The Other Side of Menopause—It's Finally My Turn!
Dark Night of the Soul
While I was going through it, very few people knew—perhaps no one really knew—how deep and dark a place I was in. Aside from being miserable as an adolescent and, at times, as a very young adult (who isn't?), I've never battled with depression. I had always thought of myself as resilient, optimistic, and basically happy. What's more, I'm a minister, an inspirational speaker, a teacher of "attitudinal healing" and personal growth. It was hard to admit, even to myself, that my own teachings were working fine for my students but not for me anymore.
It all seemed purely circumstantial for a long time. My work environment was stressful and adversarial, so it was understandable that I was feeling more anger than usual. My living situation was unsatisfactory, so it made sense that I felt doubly stressed. My love life was in the pits so naturally I felt blue#8230; and so on. It didn't occur to me that hormonal fluctuations could be amplifying my responses to all these stressors, turning normal anger into the near-homicidal levels I was feeling and down times into clinical depression. After a couple of years of one difficult life circumstance after another, my body started whacking out with more overt symptoms of peri-menopause. My once light and regular periods started coming heavily and frequently until I was experiencing unpredictable bouts of hemorrhaging that sapped my energy and curtailed my activities.
By my fiftieth birthday, I looked at my life and couldn't see much of anything I liked about it. I was single and hated being in the dating scene at a time of life when my heart and body longed for a settled relationship. I was living in a home I didn't like but felt financially bound to. I felt stale in my career and didn't know how to refresh it. With my body going through the difficult changes of menopause, I became acutely aware of aging and was disheartened by how many single men my own age seemed to be looking for 35 year old women to date. For the first time I understood why women lied about their age.
After several of the hardest years of my life, my resilience gave out and I fell into a deep despair. My inner dialogue went like this: "If I haven't gotten where I want to be in life by now, what makes me think I ever will?" I distanced myself from close friends. I no longer knew how to answer the simple question, "How are you?" After listening to them share the happy details of their lives, how could I respond with, "I bleed all day and think about dying all the time."? My closest friend is a social worker eight years my junior and I felt particularly at a loss with her. She loved her home, her relationship and her job and I not only hated to rain on her happiness by sharing anything truthful about myself, I also feared that the social worker in her would start planning my intervention. How do you convey, "No, I'm not suicidal. I'm just so miserable I want to die. I stare at the wall a lot. But you don't need to worry about me." Yeah, right.
Menopause: Is it an Illness or a Birth?
The only light in a long, dark string of years was a conversation I had with Lucy Stoffels, a life coach from my church who asked if she could get my opinion on some ideas she thought would make a good seminar. I met with her as a favor and found her throwing me a lifeline. In a nutshell, she and I discussed and brainstormed the phase of life women go through from puberty to menopause as being a time of nurturing others—be it a family or projects. At menopause, all the energy a woman has directed toward taking care of the world turns toward herself. For each woman, there's a different kind of death and crisis that happens as procreative energy is turned off, both physically through menopause and circumstantially, as children leave home, marriages preserved for the children dissolve, and other trappings of a more youthful phase of life fall away. Modern medicine tends to treat each symptom separately: medications for the hormonal fluctuations; different medications for the accompanying depression, sleeplessness and other symptoms of, not just the physical effects but the emotional crisis of no longer being valued for one's youth and reproductive capability.
This illness approach to menopause is common nowadays and can certainly ease a myriad of discomforts yet, what I got from my conversation with Lucy was a perspective of menopause as something more than an illness; more than a midlife crisis signaling the end of youth; even more than a relinquishing of sexuality and desirability in favor of the neutered life of a wise old crone. Rather, menopause heralds the beginning of a "my turn" time of life. Not in a selfish way but in a freeing sense that includes sexuality without the consequence of childbirth, relationships for personal enrichment rather than family-building, and the pursuing of passions and dreams that got put on hold until#8230;. Where the 1950's turned postmenopausal women into helpless, useless figures (the "sweet little old lady") and the 1970's reclaimed women's power in the form of "crone," aging women of this millennium aren't satisfied with being quiet and weak; nor are they interested in being neutered in exchange for power and wisdom.
It's My Turn
I did menopause the tough way, without medicating any of my symptoms. I'm not recommending this. Each woman has to find her own correct path of easing discomfort, hopefully without medicating herself into numbing oblivion. For me, my stubborn I-can-handle-it-all-myself attitude was part of what I needed a crisis to break down. Without some cracks in my armor I'd never have been available to the wonderful opportunities for collaboration, partnership and receiving that characterize my life now.
My "dark night" stretched, all told, from about age 47 to 53 and seemed like it would never end. It was long enough that it no longer felt like just a rough patch. I forgot the idealistic person I used to be and resigned myself to depression being my new normal. It didn't begin or end quickly. I was more of a slow descent and equally slow rise that abruptly ended with the euphoria of new love, upon meeting my now-husband. By the time this worst period of my life was over, I had moved into a beautiful home that I love, completely redirected my career and married a wonderful man who adores me and treats me like a queen. I moved from dissatisfaction with every area of my life to being happier and more fulfilled than I've ever been.
One of the most significant changes I experienced during peri-menopause was the death of hope. I never noticed how much of my happiness hinged upon where I hoped I was heading rather than where I actually was until I got to age fifty and realized that after all these years I'm still "heading" and haven't arrived. When I was no longer high on hope what remained was sadness and disillusionment. In many ways, the loss of hope cleared a veil from my eyes that kept me lulled, chasing a carrot on a stick, so that I never tackled the real obstacles to my happiness. I contented myself with waiting for something to grow, working toward something, and waiting for my turn. As painful as it was to lose hope, it was the only way I could create a life where I'm happy with what is as opposed to perpetually hoping for some future happiness. I'm no longer waiting for my turn, I'm living it!
My own experience has sensitized me to the numbers of women hitting midlife, all in completely different situations but going through similar dark nights. As I listen to their stories, few of them recognize the connection between their despair and the onset of peri-menopause, each one feeling all alone in her unique life circumstances. I see now that despair and aloneness are part of the experience—perhaps the only part we all seem to share. When I went through the worst of my physical symptoms I was struck by how few of the women I knew—women who comfortably discussed most anything—ever talked about their menopause experiences. Perhaps it's the aspect of feeling alone, that our circumstances are unique, that keeps us quiet about the very thing we're all going through together.
The Workshop
In teaming up with the Phoenix to offer the workshop, "The Best Is Yet to Come!" I'd like to provide other women with the one thing that helped me as I went through this painful time—the reassurance that it's normal, that we're not alone in what we're going through, that it will end and that it's leading someplace wonderful. Truly, the best is yet to come! A workshop for women in midlife November 14-16 at Epworth United Methodist Church in Minneapolis. See www.LynnWoodland.com for workshop information.