Menopause Mood Meter

Menopause Mood Meter by Kate Poux

It was the day after my 49th birthday and I was in a staff meeting at school. We were supposed to practice class meetings with each other and I was seated in a circle of teachers, all different ages. The question was, “If your mood was a type of weather, what kind of weather would it be?” I was shocked how many sunny days there were around me. The more sunny days I heard about, the more nervous I got about what would come out of my mouth when it was my turn.

I really wanted to say that I had just turned 49 and have been menopausal several years, so my mood is constantly changing. I realized that I had never heard anyone at work say anything about menopause, but if they wanted to talk about mood, well then I can totally go there because I feel them ALL, in a BIG WAY, all the time! I could describe clouds in beautiful colors, blazing hot bolts of lightning and the pouring rain that comes out of nowhere. I worried that once I got started, I might not be able to stop.

I could have framed that particular day in the context of the menopause timeline that I made for myself, so I could chart my progression through this bizarre time of life and remember it all to pass on to my daughters. I couldn’t believe how little I knew about menopause when I entered it. I thought I was losing my mind for the first few years. I wish that I had seen it coming and knew women who would talk me through it. The timeline came out of a conversation with my daughters when I first defined menopause for them, trying to explain my shifting moods. It was that conversation where we realized that they would be entering puberty at the same time that I was going through menopause. We laughed nervously together at the irony.

I kind of wanted to marvel at my menopausal experience in that staff meeting moment, all these bizarre symptoms that change all the time, the patterns I began to see and the coping mechanisms I had almost perfected. It’s like I figured out this biological puzzle that connects me to all other women and I want to compare notes, share the secret handshake. It was this yearning to find out more about other women’s experiences and better understand my own that inspired Put Some Claws in Your Pause. Laura and I wanted to create a space to share our wildly varying experiences and PAUSE to observe the importance of this transition. There is immense psychic and organic energy available to us in this time of our lives. Put Some Claws in Your Pause is a place to tell our stories, get grounded in their energy and realize the potential ahead.I chickened out in the staff meeting, settled for “partly cloudy” as my response. It didn’t feel like an appropriate or safe place to unfurl my mid-life feminist flag, and I haven’t fully embraced it yet. But Whidbey Island this August WILL be a safe, absolutely appropriate place to stretch into this new growth and marvel at our experiences together. Give yourself a weekend to PAUSE with us. This is going to be the beginning of a bold, brave, beautiful journey.

True Nature

Your True Nature By Laura Culberg

I read recently that the hormonal composition of a woman after menopause is the same as a girl before puberty. I've been obsessing over this information for weeks. My current reality is this: I am perimenopausal, my partner Nancy is perimenopausal, and my daughter Lucia is smack in the middle of puberty. This means that there are a lot of hormones flying around all the time. In both puberty and perimenopause, emotional lability and fatigue are common. In my household we all share some of this. I’m writing from Chicago, where I've been with my family of origin in my family home for almost ten days. I got to spend several days with my sisters and their kids swimming in the lake, eating meals together, playing games and being fully saturated in all of our old dysfunctional patterns. In our time together there were often very hard moments, moments when I wanted to be back in Seattle, but now that they've gone back to their respective homes and I'm here with my parents without them, I miss them terribly. Something is missing. 

But still, even without my sisters here, I love my old neighborhood. I ran into a bunch of childhood friends a few days ago, women also with teenagers, also entering menopause. In the few hours of spending time with them, I could deduce that they too were experiencing many of the physical, emotional, social and spiritual changes that come along for this middle age ride.What I saw in them was grace and wisdom. Two live abroad and one in California. All were, like me, home to see their families and give their kids some time in the place where they grew up. 

Our neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago is a small one, a tight-knit community where everyone knows each other and each other's siblings and parents. I knew all these women when they were kids so it was special and kind of magical to be with them and their own kids for a few hours.I kept going back to this thought of how hormones pre-puberty mirror those of post-menopause. One of the friends I ran into was Meredith, my bestie from elementary school. When we were kids we were super creative and care free. When we found each other as best friends at age nine, we were each fully in our essence of being who we were born to be. 

We were living in our true nature before getting muddled by pubescent hormones and societal expectations. It was sad to say goodbye to these gals, people who knew me when. I felt, like I did when my sisters left, that I was saying goodbye to a part of myself, a piece of what made me who I am right now. I wanted all of these old friends to come with me to Put Some Claws in Your Pause, to join me for this brave new journey into the next period of life. I hope you can.