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Scaling Mount Menopause – A First Ascent

By on September 3, 2007 in Life Changes & Stages, Menopause in Community, Positive Changes

It’s an arduous journey we menopausal goddesses have embarked upon. Without training, preparation, or a plan. Worse yet, without a choice.

Ascending the menopausal mountain is like climbing our own personal Everest. And like those intrepid Himalayan explorers, we encounter both joy and trauma along the way.

Our menopause adventure is a first ascent. Our own mothers’ journeys were often truncated or arrested at Base Camp Hysterectomy or Camp HRT. We have no guides to show us the way.

There is good news, however. We won’t have to make this climb on our own. With the support and sharing of our sister goddesses, this climb is do-able. Many of us are accompanied by our own Sherpas, our life mates (who have their own special name for the menopausal mountain which roughly translates to something like "Holy crap – what’s happening to my wife?")

Like other peak baggers, we find that our brain doesn’t work as well at these altitudes, we suffer from fatigue, and we are whipped by fierce winds (of change). But we also thrill to the discovery of the new heights and perspectives that accompany standing on the summit of the Second Half of Our Lives.

How does our climb differ most from the Everest adventurers? We’re laughing all the way up!!!

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Menopause Good News: The Awakening

By on July 25, 2007 in After the Pause, Life Changes & Stages, Positive Changes

Menopause is a rude awakening for most of us. It’s not your garden variety rude either. We’re talking Animal-House-frat-party, Fat-Tuesday-drunken-reveller, ginormous-SUV-riding-your-bumper-at-75-mph type rude. But the good news is: it IS an awakening.

Thrown light years out of our comfort zone by the physical, emotional, and mental changes of menopause, we begin to question our lives in general. Who are we? More important, who do we wish to be? How do we sustain and enrich our relationships.? What do we want to be when we "grow up"? What legacies are we leaving behind?

The examining of these questions is allowing the Venuses and their menopausal goddess sisters to WAKE UP and cultivate more joy in our lives. We aren’t waiting for "someday" to delight in new ventures, to explore our creative impulses, or to lavish affection on those around us. Someday is today. We are awake and ready! And we’re grabbing life by the throat and planting a great big smooch on it’s kisser!

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I Just Don?t Feel Like Me Anymore

By on June 1, 2007 in Life Changes & Stages, Menopause & Emotion, Physical Menopause Symptoms, Positive Changes

Will I ever feel like myself again? That is the second most frequently asked question I hear from midlife goddesses.

"I just don’t feel like me anymore," could well be the universal mantra for the menopausal woman. I’ve yet to meet any post-menopausal goddess who claims to feel like she used to. It seems that we have actually morphed into someone new. This could be good. It might be bad. But one certainty exists: we have no choice. Kicking, screaming, bitching, whining or resigned, we are traveling the paths of menopause and midlife. While there are assuredly losses, as we continue on this forced journey we find that we may actually like some of the changes.

Positive changes include speaking our minds, giving up pleasing as a lifestyle, accepting the perfection of non-perfection, feeling tolerance and forgiveness, and becoming comfortable in our own skins, no matter how baggy or saggy.

We’re changelings. We can’t go back to the women we once were, but we might learn to embrace the scary, exciting process of becoming a new "Me".

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From Hot Flash to Creative Fire

By on April 13, 2007 in After the Pause, Hot Flashes, Positive Changes

I remember hearing in the distant past that fire is necessary for growth, that redwood seeds are ignited to grow when fire moves through. Perhaps our hot flashes have germinated the creative seed that lies within each of us. Or maybe I’m just trying to find SOME good reason for the enervating bursts of heat that inflict us menopausal goddesses.

No matter the reason, all the Venuses have felt the creative urge increase in intensity as we poise on the brink of the midlife that menopause signifies. The desire to ‘make’ something, to create, collage, or cultivate an artistic endeavor feels like an itch that we just have to scratch. We take up beading, musical instruments, knitting, photography, painting, calligraphy, pottery, gourmet cooking, poetry, handmade books, fabric arts, dance, stamping, and scrapbooking. Rae-Venus and I began creating one-of a kind art cards. They sell in the Moloka`i Fine Arts gallery. (a sample of today’s work/play is the photo for this blog entry.)

Giving in to our creative urges, in whatever modality or art we choose, is a nurturing, fulfilling process. Schedule an "art day" soon, alone or with a best girlfriend. (adapted from our upcoming book "Venus Comes of Age".)

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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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