Good News Tuesday!

Some good news today… After a roller coaster couple of days, things seem to have calmed down again. Friday was anxiety central followed by a raging homicidal fury. Saturday was a heavy, hopeless blanket of depression followed by wailing tears at bedtime. Thankfully, Sunday was a lot more relaxed…

So, the good news? Well, over the last couple of days I have started to notice my sexual desire rising again. (Yay!!!) Is this perhaps the Chinese Angelica (Dong Quai) beginning to kick in? After my last (very late) moon-time had finished I started to take 0.5 mils along with my Agnus Castus and Sage in the morning. It feels like a pretty potent herb to me, so I decided to err on the side of caution in terms of dosage as I didn’t want to trigger any additional bleeding. I had been taking it for about week when the feelings sort of crept up on me and culminated in an unplanned trip to sex shop with my fella… I found myself getting into a conversation about menopause with the two twenty-something female sales assistants which was rather interesting!

Not sure if this recently increased libido is all part of the ebb and flow if the hormonal madness, but I have definitely felt more sexual and also significantly more emotionally balanced since Sunday. I expect it is probably way too early to tell what, if any effects the new herb are having, but I will keep you posted with any further developments.

The other good news is that I got engaged today! Not really menopause related news, except I thought you may want to know that there is hope for all of us wild menopausal women… Thankfully my partner is a Cancerian so he probably gets the whole mood swing thing better than most men. (Cancerians are ruled by the moon which also makes him very caring and affectionate when he is not being an irrational loony tune himself!)

Most importantly, despite all my recent madness he hasn’t been put off marrying me so whatever else may be going awry in my life, all is definitely not lost...

Goddess Blessings ♥

A Menopausal Wake-Up Call

OMG. Yesterday was the day from hell. Are these ‘mood swings’ for real?! I have never been the most easy-going person in the world, nor the most able to handle stress, but yesterday was truly awful and my emotional reactions went right off the chart.

It all started with another day at the office. I have been feeling really stressed by this particular job and was so anxious about facing the onslaught again that I woke up 2 hours before my alarm and didn’t really manage to get back to sleep. Not a great start as of course lack of sleep makes me feel worse and I have to drink coffee to get my brain to work – something I don’t usually do. I settled down to an hour or so of work by myself and then suddenly found myself having to ‘rush to the loo’ just before my boss was due to arrive. Really not a good sign!

After several hours of feeling like I was causing her a major inconvenience just by being there, I considered doing the grown up thing and talking to her about what was going on. I decided against this as I knew if I opened my mouth I would end up turning into a gibbering, sobbing wreck and I really couldn’t face any more humiliation. I considered walking out several times but even that seemed to be beyond my capabilities so instead I surrendered to being buffered around in someone else’s chaos and reasoned with myself it is only for one day.

Then ‘The Phone Call’. I could write a TRILOGY on my Orange / EE broadband saga but I'm not going to bore you with the details. All I will say is this, I have been having an ongoing issue with my service for over a year and I have been making a concerted effort to try and resolve this since February. I started this particular call after work as I had an hour and a half to kill before meeting a friend for coffee. I ended up standing in the office hallway with my bags for an hour and then having to continue with the call while driving (hands-free) to meet my friend because if I didn’t get to the end of it there and then, I would end up being trapped in a new one year contract that I didn’t want. Then there was a road closure right in the middle of town at 5pm on a Friday night… Thankfully I was so engrossed in the conversation with EE that I hardly noticed the traffic jam I was stuck in.

After a lovely catch up with my friend, I went home and enjoyed a take away and DVD with my partner. Then I opened my emails… and there it was, an email from EE with my name, and therefore my new username spelled wrong. That was when I hit the roof. I could not understand how the man I had just spent an hour and a half speak to could have created a misspelt user name after we had gone over EVERYTHING to make sure we both had it right, including the spelling of my name. Not only did I not want to have to call them up yet AGAIN to try and get this corrected but having been stuck with an old name for years because Orange would not update it when I legally changed my name, I had visions of having to cancel yet another order and starting from scratch. I’d rather gouge my own eyes out than go through all that again!!! (If you are wondering why I have stuck with EE there have been technical complications too long to explain here.)

