Ordinary Women can change the world

Judith Timson has a great column in the Life Section of the Globe and Mail (www.globeandmail.com) today. She asks the question, how can ordinary women change the world when they are so tired? It's true that women of a certain age are wanting to step out of their lives and do more for others. And that we are exhausted from trying to juggle all our roles. It must be menopause.

Dr. Joan Borysenko calls this stage of life the Guardian Years. We want to share our knowledge and wisdom, protect the vulnerable, help grow the world into a better place. We are also learning how to speak up and be true to our own needs.

Maybe before we save the planet, women need to stop trying to do it all the way men have done it for years, subsequently dying from overwork and heart-attacks. Why are so many women experiencing stress or burn-out, usually women in the caring professions of teaching and nursing?

“Approximately one in three people is sleep deprived, complaining of exhaustion and trouble holding things together. We are an anxious and worried culture. Between 1990 and 1997, the number of doctors’ office visits for anxiety increased by 31 percent.

Unfortunately, many of the people who suffer in doctor’s offices are the health-care providers themselves. Some are so stressed that they have proceeded to the advanced state of exhaustion called burnout, which is a condition of mind, body and spirit that is distinctly different from stress.” (on Beating Stress & Burnout at www.joanborysenko.com)

In mid-life, our energy stores can become depleted. Our bodies start giving us messages about the need for self-care, often disguised as illness or fatigue. Often, we haven’t developed the habit of taking care of ourselves. That would be selfish.

I don’t think of self-care as selfish, but that’s because I learned the hard way, by breaking a leg, that I needed to ask for help. In mid-life I am learning to speak up about what I need help with. I ask my teenagers to cook once a week or at least help with supper and do dishes. I ask them to take care of their own rooms and laundry. I need help walking the dog on days when I work outside the home. Women with ailing parents have the double bind of working, caring/ cooking/shopping and cleaning for their parents, while keeping their own houses tidy and cooking healthy meals for their families. No wonder we’re tired.

My theory is that to restore balance, we need to honour our feminine life cycle. And of course, not only for women, but for weary men, too. Reinstate the Sabbath, a quiet reflective day once a week to let spirit revive us, whether through Church or synagogue, yoga or relaxation. Find more down time, less busy time. Lose the fear of ‘not being productive’ and rest more. Take daily naps. Get outside and watch the geese returning. Take a walk around your neighbourhood and smile at someone you don’t know.

Mid-life women are wisening up. Too pooped to cope anymore with everybody else’s ‘stuff’, we are turning to our own need for balance. On the airplane, if the oxygen mask suddenly drops down, it is suggested that you put one on yourself first, then on the vulnerable ones you are traveling with. Don’t wait for burn-out. Find out where you are on the 'dry well' scale - empty, half-full?

Do something good for the planet now, and take care of your heart. Find the sabbatu or heart’s rest, which in ancient times the Queen of Heaven took on her bleeding days. We have lost touch with the feminine art of rest and receiving. We can regain balance by toning down the ‘do it all today or die’ syndrome.

My personal effort to restore balance is to stop striving, resist the ‘perfectionist’ in me who is never satisfied, ignore the voice that wails, ‘it is never enough, I am not enough’. Breathe in, breathe out. Find balance and presence, find the center in the chaos. That will help the world. Give the world the gift of your presence.

Your children, your parents, your co-workers and friends, will all drink from the well of your plenitude.

be well,
musemother

Self Care for Menopausal Babes

originally published on Musemother, Tuesday, May 08, 2007

If you are menopausal or peri-menopausal, as so many of my friends and acquaintances are realizing they are, you have been or will soon be confronted by some form of fatigue - either from insomnia, night sweats or nurturer burn-out. Perhaps you are working as a teacher, nurse, secretary or in some other helping profession. Perhaps you have full-time work at home, or perhaps you have an ailing parent you are caring for as well as your children.

