The literal meaning of the word menopause is “the cessation of menstruation” but this meaning falls hopelessly short of the experience of the vast majority of women. Somehow the word indicates a moment in time – a moment that will simply arrive and pass at some magical pre-ordained time in a woman’s life. In reality menopause – or peri-menopause as it now more correctly referred to, can be a long journey with many dips and hills along the way.
 
As I talk with women I am surprised to hear those of a certain age declare – “oh I’m not there yet – I’m still bleeding” as if menstruating or not is the only indicator of menopause. They are shocked when I inform them that peri-menopause is a gradual process impacting, on average, 15 years of a woman’s life.
 
Fertility in women is a gradual climb from the time of menarche (first bleed) until a peak in the mid twenties. Just as it was a slow walk up the hill, the decline in fertility is a long one and at first imperceptible. The menstrual cycle usually remains relatively steady and unchanged and unless you are trying to get pregnant you probably won’t notice anything. But then the downward slope begins to gather speed.
 
Of course the experience of peri-menopause is as unique to each woman as her experience of menstruation, sexuality and giving birth. The common symptoms and changes are also influenced by the everyday factors of life: the food eaten; stress levels; whether you feel satisfied in your job or with your partner; still mothering or not; sense of achievement in the world; underlying illness. The list goes on.
 
So it may come as a shock to many that peri-menopause begins around the age of 42. The midpoint of life for most of us. Physiologically the female hormone levels, which have been declining for several years, drop further and fertility – ovulation, begins to dance to the beat of a different drum. These changes are subtle at first and may even pass unnoticed for several years but they are occurring none the less. Midlife is an important psychological crossing over, when a woman will look back at her girl self and wonder where that child went. This reflection gives rise to a need to reclaim what may have been lost: a lost childhood dream; a sacrificed career or direction. The need for a “return to self” becomes an urgent questing and is often misconstrued as women acting out or going crazy. Crazy making indeed is a compromised life and as women we have been conditioned to make the sacrifices needed to ensure the wellbeing of others, our partners and children.
 
42 is also an important astrological phase, when Uranus is conjunct with the position at birth. According to astrology the impact of Uranus falls like a sword of truth determined to upset the apple cart, and we question the status quo – both in our own lives and in the bigger picture. Uranus calls us to dream and will stir the pot of complacency to create change and growth. Whether you believe in planetary impacts or not, there is no denying that the early 40’s is often a time of personal questing and questioning. Combine this with the hormonal changes of peri-menopause and you have a potent mix that, if not stirred with gentleness and awareness, can create havoc in a woman’s life.
 
Menopause itself cannot be known as it occurs. You’ll never know when you are having your last bleed. Physiologically a woman is said to have experienced menopause only 12 months after her last bleed. So you don’t know if you’ve been through menopause until you’ve been through it! And the average age of that is 52.
 
Like every major life, and menopause is a major event, women need connection to others to make sense of this rite of passage. Getting support, sitting in circle, making positive change and paying attention to what your body, mind and heart are saying are essential for wellbeing and happiness. And not leaving until you are 52!

See my classes and events page for gatherings near you.

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I've just arrived in Athens and spent today immersed in images of the Madonna. On my last trip I loved awakening to the history of the divine feminine as she transformed over millennia from Isis and Aphrodisia in Turkey (ancient Asia Minor) to Aphrodite in Greece onto the Madonna of Christianity via the many forms of the goddess in Roman mythology.

Today I was delighted with rows of terraphims - magical talismans of fertility and sexuality that were common in the life of women nearly 6000 years ago. It is astonishing to see these forms, some as small as a coin to fit in a clenched fist or hide in the fold of a pocket. Some larger to adorn an altar and invoke the mysterious power of fecundity. For mysterious it was and for all our medical knowledge and modern understanding the magic of creativity is still a thing of mystery.

Where are you little girl?
 
Close your eyes now and remember yourself as a child, a girl of maybe 6 or 7. Who do you see? This image passed by on my news feed the other day and I'm sorry I can't find the source but I wanted to share her with you as she landed in my sights just a day after a workshop for menopause: "Transitions". For a while during the day we had explored memories of ourselves as little girls and it seemed so right to see this expressed so beautifully. 

When I look back I see a girl is a cotton nightdress whirling like a dervish in the lounge room to the classical music that was my mother’s choice of vinyl. Like a Sufi I would spin for what seemed an age, delighted with the giddy sensation and lost to an internal world of imaginary places and faces rising up from some far off memory. My whirling and twirling was bought to an abrupt end one day when I caught my big toe in the hem of my dress and fell crashing head long into the corner of the glass coffee table; a rude awakening from my revelry.
 
From time to time I rediscover this wild child as I loose myself in song and dance.  If the mood is right and the music invites me I find myself back twirling and spinning, loosing my mind and heart to the vortex the movement creates.  I am free again, just a girl dancing in her nightdress expressing something beyond words or logic.
 
