Be your most authentic YOU

My interpretation of giving less f#@ks

You’ve probably heard a lot of women say that one of the things that comes with menopause is a ‘give less fucks’ attitude.

To be honest, when I first heard this, I kind of shook my head. It didn’t really land for me.

Because I did still care. I gave a fuck. I give a fuck. Actually, maybe I even care more.

However I persisted in my reflection of this statement and have come to my own interpretation of it.

For me it doesn’t mean I become rude or walk around telling people what to do or not to do, nor do I not care about someone’s engagement with me.

Rather it means I give less fucks about all the stories I’ve told myself about myself, on repeat, for decades. I guess I’ve stopped obsessing over perfection and aiming to be something I’m not.

This isn’t a simple transformation and in many ways is life-long; I don’t think I’m finished yet. But I definitely believe this is a key part of the peri-menopause portal. All the things we let go of in preparation for entering and claiming our third phase of a woman’s life cycle. With every last bleed, another layer can be shed.

A wise mentor said to me recently that women actually have a distinct advantage over men in ageing. I know, that’s not what we’re typically told, but once again it all depends on the lens you see it through.

Linear by nature, men’s hormones just go on a decline, whereas for us cyclical beings we go through a real shake-up. This spin through the washing machine brings us to a new place, a starting again of sorts and this is probably why it’s known as a ‘second spring’ in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

During my peri-menopausal years I recall reading a piece written by an Ayurvedic practitioner talking about how ageing well involves removing old patterns of behaviour and enabling the truth of who we are to come out.

This is not just a mental exercise, it’s about going into the body and releasing what’s there at a cellular level, which is something peri-menopause helps us to do and our prior years of bleeding give us practice in. It’s also why I centred on embodiment practices during this phase.

In my experience, pain and discomfort has been the greatest way of showing me what needs to release. So the pain and discomfort that may occur during this portal is in itself an opening to change.

It is also the clearest path to seeing which parts of ourselves we’ve turned our backs on. What do we need to pick up? What do we need to reclaim?

Peri-menopause for me was more of an emotional letting go than a physical struggle. But I did have some physiological challenges I grappled with. The way my body seemed to be changing on the surface; the difference in skin texture, plumpness, muscle tone as a result of fluctuating hormones. The new way my mind was operating; the drop in estrogen contesting what was familiar. The declining progesterone and temporary insomnia showing that the way I managed my stress was even more crucial now.

For me, knowing who I am, understanding my nervous system kinks, the things that set me off and the things that support, was part of the solution.

It was a chance to take a deep dive into this being called Sharon Sztar and what makes her function best and what disrupts this functioning — what do I need to nourish and nurture me and what hijacks my energy. In some ways I had a head-start as I’d gone through something similar during my chronic fatigue years, but it went to a whole new level during peri-menopause and since.

The theme that has been ever-present for me over the last few years of this transition is what I refer to as ‘being my fullest expression’.

What does it mean to be all of me? To not only own it but embrace it.

It means I walk around connected to the essence of who I am and who I came to express in this lifetime.

I stop apologising for what I haven’t done or got. Or for my nuances, desires, yearnings. Aka, I stop giving a fuck!

I embrace some of the parts of me that at times feel contradictory. My depth and my playfulness. My light and my dark. My human messiness and my inner knowing. My natural earth woman and the one who has a penchant for fashion. My gratitude for life and my yearning for more. And so on…

I sense this enquiry intersects nicely with the visibility discussion around ageing.

What truly makes us visible?

What truly makes someone stop and say, ‘wow, I want to know that person’?

Yes, there is a surface component level of the wow, but that’s fleeting, that doesn’t last.

Sustainability is our inner light, which involves owning all of who we are, so our light can radiate. Otherwise in the disowning we block it, we prevent its ability to shine through the dark. It’s kind of like turning the light switch off and keeping it off.

Vitality can decrease as we age, however when we are powerful within ourselves we won’t barter energy with anyone. So I sense this not give a fuck thing comes naturally in menopause as we know we need to do it for our protection and survival.

I’ll be holding some workshops mid-year around this. My story of the transition and how I moved through it in a not-so typical manner.

With love

Sharon