stories from the front

"There was a woman I knew during my teen years who one morning abandoned her family and stayed at her mother's for a period of weeks. This was unheard of. I didn't know of another such case. She was loving, kind, an excellent mother, active in the church, highly regarded by everyone. In fact, I think it's safe to say her family was our town's model family. One explanation was whispering hotly around. The woman was going through her change. I overheard my mother and my aunts before they noticed me listening. Later, when we were alone, my mother attempted to appease my curiosity by explaining that some women, even the most respectable and charming, when going 'through the change' went a big mad."

from An Indiscreet Thing, by Miki Nilan in Women of the 14th moon editors Dena Taylor/Amber Coverdale Sumrall

I'd have to add, sometimes it's the most respectable ones who need to get away the most, find their inner wild woman, as Clarissa Pinkola Estes might say.

I spent the last 5-6 years wishing I could get away all the time. I didn't understand it. I was afraid of doing anything about it. It was a yearning so deep I thought it might be a call to divorcing my family, but I didn't want to do that. I saw a therapist for a while to help me sort things out.

Peri-menopause is actually where the angst is. Once you hit menopause, something calms, at least for me. Once you listen to the voice calling for change, and really listen deeply to see what it is asking of you, and then make steps even though the path is unclear, the inner angst lessens.

What did I do about the need to get away? At first I was writing stories about women who were facing this dilemna, who woke up one morning and wanted to follow the wild geese flying south. I listened to Joni Mitchell's song, sometimes I feel like going (can't remember words exactly) and I'd cry every time. It was about seasons and a woman who needed to move on in her life.

I did get away on retreats as often as I could leave my children. My friends were always asking J, my husband, where has she gone this time? and inviting him over to supper, as if he had been abandoned. They have gotten used to my leaving for meditation and yoga retreats, singing with my choir retreats, workshops on writing, or singing. Sometimes it's a 3-day weekend in Vermont or Massachusetts. Sometimes it's 10 days in Amaroo, in Australia, a very magical place with a special teacher of mine.

Sometimes it's a weekend in Fort Lauderdale, and sometimes I even bring the family along, like the time we spend a February weekend in New York. While they did sightseeing, I was in a poetry workshop. My teens were actually loving visiting boutique hotels and trendy architecture!

So I started just writing about it and complaining to my on-line writer's class at http://www.writers.com/ that I couldn't leave but I needed to get away, be by myself. One wise woman said, Leave, and come back again.

So that's what I've been doing, once or twice a year. My kids have learned to heat up frozen meals, my husband has even started cooking dinner once a week on weekends. They survive without me. When they were littler, I hired babysitters, dog sitters, whatever was necessary since grandparents were either not close by or not in shape to care for wee ones.

Bottom line ladies, you heed the call, or feel like you're going crazy. You do not have to 'up and leave em' all of a sudden. Just get them used to handling the house without you. Show them where the laundry soap is, and how to find stuff in the back of the fridge. Let the house get a little messy while you're away. It's worth it.

The bumpy parts will smooth out. The sisterhood of other women helps immensely.

safe journey,
musemother

Stripping of a woman on the cusp of menopause

If only she could, she would pick up her arms
and give them to her children, her heart to her husband,
her womb to her daughter, but all her parts are ailing,
lying on the floor awaiting rejuvenation. She lies still,
receiving breath, broken down to basic particles.
What to do on the days when tears drop into her soup?
It’s ok to be sad and do nothing on the list, she thinks,
Except the simple tasks like laundry,
except read poetry. What better refuge…
Maybe that’s where poems come from, and for,
to remind us there is something else to do
than the ‘to do’ list –
the soul cries for meaning.

She reads “Trees lose parts of themselves inside a circle of fog” (*by Francis Ponge)
It sounds like the stripping of a woman at menopause,
in the years leading up to the full withholding of the monthly blood,
she has shed her leaves, lost muscle strength, put on weight,
absorbed moisture before the season of dryness,
felt as if she has water on the brain,
disconnected and disoriented by the shift in hormones
waking her up at night and putting other parts of her to sleep.

She is not out to pasture yet, but the young colts no longer bolt
from her body or frolic at her side. She is slowing down.
And if she doesn’t allow herself to rest, she is brought to her knees
in a wave of heat and tears, unable to juggle her roles,
nor exchange the chef’s hat for the sombrero,
Her feet fell heavy and her mind dull.
She tells herself, it is temporary, like fall and the cold.
Brisk winds will return her to spring’s green time,
but only after she has lain fallow, composting
her leafy spices, at the end of a cycle.

Oh the music she needs to comfort her,
and the long night she’ll travel through for years,
until the bright sunlight reclaims her.
Then her wisdom is as legion as the new yellow-green leaves
waving on the hill at dawn.