That was when ‘tired, anxious, harassed me’ turned into a raging banshee. I was so enraged I didn’t know what to do with myself. To protect my partner, I left the room and ended up kicking in the door of my bedside cabinet. When this did not abate the rage, I decided to go out for a brisk walk up a very long steep hill and this thankfully helped me calm down (highly recommended for any future outbursts!) We were about to watch another episode of Heros when I spotted some unopened envelopes on the table... Among them was a new council tax bill. WTF?!!!! Again, weeks of careful planning and phone calls to make sure the direct debit was all set up to 12 monthly payments starting in April. We had changed the bank account the direct debits were to come out of and without notice THEY STOPPED THE PAYMENTS! And here was the brand new bill of 10 higher payments starting in June…

Utterly defeated, I sat on the sofa staring out of the window because I was crying too much to watch T.V. My partner sat there silently holding me as he didn’t dare open his mouth for fear of setting me off again. I was overwhelmed by this terrible sense of futility; what is the point of me doing anything? What is the point of my miserable life if everything I try to do just turns to shit? What is the point of bothering to live in a world where everyone else is selfish, unreasonable or just plain incompetent? I have visions of slashing my wrists because I feel so utterly trapped on this ferris wheel of stress, I seem to be completely powerless to stop it going round in circles or to find a way to get off. 

   

Ok, I know I am 'hormonal' but there is definitely something else going on here. I am a firm believer that life shows us things through events and if something keeps happening, then there must be a reason for it. Yes, I am ‘hormonally challenged’ so my reactions and feelings are heightened, but if the process of menopause has a spiritual purpose beyond simple biology then what is it trying to teach me?  Everything that happened yesterday pushed my stress levels way beyond what I am currently able to deal with. Of course I would have got stressed and angry even without the help of my hormones, but last night felt more than that, it felt like a wake-up call that menopause is literally screaming in my face.

The feeling of futility comes from knowing I am being pushed to change something but I can't for the life of me work out what or how. I am scared that if I walk away from this job, instead of feeling relief and pleased that I have taken care of myself, I will end up feeling like a complete failure and doubtful that I can do any work. I am scared that if I don’t manage to sort out this God forsaken EE issue, then I will end up with no internet options left and that will make my life even more difficult. In other words, I can't deal with the way things are but I feel frozen by a fear that whatever I do to try and resolve it will only make matters worse.

Right now I do not know the answer but I do feel a lot better for having written it all down. I have the house to myself today and absolutely nothing planned so I think I will get lost in some painting (something I have recently taken up again) and maybe some dancing and maybe even a walk…

Today I am choosing to trust that clarity will come in time.

Goddess Blessings ♥

Joining The Dots...

My recent menopausal ‘eureka moment’ has led me to re-assessing what has been going on in my life over the last five years. In 20011 and 2012 I went through a huge emotional storm and up until now, I have never even considered that it was part of my menopausal process. While I was aware that I was perimenopausal because I was having physical symptoms, so much else was going on at the time, I didn’t recognise that perhaps some of the inner turmoil I was experiencing was also connected to the beginning stages of my transition.

2012 was without a doubt the darkest year of my life. I regularly found myself chanting to myself ‘I want to die, I want to die, I want to die’. I didn’t really want to die, I just wanted it to stop. - ‘it’ being a relentless 18 month hammering on every level of my being that I just couldn’t see a way out of. So much happened to me that the only way I could make sense of what I was experiencing was to attribute it to some kind of spiritual crisis – I knew in my heart the only way I was going to survive was to surrender to whatever process I was going through and let Spirit carry me through. I have been walking a challenging spiritual path my whole life and right before this happened I thought I was finally ‘on the way up’. Despite 20 years of conscious healing from severe childhood abuse, 2012 was the year I finally reached my rock bottom. I knew I couldn’t trust a single soul to truly help me and so I was forced to do the only other thing left to do; I retreated deep into my relationship with the Goddess and prayed that she would deliver me to the other side. 

