Emotions are part of the process.
It is written, someplace in a book by Suzanne Somers or Christiane Northrup, or maybe it’s in the Akashic Records. Unresolved emotions flare up in middle age with great intensity, particularly during menopause. If you haven’t read about it, you can certainly see it in “Sex and the City 2,” when one of the girls becomes overwhelmed with her 52-year-old menopausal symptoms. Without giving away the story, the frequent rawness of menopause is brilliantly portrayed by the incredible and colorful character, Samantha. As always, she enacts what many women have wanted to express at some point or another yet have been reluctant to expose that level of angst and urgency in themselves until the gift of uncensored spontaneity was offered up during menopause.
Much like a long Saturn Return, menopause humbles us by reflecting to us what society has held true for much of the known time line: our mortality and our limitations. It forces us to acknowledge and create boundaries; we even become more effective and reactive. We begin to consciously excavate emotions we thought had long since disappeared; and if we don’t do this consciously, it comes up anyway. Not everyone experiences this emotional phenomenon–maybe women who choose HRT; women who aren’t in a state of expanded awareness, soul completion and heart opening; women in total control, or women who were born before the baby boom era–so yes, there may be a concentration of these a-symptomatic women who don’t have emotional symptoms.
And, they must be living on Mars.
On the other side of things, there are also very tender, loving and powerfully vulnerable states of being that well-up during this cycle of life. It’s a time of heart opening and self-acceptance, a time to learn about unconditional compassion as opposed to the ungrounded and spun-out sensations of the overly sweet and the caretakers of others.
Over the last several years, I’ve spent some time polling and interviewing women about menopause, and according to that pack of facts, one thing is clear, many women experience emotional surges and heat surges simultaneously. The only way to live through a dance with one of these beasts is to breathe, open shirt collars, drop any attachment to image, and drum up the courage to fully expose our brightness and the shadowy side of ourselves.
I am one of those women.
Some say old, stagnant feelings are expressed through the heat as it flushes upward and outward. Some say the heat itself creates the fiery emotions of anger, frustration, rage and irritability. Some say they are excited about being outspoken and are simply less tolerant to inanities and social mores. Others take no prisoners and feel the communication swords they carry not only weed out those who aren’t actively seeking transformation and personal truth, they quickly cut off any ties and energy drains with people who want a free ride. No matter what the source, or causes and effects, it certainly makes sense that emotions and actions formerly relegated to basement living now want to come up for a bit of sunshine, and at times rear their ugly heads when everyone in the world is watching.
If you are currently flying under radar or are loathe to expose any part of your secret self, you might want to turn back the clock, re-entering as a man or a reptile this time around. You also could become a hermit, or, you could just sit on your virtual veranda all afternoon fanning and sipping wine disguised as mint julep tea, happy you weren’t born in the deep South before 1860.
Women in menopause, at least a large percentage of the 6 million U.S. baby boomer women who are now in menopause, were raised with some built-in guidelines for acceptable female behavior and femininity. More important, there were very clear social rules of acceptance, things you do, and things you don’t do. Standing in a market, surrounded by men, yelling and stripping off your clothes while in a panic of hot flashing would have been on the “don’t” list 10 years ago; now, who knows, it might be respectfully applauded.
Are any of these circumstances familiar?
1. Children were to be seen and not heard, and girls were made of “…everything nice.”
2. We were encouraged by our mothers to never go out unless we looked good and we definitely had to be good. Many of our Mom’s stayed at home, wore pearls, tight-waisted skirts or dresses, corseted upper bodices, and heels all day long. My Mom posted a label on the refrigerator; “think thin,” it said.
3. At the onset of our menstrual cycles we began to keep everything a secret, especially hiding our new status from our Fathers and brothers. If we were lucky enough to have a conversation with an elder about this part of womanhood, we weren’t quite as surprised when it showed up that first time. Usually it was very embarrassing to be a young girl whose life suddenly wound out of control becoming bloodied with the inner war of puberty.
4. When we were young, we focused on what was most important: to be sexy and acceptable to men. Some of us even went away to college just to meet a man, or 20.
5. We were dismissed right along with our emotions as non-human and often untouchable, especially when we had menstrual symptoms. Messiness and rogue emotions were at the top of the list.
6. As we started working, being a woman was still second to men and we fought to obtain higher paying jobs. Once we got those jobs, we suppressed our feminine sides to play in the male paradigm. What else is suppressed within that basket of masculinity?
7. Only victim states were acceptable and notable. We often used this state, sandwiched between tears, to manipulate our circumstances.
8. Menopause was never discussed and our Mothers often said they didn’t notice anything unusual nor did they have any symptoms. At least they didn’t want to share these things with us, creating yet another secret for the lineage bearers to keep.
This is our foundation, for the most part, and it is our life’s journey, our soul mission to clear this piece of our lineage.
Part Two coming soon.
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