Archives for posts with tag: menopause
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Yes, No, Maybe

May 7, 2014 //
2

Questions, answers, and a hot cup of coffee.  The morning is off to a sluggish and disorganized beginning; my routine is upended by a partner going off on a short holiday in the wilderness with family and friends; I got up much earlier than usual to make coffee, help load the car, and drop him at the rendezvous point. There’s a certain quality to arrivals and departures that seems to be unique to those occasions, and I didn’t hesitate to opt in to the early morning ritual of checking the packing, making sure nothing is missed, figured out what was missed, retrieving it, and eventually – kisses good-bye. It was chill and intimate time, connecting and holding on to a precious ‘now’ moment, savoring love and sharing the morning.

4:00 am is early.

4:00 am is early.

I’m very appreciative of my morning coffee. I slept poorly; sleeping only once everyone else had truly settled into slumber themselves, and waking earlier than I planned to by the restless stirrings of my partner, excited about the trip, and wakeful ahead of schedule. I figure I managed enough to survive the day more or less comfortably; about 3 hours. The coffee is a big deal this morning. I made 4 shots of espresso, in a cup, with a bit of molasses. Fancy was not necessary. lol

The Menopause Countdown continues, and I’ve never been more relieved than when I am watching my other partner struggle with Hormone Hell. I’m ready to be done with that. Yesterday was day 305… 60 days to go and I can officially say I’m ‘past menopause’.  Truth is, though, it’s been 305 days without screaming at everyone around me unexpectedly over bullshit approximately every 21-32 days.  Had I know how much more pleasant life would be without all that, I’d have asked to have my damned ovaries removed years ago!! I suppose that’s rather more than necessarily radical, but if you don’t have the experience, how do you know if I’m being too extreme? It is what it is, though, and what it is – for me – is almost over.

My other partner heads ‘back home’ this week, herself, to recharge with family and old friends back home.  It makes sense. She hasn’t been home in a while and the timing is good.

Spring, simple, and sufficient.

Spring, simple, and sufficient.

I don’t quite have that ‘back home’ attachment to a place. I miss old friends, and yearn for a good opportunity to travel and hang out and reconnect across the distance of years by closing the geographical distance, but this is a ‘taking care of me’ area I am not good at. It’s been about 11 years since I took a step on the other coast, where my family lives. I’ve never seen my niece – 13? 14? – in person*. I last saw my Mother at my Father’s memorial, more than a decade ago. Close old friends live far away, too, and it has been as long or longer since I’ve seen them.  It is time, too, for me to journey ‘back home’ to reconnect and recharge…but other needs are a higher priority, and I am learning to make choices that meet my long-term needs over time.  It’s a complicated puzzle. I know making time to connect with friends and family is important… I’m always eager to encourage my partners and dear ones to make time to see their far away friends and family, how is it that I suck so much at making the time to do it, myself?

I find myself looking at a different question in a moment of inspiration – “What is it about not making time for distant friends and family that seems to meet my current needs more than making that time would meet my needs?” Aha. I don’t have an answer – but that’s a new question. 🙂

Another perspective, a different question.

Another perspective, a different question.

So, a quiet Wednesday morning unfolding, a second cup of coffee, and plenty of time to meditate and simply be. It’s enough.

 

*So…my sister reached out during the day and observed with some amusement that not only have I met my niece in person, we hung out and she remembers it clearly; it was at my Dad’s memorial, so perhaps overlooking the embarrassing failure to recollect such a precious moment can be forgiven, but… yeah. Totally embarrassed, because of course I remember it as soon as I am reminded! Still human. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring, women, Words

Vacationing in Hormone Hell

February 15, 2014 //
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I’m just bitching. (Nothing to see here, folks, let’s move it along…)

We can choose to be dismayed by circumstances, mired in our mud, or we choose differently.

We can choose to be dismayed by circumstances, mired in our mud, or we can choose differently.

The ‘hormone thing’ is one of those maddening bits of human existence I could do without, on an emotional level. Thankfully, the variation in my day-to-day balance is both less significant in severity, and less common these days. Long overdue, I say. I’ve had my fill of having my existence linked in some vague and irrefutable way to reproductive potential. I’m ready to move on to just being a person, with will of my own, and a level of every day balance that is at least somewhat predictable.