It all started with a major wake-up call around my 40^th birthday regarding the relationship I was in. It was like someone pulled the plug out of the bath and all I could do was stand there helplessly looking on as the water slowly drained away. Five months down the line and all I was left with was the empty bath - and I couldn’t believe what I’d been doing to myself because of my desperation to be in a relationship. A couple of months after we broke up my step mother did something that was jaw-droppingly outrageous but also very typical of her, something which highlighted the appalling way she had treated me since I was a little girl. After 20 years of ‘working on our relationship’ suddenly I could tolerate her no longer – it was like someone flicked a switch in me; I just packed my things, drove away and never went back.

A month later I had a second prolapsed disc – this time it was so bad I was hospitalised and had to have an emergency operation. I was sent home to recover even though I lived on my own and had no one to look after me. Neither my mother nor my sister offered to look after me, at my house or theirs, - my mother picked me up from the hospital, stayed the night then drove went back to Birmingham in the morning leaving me to fend for myself. My sister didn’t come and visit until I was well enough to collect her from the station so she didn’t have to drive. I was so emotionally defeated, it took me a full six months to realise what had happened and start the process of ending those relationships too.

I had no partner, no job to return to and only a handful of new friends as I had only recently moved to the area (to be with my ex). After the operation I couldn’t drive or even really sit for four weeks. I felt so fragile and sensitive, I couldn’t even deal with the radio or watching T.V. so I just stared out of the window or read books. I was sent home from hospital on a cocktail of tramadol, amitriptyline and diazepam and was not offered any helpful guidance on how to come off them. I was no longer in excruciating pain so I came off them all over the space of two or three weeks and then I hit a wall. By the time I realised what was going on it was too late to go back on them and withdraw slowly. And all that was just 2011! Entering into 2012 was like stepping off a cliff into an abyss. My life was so dark I literally couldn’t see my hand in front of my face - I really couldn’t imagine how on earth I was ever going to get out the other side of whatever was happening to me and my life.

Up until now I have put all that previous inner turmoil down to the pharmaceutical drugs and the insane circumstances that unfolded in my life. While I fully understood everything that happened in 2011 – 2012 was part of a deep spiritual process, I could also directly link my feelings to tangible events and circumstances. When those feelings recently started to come flooding back I really couldn’t understand it, especially as I am happiest I have ever been. I started to fear that perhaps I was ‘on the wrong path’ and about to suffer another spiritual battering even though I know I couldn’t ever possibly ever go back to the way it was before. It just didn’t make any sense! The only thing I could possibly attribute my emotional state to to was an adverse reaction to St John’s Wort which I was taking for my libido – so I stopped just in case it was triggering a chemical reaction in me like the pharmaceuticals from before.

Now I have started to join the dots, I can see that it is extremely significant that I had my first night sweats and first rosacea outbreak around the time my relationship started to break down and that it is clearly no coincidence that the beginning of the biggest emotional and spiritual crisis I ever had coincided exactly with the beginning of my menopause. As I become increasingly conscious of the connection between the menopause and my spiritual journey, it makes perfect sense that I would be experiencing another ‘big wave’ because I am still perimenopausal!

After the intensity of the first stage lost its grip, I was slowly released back into the world and a semi-normal life. Since then I have been feeling like I have been living in a surreal, weird kind of limbo – it’s felt like my old life has definitively ended but my new life has not yet properly begun. At times this has bothered me as I am usually a dynamic ‘go getter’ kind of person, but one of the (hardest) lessons I learned during my Shamanic Death was that I need to learn to accept ‘not knowingness’. So I have been consciously choosing to ‘go with the flow’ and to trust one day it would all make sense... 

And now it finally does! I can see that the first big wave enabled me to break me free of the past, to let go of the people and emotional patterns I was still hopelessly attached to despite years of ‘working on myself’. It turns out the purpose of all that work was to prepare me for the enormous battle that was one day going to take place within my psyche – it never really fixed the problem, but it did give me all the inner tools I needed to face the menopausal 'trial of fire' and to live to tell the tale. 

