Menopause and Sex

"We are all born sexual beings, from the moment we are born till the day we die. Whether or not we are in a sexual relationship with another person, we can feel good in our bodies, appreciate sensual pleasures, and learn what excites us sexually. Our sexuality has the potential to be a powerful and positive force in our lives, filling us with energy and deepening our most intimate connections."

- Our Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era

There are million and one ways to find pleasure as a menopausal or peri-menopausal woman. Even if you think there is nothing left of your libido, don't give up on yourself. Sex is one of the few pleasures that doesn't make you fat or raise your cholesterol, so you'd think more women would indulge.

Part of low libido could be from fatigue, from overwork, from not wanting to give into one more demand on our fragile ecosystem. I think women are used to 'putting out' as they call it, instead of being able to receive.

One day on Oprah 2 years ago, I heard Dr. Christiane Nortrhup talk about how we can revisualize our whole bodies as an erogenous zone, not just the genitalia. It takes some imagination, some dream time, but you can use whatever props or visual aids you need to help you feel excited again about sex. Sometimes, what a woman needs is some self-loving, and for some of us, an extra aid to achieve that goal.

If you are also interested in the environment, here is a website with some eco-friendly sex toys:www.ecosex.ca . which I found on the redtent sisters website.www.redtentsisters.com

Let's hear it for menopause

This excerpt is from the Power of Aging an article about 80 year old activist Betty Krawczyk.

"Grandmothers have long played an important role in sustaining life and nurturing their families and the community at large, Betty says.
"The human female is the only animal to live so long after the reproductive organs shut down," she says, adding that according to anthropologists, the role of providing food for the clan often fell to older women when the traditional male 'hunter' could not find enough.
"Menopause allowed older women to give back to the community by allowing them to focus not on reproducing, but nurturing," Betty says. In fact, when looking at human evolution, menopause was the gift "nature gave to the human species that enabled our species to multiply and spread out over the globe."
It is this "ancient connection between old and young" and the tradition of elder leadership that Betty says more older people need to embrace. "Elders and grandmothers in particular are way too meek and mild," she says, adding that to harness the power born of experience, more older people need to insist on an important leadership role.

Betty Krawczyk is the author of Clallyoquot: The Sound of my Heart and Lock Me Up or Let Me Go.

Excerpt from an interview with Betty:

Elders and grandmothers in particular are way too meek and mild. We are a huge population and we should go straight for the sources of power, not to become co-managers of a monstrous unmanageable environmental and economic mess, but to strike out for new territory in refusing to accept the corporate culture as an ideal way to live.
Practically speaking, running for office, getting behind progressive moves that promises to make children a priority, that promises to actually bring forth measures to preserve the environment before every last tree is cut, every last fish caught, every bit of farm land developed, etc., grandmothers know what needs to be done if our life support systems are to be preserved and we should be busy about doing them.

Read the whole article at:
http://50plus.com/Lifestyle/BrowseAllArticles/index.cfm?t_offset=2&documentID=21635

Menopause the Musical

If you are anywhere in your forties and wondering what menopause is about, go see Menopause the Musical.
It is hilarious.  Using songs from the 60's and 70's, the 4 women characters act, sing and dance their way through several floors of Bloomingdale's while consoling themselves and each other about hot flashes, memory loss, empowerment, mothers who still see them as children even though they have grown children of their own, and a host of other funny scenarios.

I laughed out loud a lot! and so did the theatre full of women - some young, some middle-aged, some accompanied by men (ok about 12 men in the whole theatre, I counted).

It feels good to laugh at the uproar The change causes in women's lives. Enjoy!

jenn/musemother

Great articles on menopause

One of the great advantages to the web and to this blog is the speed with which we can discover or uncover new information.

I've been thinking about rewriting the front section of the Tao of Turning 50, a manual for peri-menopause, but busy in the car doing errands all morning.  Just got home and my sister had left me an email with a website link from a wholistic pharmacist in Calgary, friend of hers, and someone who writes about menopause with great intelligence and scientific knowledge.

Here's the link: to RoseMarie Pierce's article on menopause:
http://www.sunstreams.ca/023_MenopausalYea.html

and there are some wonderful articles about PMS and the hormonal imbalances that contribute to it.
Most of us think we need estrogen, and she points out that estrogen dominance and low progesterone also are culprits of PMS and menopausal symptoms.

thanks for sharing, Sue
always on the look-out for wise women input,

Jenn/musemother

Honour the Feminine Quest

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

Or is this a journey you are embarking on, a deeper phase to your woman's journey, a developing and continuing and an unknowing. It feels to me like 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 mnnths so you forget about it.  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 at night and even Chamomile tea or hot milk doesn't help the little gerbil on its cage running all night long in your brain to calm down.

