Recently, I came across a conversation on one of my favorite websites, Vibrant Nation, asking the question “Can We Prevent Menopause?”

It was started by a woman who calls herself BHRT For Me. Here’s what she wrote:

“I came across this site: http://www.preventingmenopause.com/

I think preventing menopause altogether makes good sense. I’m 57 and I keep saying that I am treating my symptoms of menopause with bioidentical hormones, when really what I want is to stop menopause. I realized that when I saw this site.

I cycle every month and have never been without periods because of the hormones I use. Still, don’t we stop ovulating because we are out of eggs? How do you prevent the loss of eggs?

Interesting concept though, since we live so much longer now (average life expectancy of a woman in 1900 was about 48).”

Responses from readers varied from enthusiastic to appalled. Of course, every woman has to choose her own path navigating the wild woods of Menopause, so the variety of responses was not surprising.

Then a perceptive reader who calls herself Dallas Lady posed this question to BHRT For Me:

“If it makes you feel better and you are OK with it–that is all that matters.

But I am curious and for the sake of full transparency I feel compelled to ask:

Do you have a professional interest in BHRT? Do you receive any income whatsoever from any source associated from BHRT?

It just seems unusual to me that it is so central to your identity that you choose that as a “screen name” on here and your reference to a website also struck me as a bit of an unexpected endorsement not usually seen by those here unless they have a sales interest.”

I kept checking back to see her answer. And there was nothing. Nada. Zip.

Oh, she managed to answer and converse with several other readers, but Dallas Lady’s question went unanswered.

That bugged me. But I figured I’d best give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she hadn’t seen Dallas Lady’s query. So I wrote the following:

“I have to say that preventing menopause sounds like preventing puberty. Menopause is not a disease, although I do concur that it can freaking feel like one sometimes.

I take BHRT in a low dose, did not start until I had fully transitioned into menopause for a couple years, so no periods for me. (Which I gotta say seems a little weird for any woman to have periods when we are meant to cease -just like it would be strange not to start having cycles when we hit our teens.)

I am taking hormones because of horrendous hot flashes and other symptoms. I plan to decrease and discontinue them soon. Other parts of our body begin to make estrogen after our ovaries seemingly come to a screeching halt, though it may take a little time. I think (read hope) mine might be kicking back in. But I sure don’t expect (or even want) my hormones to be at the same level as in my thirties.

There is no one right answer or solution for treating a woman’s menopause. Every woman must weigh risks vs benefits, severity of symptoms, and general life quality – then decide if or which remedies to take. Bioidentical hormones are one choice, as are soy, herbs, and the like. Or meditation. Or nothing.

No one thing works for every one – (and some things that work for a while may not work later.) Also everything may entail risk for a particular individual woman.

I am also very curious as to why I did not see an answer from you to Dallas Lady’s question about whether you have a professional or financial interest in BHRT and/or the website you mention. I believe she asked a very clear question – I tell all the women who write me on Wellsphere or my Menopause Goddess Blog site to be wary of any site or person that advocates one right answer for their menopause (or any health issue.) FYI – I do not receive any monies for my website or my involvement in Wellsphere. I always hope that sales of my book (The Big M) will keep me afloat. But it is a labor of love and as a health care professional and activist, I’ll keep going.

Would love to know more about your connection to the website – please answer here. thanks so much for bringing up the topic.”

Lynette Sheppard RN
Menopause Community Health Maven, Wellsphere.com
Creator/Moderator Menopause Goddess Blog
Blog Circle Contributor Vibrant Nation and Jane Nation
Menopause Examiner for Examiner.com
Author of “The Big M”

Yep, I put in all my credentials just to make sure I got an answer. And did I? Of course not. Which brings me to the one Latin phrase I remember from nursing school: caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware. That’s you. And me.

I checked out the website she was pushing. It appears to be a one-right-answer site. And I couldn’t really ascertain who it represented. Another reason for caveat emptor.

I’m not at all bothered by BHRT’s choice of name for herself or by her wholehearted enthusiasm for her topic. I wouldn’t fault her for pushing an agenda that she might profit from. I do fault withholding information that might help us make informed decisions.

