If she goes into menopause accepting the natural flow of life and its transitions, she may sing the song of watch and wait, and learn to surf the ups and downs of the transition time, which can be considerable.

        If she goes in seeing menopause as a modern inconvenience and that medical science has all of the answers, she will opt for drugs until she finds that science has few answers and drugs may be a modern horror, not a modern solution.

        If she sees herself as a victim of her hormones gone out of control, she may fail to ever get to know the integration of her mind, body and spirit.

        If her life in general is out of control and she chooses to see it all only as a menopause problem, she may sink deeper and deeper into the failure to heal her whole life and prepare for the future ahead.

        If she likes to believe in magic, but can't create this magic on her own, she may follow a passing guru who dispense magic cures, at no small price, with escalating demands for more and more purchases as, over time, the magic dims, and Nature has its way after all.

        If her menopause was surgically induced, she must share with others like her for her menopause pre-history is unique and her post-history is experimental.

        Any of the above songs can be sung by the menopausal woman.

My greatest comfort at the moment is part of an essay that Michel de Montaigne wrote in the year 1580 when he had been exactly my age (late thirties). He says he has nothing definite to say about himself. Depending on the circumstances and the outlook on himself he feels he is bashful as well as impudent, prudish as well as horny, talkative as well as silent, energetic as well as weary, intelligent as well as stupid, grumpy as well as affable, mendacious as well as honest, knowledgeable as well as ignorant, generous as well as thrifty. He continues that everyone will feel the same if s/he is honest in her/his judgement about her/himself. He says the difference between us and others is the same than the one between the different parts within us.
       If she goes into menopause accepting the natural flow of life and its transitions, she may sing the song of watch and wait, and learn to surf the ups and downs of the transition time, which can be considerable.
It is not so much menopause, it is the beginning of visible aging that causes these ups and downs. The fear of age and death so perfectly hidden in younger years comes up full force. If science were able to postpone menopause to the sixties without stopping the aging process I am very sure that women would
still get into emotional problems in their forties/fifties.
       If she goes in seeing menopause as a modern inconvenience and that medical science has all of the answers, she will opt for drugs until she finds that science has few answers and drugs may be a modern horror, not a modern solution.
Some drugs are an old solution to an equally old problem. No society was ever able to live without drugs/mind-altering substances, not even the most primitive one. When the first human being started thinking "I" it realized it was vulnerable and will die. From that time onwards human beings tried to forget about that and looked for means to achieve that. Religious ideas emerged, mind-altering natural substances came into use and the search for the fountain of youth has never stopped.
       If she sees herself as a victim of her hormones gone out of control, she may fail to ever get to know the integration of her mind, body and spirit.
Yes, I agree.
       If her life in general is out of control and she chooses to see it all only as a menopause problem, she may sink deeper and deeper into the failure to heal her whole life and prepare for the future ahead. 
Yes.
       If she likes to believe in magic, but can't create this magic on her own, she may follow a passing guru who dispense magic cures, at no small price, with escalating demands for more and more purchases as, over time, the magic dims, and Nature has its way after all.
She is not to blame. She may have been taught to listen to gurus for her spiritual and physical needs from childhood days onwards. Life may have told her that pleas are rarely answered by these gurus or the supernatural so deep down she knows she is being fooled. But she is used to living with this conflict. The principle of hope wins over the principle of sound reason.

niyara

I always noticed back in my hormonally cycling days that whenever I caught myself humming it would be in the second week of my menstrual cycle, seldom any time else. I noticed this of course because I seldom hum. I haven't noticed any humming lately. Does that mean I don't have my menopause song yet?

But back to the story of a menopause passage.

I finally finished rereading Sharon Butala's "The Perfection of the Morning" on the weekend. [Finally, <grin> I am looking forward to real menopause so I can start reading again]

Sharon moved out into the country (a ranch in southwest Saskatchewan, we went to this area on holidays this year.) to a new life and a new marriage when she was age 35. This book is about her passage into the "world of nature" and the profound change it had on her view of life. She was 54 when this book was published.

But in the final chapters of the book, she could see that the profound changes that took place were not just due to this change in lifestyle or to <nature> but were...ok I see it now, she found  her song.

