Today's Draw: Heart from Paris DeBono's Gypsy Tattoo Oracle in the House of Lily from the Deck of Lenormand Houses. Are you a raging hormonal lunatic? Has menopause driven you to the brink? And are you feeling bad about it?
The Gypsy Tattoo Oracle isn't a Lenormand deck, but I just received it today and decided to use it like one. The Heart card is about love and emotions. And the House of Lily is about wisdom and maturity, sensuality and serenity. So I could go a couple of ways...I could talk about sensual love relationships. Or I could talk about "maturing emotions" aka my raging menopausal hormones.
Unfortunately you're going to hear about the latter.
You know, for all you men and younger ladies out there, I'll tell you this—you cannot possibly fathom the insane and dramatic mood shifts that can happen during menopause until you actually experience them. Most women (and men) know about PMS. PMS is child's play compared to the more "mature" experience of menopausal hormonal rage.
Not following my own advice from yesterday, I got too bogged down in the details of something—trying to control the uncontrollable—and went off on a customer service person over the phone. F-bomb action. Screaming action. I'm sure anyone within a square block radius heard me. I have a voice that carries. God bless her soul, it was so insane and out of proportion that the customer service rep was trying hard not to laugh.
This isn't the first time, either. It's happened a few times in the past couple of years. The first time took me by surprise. It was fueled by paranoia and, even while I accusing the other person of stuff, there was a sane person inside my head asking "why are you doing this? You don't believe this." But I couldn't stop myself. I really felt like I was loosing my mind.
See, I don't want to take bio-identical hormones and pharmaceuticals. It just doesn't feel right to me. It feels like what Monsanto does to corn. So I'm looking into more natural things. And, mostly, I'm just hoping to wait it out. In a year or two this whole menopause thing will be done with. Maybe even in less than a year if my ovaries play their cards right. And I'll settle into a new normal that I can deal with.
But in the meantime, I've had maybe three big incidents in two years and one of them was today. And I hate being that person!
Why am I sharing this with you? Because back in our mother's time, we were told we were imagining things. Even now, this is something we don't talk about. It's a "secret shame" we hold...because we "lost it" on someone. And it's scary when it happens. We can talk some about night sweats and insomnia and memory lapses and some of the other symptoms, but when it comes to emotional meltdowns, who likes to admit to THAT? Women were sent to sanitoriums over stuff like THAT.
And if you have a male doctor, like I do, really how much can he understand? I've almost always had male doctors, so I'm not being sexist. I'd say the same about a female doctor in her 30s, quite frankly. You only have observation at that point. You have NO IDEA of what it feels like to have one of these meltdowns inside and how out of control you feel. It's like a violence within. And it's scary that you can turn on a dime like that. Until you experience it yourself, it sounds like someone's being dramatic. And while I'll cop to being dramatic, I'm not being dramatic about this.
So anyway, I wanted to share for all the other women out there going through this or about to go through or who have made it to the other side. We've been given this miracle process in our bodies that allows us to have children and connects us to the human lifecycle in amazing ways. And when it starts breaking down, it takes a toll—physically, emotionally and mentally.
It's an honor and a curse to be a woman. And the things we experience because of it are real. It's not a reflection on you when you go balls-to-the-wall crazy on someone...haha. It's the way we were built and part of our path. And we—I—just have to remember to be easy on and kind to ourselves until this process is through.
Today's Draw: Lilies in the House of Garden in the position of Goal from Chronata's Minute Lenormand, the Deck of Lenormand Houses and the Deck of 1000 Spreads. How do you feel about becoming—and looking—older? Would you ever get a face lift? As you age is your goal to squeeze out every last drop of youth...or to reach out and embrace your elder status?
Today is the last day I'll be posting one of my long blog posts as a woman in her 40s. I turn 50 this weekend. And I'm still not sure how to feel about that. I know that, among my options are a) cry because my life is over and b) just treat it like another day. Aside from the rather full day I have planned, I was leaning toward option b.
But then came Lilies (Wisdom, Maturity and "Older Woman") in the House of Garden (Community, Party, Event) in the position of Goal (Goal...haha). So it's saying my goal should be to celebrate my elder status with others. Well, my actual plans are pretty low key, but there's a piece to this that's saying a) I've reached elder status and b) that means I'm now part of the community of my elder friends. And my plans do include a certain elder friend....
There's this whole Maiden/Mother/Crone thing that signifies the life stages of a woman. And, with menopause and 50 and all of that, you become a crone, an elder. Most of my friends are already there, hovering in their mid-50s to early 60s. One is in her early 70s. And while I'll still be the young whippersnapper with much to learn...haha. I'm kind of officially one of them now. These are the wisest, kindest, most supportive and reasonable people I know, so it's good company.
And bringing that back around to the cards, our society puts forth so much effort to make youth our goal. We slather ourselves in creams, get surgery, inject botchalism in our faces, pop vitamins, wear hip clothes, clomp around in ridiculous shoe trends...we feel compelled to chase this specter that's gets farther and farther away from us each passing day.
Sometimes I'll see an actress on TV that I know has many years on me and, even if she looks good, I think, "what are you running from? Who do you think you're fooling?" Some of these women don't even look like the woman they were before. While I'm sure they have a lot of pressure on them to look a certain way for their career, it certainly hasn't hurt Sally Field's career that she remains fairly natural.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I get wanting to feel good about yourself. But how good can you feel when your intention is to chase your youth and any hint of age is met with a call to the plastic surgeon? Is that really feeling good about yourself? Or does feeling good about yourself have more to do with embracing yourself as you are? How do you ever come to peace with yourself when you keep finding things to fix?
And I don't want this to be about surgery. Someone close to me had a face lift and it made them feel better when they looked in the mirror. I really didn't notice much of a difference, quite frankly, because I will probably always see her through certain eyes. What this is about is the push in our society to chase youth. That looking young, feeling young and being young is the goal.
But I look at friends of mine who are aging naturally...D with her long gray hair, V with the sassy cuts and scarves and R with her glowing skin, short cropped gray curls and youthful energy....and I see beauty and wisdom on their faces and in their eyes. How can that NOT be our goal? To traverse our 50s, 60s and 70s with a light heart and our earned wisdom?
Listen, my friend R is in her 70s and can run rings around all of us. If she has wrinkles, I haven't noticed them. I haven't noticed them on V or D, either. Eyes and hearts and spirits never wrinkle. When I talk to these women, they glow from something genuine within. That earned confidence and wisdom supercedes anything on their face. And because it's natural, you're not looking a them wondering what work they've had done...you can see through to their soul. How can that not be our goal?
So as I approach this turn of the calendar in my life, I know what I want to be when I grow up. I want to wear my wrinkles and age spots as a show of wisdom. I want to remind myself that when I look in a mirror, I see Tierney's wrinkles and when everyone else looks at me they just see Tierney. And I want gray hair like D's, but my follicles aren't cooperating quite yet. The goal is to celebrate my cronedom and know that once I'm there, I'm in very good company.