The question might not be “Can We Prevent Menopause”, but rather “Should We?” And “What Are the Costs?” What do you think?

Conventional wisdom or old wives tales would have us believe that time actually speeds up as we age. Remember when we were small and the school day seemed to move at a glacial pace? Or how it took eons for Santa to finally make an appearance?

While it does seem to me as if Christmas comes all too quickly each year, which would substantiate the belief that the clock hands whip around the dial at an ever increasing pace, Still, I experience plenty of times when time tortoises. Like in meetings. I hate meetings. Or in the dentist chair.

I must say that I haven’t noticed time speeding up. Lately though, I have caught time behaving in unexpected ways, time warping if you will. It would make seem logical to me that time set aside for enjoyment would pass quickly while chore time might drag. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

What I’m talking about is a weird sort of time distortion. For example, the day we spent waiting for the tsunami lasted about a week. That makes some sense to me, I guess.

However, this past week lasted about a day except for yesterday which seemed to last nearly 3 days. Yesterday was a fun day – set aside for Lei Venus and I as an art day. Today is a work day whizzing by even without the notorious time sucks of Facebook and Twitter.

That gives the lie to leisure time going by in an instant and work time dragging on slowly.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t a manifestation of Menopause brain fog – my brain seems to be working as well as it ever doesn’t these days. Is there a tear in the space-time fabric?

All this musing (read perseverating) about time came up because I could swear I just wrote a blog post a day or two ago. And it’s been a week! Some days I feel like an elder Alice whose fallen down the rabbit hole and can’t get up. And everything is topsy turvy. Especially time.

Is anyone else experiencing time warps? Does time speed up as we age? Tell me it isn’t just me.

Wave Mo`omomi at Dawn ©lynette sheppard 2010

Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville dragged me from the depths of slumber. “Why is there music at five am?” I wondered groggily. Finally realizing that I was hearing a ringtone, I fumbled for my cell phone on the bedside table.

“Big earthquake in Chile,” my husband blurted in my ear. “Sue Nonny.”

“Sue who?” I asked, scanning my mental files to figure out who we knew traveling to or living in Chile.

“Tsunami!” my husband repeated. “Heading to Hawai`i. Get to high ground.”

Lei Venus and I were attending E Pili Kakou, an annual hula conference on our neighbor island of Kaua`i. We look forward to attending nearly every year for girlfriend time, rekindling our joy in the dance, and new adventures.

This year, Mom Nature saw to it that the emphasis was on adventure with a capital A.

A note had been slipped under our door by the Kaua`i Beach Hotel management. Basically, it instructed us to grab our essentials only and be ready to evacuate if the Civil Defense sirens sounded at 6:00 am. We hurriedly dressed, slam dunked a couple cups of coffee and grabbed our purses, cell phones, and computers.

The sirens blared eerily and we headed to the lobby. We were immediately squired to buses and shuttled several miles away to the Kukui Grove Mall.

Much of the mall was closed and deserted. We headed to the courtyard where a stage was setup for entertainment throughout the year. Our wonderful hotel had sent scads of homemade pastries and a cooler full of drinks for us. (Mahalo Maydene, and all the fabulous crew. Mahalo to Roberts Hawai`i also.)

And then the show began. Blaine Kamalani Kia, president of Ka Laua`e Foundation that created and puts on E Pili Kakou in Kaua`i, Sacramento, CA, Japan, Tahiti, and Vancouver, Canada corralled musicians and hula dancers to share with all the evacuees what is meant by “aloha”.

We sang, danced, prayed, and gave thanks as the day progressed. At around 230pm, the all clear was given and our newfound ohana (family) joined hands in a large circle to sing “Hawai`i Aloha”. It was what we in the islands call a “chicken skin” experience. Kumu Kia invited everyone to join us at the hotel that evening for our performances.

The weekend was extended through the next day with workshops since we’d missed our classes the previous day. But we didn’t miss our lessons. Not at all.

