Dealing with the Feelings

I awoke feeling depressed again this morning and have had real trouble shaking the feeling. I find it truly amazing that when I am here in this feeling, it is impossible to just ‘snap out of it’ even when I know it is being hormonally triggered. It just feels so REAL and so incredibly overwhelming.

I took a break from the Black Cohosh (and Angelica) for the first three days of my period and this seems to have sent me into another mini tail spin. I have already gone back on the herbs and hope they kick in again soon but I am feeling scared that maybe the herbs are not as helpful as I initially thought; what if it is just coincidental that the mood swings lifted for a few weeks? Now I have experienced some much needed relief, I really can’t bear the thought of getting stuck in this emotional quagmire again.

I want so much to be active and useful, there is so much I could be doing, so much I feel passionate and excited about but right now I feel completely blocked by feelings of heaviness and futility. I have considered that perhaps this is a calling for me to ‘slow down’ so I can get more in touch with my inner self, but when I feel like this that just doesn't seem possible. In fact what I find most disconcerting about being in this state, is that I feel so completely alienated from myself and my connection to the Goddess / Spirit. It is like I just don't know what to do to gain any real relief - as I write this I am crying and I don’t even know what I am crying about...

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I just put on some Florence and the Machine and had a good cry while dancing around the living room. I feel so much better for connecting to my emotions and moving my body to release them, especially to Florence who really speaks to me as an artist. It is so easy for me to think I can rationalise my way out of my feelings, this is a really ingrained habit of mine which I expect was born out of being emotionally repressed as a child. I always felt things so deeply but there was never any room in my family for me to express or release my emotions so everything just ends up in my head. (It's really not surprising that I ended up suffering from terribly debilitating migraines as a child.)

My usual strategy for 'dealing with feelings' is to think my way out of them; first I have to identify ‘the problem’ that is causing the feeling and then to work out a way to ‘fix’ the problem so that I can make the difficult feeling go away. Writing is a fantastic outlet but it relies completely on a mental process and it seems that ultimately I also need to learn how to express and release the physical aspect of my emotions. This is especially true when my feelings get so overwhelming that I can no longer engage my mind to manage them. It seems that in these instances I am going to have to try to remember to disengage my mind and engage my body through music and dance.

Perhaps the lesson here is to learn to befriend my feelings and give them space, whatever seems to be ‘causing’ them; just because hormones are triggering the intense emotions doesn’t mean they are somehow invalid...

Maybe the menopause is challenging me to stop trying to deal with my feelings in my head and to practise bringing emotions down into my body so that I can fully express and release them.

Goddess Blessings ♥

Seeing the Wood for the Trees

Well, it has been quite a while! I have been meaning to write but other things have been taking up my time and energy, which is a good thing because I have just enjoyed almost an entire month without major incident! My mood has really lifted and evened out and this has been a HUGE relief…

I seemed to reach a crisis point a few weeks ago and though I had managed to reduce my intense rages by taking Chinese Angelica, I was still feeling very depressed and anxious, especially on waking in the morning. I was so very close to going to the doctor’s for some HRT but really wanted to try and help myself as naturally as possible. So I decided to take some action; I went back to see my counsellor, agreed with my partner that he give me more space at home and started taking 0.5ml of Black Cohosh twice a day. I also started a (back dated) mood diary of the last few months so I could identify any patterns and the potential effects of herbs, hormones and the lunar cycles more easily.

I started the counselling right at the beginning of my last cycle. On the first session I had a good vent about everything that was bothering me, but I was still very much 'in it'. Around this time my partner had realised that our relationship was in serious jeopardy so he started to give me regular space to be alone and this also took some of the pressure off. But the most noticeable shift in my mood came when I started taking the Black Cohosh about a week into my cycle – the depression and anxiety lifted noticeably for the first time in a few months and amazingly, it stayed that way for the rest of my cycle – I didn’t even have any major premenstrual mood swings. What is really interesting is that when my partner suffered a couple of moody days, for the first time in months I was able to avoid over-reacting to him. Instead of feed-backing off each other and getting into a huge row, I was able to show my upset in a calm way and then take my space until he was ready to re-engage emotionally. This really is major progress!

