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A Weighty Problem

By on May 8, 2007 in Aging Gracefully

I broke my toe the other day when I tripped over the wrought iron coffee table legs. The doctor has admonished me to keep weight off my left foot. And no hula or power-walking or golf is allowed for 4-6 weeks. My first horrified thought is that I’ll be as big as a house if I don’t exercise, thanks to the menopausal side effect of weight gain.

In the midst of all the changes wrought by Menopause, we goddesses find ourselves in dire need of succor. We turn to our favorite comfort foods for solace and healing. Alas, we cannot splurge without paying a fearsome price these days. Food sticks to our ribs, our thighs, our hips, and our buns. Our metabolic rate has slowed to a crawl. You would think that this slowdown would be more than offset by calories burned through our hot flashes. Literally. And those goddesses who suffer 30 hot flashes per day should be wasting away, regardless of caloric intake. But in seeming defiance of all natural law, the scale tells us we are getting heavier. We look at our favorite fatty, sweet, carbo-loaded treats and we gain weight. We eat "healthy" food and we gain weight. We don’t change our eating habits at all and we gain weight. Some of us starve ourselves and we gain weight. We diet fiercely, trying to shed extra poundage. South Beach, Medifast, Ornish, Atkins. Jenny Craig, Nutrisystems., Weight Watchers. Among the Venuses, we have collectively tried ALL of these at one time or another with varying (read not permanent) success. And each year, it gets harder to fit into our skinny clothes.

Oh yes, we goddesses divide our wardrobes – not into summer and winter garb, but into fat clothes and skinny clothes. We may get into the skinny clothes, but we are not dumb enough to throw away our fat clothes. Because those pounds are always lurking out there somewhere, hoping to come home. And it is just too freaking hard to get rid of them. Anybody know any exercises I can do without putting any weight on my left foot?

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Oh Libido Where Art Thou?

By on February 28, 2007 in Life Changes & Stages, Men and Menopause, Physical Menopause Symptoms

Some women actually experience increased libido during menopause. If this describes you, skip this part. (And know that the rest of us are so envious of you! Victoria-Venus is an exception, since she is one of you.) Decreased libido is a much more common function of menopause than the converse. It’s not that we don’t want to have sex, it’s that we just don’t think about it. At all. The hormones that stoked the fires have diminished to the point that we’re lucky if we have a pitiful little ember of lascivious desire glowing somewhere deep inside us. Our mates may worry that we no longer care for them or find them attractive. All the Venuses were clear that this was not the case; we still loved our spouses and thought they were empirically attractive. We just didn’t have any drive to act physically on that attraction.

If sex was once 50% mental (or emotional), it seems that now lovemaking is at least 98% governed by our head and heart, rather than our physical sexual organs (at least until things get rolling.) So the Venuses were in agreement that they needed to find ways to stimulate mind and emotions to remind them how much they enjoy intimate physical closeness.
Rae-Venus reads romantic books or watches chick-flicks to get "in the mood." Then she ‘remembers’ her own passion and is able to fully engage sexually with her husband.

One of our honorary Venuses likes to make sensuality ‘dates’ with her husband to make sure that physical intimacy is shared. It seems to be working well for them in maintaining their sexual connection. Sensual lingerie, candlelit dinners, music, and dancing are all great ways to get in the mood for sexual pleasure. It’s been the experience of each Venus that once physical contact is initiated, the tiny ember of lust she carries within soon blooms into a full blown romantic fire. But you may have to mark it on your calendar, because if you wait for your hormones to signal that it is time for sexual intimacy, it may never happen.
(excerpted from our upcoming book "Venus Comes of Age: The Wit and Wisdom of Menopausal Goddesses")

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Menopause – Good Grief!

By on February 21, 2007 in Life Changes & Stages, Menopause & Emotion

Nora Ephron’s new book of essays entitled "I Feel Bad About My Neck And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman" underscores the need for real wisdom from real women when going through the the transitions of menopause, midlife, and aging. "There are all sorts of books written for older women," she writes. "They are, as far as I can tell, uniformly upbeat and full of bromides and homilies about how pleasant life can be once one is free from all the nagging obligations of children, monthly periods, and in some cases, full-time jobs. I find these books utterly useless, just as I found all the books I once read about menopause utterly useless."

The goddesses would have loved her and welcomed her into our group like a sister. Because that is how we feel about the changes thrust upon us. Perky and upbeat doesn’t work unless and until we can go through the appropriate stages of grieving. Losses are occurring each and every day for us. We’d be crazy to be happy and excited by them in the beginning, maybe ever.

