Thursday, April 14, 2016

Creative Soulful Woman

As you can see, there have been no new posts since 2012, when my new book came out.

Since then, I've joined the 60's club, and have moved away from the menopause discussion.

But this blog remains, and has some excellent resources for any woman headed out onto that journey of ups and downs and rollercoaster ride.

Please browse the articles and blog posts here. Know that the Mid-Life Transition is more than just menopause.

It affects all of us. Carl Jung wrote that this was a key transition time in human beings, and requires time for reflection, looking back at our past. We restory the old stories, the baggage, the pain we have been lugging around, and sometimes we find a surprise beginning!

So check out this page, but come and visit me on my Creative Soulful Woman blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest (all of which are linked from my website http://jenniferboire.com/ 

Namaste,
Peace,

Jennifer
www.jenniferboire.com


Friday, April 20, 2012

Check out these blogs on Menopause

best-menopause-blog of 2012

Coming soon on Musemother Blog: interviews with Wendy from The Menopause Blog and Susan Tolles from Flourish over Fifty


come back again!


Musemother/jenn
www.jenniferboire.com

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Tao of Turning Fifty Book Launch


Now available on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Turning-Fifty

Also linked to www.jenniferboire.com under Books. Plus a free excerpt.

This book addresses the oftentimes overwhelming journey of the mid-life woman, and offers tips and exercises for finding calm int he middle of the storm.  It encourages you to give yourself a break, before you get a break down. There is a struggle in most women about being selfish versus beginning to take the time for self care, and inner reflection, but we benefit when we put ourselves on the agenda - take time to sort things out, write in our journal. This is also a workbook, with journal pages, calming and centering breath exercises, and mostly, encouragement that you are not going crazy. Menopause is not a disease - it's an important transition in a woman's life and part of her inner journey.

This book grew out of my research for a blog on menopause (here) and now that the book is done, I'm blogging over at Musemother. See sidebar for a link.

namaste,
Musemother/jenn

Friday, February 3, 2012

Heroic Task of Menopausal Women

Women are unique beings. We go through many phases in our life, on this heroic feminine journey. First the transformation from child to adolescent, the budding body, the menstrual cycle, initiating us into the blood mysteries.

Then for some, pregnancy and childbirth - the complete transformation of our bodies to harbor for a new life, the giving over of oneself to another, as Joseph Campbell says, transformation from maiden to mother. This has always implied a bit of risk and danger, and loss of blood; less so in contemporary times in most countries. Still, it is a major change, sometimes inconvenient (when you can't bend over to tie your shoes), causing mood swings and happiness and sacrifice, joy and frustration. Breastfeeding can be joyful but oh so life-changing in terms of our schedule and lifestyle adjustments.

Then, we're not done changing. The Change arrives sometimes in our mid-forties, announces itself gently or loudly, pushes and pulls us in hormonal swings, hot and cold, yet again. This time, the blood is on its way out. And greater wisdom or connection to our intuition is coming in. Something is lost, but something important is gained.  A woman is ripe with her own knowing, learns to speak up for herself, embodies compassion if she is gentle with herself.

Women are unique, yes, and I believe it is a woman's goal or task to learn awareness of her cycle all the way along - from birth to menarche, from giving birth to menopause.

This blog and Musemother blog (where I more frequently write) address that rite of passage. I believe the most important tool a woman has is her self-awareness, and journal writing is a beautiful tool for knowing oneself.

The Tao of Turning Fifty will launch on Amazon by Feb. 9 (next week), and every woman in her forties (and sixties) will benefit from the information in this book, from Where Did My Libido Go, to I Need to Get Away, Why Rest is Radical and Tools for Inner Guidance, this workbook allows you to journal along with it, and answer your own questions.  Enjoy the journey. A link will be posted on the website www.jenniferboire.com as soon as it is ready. Many of the chapters in this book came from the blog.


Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Turning Fifty

Want to let you know I'm mainly blogging at Musemother blog, and on Facebook posting daily quotes from Musemother about the creative life, the inner journey, and a woman's heart and soul connection.

Soon to be released on Amazon is The Tao of Turning Fifty, available for sale on my website, www.jenniferboire.com. Subtitle: What Every Woman in Her Forties Needs to Know.

So hop on over to Musemother's blog, or visit the website for upcoming events and news.

What's in the works: online journal writing classes for women who want to connect with the Inner Feminine wisdom and just hang out with like-minded women who seek to know themselves better through jotting things down on paper - a mysterious process that seems to work really well !

have a creative, transformative mid-life journey
Jenn/Musemother

Monday, April 25, 2011

Feminine Knowing and Menopausal Journey

Is menopause merely the cessation of your period?  is it about losing your memory and having hot flashes? losing your fertility? Or is it a mid-life reorientation project?

This a journey you are embarking on, a deeper phase to your woman's journey, a developing and a continuing and an unknowing. It feels to me like being in a labyrinthe in the woods, a circular path that branches out and leads in so many different directions it's easy to get lost.

What is the path of a woman's life?  especially a woman who decides to have children, who gives over her body to create another body.  How does she regain her centre (if she has lost it)? and how does she keep those boundaries clear - me, us, them? How does she find herself again? Menopause is part of that journey.

Menopause is not an overnight thing. It creeps up on you slowly. You don't notice it happening until one day you realize your period hasn't come this month, and your pregnancy test comes back negative.  Then it comes back the next six months so you forget there's something going on.  Or your PMS increases to two weeks out of the month, and if you really stop and look at it, you see your emotional landscape is a little out of control.  Or maybe you aren't sleeping well at night and not even Chamomile tea or hot milk helps calm the little gerbil on its cage running all night long in your brain.

There are many many symptoms, and lots of websites to describe them to you. What this blog tries to point to is not the symptoms, but the journey.  It's as if you are on the highway to Ottawa from Montreal, and took a side road without realizing it.  You look up and wonder where you are, the landscape doesn't look familiar, the trees are in the wrong place, and the road signs post names of towns you don't remember or recognize. You need to figure out where you are.

Honour your not knowing by standing still.  The first thing to do when you feel lost, is to stop. Stop running in circles, stop pretending you know where you are.  Stop and ask for help.

Someone who has been there before may help you. Someone who has been lost and found the way again.

This mid-life woman's way has been largely uncharted till recently.  The women who came before us were told they didn't matter, or they were second best.  Or their uterus was hysterical. The male hero story describes the quest of the masculine, but where are the stories of the feminine quest?

There are wise women who are writing now about women's cycles, women's journey, woman's life trajectory, especially about menopause.  Browse this website for some of their articles, for reviews of their books, for mention of the sacred journey.

It is time to honour your own knowing.  Begin with admitting you don't know, and stay with the question. Questing. Know that the way out is the way in.  Going down and in will lead you up and out.

And watch www.questinggirl.blogspot.com for all new postings. I am working on a book for women in mid-life called The Tao of Turning Fifty, and a new website and classes to go with it, sometime in 2011.

Take good care now,
Musemother/Jenn

Monday, April 12, 2010

Astrology of Menopause

http://www.elizabethspring.com/Astrology_of_Menopause

OK, one last post, because this is too interesting.

Check out the website above, my sister sent me, as she is a budding astrologer herself.

Apparently our life cycles move with the planets too. Very cool information.

Jenn

statistics

blogflux list of blogs about menopause

Directory of Women Blogs