Human, faulty, imperfect, no more striving for anything,
except for compassion,
the need for self-love reverberating
like the hum she hears in Leonard Cohen’s voice,
claiming darkness as its source
it rings true, full of light.

@Jennifer Boire

Menopause poetry

Cross Currents

by Noelle Sickels

The moon's choreography
is less reliable now.
Unlike the obedient tides
my body chooses its own tempo,
sways out of rhythm
then drifts in step again
for a measure or two.

It surprises my attention.
I had forgotten this last bend
in the yawing currents;
Did not expect as much drama
as at the beginning,
when childhood washed away
like an unguarded doll
at the water's edge;
Or in the middle,
when all of me swelled
with the briny broth
of a stranger's life.
Now, again, I search the mirror,
hunt for how my face reveals
the changing course within.

People say I do not look my age,
as if I'd won a prize.
They say I am too young
to parenthesize the moon.
I can not always say I do not like
what people say;
do not, some days, want
to conjure back the blood,
rejoin the familiar round.
do not, like a lone sailor
in a cloud-thick night
long to drop anchor
and forget the creaking tiller
the unknown destination
the shape of undreamt shores.

Something to Look Forward To

Menopause -- word used as an insult:
a menopausal woman, mind or poem
as if not to leak regularly or on the caprice
of the moon, the collision of egg and sperm,
were the curse we first learned to call that blood.

I have twisted myself to praise that bright splash.
When my womb opens its lips on the full
or dark of the moon, that connection
aligns me as it does the sea. I quiver,
a compass needle thrilling with magnetism.

Yet for every celebration there's the time
it starts on a jet with the seatbelt sign on.
Consider the trail of red amoebae
crawling onto hostess's sheets to signal
my body's disregard of calendar, clock.

How often halfway up the side of a mountain,
during a demonstration with the tactical police
force drawn up in tanks between me and a toilet;
during an endless wind machine panel with four males
I the token woman and they with iron bladders

I have felt that wetness and wanted to strangle
my womb like a mouse. Sometimes it feels cosmic
and sometimes it feels like mud. Yes, I have prayed
to my blood on my knees in toilet stalls
simply to show its rainbow of deliverance.

My friend Penny at twelve, being handed a napkin
the size of an ironing board cover, cried out
Do I have to do this from now till I die?
No, said her mother, it stops in middle age.
Good, said Penny, there's something to look forward to.

Today supine, groaning with demon crab claws
gouging my belly, I tell you I will secretly dance
and pour out a cup of wine on the earth
when time stops that leak permanently;
I will burn my last tampons as votive candles.

- Marge Piercy

read them again!
aren't they great....
musemother
ps thanks to Lynn for the second one

My body

He’s coming in for that flying hug.
These are mine, he says,
Put them on my body.
(If I hadn’t weaned him, he’d still be rooting for milk.)

My three-year-old girl takes a shower with me, plants
a kiss on my nipple as I lean to dry my feet.
At bedtime she wants to snuggle too, just like
her older brother. He’s intense as a lover
claiming his own. She only plays at owning my body.
She lifts my right breast out of my nightgown, places
her lips around the long nipple, sucks
for a second, until I pull away, surprised
at the warm mouth sensation.

I think of Artemis of the many-hundred breasts.
Our mother hunger is bottomless,
no flesh & blood could fill the void.

Guess how much I love you?
Thirty times around the house &
all the way to China, says Katie,
my little girl
who is not mine, but water
through my fingers.

How I love to feel her solid
weight on my breast.

from Angel in the House poems series
@ Jennifer Boire

Bitch Goddess

Bitch goddess

how she snarls at the moon!

tail bone high,
she raises her hindquarters to the wind
howls to the four directions, claiming

her Space

warns me, if I don’t listen to her
yelping & crying
she’ll tear me apart with her teeth.

I’m learning a healthy respect,
let her sniff my palms, and crotch.
she scares my angelic side, with her dirty paws –

get down! I want to yell,
go take a bath.

but she is getting down in the desert dust,
rolling, getting an itch out.

she invites me down on all fours,
knees to the dirt
(my pretty white leggings stained).

But soon I’m wagging my butt
& howling, too.

What is peri-menopause?

I keep running into women who wonder if they are in peri-menopause, whether they are 47 or 51, and who think their doctors will let them know, or a blood test. Is it a matter of keeping the balance of estrogen and progesterone? Is there a way to know if it's officially begun?

Usually it starts quite simply. At least in my case, it began with a few heat rays zooming up and down my spine, before I even knew what a hot flash was. Somewhere in my mid-40's I think.
Plus my doctor, after age 40, had told me your ovulation will begin any time after your period, even the next day, so be careful with birth control. It won't follow the same pattern. So I was on the look-out way before it began.

