Some 38 million girls were born in the United States between 1946 and 1964, and now about 2 million of them each year are entering the menopausal phase of life. But these Baby Boomers are not docile, do-as-they-are-told, and ask-no-questions women. They insist on full information, options, and participation in the decision-making process regarding how they will navigate this potentially challenging phase. In this breakthrough book, Dona Caine-Francis offers a reader-friendly primer on everything women need to know to remain physically, emotionally, and sexually vibrant before, during, and after menopause. A certified sex therapist and a psychiatric nurse practitioner, Caine-Francis goes beyond the standard explanations and suggestions for menopause. She challenges women to consider the menopausal years a time of opportunity, a chance to seize the day and reinvent the self in three dimensions-physically, emotionally, and sexually. *This book, be forewarned, contains adult material.

Special features here include vignettes from therapy sessions for menopausal women and their partners, explanations of the five myths of menopause, a review of hormone therapy of all kinds, complementary and alternative medicine, insights into romance at midlife, and a chapter devoted to partners of these women to help them share an understanding and offering suggestions to keep the fires flamed. Strategies for sexual wellbeing of menopausal women may otherwise and elsewhere be neglected, but Caine-Francis provides a focus to such strategies and offers practical solutions to enhance sexual connections with partners.

Dona Caine-Francis, NP, CNS is an ANCC Board Certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, clinical nurse specialist, and AASECT certified sex therapist at Lake Norman outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. She is past president of the North Carolina Nurses Association and currently serves on the National Board for the American Nurses Association's Center for American Nurses. She is the author of When Benjamin Wants to Know: Family Conversations About the Facts of Life and When Jessica Wants to Know (forthcoming). She is a national speaker on Speaking of Sex How to be an `Askable Parent' and Sex and the Seasoned Woman: A Menopausal Survival Kit.