The real lesson of hula, indeed that of all Hawai`ian culture is “aloha”. Aloha – sharing with humility, compassion, modesty, and reverence all that you have to offer with family, friends, and strangers. Aloha – an outpouring of love and grace with no expectation of anything in return. Aloha – a way of life Hawai`i can (and does) offer the world. Aloha, a vision for our present and future that we Menopause Goddesses and elders can model.

Lei and I are home now on Moloka`i. We are grateful to have missed the devastating waves of the tsunami. We are saddened that our ohana in Chile are suffering from the destruction of the quake. And we are reminded to be our own waves – waves of Change. Not tsunamis creating havoc and laying waste, but gentle persistent waves. Waves of kindness and connection. Waves of peace and sharing. Waves of aloha. We can live that promise anywhere.

Navigating the net can be confusing and disheartening. When you google the word menopause, you are bombarded with almost 10 million results. (9,680,000 to be exact.) Sheesh! Where does one start? How do we find good information?

Googling menopause blogs is not much more helpful. The top results are blogs that have few or new entries for several months. Sadly, Sue Richards of the top result, My Menopause Blog, has Parkinson’s disease and is unable to blog at this time. Google is woefully behind.

Add to that the overwhelming number of blogs and sites that are moderated by drug companies or selling something and it is no wonder that menopausal women are hard pressed to find good information on the net. The whole process just wears us down and we have to head to the kitchen for something chocolate.

So to save my goddess sisters from frustration and meltdown, I’ve compiled a list of what I believe are the best websites and blogs for women of a certain age. (Besides our own Menopause Goddess Blog, of course.) Here are the first few you will want to check out. Feel free to celebrate with the aforementioned chocolate.

Women in Balance
Women in Balance ( http://www.womeninbalance.org/) is a national, nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower women to take charge of their hormone health.

Education is a mainstay of this site. Not affiliated with any other group, they offer unbiased information from a multitude of sources. Their site also offers a healthcare practitioner finder. Subscribe to their monthly newsletter and watch for their one day Hormone Education days in a city near you. Last year’s hugely successful venues were Portland OR and Tampa FL.

They also publish selected entries from our Menopause Goddess Blog in the monthly newsletter. However, I loved and followed their site long before they asked.

I especially resonate with this philosophy from their Vision statement:
Knowledge is power. Balance is everything.
Hear, hear.

Vibrant Nation
Vibrant Nation (VibrantNation.com) is an online community dedicated to women 50 and older. Here’s an excerpt from their “About Us” description:

“At Vibrant Nation, these women (whom we’ve named “Vibrant Women”) can look for tips, share information, and join in smart conversations about work, style, relationships, wellness, books, and more.”

It’s a very user friendly site, where you can start a discussion or conversation easily. Or you can just “lurk” and read what other women are saying. Topics are broken up into the following:

# work & money
# fashion & beauty
# family & relationships
# love & sex
# health & fitness
# books
# technology & internet
# spirituality
# home & garden
# giving back
# going green
# food & drink
# arts & entertainment
# travel
# news & politics

They partner with all manner of vibrant women bloggers in the Blog Circle and are growing a real voice in the marketplace, making women over 50 a force to be reckoned with.

Lastly, I love the name. Vibrant. Yes, we are.

Minnie Pauz
Humor is what saves us during the menopause journey, so the third site we’ll highlight in this blog entry is Minnie Pauz menopause cartoons. (http://www.minniepauz.com/) Hilarious and all too true, cartoon heroine Minnie Pauz says “If you don’t get it, You ain’t there yet.”

You can subscribe to the newsletter to get the latest cartoon. The moderator also has a good blog and a bulletin board where women can post issues and dialogue with one another. I personally found the bulletin board format a little confusing and “busy”, so it wasn’t my favorite part of the site.

I’ll be sharing more cyberspace gold in upcoming blog entries. For now, check these out and let me know what you think or share your favorite sites with us here at Menopause Goddess Blog

All last week I was suffering from PCSD. That’s Pre Colonoscopy Stress Disorder.

