Understanding Menopause and Its Myths
Menopause has a bad reputation, a lot of myths, and misleading information that make it difficult for us to discriminate what it actually is, what to expect, and how to prepare for it.
In mainstream culture, the idea is circulating that it is something new that happens to us due to the longevity span, which is far from the truth. For thousands of years, Ayurveda and shamanic traditions have known about it. Traditional Chinese Medicine even calls it Second Spring and has kept millennial knowledge for all the stages, experiences, and ways to handle it in good health.
Historical Roots of Menopause Stigma
The bad branding of menopause appeared, or at least became more visible, in the Victorian era when women in perimenopause/menopause were called “crazy” and had to be “cured and fixed,” even by hysterectomy or by placing them in mental health facilities. Fear of being labelled as “crazy” or of having to give up part of our bodies is a legacy of traumatic experience that we all carry throughout generations. Adding to the intergenerational trauma that, for centuries, women were seen, valued, and validated only for their fertility does not make it easy for us to go through that passage of our lives. Even though lately the conversations about menopause are popping up, if you see circulating images it seems that we all have to look like aged supermodels wearing extravagant clothes in bright colours. Each one of us has her own way to enter and go through that period.
Why Menopause Is More Than Physical Changes
Menopause is not merely bodily changes; it is a journey that brings emotional and psychological challenges and transitions. Addressing bodily sensations without their psychological impact fortifies the compartmentalisation in our psyche and our being. Not only is our physical body changing, but also our way of being. We are waiting for permission outside of ourselves to enter that stage of our life. Society’s scripts do not give us permission to be ourselves. We are buying into the narrative of deficiency and scarcity. We are being silenced, playing small, staying hidden, being paralysed by doubts, being unclear about who we are, what we are doing, and how to do it, paralysed by fear of being judged.
Strategies for Coping With Menopause
We adopt strategies to meet the menopausal changes. We can use all the strategies during transition, even pass through them multiple times, or get stuck on the first two:
1. Resisting Change: The Anti-Ageing Narrative
Silencing the voice of change and separating the body from us. The body has to be fixed and cured of the menopausal changes that need thousands of dollars of medication to keep us ‘young’. The anti-ageing industry is thriving for billions of dollars on this strategy.
2. Victim Mentality: Menopause as Decline
The mainstream noise promotes menopause as a time of decline on all levels. So we can’t do anything but suffer silently or not so silently. We are victims of the changes of the body and ageing. Nothing depends on us, we have no choice. We struggle in silence through what could be a transformational time.
3. Acceptance and Curiosity: A New Chapter
Accepting and allowing this chapter in our lives. Becoming more curious than ever. Listening to what the body is trying to tell us and honouring it. It’s important to acknowledge both the gifts and challenges of the change taking place in us.
Common Challenges Women Face in Menopause
Feeling Betrayed by the Body
We are used to our body working in a certain way, and when body changes in menopause call for our attention, especially when those changes bring discomfort, we may feel as though our body betrays us.
Menopause is our very human natural design. The body initiates the changes, as in puberty. In menopause, we may become explicitly aware of the body, and it is time to value and revalue our bodies.
The body is our medium to act and connect to the world, our medium of expression and existence. It tends to shape our perceptions, feelings, and actions and initiate transformation of our being-in-the-world.
Shame, Ageing, and the Not-Enough Narrative
The body and ageing are among the main sources of shame in our culture. Many of us live in a society that selects and encourages some physical aspects and not others. We cherish values such as appearance, sexuality, youth, individualism, self-sufficiency, competition, efficiency, and achievements. The cultural categories determine what is socially acceptable and what is not. Understanding that we entered the menopausal cycle (perimenopause, menopause, post-menopause) can mark the entry to a physically different world and bring a pervasive sense of being ‘different,’ which can be deeply alienating and deeply shaming. Many women in menopause are viewed as inadequate, weak, less than. Decline of appearance, bodily function, and vitality becomes an increasing source of shame.
Not fertile anymore, not looking young anymore in a society that cherishes youth, we can feel ridiculed, judged, invalidated, inadequate, not good enough. Having bodily sensations and experiences that are named “crazy” by society, we feel shamed and not enough.