In my work with older women as they move through menopause I invite a reflection for each woman back to her younger self, a time when she was maybe freer to just be. I say “maybe” because all too soon little girls are pulled into the adult world. Family dysfunction; grief; loss all serve to rob many of their childhood. More than ever now, the early sexualisation and maturing of children is truncating childhood. I am grateful that my childhood was filled with hot summer days running free in the suburbs; time to lie under the trees to dream, hours spent drawing and creating without distraction. Time to be bored. Play acting the goddess Athena as my brothers fought off imaginary Cyclops and sirens. As I grow older I am reawakening these experiences again – allowing time to dream and draw and paint and dance and read myths and legends.
 
Using the “Women’s Wheel of Life” as a map for self-understanding, when a maturing woman entering peri-menopause she sits opposite her young self, the child she once was and always will be.  As the demands of family life abate and the hormonal shifts of menopause create a new reality a rediscovering of this younger self is essential. Menopause becomes a time of reclamation – a quest to ask “Who am I?” And with that asking is the secondary question “What do I want?” not just as a desire but as a deeper quest: “How do I want to be in the world?”
 
Such questing can be misunderstood by others as selfish, as they witness the changes being made. Loved one’s may feel abandoned as old friends and ways of being are reclaimed by the empowered Maga Woman, or stand by amused as a new fire springs a flame to ignite passion for new interests and concerns outside of the immediate family and community. And this change of focus, this return to what is essential and a re-membering of self is what renews a woman.
 
Menopause used to be politely known as “the change” in years gone by and whilst it might seem arcane now this euphemism speaks of a wiser knowing that menopause is indeed a time of change that is not just physical but deeply psychological and potentially spiritually. The Apache honoured such a woman as a goddess - Changing Woman / Estsanatlehi.
 
Wise woman Jane Collings explains beautifully in her Moonsong musings the renewal Changing Woman achieved:
 
“Changing Woman / Estsanatlehi
The Apache called the Earth Goddess by this name, for she never grew old. When her age began to show, she simply walked toward the east until she saw her form coming toward herself. She kept walking until her young self merged with her aging self and then, renewed, returned to her home.”
 
This myth – this story – remains as guidance for us to find renewal as we age by revisiting our younger self and inviting her into our lives, allowing her a voice once more.  Using creative processes and ritual to invoke what may be long forgotten aspects of self are part of the “Women with Spirit” retreats. If you would like to receive more information on up- coming retreats and events please subscribe to our mailing list or feel free to send a message via the contact page.

In the meantime - time for a twirl!
 
 

Summer is in full swing at last. Warm days and stormy skies abound, but being southern Australia – perhaps the most temperamental climate on the continent, nothing can be taken for granted. The weather can swing from sweltering to cold and grey in a matter of minutes and I am left lamenting the move south. You see I am a light lover. I can do the cold, in winter, where I think it belongs, but it’s the sun I miss, the sense of space an open sky creates. So in the tentative warmth of summer days I have my hands in the soil and delight in abundant green growth that endures as I feel the promise of autumn just around the corner and reflect on the passing of my own summer days.
 
As an older woman I resonate with autumn, a time of harvest and review, to look back at what has worked in my life and what didn’t. Sneaking in a last few plantings for a winter crop – those hardy brassicas that endure the cold and sweeten with the frost.
 
I love to garden and think it is a beautiful and apt metaphor for life. Mother nature has all the lessons we need to know as she patiently goes about her business. As the macrocosm so the microcosm.
 
I see the earth as ourselves, who we are, the life we have. I think about the modern industrial lust for the earth, seeing her as a resource to be used. How her hidden gems have been ripped from her belly indiscriminately. Growth is good and must be maintained at all costs, a crazy model of how to live. Do we treat ourselves the same? Seeing our body, this life, just as a vehicle for me, me, me! To use it up till it’s broken and just patch it up along the way. Or can we life in simpler harmony with our body and mind by responding to our real needs? Giving rather than taking.
 
On contemplating all the factors that make a beautiful garden I saw so many relationships between these elements and the tools of yoga; all the wonderful practices available to us to life healthy, happy, creative lives.
 
Water is our emotional life, expressed as devotion. Too little and we cannot thrive or survive. Too much and we rot, our roots lose strength. Waterlogged soil without drainage for emotional outlet and we get bogged, our roots can’t go deep and strengthen. Bhakti is the yoga for our emotional life, directing the longing to the highest, to the divine, kirtan and service transforming our emotions into bliss.
 
Fertilizer equates to our spiritual nourishment, our practice. We have to apply it regularly in the right amount to nourish the soil and the plants of our garden. Compost of the sweetest quality needs to be fully integrated into our life/soil for maximum benefit. Too fresh or too much encourages the plants to grow with big leafy leaves for show but little fruit for nourishment. If too dry the compost can’t break down and get into our centre, our core way of being. Using unnatural fertilizers give the quick high, the fast growth but no lasting juice or goodness, in the end destroying the soil.
 