My conclusion in all this is that I have definitely been struggling with a chemical/hormonal imbalance that has been severely affecting my mood, even to the point of making me feel suicidal. When I was ‘in it’ it was incredibly hard for me to really see this or to believe that hormones could be having such a huge effect on me; I really wasn’t convinced that there wasn’t some other terrible threat that was causing me to feel the way I felt. Looking at my mood diary entries, it is absolutely clear that the Black Cohosh has been the main factor in stabilising my moods, so I am putting my mood swings down to ‘hormones’ with ‘other factors’ having exacerbated things. To my great relief, my mental clarity also returned when my mood lifted so I was able to get on with other things – hence a welcome break from the 'blog of insanity'! 

If I wasn’t already completely convinced, I became so when I stopped taking the herb for a short break on the first day of my period and the next day my ‘morning anxiety’ returned with a vengeance. I think it is important to take a few days off all the herbs but I will definitely be going back on them tomorrow. (FYI, I also stopped taking Agnus Castus last cycle as I had been on it for over three years and my period didn’t suddenly arrive ridiculously early as I feared it would. Perhaps the Chinese Angelica and Black Cohosh are helping keep things regular…)

Despite my conclusion that I have been suffering a ‘hormonal imbalance’, there are clearly other issues that needed to be resolved and I am really glad I returned to counselling so I could start to address them. As long as I was ‘under the influence’ there really was no way out because no matter what I did, I could never seem to find my inner balance – not even sitting alone in nature which always usually works for me. I honestly believe if I hadn’t managed to get a handle on the hormonal imbalance, I would still be going around in circles in counselling trying to get relief from some other perceived threat. Thankfully, the Black Cohosh did work and as soon as the anxiety and depression lifted, it became much easier to see things clearly and to start to figure other things out. Yay!! :)

   

Goddess Blessings ♥

One Day at a Time

Finally, some head space! My partner has got a job on at the moment that is taking him out of the house and so I have the place all to myself. I also had a couple of days to myself last week and I definitely feel a lot less nuts. FYI I have decided to stop taking Agnus Castus as I have been on it for nearly 3 and a half years, which is a very long time to be taking a herb without a significant break. I am scared that stopping will bring back my 'too frequent' and ‘too long’ periods but am hoping that taking Chinese Angelica instead will keep things in check. All I know is that I am feeling loads calmer at the moment and I am so relieved!

There are so many layers to what is going on for me right now that it is hard to see the wood for the trees. There is of course the menopause and all the hormonal fluctuations that are going on in my body and then there are the other physiological factors to consider such as the herbs I am taking and diet etc. I am also experiencing a rather challenging astrological transit which interestingly began around the time this recent menopause wave started up. (Neptune square Mars – which can be very debilitating and confusing L) Then there are other life circumstances to consider that may be affecting my emotional state such as cutting contact with my family last year and then suffering the most terrible scapegoating in my last job which ultimately ended in my being sacked for not ‘fitting in’. Last, but not least, there has also been a huge adjustment going in my relationship since my partner returned home after being abroad for 7 months while caring for his dying mother... Now we are both trying to start our own businesses and planning our wedding, and all from a tiny one bed flat!

While menopause is clearly exacerbating things, I am really not so sure that a hormone imbalance is the cause of my current difficulties. Judging by my incredible relief at regaining some long periods of uninterrupted alone time, I expect menopause is simply amplifying feelings and making it 10 times harder to deal with issues as they arise. Yes, I sometimes feel totally overwhelmed by the intensity of my feelings, but what bothers me more is the lack of clarity that is being caused by the nebulous and complex nature of all the influences that are currently affecting me. I am someone who likes to have a plan and to at least understand what I am up against and this all just feels totally out of my control. The minute I try to pin something down – a solution or even just an approach to finding one – it all just seems to slip through my fingers again. Deep down I know that even taking the right herbs and eating the right foods isn't going to be the magic solution for me right now because I know in my heart that I am going through some kind of 'soul transition'.  

All I seem to be able to do with any certainty right now is keep getting up in the morning, keep ‘doing what needs to be done’ on any given day and keep writing this blog... 

Maybe this isn’t the right time to try and plan my Next Big Move or to identify my ‘true calling’ in life or to try to push forward with a new business and maybe that is perfectly OK. 