Shame makes us shrink and hide. Many of us may recognise the narrative “we still have something to offer” that we tell ourselves, only to reinforce not-enoughness. We have a lot to offer! It starts with us voicing that inside ourselves and to the world, not shrinking and making ourselves invisible.
Grief and Loss During the Menopause Transition
Menopause is an initiation into our wise years. This initiation is silent; it is not celebrated as previous initiations in our lives such as our birth, graduation, marriage, giving birth to children, or promotions at work. And, as every initiation involves grief and loss, so does this one. It is not a loss that is recognised and honoured by the society we live in. Hence we do not recognise it either. It is a silent grief that we cover up with the hustle of the outer world.
Ceasing fertility for some women may bring relief, but for others it is the end of the dream of giving birth. Our fertility span used to give us status in society for centuries, and we are not only hugely influenced by that but also identified with it. In menopause, we lose that status and identity. The new one is not yet clear and not even desired.
The Existential Crack: Facing Ageing and Mortality
We are facing not only the ceasing (death) of the fertile years and fertile identity but also ageing, our mortality, and our ultimate death. Until that moment, our life went on a linear trajectory of known and foreseen events (child, young woman, mother, scholar, graduate, career, family), which brings us face to face with the fear that this line goes straight to death. But we arrive at the spaciousness of life; it brings us to our deep truths about ourselves and our relationships with the world. It doesn’t mean we have to abandon who we were until that moment but open to the new. It is time to redefine what womanhood is without fertility. It is time to incorporate and redesign our new realm and ourselves. It is the nature of life to move into a new cycle, a new stage.
Menopause as a Turning Point
Menopause as a Choice, Not Just a Change
Menopause is not just a change that is thrust upon us; it is a point of choice. We can allow it to happen and respect those changes, understanding change is part of the life cycle, to be embraced and danced with, not feared or denied. We can choose how to be, and by informing ourselves we gain true choices and the power to bring changes in our lives. That is a big part of stepping through that threshold. To change our lifestyle, the way we think, the way we move, so that we honour our design.
The Space Between Old Self and New Self
There is a space between the old me and the new me. We don’t yet know what this new me is, we don’t know if it is safe to become that new me, and we fear losing our known self. It is like moving into a new house – we start to check our belongings and separate what to hold and pack for the new house, and what to let go and leave behind. We can choose the new me that we want to embody in the next several decades of our life and choose wisely.
Stages of Accepting and Allowing Menopause
The Transition Stage
What is the new way of being? What is unclear? What are our values? What guides us? Who or what supports us in this time of change? What practices will help us navigate this time of transition and the unknown as we traverse from an old to a new experience and identity? This stage serves to normalise the challenges of being in the in-between realms, supports us to stay present in the unknown, and helps us continue to move forward when things feel overwhelming or unclear.
The Incorporation Stage
Here we explore the new identity/identities and the role of experience we are moving into. We inquire about our inner gifts, strengths, and capacities that we discovered within the transition stage, which will support us in stepping into a new realm/stage of life.
Incorporation is thriving through change. Our superpowers are: reframing our mindset, re-engaging with ourselves, honouring our lady parts. Living the life that serves our body, so our body can serve our lifestyle.
The life-force of our creativity has different expressions: being even more authentic and honouring our truths. Leading our own (inner) journey, reconsidering what really matters to us, paying loving attention to what’s going on with our bodies, inside and out, reevaluating where we stand in our world and what the coming years will be like for us. Redefining success. Success becomes rebirthing, recreating ourselves, the capacity to say, “This is who I am”!
Conclusion
Menopause = sacred pause. It is a permission slip to stop, to slow down, to listen, to feel, to be. We are invited to take time to pause, rest, regenerate, and reflect. It is space to remember to dream again; it is time to (re)imagine ourselves. Realising and honouring the sophisticated design of this bodily change brings transformation to all domains of our existence.
We are asked to soften and strengthen at the same time. It brings renewal energy. Menopause is a portal to feminine mastery – the switch from knowledge to wisdom. Menopause is saying “yes” to life.
Menopause is the new black! Let’s wear it confidently, gracefully, consciously, courageously, and joyfully!
