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 ♥

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 ♥