When the Body Speaks: How Menopause Unmasks Generational Trauma in South Asian Women

Menopause isn’t just a biological transition; it’s an emotional reckoning. And for South Asian women, that reckoning often goes far deeper than hormones. It reaches into generations of silence, self-sacrifice, and suppressed pain.

We are the daughters of women who never spoke of their needs. Who worked through grief without therapy, raised children through patriarchy, and held their trauma in their bodies. And now, as we enter midlife, our bodies are speaking the language they were never taught to express.

The Body Keeps the Score

Modern research, from neuroscience to epigenetics, confirms what many ancient traditions already knew: trauma lives in the body. And when the body begins to change, as it does during perimenopause and menopause, old, buried emotions often rise to the surface.

Hot flushes. Anxiety. Insomnia. Rage. Panic. These are not just hormonal fluctuations. They are signals. Symptoms that may be linked to the unresolved wounds of our lineage, of forced silence, displacement, racism, domestic violence, and cultural shame.

Many South Asian women say they feel like they’re “unravelling” in midlife. What’s really happening is that they’re being asked to meet parts of themselves they’ve never had permission to acknowledge.

Cultural Conditioning and Emotional Suppression

As South Asian girls, many of us were taught to suppress:

• Anger: “Be quiet, don’t answer back.”
• Grief: “What will people say?”
• Desire: “Good girls don’t think like that.”
• Individual dreams: “Family comes first.”

By the time we reach our 40s and 50s, these emotions have accumulated. And when hormonal changes lower our threshold for tolerance, they burst forth.

Suddenly, we can’t pretend anymore. We can’t people-please, overextend, or self-abandon the way we used to. Our nervous systems are exhausted. Our bodies demand rest, truth, and release.

Midlife as a Portal for Healing

While this can feel terrifying, it is also an invitation. Menopause offers a chance to break cycles. To feel what was never felt. To speak what was never said. To heal what was never healed.

This is the work of reparenting. Of therapy. Of movement. Of stillness. Of listening to your body, not as a betrayal, but as a wise messenger.

Practical Ways to Begin

• Journaling: Ask your body what it’s trying to tell you.
• Breathwork or somatic therapy: Move stuck energy through the body.
• Talk therapy with a culturally competent practitioner: Share your truth without fear of judgment.
• Creative expression: Dance, write, paint, let your body speak in your language.
• Connect with other women: Sharing your story helps dissolve shame.

At The Sattva Collective CIC

We hold space for these stories. We honour both the pain and the power. Because when one woman breaks her silence, she gives permission for others to do the same.

You are not “too much.” You are healing in a world that taught you to numb.

Let this be the generation that listens when the body speaks.