Sadhvi

Being a woman over 50, I thought I might want to write something about Menopause every now and again.  It isn’t taboo, but I think that for me it’s just been so intense that I don’t know what to say.

Really.  I mean, who wants to hear someone write about how they don’t know who they are anymore?   Besides, I have a funny feeling that dealing with this Change is kind of like trying to find the “perfect  bra”, having the “perfect job”, or communicating clearly with my husband: there really isn’t an answer, it’s just a mystery and a challenge to be lived on a daily basis!

Not only is there the pressure to look good these days, to be thin enough not to be considered “fat”, to not be negative, but rather positive, to be politically and socially correct, to work out or do some sort of Yoga or Pilates to stay in shape as I get older, but every morning there’s the challenge of facial hair.

Susun Weed

I have a book, “New Menopausal Years, The Wise Woman Way: Alternative Approaches for Women 30-90″  that I opened from my bookshelf to see what herbalist and Wise Woman Susun Weed had to say about it: you can just click HERE to go to that information online. 

If you find the time, you should go to one of Susun’s events, and most definitely, buy any of  her books.

In a nutshell, I can tell you that it’s not going to go away and I will have to keep up with the daily maintenance of it, well, for the rest of my life.  And for everyone’s sake I really hope I don’t forget.

My mother, who is still alive, has not really spoken much about her Menopausal years to me…maybe the whole topic was as mystifying to her as it is to me now.  Mom?

In the past couple of years I have had all the symptoms associated with this Change and I am thankful that they didn’t all happen on the same day, because then I wouldn’t be writing to you via this blog post, but rather from a prison cell somewhere in Missouri.

When it gets brought up with girlfriends, there is always someone who didn’t have ANY symptoms, who is having wild sex all the time with her husband or new, younger lover, or someone who just started taking some hormones from horse urine and swears it makes her look 20 years younger.  Then there are my girlfriends who are in their 60′s who tell me that their menopausal symptoms have never gone away.  So there ya go!  It’s like I said before, it’s all a mystery.

Maybe it just comes down to accepting this new me as I get older, just as it always been throughout my life of being OK and enjoying what is, no matter what age. 

Amen, and seriously now, may you have a good night’s sleep and awake with no facial hair in the morning!

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

(Reinhold Niebuhr: American theologian 1892-1971)