"I was 40 when I first started having night sweats," says Patti Shields, 42, of Birmingham, AL. "I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and even though the air conditioner was running full blast, I'd be covered in sweat." 

Shields is talking about menopause, the rite of passage that signals the end of a woman's reproductive years. "Those night sweats -- and the other symptoms I began to notice -- suddenly made me feel old. One day I'm a young woman in her prime, and the next day I'm worrying about whether or not I'm prepared for retirement and thinking about 'getting my affairs in order.' It was a classic overreaction," she says, laughing. 

Medical scholars dispassionately define menopause as "the cessation of menstruation." For women, it is much more than that. Because menopause marks the end of fertility, many women see it as a time of freedom from menstrual periods and pregnancy. 

"Women shouldn't think of menopause as a death sentence," says Holly Richter, M.D., Assistant Professor of Medical/Surgical Gynecology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "It is a transition from a healthy reproductive life to a healthy nonreproductive life. If women see themselves not just as a uterus, but instead look at themselves as a whole person, this nonreproductive life can be as fulfilling as their reproductive years."