I still find a lot of opportunity to resent the fuck out of the lack of medical progress in the area of women’s health and well-being with regard to sex, sexuality, hormonal cycling, and reproduction. You may not agree – I mean, so many fewer women die in childbirth than once-upon-a-time, right? And…The Pill, people, we have The Pill. Sure, sure, we do. Good stuff. I wouldn’t reject those advances as being undesirable or unworthy of high regard; they are game changers for women. Still…we’re talking about medical science.  Are you aware that there is no ‘test’ for menopause? None. No scientific, clinically validated, reliable test that determines conclusively when a woman has reached menopause. Oh wait… there is this ‘state of the art’ gem: “When it’s been a year since your last period, and you are ‘older’ than typical child-bearing age, it’s ‘menopause’. (If you are ‘too young’ for menopause, don’t forget to see your doctor if you miss your period for a year.)”  Yep. That’s it. State of the art medical science and diagnostics in action. Welcome to Hormone Hell, we have your reservation on file.

Those years after a woman ‘loses her goddamned mind’ and is finally accepted to be ‘menopausal’ are an interesting buffet of being insulted, ignored, over-medicated, referred for mental health care, infantilized, resented, feared, and dismissed. It all sucks very much, from the first time a physician tut-tuts those very first concerns that ‘something isn’t right’ to the moment a physician much younger than you are insists that ‘you’re really much too young’ to be experiencing peri-menopausal phenomena – at 45.  By 50, most doctors will grudgingly admit that perhaps you’re not insane and may actually be accurately reporting your experience, and may be closing in on menopause. Did I mention it sucks?

Hilarity really ensues, for me, when a lovely, educated, fit physician in her early 30s states with considerable self-assurance that ‘most women’ don’t have any real difficulties with their hormones, and more likely need mental health care – because she has not had any issues herself.  Yep, that’s a real winner with me. lol. Another fan favorite is when women who have finally gotten to the other side somehow magically rewrite history such that their recollection of their own experience is that ‘it really wasn’t a big deal’ and they ‘barely noticed at all’. I like that one best when they deliver it sweetly in the presence of family members who actually recall how bat-shit crazy the bitch was for nearly a decade; the facial expressions are priceless, and sometimes people snort their beverages, and shoot them out their nose.

I’m ready to be done. I don’t really enjoy the new challenges (vaginal dryness – it’s a real thing, ladies, and it’s likely going to result in at least one or two tearful rounds of ‘but I did feel like it, I don’t know why…’ before everyone settles down and moves on to the next issue), and the reduction in moments of hormonal tantrums and flare-ups of temper sometimes doesn’t make up for the hot flashes, the sleeplessness, or the chronic uncertainty about when/if there’s going to be gross quantities of unexpected bleeding.

It’s gotten to be almost routine, now. I have some mild, barely noticeable shift in hormones, and the ripple effect on my experience is so subtle it is almost undetectable…until I find myself frustrated by something small, or losing my train of thought in mid-sentence. 5 years ago it was more about ‘please, can’t you give me some sympathy, or some help?’  Now, I find myself more likely – like this morning – to be feeling something more ‘damn it, I wish this were finished, this has got to be hard on him.’ Who knew I’d find some value in this process, or a way to apply these experiences to personal growth and perspective? I sure didn’t.

I was once a woman in my 20s, pretty cocky about how comfortable my hormone balance felt for me. I had little sympathy for other women; I didn’t have cramps, so how bad could theirs be? Later I was a woman in my 30s facing doctor after doctor assuring me I was wrong about my experience, and being given medication for things that probably don’t need a pharmaceutical solution as much as they need support, understanding, and education. I was definitely headed for ‘bat-shit crazy’ at that point. I’m not so cocky now. lol. I hope that I don’t get to the other side and magically lose all recollection of how tough some of this has been.

My latte is cold. I’m bored with bitching. My head aches. I feel cross and disconnected, and struggle to make simple decisions real-time without dithering a bit. My conversational flow is impeded by my emotional experience.  If you’re also vacationing in Hormone Hell, I’m just down the hall – you have my sympathy, and you’re not any crazier than you choose to be, although there are unavoidably moments when that isn’t clear. 🙂 If you no longer vacation in Hormone Hell, nice going, and I hope the scenery is extraordinary wherever you find yourself now; have a great time! If you don’t know what the hell I’m on about, because you just haven’t gotten there yet… your time will come. Trust me. (And don’t be a dick, seriously.) 😉  If you are riding shotgun with someone vacationing in Hormone Hell, I want more than anything to offer reassurance, to give you support, to say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel… and if you are the sort who does sympathize and support your hormonal partner(s) to thank you for that… but… damn. There aren’t really any words to bridge that divide. What reassurance could I offer? ‘Next month may be better’? ‘It’ll all be over, eventually’? I guess ‘thank you for hanging in there, and trying to understand how hard this might be’ is about the best I can do.

There is an airplane in this picture. It's a metaphor.