The most important Mother's Week (I've just extended it from one day to one week!) message is the one I received in my in-box this morning from Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom and Mother-Daughter Wisdom. I think it's so important I'm passing along an excerpt to you:

"One of the biggest challenges women face is learning how to care for themselves while caring for others. It requires a delicate balance between what often feels like polar opposites. I’ve spent a lifetime studying self-care. And I’ve come to the conclusion that good self-care is the single most important aspect of our health, period. The programming of self-sacrifice leads ultimately to health-destroying sentiments, such as guilt, resentment, anger, and other emotions linked to high levels of stress hormones. Self-sacrifice feels wrong to us on a soul level—our spirit gravitates naturally to joy and happiness. That’s why self-sacrifice ultimately makes us sick and keeps us stuck in dead-end situations."
Dr. Christiane Northrup's e-health newsletter excerpt

Unforunately some of us have been programmed to be good girls, and give selflessly to others without thinking about ourselves. Sometimes it takes a major health challenge, like burn-out or chronic fatigue syndrome or breast cancer, to make us stop and take a look at how we are emptying our feminine container, giving our energy away, and losing our joy.

My wake-up call was a broken leg, and a small cyst in my left breast (which turned out to be filled with a thick creamy substance!) The message took me a while to figure out - but while I was lying in bed with a cast, I had time to think and reflect. I also had time to listen to how my husband was dealing with a busy household, and time to talk with him in the evening about my feelings. I learned I had to speak up and ask for what I wanted (help with kids, help in household), especially in the sensitive area of sexual pleasure. I learned a lot of things.

I learned I was not superwoman, and could not do it all alone.

I learned that nobody else wanted me to be self-sacrificing anyway.

I learned through therapy (after my father passed away and more emotions came up) that I had always felt I wasn't 'enough', not good enough, not pretty enough, etc. And that I overworked myself out of needing to feel worthy. I had a hard time saying no to volunteer jobs for instance, especially if they had a nice title attached like 'coordinator' or 'vice-president'. My self-worth was lower than I imagined. And I was keeping myself too busy to wonder why I felt depressed, stressed and over-extended.

It's a long slow process towards self-honesty, and learning to be true to myself. On the road, I am learning how making myself invulnerable cuts me off from feeling close to people. How controlling others is a technique that used to work for me in my dysfunctional childhood home, but how it doesn't work with my own family now. How pushing myself beyond my comfortable limits makes me end up going over the edge and useless to those who rely on me.

Self-care involves dumping a lot of old baggage that doesn't serve me anymore. Guilt, resentment, anger and stress were making me a very cranky person. That's not the woman I want to be. Menopause has been a gift for me, in that it has forced me to pause and reflect, and dig deep. In that descent into murky waters, I have found some healing. I have begun to accept myself, know my limits better.

I hope you will not wait until something breaks. Heed the warning signs, the tension in your neck and shoulders, the explosive anger and PMS, the extreme fatigue and insomnia, and take action. Slow down. Be kinder to yourself, and that will increase your capacity for kindness to others. If you lose yourself, or your health, you can't help anyone anyway.

One way you can do this is to be mindful of your own body rhythms. See the Women's Wisdom blog (link on the left) for Seven Tips for body guidance.

Where is the deep feminine space?

Rereading my own entries about the masculine and animus on this and wisdomforwomen blog, it strikes me that my dis-ease with myself is really about missing the feminine space, the deep sense of groundedness that comes from being still, alone, either reading or writing or meditating, the best times for me are when I am alone.

I have always been a loner, and a social animal too. Not a complete introvert, but as menopause has gradually acclimatized me to my own nature, I realize I need time alone to be well.

Lately I have been overbusy with some volunteer work that involved lots of computer time, emails and phone calls, deadlines, kind of an HR position. It nourished and fed part of me, because it was a good cause. Helping spread a message of peace in the world. But somewhere in the busyness, I lost my own peace, my own depth or root of stillness. Part of me loves to be busy, to feel important, to have a 'job' to do besides being mom, cook, and laundry person.

The challenge for me is always to find balance: time to write vs time to be 'out there' doing stuff, keeping the wheels in motion.

