So, I’m a fifty year old woman who is filled with a shopping cart full of emotions.  I feel angry, disappointed in my own body, sorrowful of the things about myself that I have lost, regretful that my body no longer will create life, mourning daily for the last attempt I made at bringing another child into this world, only to lose her.  I feel lost.  I feel abandoned by my own existence.  Who do I blame?  No one.  Time.  I guess I could blame time, but it doesn’t erase what is happening in the secret spaces of my mind and body.

 The only thing that makes sense to me is to look at the new journey as the Native American Indian women do.  It is a time of respect.  It is a time of reflection.  It is a time of honoring all that has been accomplished before.  Maybe there is no need any longer for the “me” I was, only the “me” that is now developing.  Maybe everything else in my fifty years of life has prepared me for this new creature that I am evolving into.  I have done all the things that were right and noble and causes of the heart.  I have raised an outstanding son, I have been a good wife.  I have been a hard worker.  I have outlived my parents and made sure I didn’t take the turns in life that they did that eventually cost them their lives.  I have done all that.....what do I do now?

Well, I suppose listening to myself for the first time would be as good a place as any to begin.  Meeting with other women who are walking this same twisted path isn’t the answer.  It only reinforces the fact that all of the players in this menopausal game are wearing the same uniforms.  I don’t want their support.  I don’t want to hear their stories because they are the same as mine.  It only serves to remind me that instead of just myself feeling trapped in this uncontrollable situation alone, that they are millions of women flailing around, feeling as inside-out as I do.  No, I don’t want a support group.  That may have worked in the sixties, but it doesn’t fit me well in the year 2001.

 The answer I have chosen may not be the answer for anyone else.  What I have decided is to allow myself to feel the feelings I am feeling.  I allow myself to feel angry on those days that I feel anger.  I allow myself to feel depressed on those days when I feel deflated.  I allow myself to feel lost on those days when I seem to have no direction whatsoever.  I allow myself to question why all this is happening to me because if the day were to come that I ever stopped asking why and how I can make it better, will be my last day in this life.  I allow myself to be selfish and let those around me know when I must be alone.  I allow myself to be honest with those around me and instead of making excuses for the silly, mindless things I say and do, I tell them it’s just a “menopausal moment” and I have chosen to wear that as a badge of courage instead of an excuse for doing something wrong.

 I resent Western medicine for neglecting to tell women collectively, all the facts.  It’s supposed to suffice having a beautiful actress invade my television and tell me that she’s been taking HRT’s for years now and never felt better.  What we as women forget all too easily is that SHE IS PAID TO SAY THAT!  Her skin is flawless and youthful because she spent 30 minutes with a makeup artist before she ever stepped in front of the cameras.  I resent my FEMALE DOCTOR who has not even reached the age of 30 telling me that she “understands how I feel”.  The hell she does.  Just wait.  Her turn will come.  I resent the fact that menopause is the unspoken ailment.  The world as a whole could care less.  Well, women have gone through it for years, and they will continue to go through it.  Yes, unmistakingly that is true.  But, it doesn’t mean we have to like it.

 The truth that seldom reveals itself and stays hidden in the shadows, is something I didn’t learn from my doctor.  They were things I learned by taking control of my own destiny and reading about.  How about this for a basic medically proven fact....no woman should remain on HRT medications for more than 13 months because after that amount of time the risk of getting a number of different types of cancer increases at an alarming rate.  after that 13 month period.  Another little known fact is that after 13 months of exposure to these “miracles of modern medicine” they not only lose their effectiveness, but they begin to reverse the effects and actually CAUSE the symptoms you took them for in the first place to come back even stronger, with an even tougher vengeance.  But, you see, once your doctor writes the prescriptions for you, that’s as far as their personal responsibility goes. 

 The remedy for the rage that women feel inside during menopause is our old “best friend” and “trusty female companion”...valium or prozac.  Sure, it will make the days all melt one into the other, and you won’t care so much that you have lost all control over your body and most of your mind, but is being a zombie the answer?  I think not.  Why doesn’t the medical world give woman more credit than that?  We don’t want to be “quieted down”, we want to understand.  We don’t want to be silenced by drugs, we want answers.  Real answers.  What can we expect?  How long is this going to last?  What do I do about it that won’t cause me to grow long thick black hair on the bottoms of my feet and cause me to want to become a wrestler in my spare time?  What about my feelings...tell me which ones are real and which ones are caused from the lack of the hormones that are no longer produced in my body.  Are all of these feelings I’m having going to be with me for the rest of my life?  Is there anyway to regain my sexuality without being in a drug-induced state? 

 continued.....