Maybe the Goddess has sent both menopause and Neptune to try and get me to slow down and I just need to stop panicking that if I do, I am going to fall off the edge of my life and never be able to get back on it again. 

Maybe this is the right time for me to withdraw so that I can experience another deeper layer of healing and yet another re-birthing. 

Maybe, just maybe, there is absolutely nothing wrong except my almost pathological resistance to letting go!  

Just for today I will trust the flow of life and allow it to lead me to where ever I need to go…

Goddess Blessings ♥

Death by Insanity

Ugh. I just want to sit here in a heap today and thank The Goddess I actually can. Not only has my client cancelled today’s work but my partner is out all day on a job… finally a day to myself with nothing but my own mind to drive me nuts!

My period has arrived two days early and I am in a lot of pain – more than usual. After waking abruptly with my partner’s alarm early this morning, I went back to sleep spent the rest of the morning dreaming disturbed dreams. I was woken by a tactile hallucination – I was sure someone was sitting on the edge of my bed as I could feel the mattress sink next to my legs. I had to open my eyes and check – of course no one was there. I closed my eyes and felt the mattress moving again though I am sure I was still awake – so I had another peek just to be sure… When I went back to sleep I started dreaming about having weird sex with Johnny Depp and then more of the usual ‘everybody hates me’ dreams I have been having of late… When I finally got out of bed it was because the pain woke me up and now I feel like I have been run over by a bus! I am SO glad I don’t have to go to work today…

I feel like I am living in my own special kind of hell right now. I thought maybe once I knew what was going on, i.e. my menopause, and had accepted it, that things would start to get easier. How wrong I was! I feel like I am on a demonic fairground ride that I can never really get off. Every so often it plateaus for a bit and I think the ride is over or at least calming down but then all of a sudden I realise that I have in fact been coasting along a great precipice and am now plunging full throttle into what can only be described as 'death by insanity'. I mean seriously, why the hell did no one tell me about this? I think describing this disturbing unreality as ‘mood swings’ has got to be the understatement of the millennium…

This past week I have been seriously considering HRT, if only to check if it really is hormones that are causing all this madness. I don’t even know how to describe it any more – no words seem to do ‘it’ justice or really describe how completely insane I actually feel right now. During my research I came across an interesting article which explains that during perimenopause – the time leading up to the last period – hormones don’t simply decline, they fluctuate violently. Pre-menopause hormones undulate in a gentle, predictable monthly wave and in post-menopause there is nothing happening at all, but during perimenopause there is a huge hormonal tug of war between your brain and your body which are no longer working in sync as they once did. To make matters worse they ‘feedback’ off each other which causes huge unpredictable surges in hormones – a bit like a couple arguing and things spiralling out of control as they feed into each other’s insecurities. Obviously this chemical process varies from woman to woman, both in terms of what actually happens and how we personally respond to the imbalances caused but clearly for many women, menopause is not simply an unpleasant ‘mid-life crisis’ or even an uncomfortable ‘eostrogen come down’ – for some women, when menopause kicks in we are taken hostage by a full blown chemical war that explodes inside our bodies, a war that we cannot see, cannot negotiate and have no real way to escape. No wonder I feel like I am going mad…

Not only do I have this enormous hormonal battle to contend with which is making any other stress or difficulty in life almost impossible to deal with but then there is the torturous ‘should I, shouldn’t I’ mental loop regarding the decision to take drugs to get some much needed relief. I can just hear the voices now; ‘Do whatever you need to do, no woman should have to suffer in this way!’ vs ‘Don’t succumb the Devil! Don’t be weak! You can do it without drugs!!’ I am beginning to imagine what women giving birth must go through with the epidural drip doctor looming under strip lights perched on one shoulder and on the other, the big mama midwife promising all the wonders of a natural birth; when you feel like you are dying, which voice do you listen to?

