(bass transition music) - It's the summer of '99.

I'm living in Toronto at the time and I am hot!

45.

Fit.

When people tell their stories, they automatically create a community in the wake of their words.

♪ Biological clock is ticking ♪ Pushing me in directions I don't want to go ♪ ♪ I'm a cougar, a man eater ♪ A femme fatale - I come from a long line of storytellers.

Old black women from the Alabama, Mississippi, Jim Crow South.

And that's how they used storytelling.

To teach, to warn, to entertain, to impart.

I am the producer, the founder of The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers.

Which is a live story storytelling event.

I always say until you tell your story, we can never know your glory, your greatness, your trials, your tribulations.

So we need each other to show us how we get through struggles, through challenges, through good times and bad.

I wanted to come out and tell this story, Confessions of a Menopausal Femme Fatale, to extend my story to the world.

♪ I'm betwixt and between ♪ I start to notice things like ♪ ♪ All of a sudden I'm hot ♪ Jump out of my skin hot, can't sleep ♪ ♪ Night sweats ♪ Chills - When I was first noticing the symptoms of menopause, they call it perimenopause.

I was able to recognize myself.

I was having mood swings, these hot flashes would happen.

And when I ask around, older women who would've been able to tell me, they would say oh I don't remember.

My mother says I don't remember.

Women who were older didn't want to admit that they were at this stage or at this age of life.

And so there was no information.

So I wanted to write about it then.

But I hadn't gone through it.

So now on this side I have a perspective.

And now I can share that journey that I took.

- I believe it's courageous what she's doing.

Because people don't talk about it.

They're shy or embarrassed to talk about some things and she's really taken that first step.

I believe for a lot of people, men and women, to have these conversations that should, I believe, be normal for society.

- It's scary.

Ooh, you at the beginning of the change of life.

What I really want to do with this show, besides tell my story, is to remove the stigma.

And honor.

It should be a rite of passage.

In other cultures it may be a rite of passage, but here we want to be youthful, and we can be youthful for a long time.

But youth is a state of mind.

And wisdom is something you earn and you pay for with your life with the blood, sweat and tears of your life.

♪ 'Cause I'm alive ♪ Oh I'm alive - We began last year.

When my husband and I are boarding the plane to go to Hawaii, to the island of Oahu.

And I have a panic attack on the plane.

Which isn't really a panic attack.

It just triggers memories of when I left Detroit to go to Hawaii, changed my name, and basically committed a crime that I was trying to forget and escape from.

So I realize before we take off, I'm going back to resurrect and reclaim this former self.

My name used to be Jeannette McGruder.

When I was with P-Funk and that whole past.

So I'm going back to resurrect and reclaim.

Forgive and integrate that part of my life so that I can have full power and I go, and then we flash back to these symptoms of perimenopause and we move forward to what I learned in the end.

Well at first, his words, they hurt me.

They take the wind right outta my sails.

I'm too much?

And then it sinks in, what he's saying.

I'm too much.

That means I'm not dead.

I'm not complacent.

See, 'cause I'm going for being way too much.

I'm going for being over the top alive!

- Her stories that she's going to be telling throughout her performance, I believe everyone is gonna resonate.

There's many funny moments.

One of my favorite moments is almost like, it's the moment where she's reclaiming her womanhood.

Because of another man's assumptions about her.

And it is hilarious.

- I made it a solo standup storytelling concert because I wanted to incorporate everything that I am.

I'm a standup comedian, I'm a singer, I'm a storyteller.

It has music, song.

It has comedy.

It has tragedy.

It has all the elements of a powerful story.

♪ If I'm too much ♪ Why not go for being way too much ♪ - [Satori] All of the storytelling songs, I wrote those songs.

There's different styles and moods of music which help to tell the story and have the emotional position that I'm in at the time.

- Really her voice, I would say, is even more musical than the music itself.

People should come to the show because they're gonna be entertained, they're gonna get a great story, they're going to laugh.

They may cry.

They're gonna be shocked.

They are going to be sad.

They're gonna feel all - the full range of emotions they're going to feel in this show.

- I hope they take some part of my story and allow it to make a difference.

To let it ruminate.

Let it free them.

You don't have to be shamed or uncomfortable about being a woman.

And being at this powerful, powerful stage of life.

With all these other years ahead of you if you're lucky.

♪ I'm too much