Autumn is always a reflective time for me. We moved into this house 2 years ago, it was our 4th move in 3 years. So it’s always an apt time to reflect. And so within the lens of my own meno journey & with the benefit of hindsight, experience, knowledge & practice I reflected on my early years as a mum.
I’d had my kids later in life having after a corporate career that I had always felt conflicted within – I loved but it hadn’t exactly filled me up. We lived overseas. My husband worked 12 hour days & travelled frequently. And when my youngest was 18 months old I was diagnosed with severe agitated depression & the day before her 2nd birthday was hospitalised for 5 weeks.
We were living in Germany at the time & it was a horribly chaotic time. I adore my kids but I felt motherhood overwhelming & suffocating. At my worst I was explosive & damaging.
I took whatever help I could get having been told by my Haus Dr I’d have more luck getting support if I jumped off my house. So when I finally got a diagnosis I didn’t question it.
I hated myself. I didn’t want to be like this. I felt like a failure. That I was letting everyone down. I was full of shame & guilt. I desperately wanted to be the mum I knew I could be if only there wasn’t something so bloody wrong with me.
I clawed my way back 1 step forward 2 steps backwards, 2 steps forwards 1 step back, eventually onwards. Life would trip me up as it has a habit of doing & I would think I must be a lousy mum, letting the kids down, dragging them into my chaos. I doubted my ability to teach, thinking I must be cr*p at what I do because life kept tripping up me.
But you know here’s the thing. I started to understand & believe that I choose to incarnate at this time because of the lessons life had in store for me. Once I started to believe that coming a cropper wasn’t tantamount to failing, it’s just part of life & trust that I was going to learn something interesting as a result of this experience, it’s funny how things change: setbacks become opportunities.
I started to realise that if I didn’t choose to learn the lessons they would get more chaotic & louder to get my attention until I did.
My own menopause journey started to take on a new perspective. During my menopause my menopause symptoms were chaotic (insomnia, anxiety & panic attacks, menorage) because my mind, body & soul was crying out to be heard. Things so chaotic enough that it caught my attention. I used my practice to help me to become more consciously aware to catch the symptoms before they floored me & the space & time but also see the lessons concealed within them. And this created space for the inner work.
It also helped me to reframe my meno story. I saw The Menopause, the umbrella term for all 3 phases of our life: our Autumn years, the peri-menopause; our Winter years, the menopause; our second spring as we emerge, as a journey of awakening, of conscious awareness, a conscious uprising if you like.
That’s why it can feel so chaotic – to catch your attention so you can do the inner work.
But I also knew that I had no real understanding of the peri-menopause until I was probably out of the menopause (my periods stopped with the mirena coil so I have no idea if that is their natural conclusion or hormonally induced). As such I had not done the inner work I was being called to do during the peri-menopause because I simply wasn’t aware of it.
Reflecting on my early years as a mum within a peri-meno lens does explains the chaos: at a time when my body & mind was crying out for me to turn inwards I actually had to be extremely outwards focused because I had a baby & a toddler. There was no space or time for me. I really struggled with the monotony of it all, to the point of overwhelm & frustration. And I can’t help but wonder how many other women out there have or did feel the same.
Whether what I experienced when my kids were young was peri-menopause or post-partum hormonal fluctuations I may never know. Maybe the rapidly fluctuating hormones of both experiences escalated a decline in mental health? I do know that there is a high proportion of women whose peri-menopause symptoms are misdiagnosed as mental health issues & so the treatment just doesn’t hit the mark.
For me anti-depressants when I didn’t know any better took the edge off to give me the space mentally & emotionally to do the inner work. I committed to my yoga & meditation practices, journaling, learning about the science behind it all, understanding energy & quantum. And slowly slowly life started to get better, easier & flow more. After over a decade after I was first prescribed anti-depressants I am gently & slowly reducing dose.
Self-care has been such a huge part of what for me has become quite a spiritual journey of awakening & conscious awareness during my menopause journey.
Looking back on my early 40’s when I realised it could have been much more hormonal than my fault was very liberating. Don’t get me wrong I take absolute responsibility for it but I can find the space to let it go. It miraculously it has released the guilt & the shame, the fear & the loathing.
And I believe that’s part of the journey in the menopause: finding space to let go. Let go of the stories we’ve told ourselves, let go of the shame & the guilt, let go of the fear & doubt & loathing, let go of all that bollocks!
You know what if it’s good enough for the trees, it’s good enough for us. The trees shed their leaves in Autumn because they no longer serve them, so too are we being asked to release & let go what no longer serves us.