It’s recommended that at age 50 all of us get a colonoscopy, to screen for colon cancer. In the abstract, it seems like a no brainer. Get checked out and either get a clean bill of health or catch disease early so it can be treated. End of story.

But when that fifth decade arrives, the abstract becomes concrete. That initial screening exam seems less like a great idea and more like a trip to Procrasti-Nation is needed. I thought about it when I turned 50, considered it a bit more seriously at age 51, blew it off at age 52, felt a little guilty at 53, and finally, at age 54, scheduled the damn thing.

Essentially, there were two parts of this procedure I wasn’t looking forward to. And no. One of them was not the tube shoved miles up my nether zones. Oddly enough, that didn’t bother me too much. Especially knowing I wouldn’t be awake for the event.

What bothered me was the prep and the anesthesia. First, I worried about the prep. To prepare for the flexible tube-snake to see and photograph your colon, you are required to drink a gallon of thick, salty sludge with the ridiculously inappropriate name of GoLytely. Because you don’t. Go Lytely. No, you go as hard as it is possible to go without actually turning your large intestine inside out and dragging it over your body like a chrysalis. I kid you not.

You drink the first half gallon starting at 4:00 pm the day prior to the exam – downing 8 ounces every 10 minutes. Then you pull up stakes and live in the bathroom for the next five hours.
Exhausted, you crawl to bed praying that Mom Nature won’t call you any more that night. You have no more left to give.

At 6:00 am, after flinging your abusive alarm across the room, you start the second half gallon, 8 oz every 10 minutes, and again take up residence in the bathroom.

The prep was as bad as I hoped it wouldn’t be. However, I was grateful that I didn’t have to be at the hospital until 11:00 am for obvious reasons.

Once in the special procedures room, a nurse started my IV, dressed me in a fetching open back frock, and hooked me up to monitors. No problem. Now all I had to do was wait. And fret. About the anesthesia.

Now the anesthesia for a colonoscopy is really called conscious sedation. Which means while you have no awareness or memory of the procedure (many mahalos for that), you are actually responsive and in what is called a twilight sleep. It’s short acting and you wake and leave shortly after the procedure.

Unfortunately, I am a bit of a control freak, so even a nice “twilight sleep” sounds like a nightmare to me. However, the alternative of being awake and aware of the tube-snake seemed much worse, so I was down for the full meal deal.

As they rolled me into the procedure room, I noticed my heart rate and blood pressure climbing. It’ll do that when you fret. A needle went into my IV and the next thing I knew was I was getting dressed, joking with the doctor and nurses, and in a very mellow mood. Especially after getting the clean bill of health. Didn’t remember a thing. Went home and let Dewitt wait on me.

So was it worth it? You bet! Wasted a lot of time worrying and fretting, though.

If you have yet to have your first colonoscopy, I have just two other bits of info that might help. First, make sure you have a warm robe and/or a space heater in the bathroom when you drink the prep. My girlfriend, Gena, told me that I’d feel chilled when I drank the GoLytely (because it’s refrigerated and diet is only clear liquids from breakfast on, etc.) Keeping warm definitely ups the comfort factor. (I was cold and I live in the tropics!)

Also, eat yogurt for a few days after the procedure. I was at my chiropractor’s office a couple days after my procedure and mentioned to him that it was really easy, but that I was feeling kind of crappy (no pun intended) in my lower intestinal area. “Are you eating yogurt?” he asked. Dumbstruck, I looked at him. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I had just cleaned out every single cell of normal bacteria out of my colon. Of course I needed some help getting back to normal. Duh!

Sure enough, a couple servings of yogurt and I was feeling perky again. So don’t wait, goddesses. Put on those big girl panties and schedule your colonoscopy. It’s one of those things that is so much easier in hindsight (pun intended) that you wonder why you waited so long to do it.

(For the best ever colonoscopy story, read Dave Barry’s essay: A journey into my colon — and yours.)

As a nurse, I belong to a continuing education / latest research site called Medscape. It’s nothing short of wonderful. When I think of the sheer poundage of my professional magazines that I subscribed to in the past, it boggles the mind. (And stimulates my guilt reflex when pondering how many trees gave their lives so that I might give better nursing care.)

