Menopause can be an overwhelming stage for women to navigate through, and a new campaign launch “Tune In To Menopause” is ready to help equip women by providing them with the tools and knowledge they need to celebrate this new stage. Kim Cattrall has teamed up with Pfizer to alleviate the stress that’s entangled in a woman’s menopause chapter by telling her story and teaching them to embrace it with poise. The campaign has also created a personalized song collection, “Tune In To Menopause" playlist, on Pandora Radio for women, designed to inspire them through their new journey.

“What I’ve really discovered about menopause is that there’s no two menopauses that seem to be alike. There’s no one size fits all...” Golden Globe-winning Actress Kim Cattrall, who is best known for her role as Samantha Jones in the HBO series Sex and the City, told Medical Daily. Cattrall played a very vivacious and take-charge kind of woman who begrudged the process of menopause and approached it with a sense of dread.

“Playing a character before I was in menopause is one thing, but actually going through it two years later after we filmed those sequences and having experienced my own menopause, I’ve really thought in some ways I’d like to go back and address it differently,” Cattrall said. “It was quite overwhelming for me. You could see that Samantha didn’t like it, but she didn’t like it like she didn’t like a certain outfit. Menopause was quite bewildering for me in the beginning, which is why I went to my doctor, writing down the symptoms and saying this is what I’m experiencing and then working through the process.”

To be able to bring the menopause conversation to the forefront, the campaign encourages on motivating women during this new advent in their lives and to learn how to embrace the changes with a sort of savviness. Every time a woman goes onto the site and participates in the “meno-cause” quiz to help women find out what their menopausal style is, Pfizer will donate one dollar. The company plans on donating up to $50,000 to Dress for Success, a nonprofit organization aimed at helping women transition back into the workforce by providing them professional attire and a network that breeds career development and confidence. Cattrall has been a long-time supporter of the organization and believes the two causes interweave seamlessly, with the same support and collaborative mission.

“When women hit this stage, they think, ‘OK, I’m just getting old and my body is decaying and there’s just nothing I can do about it,” Obstetrician and Gynecologist Dr. Patricia Sulak, told Medical Daily. Sulak, who treats patients at the Scott & White Hospital and Clinic as well as Texas A&M College of Medicine, has more than 34 years of experience specializing in menopause, and has worked as the medical advisor for TuneInToMenopause.com. “But that’s so wrong! There are so many things that we can be doing at this stage. This stage is critical."

The importance of creating a strong relationship with a doctor during this stage in a woman’s life is, as Cattrall calls it, “instrumental” to helping her through the process. Every day another 6,000 more women enter into the first stages of menopause, which is defined as a not having a menstrual cycle for 12-consecutive months. But once those months are over, it’s not just a marker in their life, as Sulak says. Women will be in menopause for the rest of their lives until they die. It just depends what menopausal symptoms they're experiencing and how long or severe those symptoms may be.

While 80 percent of women have moderate to severe hot flashes, it turns out 50 percent of women over the age of 50 have low bone density, and if not managed, can lead to osteoporosis, which is a disease that makes bones fragile and much more likely to fracture. “It’s not just the hot flashes that women go through, but also it’s things that women don’t sense, such as the osteoporosis that can be developing," Sulak added. "During menopause there’s accelerated bone loss that we know occurs by the first few years after that last menstrual cycle. Menopause can really affect a woman’s personal and professional life.”

Samantha Jones’ Menopause

Kim Cattrall Tune In To Menopause
Kim Cattrall Tune In To Menopause Kim Cattrall Tune In To Menopause

“My platform, especially since Sex and the City, has been looking at issues that affect women and what it’s like to be a woman living in this time in this age and the challenges that that poses that. The work I’m choosing to do is reflecting a lot of what I’m experiencing in my life,” Cattrall said, adding:

I think the one piece of advice I hear in my heart and also think about the things in my past, as far as encouraging myself, is to be good to yourself and take care of yourself. And that’s not just meaning go on vacations or to order that great dessert that you’ve been depriving yourself of. It’s really taking measures to know what’s going on in your body, in your mind with your hormones, and to take time to yourself. Investing in yourself by tuning into what’s going on with you is really discovering the true sense of who you are and allowing it to happen.

Aside from her inspiring campaign and story for the women of Tune In To Menopause, Cattrall recently produced and starred in a new series Sensitive Skin, which premiered in July. The Canadian HBO series revolves around a married couple and a woman going through a midlife crisis.

“It was liberating and empowering to take on themes that not a lot of people are addressing and find the comedy in it and the humor in it and to also find the pathos, the irony, and the fear and trepidation to make it as fully realized a story as much as possible. So this is really part of a thematic work process for me to be able to speak to women my age about these very important issues," she said.