WHEN I first started to experience the symptoms of the menopause, friends and family advised that I should get down to Boots and buy myself a pregnancy test because they considered I was far too young. I was 45, at the lower end of the normal range of 45-55, but not extraordinarily young. One in 100 women experience early menopause before the age of 40.

It’s occurred to me since that the rush to diagnose me as an older pregnant woman, rather than a young menopausal woman, was part of the widespread denial there is around what we call “the change”.

Back then, two years ago, it seemed to me that no one was talking about the menopause. I felt that whenever I mentioned the word, the air would freeze. Young friends would glaze over. My parents’ generation seemed to have forgotten it had ever happened to them.

The phase was particularly confusing for me since it came around the time of the death of my younger brother, at 42 years old, to a pulmonary embolism. I was heartbroken, and so consumed by grief that I barely noticed that I had gone months without menstruating. When I did, I thought my missing periods were just stress – to add to the mix my father was having a quadruple heart bypass. I searched the web to see if a shock could trigger a pause in the menstrual cycle. Then, as time passed, I realised this was it. The change was really happening.

I always then made a point of mentioning the menopause in social settings, and sometimes people would actually talk ¬ women a few years older than myself in its clutches. The sluice gates would open and release tales of hypochondria induced by the wealth of strange symptoms, HRT advice and comforting tips. It seemed to me there were, after all, sources of secret knowledge. But, on this, it’s not secret knowledge we need, but public knowledge.

Two years later and it seems we are talking about it a bit more – partly thanks to Kirsty Wark’s documentary The Menopause And Me. Attitudes are changing, as could be seen last week in Scotland, when, following an industrial tribunal that ruled a woman’s menopause a disability, the subject was discussed across the media. The menopause, of course is not a disability, and shouldn’t be considered such – it’s just that some of the symptoms, for some women, are so severe that they are disabling.

What is particularly depressing is to see some people responding to the results of this tribunal by suggesting such rulings will make employers more wary of employing older women. It’s a reminder of why career-oriented feminists have hitherto been wary of talking about it too much. We know how easily our biology gets used against us in the workplace. Coming out as menopausal can seem tantamount to saying you’re ready for the knacker’s yard – which seems particularly ridiculous given the wealth of older female role models there are now, who are showing us that the post-reproductive years can be astoundingly productive.

Radio Scotland’s Kaye Adams Show last week, when it discussed the tribunal ruling, raised some of these issues. Among the many anecdotes that emerged was that there are women who are signed off work with depression, when what they are suffering from is not depression, but low mood and anxiety associated with the menopause. That this should be the case, says a lot about how stigmatised and far down the heap of taboos the menopause is. That needs to change. Yes, the stigma around mental health needs to be busted. But so does the fear and mystery around a change almost every woman will go through, sooner or later.

HERE’s a typical scene from modern parenting. You’re standing there shouting at your child to get off the smartphone even as you’re swiping your own and checking out the five more "likes" on the post you put up of your youngest with chocolate birthday cake all over her hair. It’s always been hard to parent and not be a hypocrite, but it’s particularly challenging in the digital age. For, when it comes to the over-sharing of information, it’s not the kids who have grown up with smartphones clipped to their buggies we need to worry about, it’s their parents. Hence the popularity of the verb “sharenting”.

Currently, we seem consumed by a moral panic about the kids and what they’re putting out there on their smartphones, when, as Barclays bank effectively pointed out last week, really the biggest concern should be on what we parents are putting out there about them ourselves. Sharenting, they said, was the weakest link in risking online fraud and identity theft. And, we don’t need to be an "Insta-Mum" like Clemmie Hooper, who recently came off Instagram after her hugely popular account was criticised for exploiting her kids, to be taking it too far. Those pictures that you shared of your child looking so adorable in their new school uniform on their first day at school are the kind of thing that is a share too much. Or that cute picture of your daughter with Bono, her first pet. I know, I know ... I'm starting to sound like a hectoring parent here. But, the kids aren't going to get it right if the kidults can't.