Then there the weed seeds that blow in or that are picked up on the way that bring unwanted plants in any garden. They are hardy; strong and prolific threatening to choke out the goodness of life. How can we deal with the weeds? Poison them but then all is eventually poisoned, life becoming sterile or dead. That’s when we take no risks nor allow possibilities.
 
If we ignore the weeds the entire garden becomes chocked, lost and has to be stripped out to start again.  The best way to deal with the weeds is to get down on your hands and knees and peer into the garden, carefully and systematically pulling them out one by one. As we do so we take care to preserve what is needed, marvel at hidden joys re-found that have survived despite the odds. Meditation is the weed pulling of our life. Systematic, slow, a daily practice. And isn’t it wonderful how easily weeds are pulled after a good watering of bhakti or better still rain! Rain is grace in life, divine grace, kripa. More nourishing than just watering with a hose but out of our control, not something we can always rely upon.
 
The there are the pests – hungry to eat all the goodness of the garden. Birds before you are out of bed, possums and rats in the dead of night. Caterpillars and bugs if your fertiliser is all wrong, souring the soil.
 
So much to manage, sometimes we just need to protect ourselves/our garden with screens and netting. Take time out to retreat and heal.
 
Most of all we need sunlight, warmth in just the right amount. The rays of the mighty fire at the centre of our solar system, our sun. Fire is yagya, the letting go, sacrifice or surrender to life itself. Ritual relates to the element of fire, ritual brings rhythm and meaning to the everyday experiences of being human. When we create a ritual in the right balance we can feel its glow permeate.
 
So much to balance to create a productive beautiful garden! And of course what of the plants, what is in your garden. What grows from the seeds planted? Are they right for the soil, the temperature, the season? Do they bear fruit or are they just for show?
 
The last factor is the season. This is the factor that no one has no control over- it is inevitable, part of the great cycle of birth and death. In this life we only have 1 full cycle of the seasons. Some of us don’t even have that much time and at menopause we are at the season of autumn.  We might look at our gardens and feel regret for the things neglected, over whelmed by weeds and pests. We also harvest: the slow growing pumpkins that have been hidden under wild growing leaves, tomatoes weighing down the vines, corn with her silky ears mellowing in the sun needing to be picked before the sweetness turns to starch.
 
We may also salvage a late crop, if Mother Nature is kind. Maybe winter will be mild and plants will yield after all but the light will fade eventually and darkness will come.  A time of quiet reflection as the soil cools to ice.
 
But today as the summer sun shines and a storm brews from the south, I remind myself to show gratitude for what is going well in my life right now and for give thanks for the harvest I make from a life well lived.

There she is – a figure of terror, the mythical gorgon of Ancient Greece.

But is she really who we think she is? I love archetypes; they just pop up in my imagination from time to time and stay with me as some sort of beacon or reminder.  Medusa emerged in my dreaming about 18 months ago, around the time I was getting ready to make big changes in my life. It’s no coincidence to me that’s she came at this time, as I was feeling a bit snaky and maybe just a little capable of a death stare.

For me Medusa aligns to the Sorceress phase of a woman’s life, a time towards the end of menopause. Remember menopause is a long time – 15 years in total, so there’s plenty of time to get to know her. This is the final phase of the power years; the fire burning bright in it’s last transformation.

In myth Medusa was the granddaughter of the earth (Gaia) and the ocean (Oceanus), a beautiful mortal Gorgon maiden sworn to celibacy to fulfill her duties as an attendant to Athena. But she forsook her vows to consummate the reciprocated love of Poseidon – God of the Sea. Her punishment for this transgression was to be transformed into a snake haired, ugly monster turning to stone those who looked upon her. Her destiny thereafter was to wander, homeless and loveless until Perseus, another of the Greek heroes, ended her life by cutting off her head, which he then used to protect himself and others from harm and treachery. 

Medusa is by any measure a terrible form of the feminine. Unlovely: scorned: suffering for love. And yet in the end she becomes the protectress, triumphing in death, as she never could in life.  I was delighted to discover Medusa recently in my travels through Greece and Turkey and was surprised to find her always in her place as the protectress, adorning doorways and pathways. But most magically of all she lives under the great city of Istanbul, deep in the underground cisterns, supporting one of the mighty pillars. 

On returning from Turkey I began a project of painting the thirteen archetypes of woman and started with Medusa. For me painting is a meditation, an immersion into the essence of the archetypes or form I am attempting to render. Rather than aim for likeness I seek out the feeling of face and let it speak to me. My time with Medusa was undertaken at a challenging time for other external reasons and so many times I wanted to abandon her. She began as the beautiful maiden and slowly revealed her shadow, the darker side we are more familiar with.

Resolution of the shadow, bringing those aspects of self we deny into the light is the work of becoming whole. The shadow, according to Jung, is the unfinished business of repressed behaviour. Those dirty little secrets underneath the face of pleasantness or spirituality or any other pedestal we allow ourselves to be put on. Shadow is personal and collective. In these troubling times we live in I see plenty of shadow coming to light. It is hard to look at, difficult to understand and the hardest of all; to accept. But in the end it makes us whole and healed.

oms to all.