Perhaps this second wave is about opening up to expand my understanding and to finally prepare me to transition into the future I never imagined was possible…    

Goddess Blessings ♥

Gaining Some Perspective...

A few weeks ago, when I first started doing research about the uncharacteristic anxiety and dark moods I was experiencing, I considered that it may be something to do with the menopause. Even I found all my symptoms on ‘the list’ but still wasn’t convinced because the feelings I was having seemed too extreme compared to my physical symptoms. I’d always expected that I might experience some hormonal mood swings once I was no longer menstruating or if I started having huge hot flushes during the day, but my physical symptoms really weren’t any different from usual so I couldn’t understand how these challenging feelings could have suddenly become so intense. I had also imagined that any hormonal feelings I might experience would somehow be obvious to me and ‘make sense’ so my overwhelming confusion and cloudy thinking made it seem all the less plausible that my feelings were being caused by the menopause.

Then I had my first missed period - a ‘phantom period’ lasting 5 days which was physically painful and an unexpected emotional roller coaster ride. I couldn’t sleep properly or concentrate on anything and all I wanted to do was run away and hide from the world. A few days later I got my first positive blood test result in 5 years confirming what I already knew to be true – I was ‘perimenopausal’. It was only then that it really hit me – maybe all the emotional stuff I’d been experiencing was related to my menopause after all, it had just came before the next wave of physical changes…   

The problem is no one really talks about the process. Yes, there is a well-documented check list of symptoms, but no one really explains how all these symptoms relate to each or how they might develop and change over time. There is little if any mention of the multitude of different layers to the changes or how these may directly and indirectly impact a woman’s life. In the end, a check list of symptoms and their possible remedies doesn't really help much when you are drowning in a process you don’t fully understand.

   

I also found that most of the online information that I found proudly states that ‘every woman is different’ as if this is somehow supposed to be reassuring. Unfortunately this sentimental vagueness offers no comfort when you are staring down from what can only be described as the precipice of your own demise. Offering this unhelpful platitude while systematically ignoring the depth and breadth of the menopausal process seems like society’s way of saying to women – ‘you are in this on your own – deal with it’. Telling a woman that her menopausal difficulties are ‘uniquely her own’ not only separates her from the reassurance of a common experience but also from the community of womankind which holds the only potential source of genuine support she is ever likely to receive.

When looking at it from a purely medical point of view, if menopausal women are found to be suffering from mood swings, then it makes sense to attribute them to hormones because they are after all the ‘root cause’ of the entire process. However, if we take a step back and look at the menopause from a holistic point of view, it becomes conceivable that perhaps some of that anxiety, depression and rage can be attributed to external causes such as a lack of support in relationships or at work or as a result of feeling rejected and ignored by society – in short, circumstances that have nothing directly to do with the woman or her hormones. It also becomes possible to see that although each women’s journey is unique, ultimately menopause is not an ‘individual experience’ because all women go through it if they live long enough. When we step back far enough it becomes clear that actually the menopause is the final stage of a collective feminine process, a process that quite literally makes the world go round! All women play a role in this human expression of the Divine Feminine and the collective patterns that are forged over time don’t just affect women, they affect everyone including children and men.

When you look at it this way, menopause transforms from a ‘private medical matter’ into an important step in the cosmic dance of life, a step that should be explored, embraced and perhaps even celebrated. But when these deeper emotional and spiritual layers of the menopause are denied or ignored by society, this empowering vision remains hidden from women’s view like a valuable treasure map buried in the sand. This leaves individual women isolated and emotionally vulnerable while going through what is potentially the most challenging Right of Passage they will ever experience.

Menopause does not have to be approached as a list of medical symptoms or as a private, individual experience. We can make a conscious decision to view menopause as the third and final stage of a life-long feminine journey that is deeply connected to our very existence on this planet. When we are prepared to dig a little deeper, menopause becomes so much more that a biological process measured by hormonal fluctuations; the process of menopause has the potential to be experienced as a powerful spiritual awakening that calls into question every single aspect of our beingness; - our sexuality and creativity, our inner emotional landscape, our relationships with others and even our collective position within society.

