to honor those most impacted by time, labor and sacrifice.
So I am writing to you, Future Me, because I want us to meet each other awake.
Who are we when I finally arrive?
Are we softer without being smaller? Stronger without armor? Have we learned how to rest without apology? Have we let go of the belief that our worth must be proven through exhaustion?
Do you still remember how it felt to be in this body when it was burning its way into wisdom?
I want to remind you of some things from this time.
Remember that menopause was not an ending. It was a threshold. It was the moment you stopped leaking your life force outward and began gathering it back into yourself. It was when your “no” became holy. When your “yes” became deliberate. When your body demanded truth instead of performance.
Remember that aging gave you agency, not irrelevance. That each year sharpened your discernment. That you stopped asking for permission and started asking better questions.
Remember that creativity saved you. Not productivity. Not hustle. Creativity. The making of meaning. The insistence on beauty even while grieving. The way words, rituals, community and imagination kept you in right relationship with being alive.
I want to ask you a few things, too.
Did we keep choosing hope even when cynicism tried to pass itself off as intelligence? Did we stay politically awake without becoming spiritually numb? Did we continue to understand democracy not as a system alone, but as a practice of care, participation, and belonging?
Did we remember that flipping the script on menopause was never just about bodies? That it was about who gets to transform … to age with dignity. Who gets to be visible. Who gets to be resourced. Who gets to be believed.
If this letter finds you when our timelines finally meet, when you have crossed into ancestorhood, I want you to know this.
I am trying, Omisade. I promise you, I am.
I am trying to live in a way that will make you proud. I am trying to leave something behind that is more than evidence of survival. I am trying to practice memory as a form of resistance. To treat my life as a living archive. To love in ways that outlive us.
If you are an ancestor now, please remind me of what mattered most. Not the accolades. Not the fear. Not the scarcity. Remind me that I belonged to myself. That I belonged to my people. That I trusted the wisdom of my changing body.
Remind me that we did not disappear with age. We arrived.
With reverence and so much love,
your younger self,
Omi
