If you want content built by women traumatized by perimenopause there is plenty out there. You can watch reels all day about hot flashes, lack of libido, weight gain in your midsection, and overall dryness–including personality. In mom groups you can find out the best pads to use because apparently we start peeing ourselves at a certain age and which doctors prescribed which hormones. You can join the bitch-fest of how suddenly the love of your life is the most annoying man on the planet and how maybe separate bedrooms will help save the marriage during menopause.
If you have not yet reached the age where people are throwing weighted vests and peptides at you all day long while checking in on how much protein you are eating, then you may still be in the stage of life where you are fertile. For you the culture would like to offer you birth control pills or injections because your fertility is a problem to be dealt with not a reality to be celebrated.
Me? I’m in no mans land. I’m not quite in the former camp, but neither am I part of the latter.
I don’t hate my cycle. It is something to be treasured. When my daughters’ started their cycles I gifted them with jewelry I’d picked out for them years ahead of time. I took them out to lunch and celebrated with flowers. And each month when any woman in my house starts her period, she need only send a text and one of the boys will bring her a celebration treat. Not, an “it sucks to be you” treat. Not even a “feel better” treat. The treat is explicitly an act of celebration.
The truth is, I love my period. And I’m very sad to see it starting to disappear. It’s packing its bags. It’s not gone, but it’s called for the Uber.
And I’m not ready.
I’m not scared of getting older. I have actually embraced my crows feet and laugh lines, my grey hairs and muffin-top. None of those things bother me in the slightest. I’m more confident in my body than I ever have been in my whole life.
But my period? I’m not quite ok saying goodbye to the cycles around which I have planned my life. Even if pregnancy was not on the horizon (There was a long period of celibacy before God blessed me with my marriage.) the monthly reminder of my feminine strength has always been welcome, the phases of the month passing like four seasons of a year is actually lovely and powerful and distinctly mine. The manifestation is physical, but the reality is spiritual.
It’s not because my cycles have been easy that I love it. I have endometriosis. I’ve had cysts rupture at the most inopportune times. I’ve had severe cramps and menorrhagia. But over the years I’ve learned to listen to what the pain was trying to tell me. In the process of listening I’ve learned to support this body and love all that she is capable of.
And the thing is, I don’t know who to talk to about this. There aren’t books written for me to negotiate this. There are books that address specific symptoms (weight gain, mood swings, hot flashes) and books that deal with after the symptoms and the next act in the drama of your life (empty nest, retirement, being a boss-babe). But there isn’t a guide for how to mourn the ending of your fecundity and how your feminine identity as Virgin, Bride, and Mother is to be lived out after the seasons of your life have blurred into one. Where is the older woman who can tell me how much she also loved her period and how a good God carried her through to the acceptance of a deeper understanding of maternity, not through ovulation-conception-pregnancy and birth, but through a spiritual reality of nurturing souls and giving birth to ideas and desires.
I don’t have that older Titus 2 woman who has gone on ahead and left me a cairn or two so I know I’m on the right path. What I have are women who are two steps ahead who rejoiced at not having a period anymore because they lived off Midol before that and they live off Xanax now. And I have women around my same age trying to negotiate this minefield on their own, feeling not quite themselves but also unwilling to throw in the towel and go gentle into the good night. I need someone to brew me an herbal tonic of ashwagandha, lavender, and linden and lovingly hold my hand and tell me it’s not all bad. I need someone to cry with me–not about growing older–but about how grateful we are to be women who were allowed to participate in this beautiful act of bringing life into this world. I need someone to speak of hope. I need someone who knows how to live out Virgin, Bride, and Mother metaphysically and liturgically. I need a woman who loves being a woman–who is over the age of 60. (I’m only 47 but I’ve got to pad this. I need to make sure she’s on the other side of this roller coaster before she starts handing out advice.)
If you know such a wise woman and if she forages for herbs in her bare feet, collecting them in her upturned apron or skirt, I must meet her. If she veils for Liturgy and says things like “Have you tried talking to St. Hildegard about that?” I need her number. If she refuses to dye her hair and carries both holy water and homeopathics in her purse and she can be counted on to bring a casserole over to the new mom, tell me more.
I suppose if I cannot find such a woman, I shall have to become such a woman. Perhaps I shall have to pay careful attention to this passage of my life and leave some trail markers for my daughters.
reconciling things 