Now with a couple of keystrokes, I can stuff my few remaining brain cells with the latest nursing and medical knowledge. Amazing. I love love love the internet. But I digress – which happens to me a lot since The Big M.

I’d like to share a few of the latest research findings regarding menopausal women.

Hot Flashes Sufferers Live Longer?
I received a tweet the other day that stated “research shows women that have a large number of hot flashes live longer.” I went to the actual study and found that in truth, it was women that reported night sweats in addition to their hot flashes. They had a 30% lower mortality rate from heart disease than women who didn’t suffer from nocturnal overheating, irrespective of risk factors or HRT (hormone replacement therapy) usage.

Wow. I believe that I will likely live to 210 years of age if this is true. Thank God for wicking sleepwear. (Stay tuned for the debut of our Menopause Marketplace to find great wicking sleepwear vendors.)

Does Depression Affect Menopausal Symptoms?
This study found that women suffering depression reported more menopause symptoms. Conversely, the authors were surprised to find that menopause also seemed to lead to more depression. The first thing I have to say about these results is “Well , DUH!”

The second is that this sounds a little like “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Which we could debate forever, but why would we want to?

Most important were the conclusions of the study – that identification and treatment of depression might help with symptoms of menopause as well.

True enough, but at what cost? We are already seeing a number of articles promoting antidepressants to treat menopause, which really is like trying to shoot a fly with an elephant gun. While I am the first to say that menopause symptoms suck, I also believe in the remedy with the least side effects that helps.

I strongly believe in antidepressant drugs when necessary. When depression causes significant disruption of daily life activities or relationships or suicidal thoughts, then pharmaceutical treatment along with professional therapy can be life saving.

But we need to assess a matter of degree with depression. Some mild depression, e.g. feeling sad and blue, weepy, not motivated during menopause affected all of the Goddesses to some degree. When we shared it with one another, it lessened greatly. It was wonderful to find out that it was normal and it was likely temporary.

Two of our goddesses have suffered from depression pre-menopause and have taken antidepressant therapy successfully. The rest of us just felt crappy for awhile.

Risk for Major Depression Increases During and After Menopause

Basically this study found that the risk of major depression doubles during perimenopause and menopause when compared with premenopause. That sounds about right. To put that in perspective, if two of your twenty friends suffered a major depressive episode before any of you went into menopause, then it might be likely that 4 of your friends would suffer a major depressive episode. Leaving 16 feeling blue and “normally” depressed.

I couldn’t find out how the researchers defined major depressive episode. One of the researchers did make this statement, which was billed in the Medscape article as the take-home message for clinicians. “When women come in and are thinking that they have some extra difficulties with life and feel down and blue…take it seriously. It is not just a passing thing.”

Okay, that worries me. Because it describes nearly every menopausal woman I’ve known at some point in her journey. I personally felt down and blue, and was dragging my weary arse through the days during the worst of the Big M. I was also hot, cranky, and sleep deprived which likely made it worse. But it WAS just a passing thing. It was normal. The best treatment I experienced (besides sleep and cooling measures) was support and commiseration from my Menopause Goddess sisters.

While I’m delighted that we are doing some research on The Big M, I have to wonder why we aren’t looking into bioidentical hormones, herbal therapies, and the effects of support groups. Could it be because there is no funding for these types of research?

So ladies, remember the one Latin legal phrase I learned in nursing school “caveat emptor”. Let the buyer beware. You are the buyer of your own health care. Pick and choose. Ask questions – lots of them. Ask about side effects and risk-benefit analysis. And not to be a conspiracy theorist, but ask yourself who might have funded a given research study? Who stood to gain?

Lastly, make sure that you are followed by a physician or nurse practitioner, not led. Most health care professionals I know actually appreciate a patient who is actively involved in her own care. And if they don’t? I’d shop around for a new health care professional/partner.

My good friend and sister Menopause Goddess, Saskia, sent me this wonderful email that is currently circulating the web. It’s a must-read and worth reading again if you have seen it.