     

I am not going to indulge in a logical ‘pros and cons’ argument with myself about this because I know deep down that it is not a ‘logical’ decision that I must make. I used to be very ‘anti painkillers’ until I suffered two prolapse discs and it was no longer an option to refuse the cocktail of drugs they gave me. I fully accept there are times in life when we have to rely on medicine if only to survive and at those times it would be foolish not to, regardless of any potential health risks. I also know that if it came to the point I felt I really needed it, I would take HRT because I have no intention of being a martyr to the cause – my emotional and physical well-being is far more important to me than any health ideology. But having said this, I really want to embrace the ups and downs of menopause because I believe there is the potential for great emotional and spiritual healing which I fully expect HRT would obliterate in one fell swoop. (I am open to being wrong about this…)

The fact is I am in an unusual situation where I do not need to function normally on a daily basis and part of me wonders if I would be wise to take full advantage of this. If I had a successful career and/or children continually demanding my attention, then things might well be very different – as I feel right now I have absolutely no idea how menopausal women work full time or cope with the demands of a modern family. The truth is I have been caught up in a huge emotional / spiritual ‘process’ my entire life and have rarely had much time for anything else, and I have often lamented my apparent bad luck. Part of me is absolutely gutted that just when I felt I found some inner peace and stability in my life Kali should come banging at my door again screaming Her blood curdling battle cry. My reply is always the same: Why does this keep happening to me?!

Eventually I step back and look at it all from the other side – maybe I am not supposed to live a ‘normal life’, maybe my apparently ‘unsuccessful’ life isn’t some awful punishment for continually failing to be a fully functioning person. Maybe I am not supposed to ‘pull myself together and get on with it’; maybe emotional processing is my true purpose in life. Maybe I only reject this truth because I live in a Capitalist Patriarchal society which rejects emotions as being weak and shuns inner growth as being essentially worthless – one is only excused for ‘indulging’ in such perverse activities if we pay for it ourselves and fit it into our spare time like it is a frivolous hobby. The sad truth is inner work is only given any real value when it promises to enable us to re-join the human race and ultimately become more economically productive. Otherwise, what is the point of doing it? Apparently a life lived in the inner realm is no life at all…

I thought I’d come to terms with the unexpected way things have unfolded but I had still hoped that one day I could stop all the painful navel gazing and start my ‘real life’. This time a year ago – I thought things were finally on their way up (from my navel!); I had a permanent full time job in a busy finance office (OMG), a new relationship that looked very likely to stick, a nice flat and car that got me from A to B, hell, I was even beginning to save money! As I entered into June 2015, the only blip on the landscape that I could see was my relationship with my family that needed resolving and finally putting to bed. I remember going to see a counsellor and telling her that I thought my life is finally stable enough to cut ties with them and ‘get on with things’… No sooner had the words came tumbling out of my mouth than my new found stability all started to unravel; within days my partner’s estranged mother contacted him after nearly 10 years to say she was dying and wanted him to go and look after her in another country, which he did a few weeks later, but not before I was made redundant from my first permanent job in 13 years... a job I'd managed to hold on to for a whole 12 months! In the space of a month my whole life was turned upside down and as of yet I have been unable to turn it right side up again.

At first I thought menopause was just the cherry on this disastrous cake called ‘My Life’ but it is slowly beginning to dawn on me that perhaps it is something entirely different, that perhaps my menopause experience is in fact the whole point of it. Right now I feel I am standing at an important crossroads in my life; I can continue to chase a life that has always eluded me; to take HRT and any other drugs they will give me in an attempt to make me ‘normal’ again so I can become a fully functioning ‘successful’ human being and just get on with it. Or I can finally accept I am not even close to being the person I think I should be and my life is not going to ever ‘return to normal’ because there has never been anything remotely ‘normal’ about my life to return to! 

Perhaps menopause is the wake-up call that I have needed to see that I am in fact fighting a battle against myself and always have been. I have never really accepted who I am or the incredible and deeply challenging life that has unfolded before me. I have always felt I am missing out on something that everyone else seems to take for granted – a guaranteed position of being safely tucked up in the soft fabric of the human race. I have worked on myself incessantly, but always with the goal of winning my ticket out of ‘here’ – a place that to me has felt like a permanent exile from my real life...

