In The Change, her book about menopause, feminist scholar Germaine Greer says that women’s midlife suffering comes in two forms: “One I have called misery, which has no useful function and should be avoided, and the other grief, which is wholesome, though painful, and must be recognized.”4 According to Greer, misery is “a grey and hopeless thing, born of having nothing to live for, of disappointment and resentment at having been gypped by consumer society, and surviving merely to be the butt of its unthinking scorn.”
