I’m a third of the way through the interviews for the Conditions for Flourishing qualitative research, and one thing already seems remarkably consistent: when going through menopause, it can be surprisingly hard to distinguish whether something you’re experiencing is because of menopause — or just because.

I chose conversations because I wanted to hear how women themselves make sense of life after menopause, in their own language and on their own terms. A questionnaire can tell us what people select from the options we give them. A conversation can reveal what we did not know to ask.

I began this research with a simple question: What are the conditions that enable women to flourish in the years after menopause?