“Whenever a woman is finally able to think of her own needs after years of being primarily focused on those of her children, family, relationship, or career, she moves into the third great mystery of her life cycle (menopause)”.
“Having fulfilled her worldly responsibilities to her family, the dark moon crone (aka: menopausal woman), could once again live for herself and pursue her spiritual path. A span of her life opened whereby she could now devote herself exclusively to fashioning her retained blood of life into mental and spiritual rather than physical children”.
~Demetra George
Despite my anguish over my discovery that I’m entering the third phase in my life (the other two in case you diden’t know, is being a youth and mother), the above quotes made me feel a bit more at ease about life. How true it is. Women truly deserve to find or renew ourselves again at this particular point in time and especially in this day and age. A few years ago, I watched my grandmother as she lay in a coma, leave this world absolutely exhausted. She literally worked for everyone else and never asked for anything in return because of her upbringing in a staunch Euopean household told her, that it was her duty to serve the man, family and God. Despite her soft complaints that she was “so tired” as she was going through her perimenopause, no one listened. No one obviously understood (or cared). No one gave her a break.
I will never forget what my grandmother had to go through. I will never forget the pained, greyed face of a woman with so much potential but never had the opportunity to know or discover herself. I will never forget the stories she told me of constant regrets. A child, I obviously had no idea what to say. She knew this which is why she was comfortable talking to me. I am incredibly grateful that I was not raised in her day and age, in a time when women were coralled by dogma and societal rules that implicated that all women must serve until death!
Christiane Northrup comments in her book, “The Wisdom of Menopause” that:
“The clarity of vision and increasing intolerance for injustice, inequity, and lack of fulfillment that accompany the perimenopausal changes are a gift. Our hormones are giving us an opportunity to see, once and for all, what we need to change in order to live honestly, fully, joyfully,and healthfully in the second half of our lives. This is the time when many women stop doing what I call “stuffing” – stifling their own needs in order to tend to everybody else’s. Our culture expects women to put other’s first, and all during the childbearing years most of us do, no matter the cost to ourselves. But at midlife we get the chance to make changes, to create lives that fit who we are- or, more accurately, who we have become”.
It is a miracle, I think, how our bodies innately know what we need to do if we are able to put aside temporarily, the post-menopausal symptoms in order to listen within. It’s really hard. Like the preverbial onion from hell, if we peel the firm layers off one by one through the agony and tears, patiently tending to each change or symptom within our bodies, we eventually find the true and tender core of who we are. It is a huge frickin struggle, but it can be done.
For almost five years now I have been carrying with me a mental and physical garbage can, tossing anything out that no longer serves my mental or physical health. This includes painful partings from long-time,old friends that no longer serve my growth, revamping diet and excercise and re-structuring priorities. It means clearing the clutter in my basement, the attic, and in my mind. It means exploring new alternatives to care for body, mind and soul. And, in general, I am slowly and with both pain and joy, slowly re-creating myself.This has been frightening because I have a tendency to find comfort in routines and consistency. It is a gruelling challenge because I have an Autistic daughter who’s whole life revolves around routine, consistency, same-ness. So, I am used to nothing else. I have been, when I thought that I had it all figured out, slowly sifting through the layers of a large pile of dirt of a some-what painful child-hood. This has been the worst pile of garbage I have ever had to sort through. Years and years of heeding to and feeding into my parents negative, co-dependent and unjustifiable fearful habits really messed me up. I am lucky though- years of reading and then slowly piecing myself back together by listening to what my heart & common sense (and telling everyone around me who attempted to tell me what to do, to f-off), has saved me hundreds of dollars worth of therapy. I’m still not finished my inner-work. Our lives are an endless journey until death. Old insecurities and issues will always continue to arise and we will always have to deal with them. I am reminded of the move: “A Beautiful Mind”, one of my all-time favorites. The connection for me is, how John Forbes Nash, a brilliant man and professor, was able to re-train his paranoia schizophrenic mind without taking any medication. Schizophrenia remained with him always but he learned how to deal with it without loosing himself in the process (medication would have taken his genius away). Because I’m highly sensitive, stress is effecting me greatly now that I’m going through peri-menopause and my doctor wants to put me on medication. The emotional changes alone are alot for me to handle. When things become harrowing, I remember the movie A Beautiful Mind. Like Christiane Northrup said, peri-menopause for women is a gift. But we only see it when we start to remove or peel the layers off with patience and care by taking care of ourselves. We can do something, even if its only a little bit. Something is better than nothing! I have learned to turn my thinking around about peri-menopause and all the hell that it brings. It truly is our only ticket to self-renewal and freedom from extreme burden. Burdens however, will never go away, but with good choice-making, they do become easier to manage.
Simplicity and the importance of aloneness.
It has been recommended and modelled by many saints, monks, and highly spiritual peoples throughout time. However, we women in North America are inundated with so much responsibility, with so many “needs and wants”. How do we do this? How do we find the time?
Anne Morrow Lindbergh in her book “Gift from the Sea”, states:
“If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement, or a shopping exedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it- like a secret vice!
Actually these are among the most important times in one’s life- when one is alone. Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. The artist knows he must be alone to create; the writer, to work out this thoughts; the musician, to compose; the saint, to pray. But women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves”.
She goes on to state:
“Solitude, says the moon shell. Every person, especially every woman, should be alone sometime during the year, some part of each week, and each day”.
And,
“By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class”.
I cannot stress enough, how every woman on this “Earth”, should read this book. Its such as easy read. I faithfully read it once every summer. Anne M Lindbergh’s musical and inspiring words always uplift me greatly. The wife of the infamous Charles Lindbergh, Anne is an amazing, classy, yet down to earth woman who’s reflections on youth, age, solitude, love and more, are penned down with great inner reflection and beauty, spirituality and observation.
It is one of the most elegant books I’ve ever read.
To be continued.
