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!
♥