I think it took til age 45 before any major disruption in my period began, maybe even closer to 49, when all hell broke loose. No, that's not true. I started noticing PMS lasted longer and longer, until it was half the month. At ovulation, I was having sharp attacks of irritability lasting only a day or so. And some spotting in between periods, before they began skipping a month here and there in random order. Then six months in a row. Then 2 more periods. Heavy cleansing ones.

Insomnia was a given, but that had been more or less present since having kids. Every night was musical beds practically, because whenever my daughter had a bad dream or needed company she'd end up in my bed, I'd move into the guest room, and so on.

At age 50, my daughter finally grew out of needing me at night, and I began the 13-month period of no menses. After the 13th month, at age 51, I was officially menopausal. I still get night sweats after too much red wine, or hot flashes occasionally, but rarely. It seems in my case to be related to liver function.

I think the best thing I ever did was see a therapist at one point, to talk about my emotional turbulence and roller coaster of hi's and lo's. A lot of tears later, my PMS had shrunk to a manageable period. And my heart seemed lighter. There's a song of Lhassa's (spanish Montreal singer) that goes, "my head was full, but my heart still wanted more" (rough translation). That's how peri-menopause was - a labryrinth in the dark, turning in circles, not knowing what I wanted any more, but sure that I wasn't getting it. Needing time alone, time away, time for just me. In spite of everything on the outside being just fine, family-work-home wise.

But we are all different. Just talking to my sister Sue (hi Sue) in England, who is 2 years younger, and still going through peri-menopause. For her, progesterone cream works. She had chronic fatigue, and adrenal exhaustion, and progresterone helped her through that. High estrogen, like the Promensil (red clover supplement) I was taking for hot flashes, wouldn't have helped.

I guess the bottom line is, listen to your symptoms, get medical advice, use your google search function, and just know that everybody is different - there is no one panacea. Rest, good food, exercise, all the common sense healers are usually a safe place to start. It may be relatively smooth for you, who knows.

I really recommend the women doctors at http://www.womentowomen.com/ as an excellent resource, with articles on all the possible symptoms and how to remedy them.

happy November, Scorpio babies!
jenn

Intuition and Menstrual cycle

I know I've been writing a lot about intuition lately, but I just found a really great article about the link between intuition and the menstrual cycle (and menopause too).

Some days I am definitely moving too fast to appreciate all the help that is whispered my way, but some days I sit back and watch the coincidences and synchronicities fire up and blow me away.

You are not crazy if you believe in a mysterious power that helps you move towards what needs to happen in a day. And if you pay attention, you may find there's a link between your cycle (if you have one, and yes, even after menopause I seem to have one) and your inner knowing.

Here's an excerpt from a brilliant article by Alexandra Pope, that popped up after a search on google:

"The stress sensitive barometer in women, the menstrual cycle is an exquisite system for sensing both physical and psychological wellbeing. Menstruation is an initiatory moment. Women can potentially open to a highly charged altered state, giving them access to a singular kind of power - the power of self awareness, deep feeling, knowingness, intuition. A power that matures over time with each cycle.

Most women might find it strange to talk of the menstrual cycle and menstruation as useful and powerful beyond its baby making function. This is not surprising. Too long we have been tyrannised around our bodies. To get anywhere professionally we've had to deny the life of our uteruses and silence our emotional authority for fear it would be labelled as 'losing it' or 'not rational', in other words not intelligent. T

he word 'hysteria' comes from the Greek for womb, hustera. Our wombs were seen as unstable organs, making us unstable. Whilst medical science has moved on from those fifteenth century notions, in today's atmosphere there still lingers a feeling that women are essentially unpredictable and unreliable beings because of the menstrual cycle.

No wonder women have needed to tread carefully when drawing from an authority that was not of the intellect. An authority coming instead from a knowingness, from the fullness of our senses and sensual nature. It is only in recent years that emotions have gained some currency. Emotional intelligence is a frequently used phrase today now that Science (male) has come up with the "hard" evidence making Emotions (female) respectable!" from an article on http://www.mum.org/articles. or at http://www.wildgenie.com/, Pope's own web site.

I've just ordered her books, A Woman's Quest. Now you know why this site is named 'questinggirl', because it has been a quest for information, a journey towards knowing, and not just guessing, at what a wonderful system we have within us. Who knew that a menstrual cycle was something other than a pain and a bother.

Especially now, with millions of women numbing their hormonal wisdom with the Pill, and even taking it continuously so as never to menstruate, there is a real urgency to getting this Feminine Knowledge out there! So spread the words, ladies. Our cycle is not to be played with, denied, doped up, or dallied with.

Even in your most peri-menopausal moment, remember the Blessing, and not the curse.

namaste,
musemother aka jenn