Over this past week of writing I have become aware of this exciting possibility and in doing so have started to feel infinitely better – not exactly sane – but definitely better! Since deciding to chart my own menopausal course against this newly found map, I no longer feel alone in facing this this wild and scary journey. Not only has meaningful support and sharing with other women suddenly become a genuine possibility but also I have realised that whether I am alone or sharing with other women, I can at any time choose to consciously draw inner strength and guidance directly from the Source of the Divine Feminine.

I am slowly coming to terms that I am likely to be on a roller coaster ride for a while yet and that I need to look at holistic ways to minimise any distress. I can see clearly that this means I not only need to nurture my physical body by taking herbs and supplements, exercising and eating well but also need to explore ways to meet my emotional, sexual /creative, mental and spiritual needs while I go through this life changing transition...  

Goddess Blessings ♥

Friday Morning Surprise!

Well, what was a surprise! After taking Chinese Angelica (Don Quai) tincture twice, my moon time arrived this morning, seemingly out of the blue. Last week’s painful ‘phantom period’ lasted about 5 days – the usual length of my moon time and all symptoms were abating so I assumed ‘the moon moment’ had passed. I saw a friend on Wednesday who suggested the Angelica for helping to stimulate my libido, and it seems like it may have stimulated my flow too!

   

I just did some (further) research on the herb and found a very interesting article: ‘Angelica has a powerful action over a woman's reproductive system. American and European Angelica were used by colonial women to promote menstruation and to terminate pregnancy. Susun Weed (sic), a noted herbalist, says that Angelica will bring on delayed menstruation 60% of the time, if menstruation is no more than two weeks over due.’

All I can say is WOW. I have found all the herbs I have used so far to be effective at managing my symptoms, but I really do find this quite amazing. I knew the herb was also generally highly rated for menopause and regulating the hormones but I didn’t expect such a dramatic, fast working response. I used about 2mls of tincture on Wednesday night, 2mls on Thursday morning and was intending to continue this dose every morning until my next moon time started - I certainly didn’t recon on it being Friday morning! (It isn’t recommended to take it when you’re bleeding as it can make it heavier – I am also concerned that it might make the bleed last longer.)

So, the end result of this little experiment is that I will wait until my moon time has stopped before re-commencing and lower the dose a bit as it seems pretty pokey stuff. I will report back later when I have more info on how it affects my libido…

While we are on the subject of herbal remedies, I want to start exploring the really strange emotional state I have been experiencing of late. I have already mentioned that I am not entirely sure everything I have been experiencing is being directly caused by the menopause. Among other things, I have been wondering if some of it has been caused by a negative reaction to taking St John’s Wort. It has been really hard to figure out exactly what is going and I imagine I will need a while to look at it more deeply. So I will continue writing for now and share it on on the next post. 

Goddess Blessings ♥

Menopausal Magic...

So many interesting thoughts and realisations have started arising now that I have created a space to explore this extraordinary process I am in. This blog has quickly transformed from an ‘anchor in a choppy sea’ into a vessel that I can use to channel all the intense energy that is being generated within me. In a few short days I have gone from flailing around in an ocean of ‘menopausal madness’ to staring at the night sky with a map and compass feeling immense wonder at the magic of it all…

My menopausal journey began when I was about 39 with night sweats and a general feeling of ‘hotness’ at night. Although I never received a positive blood test result to confirm it, the only explanation I could come up with was perimenopause. Around the same time I noticed a small acne spot on my cheek that, rather than clearing up over time, gradually grew and then developed into a small cluster. Great, I thought, another round of hormonal acne to deal with! Of all the symptoms, this one scared me the more than any other potential menopausal malady because I had suffered terrible acne as a teenager and really didn’t want to go through all that again. Thankfully the rosacea never got too bad and I eventually (happily) discovered that applying Tea Tree and Lavender daily was more effective than antibiotic creams I was prescribed. I was aware of the physical changes right from the start and because none were massively disruptive and I knew that the transition could take years, I had no real issue dealing with what was happening to me.

