Embracing menapause is not something we are encouraged or taught to do in my part of the world.  It's deemed to be a time of discomfort, an end of female productive usefulness and worse.  My own menapause was a nightmare, mainly due to emotions because I did not conceive the child I thought I so desperately wanted.  In reality, when I had the opportunity to have a child, I didn't actually want one.  So was it all in my head?!  Did my culture and beliefs affect my experience of menapause?  Absolutely, YES!