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 were 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.

A 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.  The male hero story describes the quest of the masculine, but where are the stories of the feminine quest?

There are many 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. 

Winter Rest in Midlife

Snow hastens to reach ground
Up-gusts blow sideways
Water is harsh, moving to shore in a hurry
Waves bump rocks over the side and onto grass
Backyard view almost obscured by white
wind and shades of grey
island’s shoreline obliterated by violent tempest.

we are safe inside the window warm and heated
we are on solid ground watching white caps
winter showed up to day grizzly beard and big boots
white hair scraggled and long
not father Christmas with jolly belly and smiles
but burly lumberjack all bluster and blizzard
it is best to be inside, not venture out
it is wiser by far to stay put, drink chai from the red Chinese pot
read the I Ching for aphorisms
throw the coins and divine the future
“It will snow today, tomorrow and the next day” (says the
weatherman) so hunker down in the bedside bunker
with your little dog on your lap and the cats spread like living fur coats
ease the angst in the stomach about the list of things
take the day off
to dream and be remiss
you have an excuse to be late
to not return those library books
to miss an appointment
to stay home in bed and do nothing but read a novel

You have been blessed
with a snow day of rest.

Finding Sanctuary and Serenity in Mid-Life

Here in this room I have created a sancturary and this is what I want - nothing on my list of goals to achieve, nothing on my to do list or to to buy list. Just blessed peace, for a moment, in which to find a still point, a place to let go of thinking, and always running the show.

I have built this sanctuary, this house on the edge of the lake, to have somewhere to dream in, to find whatever it is I need. I do not feel the urge to leave anymore, that mid-life restlessness has been removed. I do not feel the urge to flee myself or keep busy constantly. I even begin to feel joy in the kitchen, in the center of the house, in receiving guests to celebrate the new year with us.

Up until now, what I enjoyed doing most was uncovering new information then disseminating it. Making the unknown known (which was whispered to me during a Soul Purpose exercise at the Writer's Spa in Taos in 2006).

I find healing in Bija's chants, in soothing yoga classes, in lying down on my bedroom rug to do yoga stretches, a vibration that rocks the soul. No need for talking, just being breathed.

There seems no end to war and vengeance in the outside world, but here in my sancturary, I have glimpses of surrender, of letting go and letting fate take its course.

I no longer know what I want to do. What does a know it all do when she no longer knows, I ask myself. Breathe, relax, iron and do laundry. Buy groceries and prepare my class for next week, prepare a mini-retreat for myself on this snowy day. Reconnect with myself through my journal, find my inner self and record it here.

High on the list of pleasure filling activities are music and singing.
I feel strong when I get good feedback about my singing. I feel strong when I help other people feel better about themselves. I feel strong when I am quiet and alone listening to soothing music. I feel strong when I do yoga. I feel strong when I am not rushed and can go at my own pace.

I feel the urge to surrender the direction of my life to an inner current, my heart wants to lead the dance, and my mind is terrible at following the heart's lead. I put my heart's foot first, trust in the unknown. I have strengths in intuition, to guide me if I trust it.

I know what I know. Information comes to me from within.
Follow up on that insight, impulse.

Shut down the internet/computer/emails and reliance on outside information, more often.
Rely more on the whispered truths, subtle influence of the god/ess within, higher power, creative team, guidance from within, pilot light turned on.

In stormy times, seek the center.

Keep the foundation strong by nourishing self-love, water the root. Find the eye of the storm in 'I'ness.

The fear I have that sometimes prevents me from hanging out in this peaceful place is that I will turn into mush if I do nothing, if I explore with curiosity this place of acceptance and waiting for an impulse from within.

This morning I felt so tired of moving from someone else's impulse, energy and always responding as if I have to, as if I am a puppet whose strings are pulled by someone else. I felt resistance to moving this way anymore. I feel how passive I have been, how disconnected from my own passion.

I am at a crossroads, here in the heart and hearth of my new home. I don't want to go out. I don't want to rely on outside sources to fill me with information and inspiration, all the while hungry for my own truth.

Where does my candle get lit from, which fire? It's a new feeling, to feel blank, without direction, with no moral code or order to guide me. and to be ok with it. This is a new acceptance, to stop before heading out in the snowfilled blizzard without compass or direction.

In my mind I am in a snowblind place. But the heart feels the sun's pull, its direction and asks me to be patient. Trust that I have everything I need. Don't let self-doubt sabotage me as I experiment with not knowing how it will all turn out.

Written January 13, 2009.