I decided to monitor the changes myself and seek herbal and other complimentary remedies as required. Just before my 42nd birthday my periods went completely haywire and so I started taking two herbal tinctures – Agnus Castus to regulate my cycle and Sage for the increased night flushes and general sweating – both of which really helped. (By the way, Neal’s Yard provide high quality tinctures for incredibly low prices – currently around £19 for a massive 300ml bottle – and they will even create bespoke mixes for you – I HIGHLY recommend them!) For the next three years nothing else changed much except last year (aged 44) I started to experience disheartening fluctuations in libido and lubrication, a topic I will explore later on.

Recently, when I started desperately scouring the internet for help dealing with the more tricky emotional aspects of the menopause, I noticed that most of what is available out there is about menopause ‘the medical condition’; i.e. info on symptoms, tests and cures. It all seems to be about keeping healthy and minimising disruption to women’s lives so they can continue to function ‘normally’. While I am in no way suggesting that the medical and health aspects are unimportant, what I find striking is the complete lack of information on the emotional and spiritual aspects of this process.
 

Anxiety, depression and mood swings are of course all ‘on the list’ but from what I have read so far, are usually only talked about in purely medical and health terms. In the end it all seems to be very practical and any guidance on the deeper significance and meaning of this important Life Transition appears to be totally absent or at least carefully hidden from view. I am beginning to realise that this blanket of social denial about the deeper aspects of menopause is the main reason I have been feeling like I am going mad; how can I find a way to navigate my way through this powerful Right of Passage in a society that is steeped in such ignorance and denial?

I am very sure I am not the first woman to raise this issue. I am also well aware that our society fails to offer women spiritual guidance on any of the feminine mysteries – i.e. menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth and early motherhood – but what has become painfully clear to me over the last couple of days is that the menopause stands out as being the single most neglected and repressed of all the female mysteries and this neglect is having a direct and profound impact on my own personal experience. Not only does the general lack of supportive guidance cause sensitive women like myself additional distress and confusion but also, by failing to acknowledge this essential aspect, we are sadly missing out on the potential gifts that can be gained through fully engaging with the experience.

I have only been writing about it for three days, but already I feel like I am seeing the menopause as so much more than a list of ‘inconvenient’ symptoms that I must learn to tolerate – Today it feels like a portal of spiritual and emotional possibilities have opened up in front of me and I am actually feeling excited about exploring them. Of course, I could be in the grip of a severe hormonal mood swing but maybe, just maybe, I have just caught a glimpse of something real that lies beneath the veil of denial…

Goddess Blessings ♥

An Anchor in a Choppy Sea

I feel I need something to anchor myself to, something that will remain a constant while I am going through this process. I am hoping this blog will become that anchor because writing has kept me sane through many other challenging periods in my life and it is something I can do regardless of how I am feeling in the moment that I start to write. This is what I am struggling with most at the moment – feeling I can’t hold a thought or make any solid decisions. My mind is floaty and confused, I have become absent minded, forgetful and at times totally incapable of dealing with any external stress. My feelings are extreme and seem to change every five minutes so it has become impossible to centre myself internally or ground into any sort of reality.

I have been feeling increasingly like this for a couple of months now and have been finding it incredibly frustrating and anxiety producing. Even as I write I am not completely sure this fog is part of my menopause – I have been racking my brains try to figure out ‘what is wrong with me’ while hoping that it would soon pass so that I could ‘get back to normal’.

But somehow it feels as though my life is slipping through my fingers and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. They say ‘if you can’t beat them join them’, so I have turned on some lovely floaty music with water and bird sounds in the background as I write my way along a gentle river. In this moment I have decided to go with the flow of my current experience and see where my thoughts and feelings lead me...