If I were to stop worrying about ‘fitting in’ and truly accepted who I am and what my life is about, then I know I’d much rather stick with this menopausal process even when it gets really messy, scary and at times completely ‘dysfunctional’. If I was to accept that this is my life then I would see that I am already half way through it and I no longer have the time to sit around lamenting a life that clearly bears no resemblance to the one I was given. When I look at this important decision from where I am actually standing instead of where I think I should be, then I know in my heart that I would much rather take herbs to gently aid me in my process while taking as much time and space as I need to discover the wonder of the woman I already am and the life I already have:  

I am a Witch, a Shaman, a daughter of the Dark Goddess;

I am Persephone, Lilith and I am Kali.

I embrace everything about me that society shuns;

My life is unfolding exactly as it should.

I call upon the Great Goddess to fill me with love, courage and acceptance;

For myself and all that is repressed, wounded and disowned in the world.

I call upon the Divine Feminine in all Her magnificent forms;

To support and encourage me as I transition into the Crone I was always meant to be.

Ho! 

♥

Just for Today...

Today I have hit a wall and am finding it so hard to even write this. I still can’t believe that this is hormonally triggered, it is just so extreme. Today after several days of waking with weird dreams – not really disturbing but just emotionally triggering, I have been left feeling disassociated from my body. I had a pelvic scan this morning which went well but to be honest I hardly even noticed that I went, I have been feeling so split off from myself and the world. I decided rather than going straight home I should go for a walk in a riverside park as I find nature usually sorts me out. Instead I found myself sitting by these beautiful rocks just as split off from my body as I had been at home. I found I couldn’t move or really cry – another thing that usually brings relief. I was massively bothered by people walking by and felt uneasy about going home as I partner was there and I just want to be alone. When I got up and pushed myself to walk more vigorously, I found my mood lifting a little but still no real relief.

I really don’t know what is wrong with me. I have so much to be grateful for and nothing major stressing me out, perhaps for the first time in my life. I wonder if now that things are quiet this is a delayed reaction to my past or if I feel like this because there is something ‘wrong’ that I am not seeing. I am normally a woman of dynamic action but I have absolutely no motivation to do anything and if I try to figure things out I find my head going round and around in circles which sends me deeper into despair as I just don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know whether to try to ‘push through’ this or to gently ‘sit with it’. If I could be sure what ‘it’ was, then perhaps I’d know what to do; if this is grief then I know I just need to make space for feeling it. If it is hormones or related chemical imbalance then perhaps I need to take a more pragmatic approach and take action… What really scares me is the worry that this is the ‘real me’; now all distractions and stresses have been removed maybe this is how I really feel about myself and about life.   

It feels like a really bad drug / addiction withdrawal and I wonder if this is what it is. I read on one website (I think it was A Vogel) that menopause is in fact a ‘drug’ withdrawal – the drug being oestrogen. We have been reliant on the chemical oestrogen our whole lives and now our bodies have to become accustomed to functioning without it. This makes perfect sense to me. I have also suffered from love addiction and wonder if my cutting ties from my abusive family has sent me into a different kind of withdrawal, especially as I have spent many years trying to resolve things with them.

OK – this writing is definitely helping. Strangely, writing for an audience helps the processing because if I write in my journal in this head space I just seem to spiral down. At least this way I have to be more precise and not allow myself to get sucked into my negativity because no one would want to read that! I said right at the beginning that I wanted this blog to be an anchor and even when I desperately want to isolate and avoid, as soon as I start typing the negativity starts to lose its grip.

My conclusion today is that I am experiencing withdrawal, possibly even from two things – oestrogen and also to unhealthy attachments that have dominated my life. It is no wonder that I am feeling wobbly, confused and split off – my mind, heart and my body have some major adjusting to do.

So, just for today, I am going to stop trying to ‘figure it out’. I will neither sit there staring into space nor pick up the axe and start trying to chop my way through the dead wood. I don’t have to be Super Woman but neither should I sit here and wallow in my negativity. I am going to write a list of simple things I can do when I feel like a trapped rabbit drowning in her burrow. This is a list of things I know have worked in the past all of which I can try and see which works in the moment:

1. Write my blog – that is what it is for!

2. Go for a walk in nature – get away from people and the city if I can

3. If my back feels up to it – walk up a big hill or try a bit of running

4. Do some mundane physical or administrative chores

5. Dance to loud music or listen to relaxing music to calm my mind

6. Sit by a bubbling stream, weir,  waterfall or waves – anywhere the water makes sound

7. Write a gratitude list (I may even start a gratitude diary again…)

8. Give my partner a hug and allow myself to cry if tears come

9. Call or meet up with a friend for coffee

10. Create some routine / structure / small achievable goals – I don’t have passion motivating me right now so I need to rely more on structure and routine to keep me moving forward, especially as I do not have a full time job at the moment.

