To say that it seemed like this show was aimed straight at me was an understatement. And while I was intrigued, I was also stunned. Why didn’t I know this? Why did I have to learn about it from a TV talk show? How could it be that I was in the middle of a pretty profound biological stage of life that I clearly knew nothing about?
So while I sat watching the program, trying to take in the science of it all, the one thing that Dr. Northrup mentioned that took most of my attention was the metaphysical aspects of midlife.
She said something along the lines of “Anything from your past that you haven’t dealt with will absolutely make itself known during this time.”
For me this was what Oprah would call an “A ha” moment. I live in Australia and down here, they like to say, “the penny dropped.” I thought deeply about Dr. Northrup’s words, and it didn’t take long for me to get that there was a reason for the anger and the edge I’d been feeling.
It was that “purpose” thing.
That belief in myself that I had pushed aside now was knocking on my door, letting me know that it was time for me to make some changes. It was time to face the hard cold facts that the career I was devoting all my time and energy to was not going to give me what I needed and that now was the time to start paying attention to that.
But where to start?
Where do you begin when you have to make a really crazy change? And I say crazy because how nuts does “ I want to find my purpose,” sound? To me, getting close to 50, wanting to find my purpose not only felt crazy, it felt scary.
Why scary?
Well I realized that I was in unknown territory. No one had warned me about this time in life and how it brought up intense feelings. My friends who were about the same age didn’t talk about it. My sisters didn’t talk about it. My mother certainly never spoke about her experience with perimenopause.
For me, the mere knowledge that I was going through a stage of life that I knew nothing about but could see that I really needed to get a handle on was a confronting time for me. It was a wake up call. What was happening to me at this time is what I’ll share with you later in a chapter called Awareness. It’s the first step towards making lasting change at midlife.
The first thing that I did with the awareness that I was in the middle of perimenopause was to get knowledged up. I read Dr. Northrup’s books and everything else she created (and you should too, visit her site at www.drnorthrup.com). I was absolutely intrigued by the key insight she had shared on the Oprah Show and that was that any issue, be it physical, psychological or metaphysical that hasn’t been dealt in the past, would really come to the surface at midlife. That fascinated me. Little did I know that this impact would actually result in a passion to help empower women at midlife and to show them all the possibilities. In going through this challenging time and by getting to the heart of what my body was trying to tell me, I had stumbled upon the elusive purpose I had been so desperate to find.
And as I began to dig for information about perimenopause, I discovered this was a far more complex stage of life than I first thought, affecting more women than I could ever have imagined. I began confiding in my close circle and hearing their stories. I spoke about it with strangers. As I listened, it was like some strange veil was being lifted and I began to realize that my big thing, the dilemma of finding my purpose was just the tip of an iceberg of issues that surfaced for women at midlife.
Here were some of the things that I learned:
Relationship Issues - Divorce rates soar after 50. In fact, it’s a phenomenon that’s been given its own name, “Gray Divorce”. And forget the cliché image of men with toupees buying red convertibles and ditching their wives for their 20 something secretaries. The latest statistics reveal that women are the primary instigators of divorce. Something clearly was happening that was causing women to leave their marriages or to consider it. And this got me noticing that relationships on a whole were at a tipping point for many women at this age, not just the married ones. For my single family members and friends in their late 40s, this was a time of having to come to terms with dating people with “baggage” and that finding and keeping relationships at midlife had a new level of complications.
Empty Nest Syndrome - Women who had devoted their whole lives to being mothers were now starting to feel lost in their surroundings as their kids were growing up and gaining independence. It’s no wonder that full time mothers get nervous about the future because where empty nest used to mean a time that coincided with retirement, it now means having almost a whole other lifetime to live. And that means trying to work out what to do with that time. What do you do when you think that all you know is being a mother? What do you do when you feel like you don’t have the skills or the confidence to get a job?
I’m Sick of Being A Mother Syndrome - Maybe it is has to do with age and 20ish years of being a mother and all the traditional things that go along with it, but I can count myself as one of those who was over having to continue a caretaking role for my young adult kids who were still at home. We all know that times are different and many kids are leaving the nest later than our generation but for me this meant that I felt in a position where I still had to do the mom thing and it left me, and the many women I spoke to, resentful.
Fertility Reality Check – On the flipside, single women I knew, who had devoted their whole adult lives to building successful careers were having to confront the biological realities of having children later in life or not having children at all. Was this a dream that they could still hold on to? While trying to work out the ifs, hows and whens of having a baby while the clock was ticking, the idea of leaving or reducing hours at work so they could experience life balance was often too overwhelming to think about.
Encounters with the Fragility of Life – After 40, we begin to confront our mortality whether it’s through experiences with friends, loved ones, family pets or ourselves. Many of us are now having to consider caring in some way for elderly parents whether it was part of the plan or not. Moving through the realities of loss and grieving while we go through the physical process of perimenopause often results in a battle to stay optimistic and emotionally grounded.
Clueless on Health – Ask any woman at midlife on how her hormone levels are and chances are you’re going to get a blank stare. One of the most frustrating things about going through perimenopause is that there is no clear and concrete roadmap for what we’re supposed to do to look after ourselves. Think about it. When we’re pregnant, we know to take our folic acid supplements and to cut out alcohol or coffee and to massage our bellies with oil and to go to pre-natal classes. There’s a general method to it all regardless of how different we are. But midlife feels like a do-it-yourself process. There are no obvious rules of how to move through it. We have to actively and radically become our own health advocates. A healthy perimenopause is all about trial and error and requires a personal diligence. Lack of knowledge can set us up for a host of problems. If we’re not careful, we can fall into a habit of self-medicating with alcohol or antidepressants as coping mechanisms to ease anxiety or help us sleep. Lack of knowledge can keep us from getting a handle on weight and skin changes. Without a clear idea of what’s going on with our bodies, it can almost feel like they’re turning on us.
Feeling Invisible – From very early on, we’ve been socialized to consider that the way we look and how attractive we are to others measures our value as women. While we’ve also been conditioned to connect beauty with youth, beauty as we age is something most of us definitely haven’t been taught to see or to look for in others. For women who’ve depended on their looks to provide self worth, the physical changes of midlife, can feel very confronting.
These were just some of the midlife choices and challenges that I found were on the minds of women over 40. Whether core