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Menopausal
Years ...
This is Menopause -- Journey into
Change
by Susun Weed
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“Pay attention now,” Grandmother Growth says,
taking your hand and holding your gaze. “The Change
known as menopause deserves your full attention.”
“Pay attention now, and relax. focus, allow, observe,
surrender. Your egg basket empties; your memory basket grows
heavier.”
“Memories are sweeping through you, great granddaughter,
like lightning flashes, leaving you shaken and trembling,
sweating and panting. Memories too gossamer to catch with
words are weaving themselves into your nights and shattering
the patterns of your days. Fragments of melodies, half-seen
gestures, sketches, muted drifts of color emerge from your
memory. All the wild passions of the Maiden are restored to
you. All those Maiden things you left behind or pushed aside
when you became Mother-woman, return to you now, enriched.
“Do those memories crowd painfully into your head?
Do they send your heart racing? So they make you weep? Sweep
you off your feet? Leave you wondering what it would feel
like to jump off a high bridge? Take my hand, dear one. Let
us walk and talk.”
There is no doubt in your mind. Your menstrual cycles are
coming to an end. You are in the midst of your menopausal
climax years.
During the year or so before the very last period (and the
year or so afterward) many women experience some type of menopausal
Change, such as hot flashes, heart palpitations, sleep disturbances,
emotional uproar, anxiety, and/or headaches.
Menopause, like puberty, requires that we give in to Change
and accept that it is beyond our control. If we arrive at
mid-life feeling more in control of our lives than ever before,
giving in to menopausal Change can be incredibly difficult.
The desire to use anything, drugs or herbs or whatever, to
avoid disruption of our normal life pattern is strong; it
comes from within and is reinforced by society. Why resist?
The Wise Woman Way offers us a new/old story: where hot flashes
and wild heartbeats are honored, where menopause is considered
woman’s greatest transformation — her crowning
as Crone — and where old women are vital, flexible,
hale-hearted, strong-boned and clear-minded. The Wise Woman
Way offers us women’s mystery stories and a host of
helpful herbal allies that aid the process of menopause instead
of attempting to stop it or fix it.
Wise Woman stories say that menopause is an initiation and
that initiation begins with a period of isolation. The grandmothers
tell me that, as a menopausal woman, I need to draw inward,
move away from outside responsibilities, and into myself.
From this view, hot flashes, fatigue, headaches, irritability,
sleeplessness, and emotional outbursts are understood as allies
of wholeness, not problems; they urge me to be alone, to focus
on myself and my Change.
Without knowledge of the women’s mystery stories, without
the help of herbal allies and the reassurance of other women,
a woman may feel alone and unsupported in her disturbing and
“pointless” changes. She may think the Change
is only for the worse, or that something is wrong with her.
And when she seeks information, she is told (erroneously)
that her Change will cause heart attacks and crumbling bones,
wrinkles and grey hair, and loss of sex appeal and libido.
Where is Grandmother Growth to guide her through this immense,
frightening metamorphosis, to show her the green gifts of
nature that strengthen her heart and bones, soften her skin
and sex? Science defines menopause as lack of estrogen and
prescribes the remedy (take estrogen) and tells us that we
don’t have to mature, or become wise women. We can remain
bound to our (and society’s) ideas of who we ought to
be, instead of exploring who we really are.
If I take hormones will I be able to make room for transformation?
take time for solitude? give myself uninterrupted stretches
of focused self-loving? encounter, nourish, and sanctify myself
as a wise and silly grandmother, a wrinkled wild woman, a
lawless fierce crone? My menopausal metamorphosis deserves
as much attention as I can give it. And I am not that rare
women who gives herself these gifts without the daily urgings
of her body and feelings.
I don’t use hormone pills, or patches, or creams. I
let the “problems” of my menopause give me the
opportunity to claim all parts of myself, even those that
are awkward, ugly, old, out of control, and afraid of death.
By passing consciously through menopause, by embracing this
Change in my life, by nourishing myself with green allies,
I renew myself. The grandmothers say I make myself complete
— reclaiming myself as maiden, redefining myself as
mother, and knowing myself as crone. It is so.
“Take my hand, dear one. I will soothe your head, calm
your heart, stabilize your grounding, and then teach you to
fly. Take my hand, now. You are in the midst of Change.”
 Menopause
Metamorphosis Duo
You get Susun Weed's book,
NEW Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way, and her
video,
Menopause Metamorphosis. Ordering this duo is
like getting a support group in your home to help you Change.
Half a million women worldwide consider this book their menopause
bible. The video includes ceremonies, songs, specific instructions
and demonstrations on using herbs, and heart felt advice from
women who've been there. You too can have a healthy heart,
strong bones, and tremendous energy without hormones..
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