I’d love to hear if anyone else has any other suggestions – please feel free to share what works for you…

Goddess Blessings ♥

Cracking Open the Floodgates

I feel really sad and fragile today. Sometimes it’s hard to know what is ‘menopause’ and what is just the ebb and flow of life... but I expect it is all connected because I can’t see how to separate myself or different parts of my life from this huge process I am in.

Thankfully my period came and went without incident. I really think the Chinese Angelica is helping to regulate my cycle as well as increasing my libido to a more acceptable level. I have also noticed that the intense rages have subsided; despite feeling immense grief today, I feel my moods have definitely evened out over the past couple of weeks and even my partner has noticed too… So a big thumbs up to Angelica!

I was almost feeling normal again but over the last 3 days or so I have been having unpleasant dreams that have left me feeling really empty and sad. The more I reflect upon my menopausal experience, the more I notice that this process seems to be causing things that are buried deep in my psyche to bubble to the surface, often though my dreams. Every time this happens, I wake feeling awful even though I am mostly re-experiencing something that is predominantly in the past.

I guess any healing process is multi-layered and I shouldn't be surprised that grief should surface at this time in my life. Not only are the hormones making it harder for me to keep any feelings I do have under control but also menopause itself is a time of ‘letting go’ and of potentially grieving one’s youth. I didn’t have a very happy youth so for me it is less about grieving what was and more about grieving what will never be.

Last year I cut ties with my family and it has recently started to cause me anguish. This is partly because I am no longer fighting to try and resolve things, so all I have left is the loss that has dominated my entire life. But also, since getting engaged and starting to plan my wedding without them, it suddenly all feels so real and so final. Rather than simply feeling happy that I am finally free of all the pain they caused me and that I am starting a new life with a man who really knows how to love, all I can feel right now is immense grief at the sheer enormity of my loss. Add that to all the other childhood feelings that are surfacing and it has started to feel quite overwhelming. The grief and feelings of rejection have started to make me question my decision to break contact and to doubt that I have done the ‘right’ thing. Thankfully, as soon as I cast my mind back to what it was like to be ‘in there’ with them, I am quite sure that not only is living with this grief so much better, but it also perfectly natural given the circumstances.

It seems that an entire life’s worth of ‘letting go’ and grieving is converging at this profound moment in my life. As menopause cracks open the floodgates of my lamenting soul, I pray that I will find the courage to feel and release these layers grief that I have been carrying around with me most of my life. 

As I stand and face these waves, I pray that I find the strength to allow them to wash away the past and everything that has held me back in life. 

Goddess Blessings ♥

On Becoming Invisible to Men

Today I received the following comment from a reader: 'The point for me is not so much about the libido, but rather that I feel that no men will ever look at me as I passed the threshold of becoming invisible. Anyone experiencing this?'  'SC'

Thanks for your question 'SC' - it is a really good topic for discussion! I started to write a reply in the comments section but then I realised I had so much to say about it I should make it into a new post. If anyone has anything to add, please post it directly on the blog (rather than in a closed FB group) so that 'SC' also has a chance to read your reply, or email me and I will post it for you.

                                                                      *          *          *

I know lots of women who have expressed huge fears and feelings of loss when they notice that men no longer look at them the same way they used to. I also went through this painful experience a few years ago...

When I was 38 I lost a lot of weight and made an effort to be attractive as I was actively dating and looking for a relationship. I felt really good about myself and was amazed to be attracting really young men, even a guy who turned out to be 19 and who thought I was really hot! (I met him at a party and we kissed outside under the moonlight - I felt SO validated and powerful...) Shortly after this, I ended up in a relationship with a 24 year old. Looking back, I feel like that was the absolute peak of my sexual confidence.

