Many women dread menopause. Comedienne Roseanne Barr is not one of those women.
“Menopause had indeed made me into a nicer person,” the 59-year-old former sitcom star writes in a column for Newsweek. “After menopause, I discovered the joy of drinking wine, and of sinking deeply into writing and time alone. These things replaced the sex drive I had thoroughly cruised down as a youth, exploring one dead end, detour, and unpaved dirty road after another.”
Losing her sex drive, Barr says, has actually been a relief because of the pain it caused. She also praised her current partner, Johnny Argent. “I no longer fear moving on to a better existence than this one, which is, of course, no existence at all. Oblivion will be f—ing sweet after a lifetime at the mercy of my hormones and my biological clock and the twisted logic that produced the craving for a dominant male sex partner. I’m quite thrilled to say that at this late hour, in my autumn years, I have at last found a man who is more savant than idiot, and with whom the sparse occasions of physical enjoining of souls is quite sublime.”
Since going through menopause, the comedian said she has had more time to meditate and take more time for herself. “My family is close, but I have more me time—there, I said that too! And what do I do with some of the time I don’t spend being whipped around by the desperate process of staving off the appearance of aging and all the rest of the crap we’re sold 24/7? For one thing, I meditate, and for another, I think. Let me elaborate (after I meditate, and then think for a bit).”
After decades of having to worry about that time of the month, she said now that she’s “sailing on much calmer seas” without such concerns. “I continue to realize how much of my life I spent firmly under the thumb of Mother Nature, that inscrutable Boss Lady. I can still hear my biological clock ticking, but it’s a calmer rhythm. Without being one of those happy-talking, sugar-coating types I can’t stand, I just have to say it’s so much easier living on this side of menopause, even with my high-mileage body.”
