Your Golden Hour is the Arabic Platform Shedding Light on Menopause

Menopause is a very daunting word when framed on its own, with zero context or explanation, because that’s what menopause is framed as by TV, movies and social media. The reality is, yes, menopause is very daunting to many women; it’s a transition stage that women oftentimes fear discussing or thinking about at all, even though 1% of all women in Egypt face early menopause, with 1 in 1,000 experiencing it before 30.

Except, this doesn’t have to be the case at all. There is a lot that can be achieved when one doesn’t have to face it alone. This is where ‘Your Golden Hour’ - the first Arabic language platform dedicated to raising awareness on menopause - comes in. Led by Gulnar Esmat, a homeopath and menopause coach, Your Golden Hour looks to create a channel of support for all Arab women as they go through this disconcerting phase in their lives.

When she was 45 years old, Esmat was suddenly hit with a wave of symptoms she couldn’t explain. Given the lack of education about menopause, she didn’t know how to label them. “I had severe anxiety and sleep problems, there are alot of symptoms we don’t know about,” Esmat tells CairoScene. “There were four to five months of my life where I was not functioning. I went to a psychiatrist, went on meds, and started to improve. I researched further, and i found out that these were menopause symptoms.”

While there is no cure for menopause, Esmat emphasises that having enough information about it is enough to be able to deal with the symptoms. “This is something that affects every single woman on Earth, the way you address it is very different, you want to expand to normalize this as much as possible,” she adds. “The movemnet has started, but it stopped at menopause.”

Alongside her Instagram page, @yourgoldenhour_eg, Esmat plans on teaching courses too, in the hopes of one day creating a community that will normalise talking about menopause openly. While she sometimes struggles to keep going, Esmat pushes forward in hopes to inspire and inform women everywhere.