Unfortunately, as you'd expect with any 'peak' in life, it has been down hill ever since! When I got back into the dating game just a few short years later, (in my early 40s), I noticed a definite decrease in the level of interest I got from men and often felt depressed by it. However, this unpleasant 'come down' also had a lot to do with how I felt about my attractiveness at the time; my health hadn't been good for a while and consequently the weight had all piled back on, plus a bit more. Add that to my feeling generally very old, stiff and physically limited because of my back problems - I felt I was a million miles from being anyone's hot date...

Over the past 5 (menopausal) years I have found it harder and harder to shift any weight and even harder to keep it off. Frequent attempts to lose weight and to re-gain my lost sexual confidence has meant my weight has yo-yoed constantly and my feelings about my attractiveness have yo-yoed right along with it. I suppose for me, feeling 'invisible' has ultimately had more to do with how I feel about myself because I know from experience that when I am feeling attractive and sexy, men notice me more - whatever age I happen to be.

Unfortunately, and to my great annoyance and constant distress, my feelings of attractiveness have a direct correlation to my weight - I just can't seem to feel attractive when I am overweight, I feel disgusted with my body and just want to hide it. At those times I want to be invisible because I feel so ugly but then I end up hating myself for not making more of an effort to look nice as well as for not 'getting on top of' my weight. It makes me feel really sad writing all this down and to be honest I am genuinely surprised by all the apparent self hatred that has poured out of me - this is the mental anguish I never really share with anyone. Once again, it seems that menopause is only really amplifying something that has always been lurking beneath the surface - I have always felt this 'fat shame' but menopause is making it so much harder to control my weight, so I feel my days of ever being 'attractive' again (i.e. slim) are well and truly over.

Despite all this, 18 months ago I met a man who finds me very attractive and wants to marry me, so I have been trying really hard not drive myself (and him) mad with these feelings of self loathing. In the end, if I have a loving partner, so why should it even matter whether I still look 25 or whether other men still look at me? The sad truth is I am far more worried about the whole 'buying a wedding dress thing' because I know that doing it while I'm 'feeling fat' is going to trigger a shame spiral... What I really want is to be able to feel attractive and sexy whatever weight I am, but I just can't see that happening, even with an attractive admiring man in my life.

While it is obvious that men are more likely to 'check out' younger women's bodies, clearly this in no way precludes them from appreciating the sexiness of older women or wanting to have relationships with them. From what I have observed, men are nowhere near as fussy as women think - and the ones who are overly fixated on appearance are really not worth worrying about. From a feminist point of view, perhaps we should be challenging the media's constant subliminal conditioning that has us believe that our only real value in the world lies in our attractiveness to men, and that if they ever stop lusting after our body, we instantly become nothing.

As I write this, I also wonder if perhaps some of women's insecurity about becoming sexually invisible is actually rooted in the much deeper fear of our own mortality; the nebulous oily fear that that comes bubbling to the surface with the impending loss of fertility and its indisputable message that our youth is most definitely over. Perhaps this is why everyone is so afraid of the menopause - both men and women - because when it arrives it is the first tangible sign that our lives really do not go on forever. In my case this terrifying wake-up-call happened in my early 40s before I had even had the chance to have any children, and it left me feeling like somehow my life managed to slip through my fingers - maybe obsessing about my weight and wanting to regain my youthful body is all about wanting to stay in control...

The fact is older women can be very sexy and judging by the snowballing 'cougar' movement, even younger men are beginning to see that. If a post menopausal woman wants sex, I am confident she can get it. If she wants love, I believe she will get offers from men of all ages, however she might be more inclined to turn them down because SHE has got more picky. And should her long term relationship fail there is nothing to suggest she won't find a new relationship if she really wants one. But in the end, all the male attention in the world won't stop the menopause from making us feel more unattractive if we are already suffering from low self esteem - or from forcing us to the face our fear of our own mortality.

                                                                  *           *           *

Reflecting upon what I have written, I think that I need to focus on being grateful for all that I have today, while also creating the space to grieve all that I have lost with my youth. Male sexual attention has always been a double edged sword for me - maybe menopause is actually offering us the opportunity to liberate ourselves from the shackles of the endless approval seeking from men:

Maybe this is the time to finally break free and truly become ourselves...

Goddess Blessings ♥