So I've stepped down from my post, which had turned into a part-time job, timewise. And here I am back on my blog, back with my books, reading The Dance of the Dissident Daughter - which just popped up on my Amazon screen one day as a book I might like to buy. Sue Monk Kidd, the author of The Secret Life of Bees, one of my favourite novels, describes her own journey from daughter of a Christian, patriarchal mind-set to woman on a journey to find the sacred feminine.

All my readings these days tend to be about the need for contact with the deep feminine, silent space. The space of nothing, in my life. Recently I dreamt that I checked myself into a hotel and just slept for a few days.

Fighting off a flu bug, everyone around me is hacking and coughing and losing their voice (even in my Singing Valentine's quartet group). Trying to lay low and beat off the illness that stalks me. I find myself alone, at home, on a very snowy day, and happy to have a day off.

I remind myself, I don't need to get sick to have a day off. It reminds me of the winter I broke my knee skiing, and got to lie in bed for a few weeks. Some times the best moments were just lying there at dusk, watching the sun set in the field behind my house, out the window, and feeling a surge of life energy up the middle of my body, just humming. And I want to be held by that hum, to be surrounded by that comfort and feel connected to my source.

Dizzy with busyness, I stop. I put my feet up. (my kids are teens and away in school all day, so this is allowed, no toddlers pulling at my jeans anymore, saying, pick my up mommy). Menopause. Pausing into stillness, to find the deep source within. The feminine or yin place, the openness to nothing, to emptiness, to stillness.

This is nourishing my soul right now.

Make yourself a short retreat today, or this week. Hibernate with the bears, and return to the source. Rest, retreat and renew, however you can, even if it's while your son or daughter makes a play house around you with blankets. Snuggle down, and in. Read stories, walk in the snow, make snow angels. Be simple.

thanking the universe for this gift,
jenn

Breast Cancer and Self-Care

"Breasts are the physical metaphor for giving and receiving. In ancient times they symbolized nature's abundance and nurturing qualities." Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom

Recently I read an article about breast cancer in La Presse, a Montreal newspaper. One survivor said her top priority now is self-care, taking time for herself, making it a priority to put herself first.

How opposite this is to the messages I received growing up in a Christian household!

It seems to run counter to our very upbringing as women and mothers: taught to serve others and put their needs first, to make sure all is well with everyone else, often sacrificing meals, rest, small pleasures like reading, sewing or singing, to ensure this external 'peace' and wellness is there in a household.

However, it always backfires if your own tank is empty, running low on the fuel of self love and nurturance.

Dr. Christiane Northrup in her book, Women's Bodies Women's Wisdom, has a chapter on Breasts and how to take care of them. Also, some important information about the message behind the physical symptoms.

"Approximately half of all women who go to doctors go because they have some kind of pain in their breasts. " She states that cyclic mastalgia or breast pain that comes and goes depending on the menstrual cycle is usually caused by excess hormones, excess caffeine or stress. It is not a risk factor for breast cancer.

She quotes a colleague who wonders why women have so much breast pain: "Have you noticed that men never complain about pain in their testicals, but that women are always complaining about pain in their breasts and even their ovaries? do you suppose it's because men know that if they complained, someone would want to cut into them?"

Dr. Northrup continues, "If women learned how their inner guidance is advising them through breast symptoms to give more time and energy to themselves, they might begin to appreciate their breasts in a different way."

Breast cancer is a sign that something is out of balance - probably toxins and pesticides contribute, birth control pills and estrogen replacement have been pointed at, our fatty diets don't help, even genetics play a part. Dr. Northrup gives a few case histories about women who made different decisions about treatments, but in the end, she points to the fact that a woman needs to take stock of her life, as well as whatever treatment she undergoes, to also do some inner reflecting, join a support group, and find out where in her life the balance of give and take needs adjusting.

What are your breasts saying to you, today? Don't wait for a major scare to pay attention.

Love them, handle them with care, and listen to their message about self-care.

luv
musemother
October is Breast Cancer month.