I remember coming home from school, sometime towards the end of primary school I think, to the spectacle of my mother and one or two of her friends taking turns to lift their tops and move with the airflow of the fan in the corner of the kitchen. They were mildly giddy with laughter. There was a heady atmosphere of solidarity in the kitchen that I recognised but didn’t yet ken.
At a time when I was just beginning to bleed each month my Mum was starting the journey to stopping. Standing where she is now it casts a whole new light on the sometimes turbulent relationship of those days. Perimenopause and teenage hormones are a combustible combination. I suspect a rethink is in order. And, one of the great glories of bringing our relationship to mind at this time in my life is that I am now well practiced at holding it on a wide generous road of compassion.
Everyday I ride the perimenopausal wave requires compassion. And what a gift it is to be embodied into compassion. Compassion for myself as I look around the room and see that no-one else has had any problem working out how the words just spoken by another fit together. Compassion for those who judge me and find me failing in my moment of hot flush multi-tasking or sleep-deprived blankness or anxiety-edged discombobulation. Compassion for those who hold me with grace as I speak bluntly of the hormonal rush chasing my body. I love that this act was described as feminist nirvana. It was a tear-edged healing of past hurts.
But also, everyday brings with it the glorious solidarity of the winks and wry smiles as I divest myself of clothing in deep mid-winter. And the conversations. Oh, the relief of conversations with those who have gone before and those just starting and those in the middle with me. The bliss of arriving into a conversational reassurance that these new pathways are, in fact, old trod desire lines, and that they take me to a wondrous place of croning, where the gendered social conventions that come with being cognisable to the patriarchal gaze just become less important.
I do wish that these conversations were a bit more public.
I understand now that the image of my Mum and her friends in front of the fan is a caricature of perimenopause. And I wish, when the first months of anxiety had edged into my life, I had known that I was in good standing. That this was just part of the journey.
Imagine knowing that menopause actually included perimenopause and that this could go on for years and years? That it traversed the terrain of irregular and heavy bleeding, no bleeding, anxiety, sleeplessness, weight gain, difficulty concentrating, feeling irritable, anxious, just not able to hold it all together like I used to. Forgetting…
Changes to libido (most commonly cited is a loss of libido, but I reckon there’s a special type of horniness associated with the long goodbye to the monthly libidinous cycle), bloating, the dryness of skin, headaches and migraines, sore boobs, night sweats, hot flushes, mood swings, urinary problems, vaginal dryness and weight gain. Not all of us experience any or all of these symptoms. But the Jean Hailes Foundation cites data that says those women are in the minority at twenty per cent. Sixty per cent of women experience mild to moderate symptoms. And twenty per cent have symptoms so severe that they significantly interfere with life.
I am so very grateful to the friends who have gone before for providing me a map as they saw me wander, lost. There should be a (probably less) bloody public map.
But, of course, as with all things embodied and coded with the gender markings of patriarchy, we are in the territory of where there be dragons. We are off the map. Lost in the huge unknowing of women’s bodies.
As I’ve been sorting through my experiences I’ve been reflecting on the privilege of whiteness. Of how much more difficult this would be to navigate in the racially charged world which positions and judges women of colour as both more emotional and less cognisable by virtue of their skin colour and the structures of racism.
And I’ve been wondering what menopause means for transgender women and transgender men.
And I’ve been grieving and angry about what this means for Indigenous women in our country, and how they can have a conversation with their mum about the family history of menopause, when children are removed from their mothers at higher rates now than when children were forcibly removed on the basis of legislated racism, and when life expectancy rates mean that the women who have gone before die earlier.
And I’ve been thinking about how the choice is taken away from the still unacceptably high number of women with disability who are forcibly sterilised in Australia.
And I’ve been struggling deeply with how to speak of this in a world charged with the value-laden binary of rational male minds and irrational female bodies.
I’ve realised that part of the answer is to be curious about the hormonality of those bodies flooded with testosterone (and about what happens when testosterone droughts hit them). Where are the judgemental and hormonal edges to public discourse on war and conflict, sexual abuse and harassment, competition and aggression? Of leaving and restarting with a younger version of her who came before? Of withdrawal and depression? Romance novels following the trope of the alpha male often have him voice the southern rush of blood and being led by his second brain. How is this not hormonal? And why is it not judged irrational? Ah, but the long shadow cast by Descartse (if only he was just a drunken old fart).
Another part of the journey is unique to women who have come to this point in the journey childless, particularly those women who are not so much childless by clear choice. For my part, there has, of course been a component of choice – my desire to bring a child into this world was matched in equal measure to do so within a loving relationship, not as a moral judgement but as an abiding commitment to collaboration; a recognition that I like to work in partnership on the big and small parts of our existence.
So, part of my perimenopausal inquiry has been to explore this new edge to an old grief. To watch and feel the heavy bleeds of early perimenopause flood from my body and know that they took with them my dreams of motherhood. To more consciously seek out new ways of belonging as the days between bleeds extend, extend, extend.
I am grateful for this journey. I admit to this with some edge of bewilderment. I think back to the start of the sleeplessness and the oh-so-terrible fear that accompanied the midnight wakings, the panic at how I would manage my self during the course of the next day. I have come such a long way in the way I use my breath, my body, and my mind to calm myself. In the way I use my brain to rewire my pathways of expectation and perfection. To find new neural pathways of kindness to self and others. For now, I am steeped in the herbal wisdom of the women who came before me. I may yet pick up the relief of the chemical compounds. But if I do so, I am grateful for the recent shift that has removed my judgements on that pathway. Rather, I am grateful that these options exist.
And I am grateful, oh so grateful, for those fellow-travellers I find on the road – walking ahead, walking with, and walking behind. Too often we feel like a solitary figure on the pathway. But in reality, we are walking together, we just need to look up and find the oh-yes-right-now gaze of the other women drawing on their breath to ride the wave of anxiety, and the ah-yes-you-too gaze of the women who stood in front of the fans.
Stardust Becoming 