“Recently, in a large city in France, a poster featuring a young, thin and tan woman appeared in the window of a gym. 

It said, “This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?”

A middle-aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.

 To Whom It May Concern,

Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans. They have an active sex life, get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins stuffing themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Bering Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia. Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and virtually have no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world.

Mermaids don’t exist. If they did exist, they would be lining up outside the offices of Argentinean psychoanalysts due to identity crisis. Fish or human? They don’t have a sex life because they kill men who get close to them, not to mention how could they have sex? Just look at them … where is IT? Therefore, they don’t have kids either. Not to mention, who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store?
The choice is perfectly clear to me: I want to be a whale.

P.S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver, and a piece of chocolate with my friends. 

With time, we gain weight  because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room, it distributes out to the rest of our bodies. So we aren’t heavy, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy. Beginning today, when I look at my butt in the mirror I will think, ¨Good grief, look how smart I am!”

Let me just say for the record, I’m proud to be a whale. Lady Leviathan – that’s my new self image and I’m feelin’ good about it! Now if I could just learn to sing…

I feel like I’ve inadvertently applied for citizenship in a new country – the Procrasti-Nation. Oh, I’m still keeping my US passport and all the freedoms we enjoy. But since the Pause, it seems I’ve adopted a whole new cosmology. Why do today what you can put off ’til tomorrow? Or forever? Why not do something frivolous or fun instead of my chores or commitments?

Our national anthem here in Procrasti-Nation might be “Feelin’ Groovy”. Or “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Instead of the lofty Latin “e pluribus unum”, our motto could be “I’ll Do It Later.”

Our national pastime: cloud watching. Far more entertaining than baseball, I think, and you don’t have to keep track of stats or wear jerseys.

So here I sit, writing my weekly blog entry at the last possible moment. I was going to write more about the Goddesses’ caregiving insights at our annual gathering, but I just couldn’t marshall my thoughts. The topic is so important that I’ll have to do it later.

That’s what happens when you live part-time in Procrasti-Nation. The important stuff waits while you do something less pressing, maybe even downright trivial. Like untangling your ‘ball’ of necklaces or reading your Facebook news.

Although I don’t “accomplish” as much when residing in this new place, I have to say that I’m a big fan of procrastinating. I spend more time petting the cats and dog. I’m more present to my friends when they drop by. And I’ve found a lot of stuff takes care of itself if you just leave it alone.

I’ve also fallen into some fun new projects because I was avoiding those items on the top of my prioritized to do list. Case in point: I was at a women’s writer’s retreat with Venus Karen Leland and a host of other wonderful, creative goddesses last summer. We were writing, reading, and critiquing one another.

One day, when we were supposed to be working on our various projects, I found myself taking a yet another unplanned vacation to Procrasti-Nation. One of my passions (passionettes, actually) is digital photography. Since all of us were engaged in the big living room with our laptops, I had to look busy. On the spot, I created a photo blog that I named “The Digital Diva”.

Weirdly enough, it took off. Enough so that my husband, Dewitt, asked if we could do another blog like it to just showcase our iPhone art. So Digital Diva / Digital Dude was born. We’ve taught classes and just written an article about creative iPhone apps and photo art for Outdoor Photographer magazine (it’s due out in a few months.)

Most of the time I spend in Procrasti-Nation does not lead to new blogs or much of anything save untangled silver chains. Like they say on the weight loss commercials, actual results may vary. Still, it feels like a gift that menopause has given me: an actual pause in my busyness and frenetic doing. And that’s why I’ve decided to emigrate there. Every now and then.

Yesterday, our new rescue dog chewed through the irrigation hose. One of our cats has a mouth infection requiring antibiotics and special food prep, while the other feline family member was screaming at the top of his lungs for no apparent reason. To add to the general household bedlam, the phone was ringing off the hook, the dock informed us that our new-old car shipped from the mainland needed to be picked up, and Dewitt got the news that his knee injury is a torn medial meniscus, which will require surgical repair.

All this was a recipe for menopausal meltdown. My usual equanimity just flat out deserted me. I collapsed in on myself with the gravitational pull of a black hole.

