I’ve been feeling somewhat reflective of late on my meno journey.
I could feel myself starting to emerge into post menopause or Second Spring as it’s more poetically referred to by the amazing Kate Coddrington & found myself optimistically looking forward to this whole idea feeling whole again. Emerging phoenix like out of the ashes, resplendent, ready to take on the world.
I’ve busy been attending more menopause workshops, immersing myself in books to support my own practice & what I am sharing with clients & my deepening my understanding of the different phases of menopause, so I felt drawn to reflect back on my peri-menopause.
When my kids were babies & toddlers I was diagnosed with severe agitated depression & hospitalised for 5 weeks. We were living in Germany at the time so getting a diagnosis & treatment was tricky enough & peri-menopause never even crossed my mind. But recently I had begun questioning that diagnosis although not entirely sure if there was much merit in retrospectively reflecting.
But as my own journey in the menopause had proved & I was beginning to appreciate more & more, the menopause is not a just hormonal journey. It’s a spiritual journey. We are being called to do the inner work.
In peri-menopause, we are being called to slow down, turn inwards, reflect & restore. This is pretty difficult with babies & toddlers in the house. I simply had not done that inner work because I was woefully unaware that’s what I was being called to do.
Of course the signs were there: the mental health signs but you see, a large proportion of peri-menopausal women will be misdiagnosed with mental health problems. It’s why the treatment I received worked but only to a point. But it is also what inspired me to teach yoga & mindfulness because they had been so powerful in helping me to manage what was going on. So silver linings & all that!
But it always felt like there was a piece missing from the puzzle and of course because I hadn’t done all the inner work, something was always missing. Inevitably I would get clobbered again, end up all over the place, feeling like a failure & that I’d let everyone down. It was a roller coaster. And of course it was because the peri-menopause is – our hormones are fluctuating wildly & for some it can last for years.
As soon as I realised that I was more than likely peri-menopausal & that’s why it was so all chaotic & messy, I was able to release myself of the guilt & shame of being a cr*p mum. I could accept it & let it go. And that was so bloody liberating.
But I was deeply mindful that by not doing all the inner work that peri-menopause had called me to do, that was probably why the menopause was so horrendous. Or put it another way: The Universe will keep giving you the same lesson until you learn it, making it just a little more uncomfortable until you take note & do the healing & growth. I hadn’t done all the healing & growth so the lesson came back with more force to catch my attention.
And it did, that’s exactly what happened for me during the menopause: it was extremely messy, chaotic, confusing, terrifying at times. Once I realised it was menopause, not only could I get the correct support with HRT (my symptoms were beyond the scope of a few flower petals, sadly although I did consider it), I could start to do the inner work I was being called to do.
I could start to surrender & let go & release. I started to do the healing & learn the lessons. It was a beautiful & painful journey. It was also enlightening & expansive & exciting. And it filled me with a passion to share what I learnt with my clients.
However, having discovered that medically the menopause is defined as that year after your last period & since I haven’t had a period for 3+ years, I was starting to consider that I may be emerging into my second spring. I felt like I’d done the work. I was in a good place. My life wasn’t perfect, spoiler alert: it is never going to, but I loved my life & that’s kinda the point we are aiming for. Happy for no reason.
Oh goodie I thought, this is the good bit, the fun bit, the emergence, the new me, passionate, empowered me. So I felt ready for second spring. Oh so ready.
But then I started to feel a deep need to withdraw, to retreat. I wanted to cancel everything. Everything felt overwhelming. I could feel that love for life dwindling. A deep sense of lack of joy.
Oh I wasn’t expecting that.
Knowing what I know about energy, I knew this wasn’t a good place to be in but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t shift it for more than a few hours.
I would get into bed at the end of an energetically, emotionally & mentally challenging day finally feeling more positive & manage to write several things in my gratitude journal, grateful to be feeling brighter & optimistic tomorrow is another, better day. After all the emotion you got to bed feeling is generally the emotion you wake up feeling.
Except that I wasn’t, I was waking up feeling anxious, overwhelmed & negative. It was only after bursting into tears in Tesco’s when I realised I’d forgotten my purse & sobbing to a friend that it’s ridiculous it’s not even worth crying about that we both looked at each other & she said, ‘Do you think this could be hormonal?’
OMGosh yes of course. I was aware of my mood rising gently mid afternoon onwards but in the morning I was back in a terrible slump that was getting worse & worse each day. I realised I hadn’t been taking my new HRT quite right & attended to that immediately.
I also realised you can’t rush these things. If you try to rush through the stages of the menopause, if you go too fast, you may very well crash. Some women transition smoothly into their second spring. Many others get stuck.
I was stuck. I was also a little more than resentful. I felt like the menopause one way or another had monopolised, sabotaged & defined my life for almost a decade & frankly enough was enough.
But I also discovered that women’s hormones can fluctuate for up to 7 years during the post menopause transition. Ah Ok, so some of this is hormonal & some of it is all about time to do some more inner work then!
I needed to heed the call to withdraw & retreat.
I liken the feeling to a chick trying to hatch out of an egg. It pecks the shell, chips a bit off & takes a peak out & then uh no, not quite yet, withdraws beneath the shell again until it’s plucked up enough courage to have another go. And that’s what second spring feels like.
I’d got over excited at the prospect of bursting out of my meno shell & I was being called to withdraw & retreat. Since I am a little wiser than I was at the beginning of my meno journey, I am going to honour this call. I am going to slow down so I can access that innate wisdom. I am going to give myself a little space & time whilst the kids are off at Easter to retreat back under my shell.
But just knowing it was probably hormonal, rather than somehow something I’d done wrong, was a relief & I was able to be better prepared the following day. I surf the hormonal wave with a little more grace, letting go of the stories I’d been telling myself & be kind to myself.
So you see, the menopause isn’t just a hormonal journey, it’s spiritual, emotional, mental & physical journey of letting go, surrender, acceptance, self-discovery & ultimately an emergence to a new way of being. Ride the wave & see where it takes you!