Keeping My Ways of Being: Middle-aged women dealing with the passage through menopause

The meanings given to menopause by women themselves are often left aside. In this grounded theory study, based on interviews and on open-ended questions in questionnaires answered by middle-aged women, the authors found that not being able to know what would happen and what influence menopause would have were sources of uncertainty for the women. The process, Keeping My Ways of Being, emerged in the analysis as the pattern of behavior through which the women endeavored to resolve their uncertainty. The intensity of the process and the use of its three different stages, those of Preserving present ways of being, Limiting changes and Reappraising, were considered to be dependent upon the central Personal Calculation Process, in which the women used their individual explanatory beliefs and evaluations of need. The theory, used as a model of thinking in consultations with middle-aged women, might show a high degree of workability in explaining what is going on.