What do Jean Houston, Z Budapest, and Jane Pauley have in common, and in common with you and me?
They believe that the second half of a woman’s life is meant to be rich and fulfilling, not an empty nest and depression. Not the doldrums and boredom of retirement following years of meaningless housework, but a bold step out of who we were and who we are and into who we want to be. A woman of our own making. An authentic being who has co-created herself. A woman who has benefitted from her midlife crisis.
Menopause marks the midlife crisis for most women. This is a crisis of self-perception as much as a crisis of physical change. Before menopause we are fertile, moon-cycling, nurturing women. Afterwards, and until we die, we are post-fertile, earth-cycling, creative women. That can be asexual, sedentary, saggy, and focused on knitting, or it can be sexually free and adventurous, grounded and practical, active, and willing to bend the rules, even in knitting.
Midlife and menopause are opportunities to change the course of our lives. The metamorphosis of menopause can be used a passage to power. Even after menopause, the changes it has wrought in our bodies act as gateways to reach into our most authentic selves, to touch our deepest feelings, and to reveal our finest aspirations.
A second calling, a second destiny, a reinvention of oneself, no matter how you phrase it, the second fifty years of our lives, the time during and after menopause, is being redefined and re-envisioned as a springboard into action rather than a waning and a decline. The Grandmother Hypothesis, as expounded by Dr. Kristen Hawkes at the University of Utah, reminds us that menopause is vital to the health and longevity of all the individuals in the clan. Old women are the wise women who keep us all alive.
In the circle of life, in the spiral of the DNA, the Crone holds hands with both the mother and the maiden. As we move from maiden to mother in our lives, from She-Who-Does-Not-Bleed, to She-Who-Bleeds-and-Does-Not-Die, our dreams and plans change, our vision of ourselves changes. We respond to the needs of life, put aside childish things, and assume the responsibilities of adulthood. Our lives unfold with careers, families, mortgages, payments, responsibilities. And we shoulder the burdens as they arise. We put our nose to the grindstone and one foot in front of the other, until we are no longer able to see the larger picture of our lives, until we wonder where the joy and satisfaction went. And so it goes, until we are faced with midlife, with menopause, with the opportunity to change.
We pass through the portal of menopause: We are melted down and reformed, wrapped in a chrysalis, turned into goo, and remade as a butterfly. We move from She-Who-Bleeds-and-Does-Not-Die to She-Who-Holds-the-Wise-Blood-Inside. We reach out our hand and take the hand of the maiden. We close the circle. We become complete within ourselves. We allow ourselves to dream again the dreams of the maiden. And now we have not only the skills to make those dreams reality, but the wisdom to delegate the work. We come to the time when we may freely put down some of the responsibility and play more at our work.
“The past has no hold over you. It is the easiest thing to change. It exists only as an electrical pattern in your brain. Change the impulse, alter the flow, and you change your past.” Jean Houston taught us to change our past in The Development of Human Capacities, a three-year long live-in experience in creating the Possible Human. And menopause can give you the juice to do some time traveling on your own, to revision your past.
Menopause is a winnowing ground, a time to sort through and discard those things that crimp our joy: thoughts, feelings, grudges, resentments, broken hearts, broken promises, broken dreams. Menopause gives us, if we allow it, the impetus to move beyond who we thought we were, beyond our own hard-earned successes and into the vigor of failure.
For what is a youthful mindset but a willingness to fail? And old fogey-hood an unwillingness to take chances?! As we emerge from menopause metamorphosis and take our place as Crone, we join hands with the maiden, and permission is granted. We give ourselves permission to try something that we don’t know how it will turn out, to ask questions that we don’t have the answers to, to fall down and get back up again. To have more fun by being more fun, funnier, sillier, less serious.
“The future may be longer than you think,” says Jane Pauley, formerly of the “Today” show and a woman who has remade her public image several times, and written about it.
If you can imagine it, you can do it. How do you envision yourself in 20 years? Start a butterfly collection now: a collection of pictures and stories of women at least 20 years older than you are that you want to grow up to be. What are you dreaming of doing? Find someone who is doing it. What steps are between where you are now and where you wish to be? Big projects are done in small steps. Take one today.
With the Crone’s wisdom to protect you and the Maiden’s enthusiasm to lead the way, the second half of your life can be exciting, deep, delicious, remarkable, inviting, enriching, suggestive, serendipitous, moving, joyous, and played to a tune of your own desire.
Susun is the author of New Menopausal Years, the Wise Woman Way, Alternative Approaches for Women 30-90, from Ash Tree Publishing, available from www.wisewomanbookshop.com or the online store named after a powerful woman.
