Once regarded as the “silent passage,” menopause is finally out of its hot, stuffy closet. For decades, women only whispered about it in veiled references to “the change.” A nasty word, change, suggesting that women midway through life suddenly cease to be who they are and morph into unrecognizable creatures. As a kid eavesdropping on conversations between my mother and aunts, I was able to decipher very little from their code words. It’s a wonder I didn’t worry for three or four decades that I’d eventually shrivel up and blow away like a keepsake rose pressed between pages of a diary. As it was, I expected to awake one day and find I’d turned into Phyllis Diller in her primetime television years. That was scary enough.

There were no Phyllis Diller look-alikes among the maturing women who recently packed the theater at the Temple for Performing Arts for “Menopause the Musical,” which will continue its open-ended run at least through mid-January. With ticket sales about to surpass the $500,000 mark, the 90-minute musical is resonating well with Central Iowa women, who aren’t just talking about menopause, but laughing out loud in its flushed and fevered face.

The play isn’t about our mothers’ menopause, that’s for certain. Just having “the talk” traumatized my mother so much the conversation never turned to how babies are actually made, let alone what happens after women can no longer make them. A mother seven times, she’d been through the whole “becoming a woman” business with two sisters before me, but it still was as if she suddenly found herself standing naked in front of the bus as she handed me a brown paper bag filled with “supplies” and “Growing Up and Liking It,” a pamphlet she said should answer most of my questions. All my friends got the book. Some of them got a bit more verbal explanation, some less, but “Growing Up and Liking It” found its way into homecoming skits, yearbook inscriptions and excuses to decline Saturday night dates.

That’s how it was. Thankfully, that isn’t how it is now. The more we talk about it, the more we dispel the exaggerated myths about menopause that make so many women approach it with dread. It surely isn’t coincidence that women have fewer menopausal symptoms in Western Europe, where they talk about it openly. And in Asia, where aging women are revered, menopause is a milestone to be celebrated.

Though many of the myths about menopause have been debunked by candid conversation, baby, we still have a long way to go here in America, where society still tends to look through maturing women as if they’re invisible and values instead their youthful and shiny counterparts. No wonder women are afraid of the changes that come with age.

Sure, you may wake up 50 one morning to find the body snatchers not only invaded, but took your perfectly good body and left in its place one that looks to be stuffed with pea gravel. On some days, you may think that if technology could just advance a little further to tap into your hot flashes, Des Moines could not only light its streets at zero cost, but also sell the surplus power to illuminate its neighbors’ street lights.

It’s not really so bad. At least women are no longer ashamed of menopause, or thought to be psychologically damaged if they suffer some its symptoms. It probably never will be appropriate to belt out a relyricized rendition of Aretha Franklin’s bluesy chorus “Chain, chain, chain” from “Chain of Fools,” (“Change, change, change” in the play) in a corporate board room. But with women occupying only 13.5 percent of corporate board seats at Fortune 500 companies, that’s a battle for later.