I was asked to contribute my reflections on being female (Period to Post-Menopausal) for a book a friend is working on right now; she offered specific questions and I answered very candidly...this is risky business, but good memoir exposing practice, so here goes nothing:
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Howdy,
I'm glad you're working on this topic, as I've been discussing it amongst my women friends this summer; the super power of becoming simultaneously invisible and fearlessly present or "seen" as a post-menopausal mid-fifties female!
My periods started when I was 12 at the top of the Empire State Building! (No joke). They continued in cycle with the moon, without fail, until my two pregnancies. Throughout my teens and twenties, I had terribly painful and heavy periods, especially as a teenager. The only thing that helped them was exercise; particularly running, swimming, hiking or rowing. I never took the pill (as many friends did to modulate the flow) until I started menopause. I was a diaphragm girl. Bloating in my belly was always noticeable to those who knew me well, too. Tight waist band, all else fine, and tired (I now think as a non-meat eater from 17-27 it may have been lack of iron that made me so wiped out). Started Anti-depressants at 28, and that seemed to help, too (although sex-drive was driven down).
My feelings about becoming a woman and starting my period were very strong. At 10 I started to develop breasts and was told to "not take off my shirt" in the summers anymore. First indication that this "growing up" was not all it was cut out to be as a girl (1972- height of be who you want to be, yet, not really). I was mortified by having my period start during a trip to a family friends apartment in NYC and having it start at the top of the Empire State Building! The family friend's apartment was pure white; shag carpet, baby Grand, matching sofa set...total nightmare. Then my stepfather, who was not Jewish and was a practicing psychiatrist in Cambridge, upon hearing the news slapped me hard across the face and said, "Now you're a woman", and explained it away by stating that it was a Jewish tradition?!? My mother and her college roommate were in as much shock as were my older and younger sisters!
Married at 34 and then pregnancies. My first child was born when I was 35, the second at 38. I breastfed each child, girl then boy, for 14+- months. I had to eat a lot of meat to stay balanced for both pregnancies and during breastfeeding. While weaning my son, I was wondering why I was still getting so hot at night, since I was no longer producing the gallons of milk that kept my furnace temps up. I would wake up from this hot wave of energy in a puddle of sweat. I was 39, almost 40, and what I thought was an exceedingly long baby-brain and a weakened physical grip at times, slowly struck me as the on-ramp of menopause.
For the first time in menstrual life my cycles were berserk. The Moon and I got divorced. This was a huge personal loss, as I felt like a human animal being connected to the moon, and like I was related in some way to the sea, which is a great love of mine.
I felt stripped of that connection by these arbitrary gushes that would be heavy and last not 5-6 days, but up to 2 weeks, followed by a week off and then geyser action again. Not to mention that I had just moved from San Francisco to the suburbs of Boston, while career changing by attending Graduate School, working in a new field, having my kids enter school and my marriage falling apart. I often describe these years as "Adolescents in Reverse".
Hormones. To take or not to take; that was the question. It seems that when it comes to our ever longer lives and finally realizing that women and men are different animals, and need to be researched as such, the jury is still out! It was definitely in full debate 14 years ago, as I muddled through ahead of my peers (early with getting my period - feeling like an ugly ducking, and early to lose it- feeling at first like an ugly duckling and now like an empowered critter, more like the one I was before I was 10)! My solution was to take The Pill, a low-dose one. So for the first time in my life, when I was dwindling in both my ability to become pregnant and to be desired by my husband, I was taking The Pill (again, kind of like a teenage girl coming into her powers, and not sure yet how or when to use them). Adolescents in Reverse...
Your question of Haunting, sounds like a different framing of how I think of it as the Reversal. I don't feel like I'm being haunted by a self I no longer am, as much as I'm finally able to return to the person I always have been.
I feel like I can finally handle the powers of being female on my own terms. I've always been "untraditional"; didn't go straight to college, did male jobs (cabinetmaking, boatbuilding, salvage diving, reporting), it wasn't until after college and Radcliffe Publishing Course that I started working in female dominated fields (Publishing and Teaching). Even then I started my own Literary agency and was told I was intimidating on dates in NYC and SF in my 20's & 30's. I always felt like the same nature-loving, curious minded, adventurous girl who loved to run through the woods and go body surfing, but society and males in particular, saw me as "intimidating" or "brave" (more from females).