Thanks jinelle, this really sums up the book for me.

From the book pg.168  [yes it is very new agey ]

"But even more even than my coming to an understanding of how I would live here in contentment was a growing understanding of the true nature of the long crisis which I had weathered and of the meaning of the cycle of dreams I had had. Now I saw that what I had been through was certainly triggered by the dramatic and sudden change in my life when I had left the city behind and come into an alien environment to make my life. But where for years I had thought my crisis was a particular specific one having to do with how I would live my life in this environment and had blamed it--this environment-- for my pain, I finally began to see that it had been something else entirely."

"What I had been through was a mid life crisis, or just a major life crisis. Everyone goes through it when signs of aging can no longer be ignored and when older family members begin to die and for the first time one faces the inevitability of one's own death. But for many people it appears as a vague dissatisfaction, puzzlement, depression without a clear cause, or a breaking out of the confine's of ones life in destructive ways. Sometimes it results in complete breakdown. In my case, because I was largely alone ...<snip>...I allowed it to happen. I didn't fight it but reveled in it, and having no one to help me, I resolved to help myself. With the help of many books, and using my journals as analyst listener I came through it."  etc. etc.

Hmmm sounds like menopause played a part too. As for being alone, aren't we all alone sometimes even if we have people around us all the time? Isn't that what you meant by going away for awhile in your menopause story Jinelle?

Sharon Butala has a newly published novel,<The Garden of Eden> I bought it and just started reading it.  The book is about two women characters one a middle aged woman and the other her neice. The middle aged woman called Iris,<is> having menopause symptoms but either doesn't know it yet or isn't making anything of them. But she has them. And we can see them. And I wonder if younger women reading the book can see them.

It began with small references, kicking the quilt back in the morning and putting her leg off the side of the bed, suddenly not wanting to join the women in the kitchen at the community strawberry tea social, thinking about the strange dreams she was having, then a mention of heat on the face at a thought, then a reference to moist hair at the nape of her neck.

This is getting on in the story at a very stressful point. Aha I began to say to myself even while being in the grip of the moment myself. [It is a good story, really] Then I read this little bit, and had to come up to the computer to share.

P. 69 "An intense heat has begun to spread itself through her, it has started deep in her centre and radiates outward inexorably, rapidly, building till it reaches her skin and a thin film of sweat breaks out on her forehead, the back of her neck, between her breasts, down her back, even the backs of her knees are slick with it. How can she be so hot when this morning the house is so cold? She crosses the kitchen with quick tapping steps as her slippers slap against her bare heels and bounce off the vinyl floor, tugging at the belt of the heavy dressing gown to loosen it. Flinging open the back door, she steps out onto the deck, the robe wide open, and feels the relief of the pristine early morning air.

No mention of the word menopause or hot flash in the book to date. And this is not what the book is about in any case, but I don't want to reveal the plot in case anyone reads it.

It was just so strange and exciting for me to read this in the middle of a novel. And it really fits into the context of the story.

Kathryn

Tell me something, please, do totally naturally post-menopausal women still have any noticeable cycles (other than diurnal)?

I can't replace exactly the hormones missing from my castrated body because mankind hasn't the knowledge yet of what all might be missing, but I can replace what I know is missing (to make me more like you); so, other than my psychic knowledge of my illness and surgery, and your psychic knowledge from having come through the cave of peri-menopause, how, from the viewpoint of *Menopause and Beyond*, are we any different?

I have been here, totally post-menopausal, for over 2 years now (without letting myself fully accept it) and you have been evolving into it throughout your peri-menopausal experience.  Have you accepted that you have arrived?  Or are you still coming out of the cave?

I don't see my post-history as experimental at all.  The surgery is a fact and the post-surgery state is a consequence; not an experiment.  Any experimenting comes from any drugs or herbs I might take and any menopausal woman can take those same drugs- only difference is that they get a bigger total dose because they have an additional small endogenous dose I don't have.  They are the ones who are choosing an experimental post-history for themselves.  It would seem that they who choose HRT are choosing to stay in the cave.

Kalli