Peri-menopause ends. Menopause is a new start.

A little insight into my transition.

Today marks two years since my final menstrual bleed, making it the end of my first year in menopause. As I do with everything significant in my life, I like to reflect on it and ritualise it.

Being a woman I find it important to acknowledge any and every change in cycle and rhythm. Twelve months ago I entered my final phase of a woman’s cyclical life so to me that was a big deal. I spent the weekend of it creating ceremony. I went to the Tea Tree Lakes and bathed in the waters. I stoked a fire and released unfulfilled dreams from my ‘mother’ phase of womanhood. I journaled and wrote a prayer for my future and I even had an afternoon tea for some girlfriends.

And a few weeks later on a visit to Melbourne I gave back some of the last of my menstrual blood (that I’d kept frozen) to the land where I had my very first bleed. It was a touching and emotional ceremony for me, acknowledging the end of one phase and the beginning of another. I was also closing the five year peri-menopause portal I’d just been in.

Many women enter and experience peri-menopause feeling as if they’ve shifted into a new body. Nothing feels familiar and for some it’s as if the world has turned on its head.

The thing is, we are moving into a new iteration of our body and the world has changed. But this is not a negative thing. And it’s important to break it down, starting with our hormones.

Our hormones are so much a part of what makes us ‘us’. And when they change, so do we.

We don’t feel like our self because our (old) self is changing. This is inevitable because we’re actually changing everyday. Our cells today are the not same as they were yesterday and our cells tomorrow won’t be what they were today. And in peri-menopause a whole new dimension is added to this as the hormonal cycle that we’ve been used to for anywhere up to 40 years is going through a 360 degree turnaround.

It’s the acceptance of this change that must come first. Without it, our world might very well crumble.

I admit I first came kicking and screaming to peri-menopause. I wasn’t ready for the change. Not because of fear of the symptoms as such but because of what I wasn’t yet ready to let go of. I loved my cycle, I loved bleeding and what came with it. And I had yet to make full peace with the fact I’d not had children of my own.

So although I experienced some symptoms — the irregular cycles and periods of night sweats and insomnia and skin rashes — my overall physical experience wasn’t a challenging one as I’d come prepared. I knew my nervous system, I knew what I needed to do to manage the transition and I did.

But the emotional portal was huge for me and I needed the entire five years of it. I call it a gift and there are times when I miss the energy of being in that liminal phase.

Portals are important as they provide an opening that doesn’t happen at other times of our lives. Portals for women include puberty, pregnancy, post-partum and peri-menopause. Note the p’s!

They may not be comfortable, but that doesn’t make them less important or valuable. Actually, in my experience the discomfort makes it even more so. How we deal with the portal gives us another step forward in our own personal evolution.

However, coming out the other side now, I can confidently say that although peri-menopause may have felt like a rollercoaster ride with it ups and downs as the hormones did their thing, menopause is much different. Or at least in my experience it is. There is a sense of calm, peace and deep knowing as I settle into my new rhythm.

Of course this doesn’t mean that things have not changed and there is some getting used to and adaptations to make to my lifestyle and routine, but that doesn’t take away from an inner sense of knowing I’m in the right place at the right phase and that there is nothing wrong with where I am now.

Here are a few things this transition phase has shown me:

• Anything we’re deep in the midst of tends to feel all consuming. There is nothing but that moment. But then that moment shifts. And we enter another one and another one. Nothing in peri-menopause stayed stagnant.

• A new aspect of my creativity has unleashed her-self. Although I can no longer birth a child, my energy around creativity is still very present. I’ve also returned to some of my childhood interests, especially around arts. There is a desire to be in my body and use my sensory organs in a new way, including hand-clay making and singing.

• The desire to be of service has grown. I may not be a bleeding woman anymore but my cycle lives on through the cycles of other women and I’m committed to making that a more fulfilling experience for women.

• I’ve learnt to be more aware of the subtleties of my body. Yes, I’ve noticed the diminishing estrogen and progesterone levels, which means I’ve had to make some adjustments to my life or rather switch things up. But this isn’t as hard as I once believed. For example as estrogen is an anabolic hormone, meaning it is building and therefore building of muscle, one of the things that definitely has changed is my need for resistance training. So in actuality I’ve become stronger through this phase because there was a need to focus on this part of my wellbeing.

I plan to share more of these kind of insights in further posts and also will be offering workshops and mentoring sessions in 2024. Please stay connected if this is an area impacting you right now.

My intention is not to deny, bypass, trivialise or ridicule menopause. It is not a pathology, a disease or a problem.

Rather my intention is to spread the awareness that peri-menopause is yet another portal of transition in a woman’s life and menopause yet another phase of womanhood.

To embrace all of who we are as women and the feminine principle we need to acknowledge this. No amount of protesting, feminist conferences or boardroom positions will shift the perception of women until we learn to embrace and own the bodies we were born into. I invite you to join me.

We don’t become less feminine as we move into our menopausal years, we actually become more so because we get to experience deeper aspects of her.

For those who are on the cusp of this time or are deep within it, I write this to say — go there, go there as much as you can, get help where needed, but try not to miss out on an integral part of what it means to be a woman.

With love,

Sharon