Surely there have been hordes of women before me who have experienced this same phenomenon that I am going through right now. It’s another experience of having a belief that I’ve carried around for years go topsy turvy. Such as the belief that life is pretty much over as we know it when — we — women (but men, you guys can experience something called Andropause so don’t be so quick to shake your head) enter the stage of menopause. That’s true in some ways and false in others.

Allow me to elaborate.

For all you who have gone before me, I bow down to you in reverence. Thank you for clearing the pathway for all of us who are now coming around. I think what’s different for my generation is that there is just so dang many of us and we’re all having the same collective experience at roughly the same time. Oh joy! Oh Joy! Course, I’m sure if we looked back to the time period when we were all entering puberty the Earth probably experienced something like a gigantic burp then as well. I never expected to feel the most awake that I have ever felt about so many things at this time in my life. What the hey?!?!? The reality of who I am now is not jibing at all with the mental picture of who I thought I would be. In many ways, that’s a good thing. I really think there was a part of me that thought I would never make it this far in life (and you know several friends and family members probably thought the same thing!).

But, here I am. Reaching out for every rose, ray of sunshine, grain of sand between my toes and helping to fluff out brilliant ideas. I’m having the mood swings of a 13 year old with the understanding and resilience of someone many decades older. Today I had several episodes of hot flashes and it was just so bizarre. Feeling cold and hot at the same time. And me, being me, felt the need to prepare the two people I had meetings with today that at some point in our time together they may look over at me and wonder if I was melting and I assured them that they should know that I would be quite alright. Upon my telling one of these friends she popped up and brought back a whole tray of over-sized dinner napkins for patting the glisten from my face. I was kind of shocked that she thought I might need so many and then the thought raced through my mind that I wasn’t quite sure how these particular napkins would respond to my level of sweat…would they break apart into little white napkin eggs on my face or come off like little miniature pancakes. Either scenario was not my preference, but I’m a trouble shooter so my brain was helping me think through for a solution to the worst case scenario. I did end up hopping up at one point and making a passing comment to disarm her with laughter as I made a beeline to the bathroom. Then I had a new choice to decide if I wanted to use one of her “guest” towels and totally wet it with water to apply to my face or to use the toilet paper. You know the former would have been a better choice than the latter. I did remove all tell tale signs of tp from my face and neck before returning to our meeting.

But such is the life of middle age woman in menopause. Really though, do I have to be so conscious throughout this process? How did it end up that I would be so sober and abstinent from everything that could have taken my mind off of this process now? What macabre joke did my higher self conspire with my higher power to create for me now? Not that I’m complaining, it’s just pretty darn funny.

I’m grateful that there are so many of us (both male and female) going through this time in our lives right now. Most of my life and definitely in my younger years I was marked for being an “air head”. Later on I decided that what was really going on was that I was so intelligent and had so many thoughts occurring simultaneously that I could not decide which thread to pick up first. Now, I have a whole posse of people who are having trouble recalling basic words in moments of sharing for others and we are all rushing to help each other finish our paragraphs of genius as if we have all signed on for some gigantic game of charades. Somehow I’ve landed amongst my people. I can seem brilliant and at the same time help people feel good about themselves for helping me to finish a thought.

I’m sure there is some beauty during this time that I have just not wrapped my mind around yet. It’s a passage. It’s a major life passage. In some cultures, this is the time when great ceremonies would take place for the woman to step into her wisdom. I’ll take the wisdom but you can have the hot flashes if you’d like.

There was something really important that I was going to end this share with tonight but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was? I’ll leave you to fill in the blanks. Just please let me know what gorgeous thoughts you think I would have had….