“Are you okay?” asked my hubby, Dewitt. Instead of answering with the usual “Fine,” or “I’ll get over it,” I shared (read spewed forth) my feelings of overwhelm. He listened sympathetically (BTW,a GREAT thing to do for your goddess, men). “Well, just remember, you don’t have to do it all or do it alone. We’re a team here.” was his sage response.

The weird thing is that I immediately felt better. The black hole continued to shrink throughout the day and was completely dissolved in my evening medicinal red wine. I forget that I don’t have to carry all the weight of my feelings of overwhelm, sadness, or general freakout alone. I don’t have to “protect” my husband, even when he is injured or not doing so well himself.

Here’s the thing: misery may love company, but when said company is allied against it, it slinks off to bother someone else. I’ve usually been good at sharing my flip-out times with my girlfriends, but have rarely shared them with family. What’s that about? Being strong? Suffering in silence? Creating calm even when I don’t feel it inside? Because??????????????

Okay, I never make New Year’s resolutions, but I’ll make an exception. I’ll share my feelings with my mate from now on as well as my girlfriends. Supermom doesn’t live at this house anymore. A Menopause Goddess does. And some days, it’ll be a little more Menopause and a little less Goddess. But it will be real. And it will be shared.

My husband injured his knee over New Year’s and has literally been unable to walk. Which means that I now have to do his chores as well as my own, while waiting on him. Sort of caregiving lite, you might say.

Initially, Dewitt was certain that he’d need an MRI and surgery as it wasn’t getting better. Then his brother mentioned that he’d had similar injuries and was on crutches for a time but it eventually healed on its own.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “That could be true. Remember when I sprained my ankle so badly and was on crutches for a few weeks, then hobbling for a while after, but it healed on its own, too.”
“No,”he said. “I don’t remember that at all.”

I stared at him, astonished. How could he not recollect an event that is lodged so firmly in my memory. After all, I was unable to walk for a good, long while.

And then I realized why he had zero recall. This wasn’t a case of elder forgetfulness nor memory lapse. He didn’t remember the event because his life didn’t change. At all. Except for a small detour to the Urgent Care Center, nothing changed for him. I still made dinner, did the shopping, even went to my job as a nurse educator, slowly executing the stairs with my crutches. Luckily I had injured my left leg, so I could still drive.

Why? Why do we women carry on as if nothing has happened when we are ill or afflicted with an injury? All those meals fixed, laundry and errands done, and work done while incubating a fever of 101+, horrific cramps, the stomach flu leads to one question? Are we freaking nuts!?! Or do we have a heretofore undiscovered martyr gene embedded in our feminine DNA?

We goddesses are well equipped for caretaking and ill equipped for the necessary job of caring for ourselves. And at this stage of life, we are looking at some long term caretaking events in our near future (if we haven’t already immersed ourselves in them.)

How will we cope? With caring for aging parents, with unforeseen injury and illness to our significant others? What balancing acts might we find ourselves performing?

Caregiving turned out to be the uber topic this year at our annual Venus gathering. Ironically, two of our very own Menopause Goddesses were unable to make the meeting at the last minute due to caretaking emergencies. Perhaps we should have talked about it last year!

Many hours of discussion and sharing later, we uncovered the main secret to artful caregiving (where you care for yourself as well as those who are in need of your care). It is this: Ask for help. This will save your bacon. Over and over again. And likely the bacon of the one(s) under your care.

People want to help. And we need to let them. We need to ask for their assistance and then accept it with gratitude and grace.
Even those under our care can help, in ways we hadn’t considered. We can ask them too. Everybody gives. Everybody receives. Everybody cares.

We still don’t know the prognosis for Dewitt’s knee. We have to fly to Honolulu on Friday to see a specialist and maybe he’ll have to have that MRI. We’ll know more then.

In the meantime, this evening I called out “Hey gimpy boy, get in here and do these dishes. You only have to stand for that.”
“Be happy to, you only have to ask me,” he grinned as he hobbled the few steps to the kitchen.