Why is our menopause so hard?

There is a cultural belief in the West that menopause is an unavoidable horror.  Prepare yourself, dig in, because this is going to be a wild ride. 

We see the symptoms we have heard about heading for us…hot flashes, night sweats, brain fog, hair loss, weight gain, sleep deprivation, painful sex…and we dread it.  We feel helpless.  But why should this be so?  Why would Nature create our bodies to suddenly unravel and leave us feeling lost and diminished, just when we are in the prime of our lives? 

I believe that we fear menopause, and experience many of the symptoms we do, because we are taught to expect it.  These are the stories we hear.  True, the times of hormonal change in our lives are often a bit challenging to navigate. Things are shifting on a deeper level than just our bodies, and we know this intuitively.  But we have done this before, more than once, and navigated it successfully.

As women, we tend to think of ourselves as one person that things happen ‘to’ along the way.  The truth is, our hormones powerfully change us at different times of our lives into different beings…from child to young woman, capable of reproducing, from young woman to mother, capable of growing a new human being in our bodies and nurturing it to adulthood, from reproductive age woman to a woman in her Wisdom years, the powerful Grandmother capable of evolving our species. 

Just as a caterpillar and butterfly have exactly the same DNA, but are very different creatures, we also go through a metamorphosis at times of hormonal change.  All of these times of change in our lives fit together and build, one upon the other.  So, in order to navigate our menopause with more ease and grace, we must also understand the earlier phases of our lives and how they connect to what is happening now, because they impact strongly what kind of menopause we will experience.

Our biological lives as women are a continuum and begin in the womb.  In fact they begin three months prior to our conception.  Understanding the path of our individual journey and untangling ourselves from the various roles and identities we have inhabited along the way, goes a long way toward bringing us to a place of authenticity and thriving during menopause and beyond. This in turn, lessens symptoms and anxiety and provides us with a strong place to stand in the world.

The Continuum Process, contained in Making Sense of Menopause will help you to look at how your own experiences through girlhood, puberty, womanhood and motherhood have powerfully shaped you and will shape your menopause.  There are also chapters on self-care and how to lessen and navigate any symptoms you might be having.  Looking at the continuum of your own life will help you to catch up to present time, be more authentic, and move into the next phase of your life clear about who you are now and how you want to be in the world during your Wisdom years.