The stages of grief that we goddesses have gone through in the time we have been meeting are pretty much the same as the stages of any loss. Denial was broken through as soon as we found ourselves sweating like pigs, crying for no reason, and unable to sleep through the night. Depression, anger, and bargaining are continual themes in our lives just now as we help one another move toward some semblance of acceptance. Small wonder we can’t face either optimistic, cheerful tomes or dry medical renderings of physiology, symptoms, and treatment.

While these may have value, they do not speak to our experience. The upbeat, "menopause is such a great opportunity" books may be useful once we are accepting what is happening to us, but initially, we feel like we are ‘doing’ menopause wrong, because we don’t feel like it is a great opportunity. Yet. We just want to be understood and to understand, first. And honestly exploring these changes in a community of supportive women is the first step.

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Hitting the Pause Button (Menopause Button, That Is)

By on February 8, 2007 in Life Changes & Stages, Physical Menopause Symptoms

Just about the time that ‘miss’ became ‘ma’am’ and compliments took a backhanded turn, (gee, you look good…….for your age), Menopause burst through the door like an unwanted guest. As it turned out, big M had come for an extended stay.

She is not a low maintenance, easy-to-be-with visitor. On the contrary, she has been intrusive as hell. She fully disrupted my life and that of my spouse. The only good news? Her sisters were moving in with my girlfriends.

So a group of us would-be goddess girlfriends have bonded together, trying to find a way to deal with the new guest taking up residence in every facet of our lives. Meeting for the last 3+ years, we’ve laughed, cried, cursed, and celebrated. We needed sanctuary from the profusion and confusion of information flooding bookshelves, media, and the web. Wisdom is what we sought. Real women sharing experience, sister to trusted sister, has helped us make some sense of the changes, and allowed for an uneasy truce with Big M. And now we are reaching out to expand our community of midlife goddesses through this blog, because the most important thing we’ve learned is that WE CANNOT DO THIS ALONE! (Soon to come: a book of our adventures confronting not only menopause, but midlife and beyond. Stay tuned.)

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A New Kind of Goddess

By on February 8, 2007 in Life Changes & Stages, Positive Changes

Why Menopausal Goddesses? Well, our core group of midlife "sisters" decided that we were certainly becoming ‘something’ with all the changes besieging us at this time of life. Werewoman felt like a possibility; some of the changes so altered our physical, mental, and emotional makeup. In the long run though, that image didn’t appeal to us, so we decided with our tongues stuck to the inner lining of our cheeks that we were becoming a new kind of goddess. Not fertile, not lissome and youthful, certainly not a siren for the male species. We were Menopausal Goddesses.

Since there didn’t appear to be a model for this new goddess, it seemed we’d have to make up our own rendering. As official Scribe for the Goddesses, I was assigned the task of honing in on the description of who we were becoming.

I found the word goddess in the dictionary situated between goblin and godsend, pretty much how I feel about myself these days. There were three definitions to ponder:

1. female deity or god – that certainly didn’t fit.
2. A woman of extraordinary beauty and charm – well maybe…….
3. A greatly admired or adored woman – hmmmmmmm

My desire is to be goddess # 3 – admired and adored, primarily by the one person whose affections I haven’t sought: ME. This may be the one of the biggest changes of menopause and midlife: a switch from a primarily external focus on others to one which begins to create a new and significant relationship – with ourselves. Embarking on this new relationship will likely be equal parts exciting, challenging, and scary. But like the rest of this journey, it probably won’t be dull!

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Shades of Gray – Aging Gracefully

By on February 7, 2007 in After the Pause, Life Changes & Stages

"I’d just like to age gracefully," so many women I know have said. What exactly do we mean by that? Does it mean being completely ‘natural’, leaving our hair uncolored when it loses its pigment? The Menopausal Goddesses discussed ‘shades of gray’ hair in one of our meetings. We realized that while most women we knew (including ourselves) waxed rhapsodic about the beauty of allowing our hair to go gray as a sign of graceful aging, these same women all colored their hair. When queried why, they responded that silvery, moonlight hair is beautiful, yet so many of them/us ended up with a muddy or yellowish gray. And that’s a color that we just don’t want to see in the mirror looking back at us!

Does aging gracefully mean celebrating our wrinkles, without intervention? Well, hardly. We run the gamut from merely tolerating them to trying to smooth them out with creams, emollients, injections, or lifts.

Upon reflection, maybe aging gracefully simply means being comfortable in our own skin, whether wrinkled or smooth. Perhaps aging is graceful when you like yourself enough that you’d enjoy having yourself as a friend.

Unafraid, unashamed, unapologetic – most of the time anyway. For the other times, we have our girlfriends to help us through.

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