The only problem is, I know that surrendering to this floaty reality requires me to disengage with life ‘out there’, to relinquish all structure, routine and focus and this leaves me feeling very anxious, especially because I recently started working for myself. In January, after my 6 month employment contract came to an end, I planned the new business and started to get the ball rolling. By February I already had some paid freelance work - everything seemed to be unfolding perfectly and moving in the right direction. My partner was still abroad dealing with some family matters and I knew that after 7 months apart, it was going to be a big adjustment for us both when he got home. But what I was not banking on was this sudden and extremely unexpected twist in my menopausal process coinciding with everything else that is going on; the return of my partner, us BOTH setting up new businesses (he left his job to go and care for his dying mother last summer) and us planning our wedding.

At first I thought it was the adjustment process on my partner's return that was making me feel so strange, and I am sure that has played a big part in it, but somewhere along the line I feel I have lost my way and I can’t seem to find the way back. All the things I normally do to centre / ground myself seemed to have stopped working. I have tried to get into some routine but it feels impossible because the inner motivation, focus and determination just aren’t there for me to draw upon. At first I thought it was to do with suddenly being around my partner 24/7 but now he is getting his life together, I am just left sitting there feeling confused and incapable of making or keeping any decisions. How the hell am I supposed to run my own business feeling like this?

The option of getting another job is even less appealing. I feel overwhelmed, confused, anxious, absent minded and at times, extremely anti-social – hardly a good position to apply for or start a new job. The self-employment was supposed to involve working from home with minimal client contact but the work I have got so far involves going to my client’s offices. If I was already in a well-established job that I could just get on with I might feel a little less anxious, but the truth is, my life has never been like that and my usual ‘go getter’ resilience is no longer there carrying me through all the changes and uncertainty of my working life.

So, how do I navigate this conflict between what I need to be doing to ‘earn a living’ and what I feel capable of doing in this woozy-changeable-anxious menopausal state? Right now I mostly don’t feel capable of doing anything, and at times I feel like a mental patient on day release walking around in a daze. In some ways it feels like a blessing that so far I only have committed to 1 – 2 day’s work a week, but then I feel I should be working on drumming up more business on the other days. The guilt, anxiety and frustration soon kick in on my ‘days off’ but without some external commitment keeping me on track, and with lots of things currently distracting me, I just don’t ever seem to be able to get it together.

In addition to this extremely uncharacteristic procrastination, I have also started to feel overwhelmed by one of the freelance jobs which is much more pressured and stressful than I feel comfortable with, even under normal circumstances. Now, with my resistance to stress currently set at ZERO, especially during my recent 'phantom period', I find myself continually contemplating jacking it in.

Right now it feels impossible to find the balance between taking responsibility for meeting my financial and personal well-being needs - it seems I am being forced to choose one over the other. If I decide to focus on work, to try and ‘push through’ this mental fog, I know that I am going to get stressed and emotionally overwhelmed and will almost certainly have to give up at some point anyway. (And this will then make me feel like a failure as well as guilty for letting my client/s down.) If I decide to surrender to this process and only do what I feel capable of doing – which right now is to only deal with very low stress conditions – then I fear I will end up running out of money and / or looking ‘unprofessional’ by turning work down.

It seems to me that there is little room for emotional processes in the world of work and that we are also continually expected to be able to deal with high stress so that we can put food on the table and roofs over our heads. As a highly sensitive person, I have always struggled with this apparent ‘fact of life’ but now my sensitivity has become massively amplified through the menopause, I fear it has rendered me completely unemployable. What I really want is a way to make decent money that does not require me to abandon myself or to have to take medication to become able to tolerate unnecessary stress. I want to be able to work in a way that does not prevent me from taking care of my emotional, spiritual and physical well-being. I want to live my life in a state of balance that enables me to contribute to society without having to relinquish, bury or sacrifice my personal needs...

As a menopausal woman, it seems this deep inner desire has become something I can no longer over-ride or ignore.

Blessings ♥

The Beginning of the End?

