Why am I writing about birth on my menopause blog? because once you've been down into the deep shadows, and spun your chrysalis/cocoon, and hibernated for a while, the ascent is like a new birth, a second life. And this involves a 'labour' phase.
There is not one day, or one moment that will demarcate the arrival but you feel the fragility of new wings, gossamer things, shiny in the sun. You feel the old self peeling away, the old attitudes, the old passions dying and the new ones being born.
If you are still in the 'bug soup' phase, where your will is hiding somewhere down around your ankles like pants without a belt, look up, and know that in the darkness wing buds have sprouted. A new you is on the way.
Your energy will return, you will be flying back into the light. Have patience.
A friend writes that her partner is in the 'throes' of miserable sleepless nights and overwhelmed with everything stressful (may I suggest homeopathy? it helps). I know it's a hard phase to go through, but it's just the labour pains. It's all about travelling into the labyrinth of the birth tunnel, and soon you will be up and out the other side.
It is a rite of passage. It is difficult. But it is worth hanging in there. Get the medical help you need, whether it be acupuncture or herbs or hormones. Read up, get knowledgeable, talk with other 'elders' who have been there.
Note that this is an important time, just like menarche and pregnancy/birth: it is a major phase of your initiation into your Self. It has been ignored, and women have been kept in the dark about it's momentous changes and the growth it brings. It is worthy of ritual.
The menstrual cycle in women is our stress barometer, according to Alexander Pope, a woman who writes wonderfully about this in The Wild Genie, and A woman's quest. So it is perfectly normal that during menopause, we start to notice what stresses us even more. We are finely tuned beings, built for ecstacy, joy, serenity and enjoyment. We cannot tolerate being out of balance anymore. Our bodies and our psyches seek balance.
Heed the messages for rest, and more rest. Slowing down is imperative. Don't wait for a major illness or accident to do it for you.
In the middle of transition during childbirth, it is not time to get up and run around, or pretend you don't know what is going on. Stay focused on the new woman being born. Stay with your center, with your new self arriving, stay in the present as much as possible.
God's little birthing machine is turning herself inside out and being reborn.
Maybe that's what Christmas is heralding this year, your own Hallelujah moment!
trust your inner tuning,
be well,
jenn
Monday, December 10, 2007
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
In My Ideal Birth
In my ideal birth I am noisy.
I labour long, walk up and down, heave my bulk over the chair,
the bed, lean over the nearest available object
at the right height (even if it’s a toilet seat).
In my ideal birth I can groan weep laugh be held
be massaged nurtured
mothered as I become mother.
In my ideal birth there are no machines.
No doctors, no medical emergencies, just a child
in meditation upside down
in my womb and a long slow process of welcoming
her into the world.
In my ideal birth, there are patient people willing to rub my back.
There are people that I love.
There are very few people.
There is no hurried young resident breaking my water,
there is no harried nurse hooking me up to oxytocin drip,
there is no fear of labour. There is no premature
stripping of anything, let alone a cervix.
In my ideal birth, I am monitoring my own rhythms.
I am breathing hard.
I am pushing beautifully when I feel the urge.
I am not told it is not time, the doctor’s not here yet.
I am ready when I am ready and there is no time limit.
In my ideal birth, there are wise women.
They trust my body,
ad I trust my body, God’s
little birthing machine.
I labour long, walk up and down, heave my bulk over the chair,
the bed, lean over the nearest available object
at the right height (even if it’s a toilet seat).
In my ideal birth I can groan weep laugh be held
be massaged nurtured
mothered as I become mother.
In my ideal birth there are no machines.
No doctors, no medical emergencies, just a child
in meditation upside down
in my womb and a long slow process of welcoming
her into the world.
In my ideal birth, there are patient people willing to rub my back.
There are people that I love.
There are very few people.
There is no hurried young resident breaking my water,
there is no harried nurse hooking me up to oxytocin drip,
there is no fear of labour. There is no premature
stripping of anything, let alone a cervix.
In my ideal birth, I am monitoring my own rhythms.
I am breathing hard.
I am pushing beautifully when I feel the urge.
I am not told it is not time, the doctor’s not here yet.
I am ready when I am ready and there is no time limit.
In my ideal birth, there are wise women.
They trust my body,
ad I trust my body, God’s
little birthing machine.
Monday, December 3, 2007
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
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
Friday, November 30, 2007
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
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
Friday, November 23, 2007
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
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
Monday, November 19, 2007
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
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
Friday, November 16, 2007
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.
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.
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