This last decade (I'm now 54) has been a tough yet rewarding. Like a teenager going through a growth spurt, I now teach juniors and seniors in HS, I thought I was going crazy for a while. In your 40's you don't expect to become unfamiliar with your own body and mind , especially after enduring two safe and natural pregnancies (during which I was off Anti-depressants for the duration and the breastfeeding). That same decade I started doing Triathlons, Marathon Swimming and Obstacle Racing. Yet my mind, like it had been during PMS as a teenager, was most clear after exercise and the most muddled the farther away from an exercise or yoga session I became. Getting a dog was a big boost. Much like a teenager joining a team or sport and having to manage their time and health better, a dog did the same for me regarding knowing that no matter what I was doing, I'd go for 2 walks in the woods each day. Shrinrin-yoku is the Japanese word for "forest bathing." It became popular in the 80's as a mental health and healing philosophy. When I first heard it a few years ago, I realized that I was going back to my girlhood with the dog. During my parent's divorce and pre-pubescent years , my favorite pastime was to hike in woods with my dog. It calmed me and gave me a clarity that later (and earlier) only came with REM sleep or exertion.
As a teenage girl and young woman, I both commanded a great deal of male attention, craved a great deal of male attention, and didn't manage it very well most of the time. I both didn't like being "so visible and available" to the male gaze (streets, subways and such) and wanted desperately to be "seen". The problem was I morphing so fast intellectually and geographically, that the physical and emotional me where often at odds. Thus the "me" that was "seen" was as often a reflection of what I wanted to project as much as who I was, making most relationship foundations fragile from the start.
When I started college in the early 80s, at the height of androgyny being in vogue, I actually wrote a short story entitled, "Life in the Median". It was Metamorphosis meets Middlesex! In my mind it was a Romantic (in the sense of Mary Shelly being a Romantic) tale of what it would be like to just experience the world through your character and spirit, not a gender. The protagonist goes to bed as a man and wakes up discovering he's become "sexless" in the shower. Now we have so many pronouns (Your, It) that didn't exist then, but I've always had "fluid" friends and a great empathy for human animals (all animals actually, but that's a different story).
I think girlhood and post-menopausalhood are quiet on the mind, body and spirit. Regarding your questions about sex, I'll be as candid as I am comfortable in this moment:
Girlhood: Always curious from a young age to explore my own body and those of my friends/family. Learned very young about masturbation (pre-double digits) and was explored (with invitation on the one hand and with trepidation/out of control on the other) by a girl friend (invited) and older neighbor boy (scared).
Teenager: Too much, too soon. Enjoyed and then depressed, as there was often no real relationship connected to the acts, so I was left to feel like a hollow shell.
20's-30's: Came into my powers; was an adventurous and "sex-positive" person; AIDs and STD's entered my lexicon, yet became committed emotionally as soon as I became sexually connected. It's who I am and it was still too soon at times.
Menopausal (40-46) & Post-Menopausal (47-beyond): Painful during the Reverse. Needed to figure out how to get my mojo on (especially with no hormones AND Anti-depressants). Made me feel undesirable and "dried up". My husband left the marriage in that department, before I could even "test drive" the solution for the Reverse. Interestingly, I've been divorced for 4 years and a year ago I started dating a terrific man who "sees" me! I've not needed hormones or medical solutions for my relations with this man; I feel my true self with him!
The three years of being a post-menopausal 50-something as single mother living in the suburbs, teaching an urban high school and connected to sentient beings around the globe via the internet were interesting upon reflection.
The Positives:
Wisdom
Usefulness
Mindfullness
Deference
Energy
Fearlessness (some say I've always had this, but those who know me, know that I used to expend too much for too little in return or by stalling in a negative holding pattern).
Balanced Body Image
Power from all of the above
The Negatives:
Match.Com and the like; Yes it's how I found my man; but the odds were stacked against me. Seems most men my age still stereotypically desire a younger woman and conversely older men (beyond my algorithm setting) were approaching me. I kept saying (and it turned out to be true) that I'd have to wait for either a widower or long divorce man who is really looking for parity (in all ways) who has just joined Match, as they get scooped up right away because they're the white whale of the online dating forums.
A Positive and a Negative:
Invisibility: On one hand you can be stealthy in some situations; agism provides a cloak of invisibility. On the other hand, being "noticed" would require more work with artificial constructs that I either don't care about, desire or want to spend my time, money and energy producing. It's not just the "male gaze" (translate that to any authority run by males), but it's also using that cloak to not give a damn, to the negative can become a positive!
My Place in the World:
Trying to be true to the authentic me (the one who could take her shirt off in the summer) while using the wisdom I've gained by riding the planet all these years to help make the world a better place.
Trying to be a role model for my kids, students, younger friends and ultimately my readers (yes I hope to write something worth reading, but that's another story).
Giving as good as I get with love and friendship.
First half of my life has been acquiring stuff (knowledge, house...) and the second half will be about releasing it and living with less.
Prejudice:
Have I felt it as a post-menopausal female: yes once. From my wasband (former husband).
Most painful and unique. Won't allow it to happen again.
I teach Women's Literature and Science Literature; so I'm hoping to educate and enlighten the next generations of men and woman who will be going through this right of passage we call Menopause.
That's really what it is for me; in the cycle of my life it's the Reverse and by extension the corner round which the last chapter of my life is beginning. I'm a Romantic, and I always love new adventures!