Today, a second pregnancy test has confirmed that I am currently experiencing my first menopausal 'missed period'. I feel deeply shocked, partly by the disappearance of my monthly moon time but mostly by my reaction to it. And I am surprised that I am shocked, because I have been very obviously peri-menopausal for 5+ years and up until this past week have felt totally okay with it.

But suddenly I am really not okay with it.
Suddenly I have started to feel this overwhelming grief and deep confusion at the prospect of entering the 'crone' stage of my life at the tender age of 45.
Suddenly I find myself lamenting where the hell has my life, my youth and my health gone?!
Suddenly I find myself questioning my very existence and wondering what it has all been for...

It feels as though my life has come to a screeching, unexpected halt and I no longer have the energy or desire to figure things out or to get back on board whatever used to propel me forward in life. When the thought of doing something interesting comes to me, something that would have previously fired me up with passion and enthusiasm, I find that I immediately toss the thought aside while telling myself there really is NO POINT because whatever I start I am probably only going to abandon in a few hours, days or week's time.

Seeing as I am a writer and have loved keeping a journal for years I thought one project I am likely (hopefully!) to stick with is a blog about this process I am going through. Interestingly, when the idea came to me I didn't experience the usual treacly thick inner resistance. It came to me three days ago after I took the first pregnancy test (the day after my period was due) and found it was 'negative'. I reasoned that it maybe too early to tell for sure and decided to re-test in three days time, as suggested in the instructions. But the terrifying seed of doubt was already planted -  'you mean this might actually be it?' I felt compelled to start the blog straight away but decided it would only end up being yet another 'unfinished project' if in three days time I tested positive and I didn't want to do that to myself so I decided to wait.

But I really did go into some kind of shock that day. I had been wondering for a couple of weeks if my wild hormonal symptoms were due to pregnancy and for some reason it hadn't even occurred to me that it was menopause that was causing it. I knew the menopause messes with your periods - I'd only last month suffered an abnormally long bleed and have also been taking herbs to regulate my cycle for over three years. (I use Agnus Castus which has been highly effective at stopping my periods arriving massively early.) Of course I also knew menopause usually causes missed or delayed periods as the process tapers down to a halt, something I had even witnessed my older sister experiencing. But what I really and truly didn't expect was that a menopausal missed period could  feel like the 'phantom period' I'd experienced in early pregnancy, I just assumed nothing would happen! I also didn't expect that when this final menopausal stage kicked in for me it would be when I have finally met the right man after years of dodgy relationships and we were in the middle planning our wedding and new life together.

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As I write this I am beginning to see I have been in some sort of weird menopausal denial, probably caused by the fact that I don't have any children. I only ever got pregnant once 16 years ago and that ended in a 'missed miscarriage' (I had to have a D&C to remove the placenta) and a very messy break-up. I was constantly re-assured by everyone I still had plenty of time for children, I was after all only 29, but despite having unprotected sex with partners since then, I have never once had another positive pregnancy test. I did, however, have many 'phantom pregnancies' where I experienced the same symptoms I had when pregnant but then always ended up bleeding. To this day I do not know if I was miscarrying very early or was just in a weird emotional battle with my body because on some level I was pining to see a pregnancy through to birth.

To add to the menopausal confusion, I am not sure I even really want children. It's been very difficult to get my head around what I can only assume must be a severe case of biology vs common sense. I love kids but I can't imagine having the strength to deal with a baby feeling the way I do these days, physically or emotionally. I honestly don't know how I'd cope, with endless sleepless nights, picking up / carrying a child with a bad back ( two prolapsed discs), or the noise and constant demands on my time and energy, even with a loving partner I know would support and stand by me.

Despite this, I know in my heart if I'd discovered I was pregnant, I'd have been over the moon so it is with great sadness that I'd like to acknowledge this momentous day as the beginning of the end of my fertility...

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By writing my thoughts and feelings down today, I have already gained some much needed clarity and emotional relief. I hope writing this blog will continue to help me process the demanding emotional and spiritual challenges of this powerful life transition and that sharing it will offer other women some comfort and insight on their own menopausal journey.

Goddess Blessings ♥