There is an airplane in this picture. It’s a metaphor.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, women

Menopause 101

October 14, 2013 //
0

I’ll just give you the TMI warning now, okay? If you are squeamish about the biology of women, I understand; please stop now and read something else. 😉  If you choose to stick around, welcome – we’ll resume after this lovely metaphor about women and medicine…

Mushrooms

Mushrooms

It says something about the state of medicine, where women are concerned at least, that the medical industry has yet to develop a simple, reliable, accurate test to determine whether or not a woman is ‘menopausal’, heading toward menopause, or dealing with some other variety of hormonal weirdness.  Seriously. Women have existed alongside men as medicine developed and progressed, and as far as I know the experience of our reproductive life-cycle hasn’t really evolved much… so what’s the hold up? Currently, the most reliable criteria for determining whether a woman has ‘gone through menopause’ is – and this is not the punch line of a cruel joke, it’s quite literally what we’re told – “once you’ve gone a year without having a period, you have gone through menopause”.  Um…what? Yep. That’s it. “Wait and see” is the best we’re offered.  0_o

I am counting down the days. Again. So far, 101 of them – and that beats my last count down, earlier this year, when I got to 92 days, then faced the ‘joy’ of disastrously and unpredictably heavy (and irregular) periods and the associated random opportunities to spot clean, or do extra laundry at a moment’s notice for a handful of months.  Now I am counting again.

I’m also wearing pajamas. Well, ‘sleepwear’ of some sort…  I’ve always preferred to sleep nude, as an adult. I find it more comfortable.  I like the feeling of sleeping nude… but I dislike the experience of waking abruptly in the night to find that linens need to be changed, the mattress needs spot cleaning, and a shower has become an urgent necessity; so, sleepwear has become practical beyond the sensuous preference for nudity. lol.  I find myself considering how nice it will feel to return to sleeping nude once I’m past the ‘pause… but I’m also sort of growing to enjoy the fun of sleepwear… is it an age thing? Is it vanity? Is it a good excuse to think of lingerie as ‘practical’? My taste is a bit toward soft and pretty, although in the dark…? lol.  I definitely don’t prefer long pajama pants for sleeping, though – I love the feel of smooth legs on clean sheets. 😀

I miss the clockwork regularity of my cycle in younger years… I do not miss the threat of fertility, though.  I’ve had a good cry or two over ‘I’ll never…’, that’s a pretty human experience, isn’t it?  Motherhood hasn’t been an aspiration for me, though. I’m not that woman; I have walked a very different path all along.  A brief period in my life – between about 27 and 32 – I had an undefeatable urge to reproduce.  It was an experience that felt very biological, and rather beyond my control or understanding.  At 50 I remain satisfied with a childless life, with choices other than parenting.   I’ve only ever met one man who moved me so, heart and soul, that I grieved openly in his arms that I would not ever bear his child – and although neither of us wanted children at that point in our lives, he understood me so well.  He held me while I cried, and said the soft tender things that lovers know to say, and the moment passed.  No doubt that will be one nagging regret I will have… one moment of poignant longing… one missed experience that will hold a tiny bright flame of wistfulness and sorrow that I feel now and again; to have been a mother, to have born his child, to have loved and shared and built someone new together to carry who we are in their heart and in their memory, would have been remarkable indeed.

Motherhood is not my path; I chose differently very early on, and I do not regret that, even a little bit.

That’s one promise menopause holds for me that means a lot; no more stress about unplanned pregnancy.  Sex without anxiety about reproduction is a very big deal in a very good way.  😀  Like it or not, most of the available options for birth control are actually pretty awful; powerful drugs with nasty side effects (including ruining a woman’s sex drive!), condoms (and the associated loss of sensation, inconvenience, and loss of powerful biological effect on mood from contact with flesh and bodily fluids), an assortment of grim options that involve inserting bits of metal, plastic, or other foreign objects (many of which can be felt by a partner, and not in a good way), or the last worst option – going without sex.  Medicine really hasn’t done women any favors with the crappy options we have for birth control – and society doesn’t do us any favors by playing head games with us about the ‘moral’ consequences before, during, or after.  It has gotten very tedious over 50 years being bombarded with constant reminders that sex isn’t okay (when it is) that my decision-making isn’t my own (when it is), or that I have some obligation to bear life in my body (when I don’t).   Yep – I’m more than ready to reach a point in my life when my ability to reproduce is behind me, and ‘babies!’ is not longer any element of a discussion about me, or my sexual decision-making. lol.

Menopause. There’s astonishingly little real research – or support – for this element of female experience.  It still surprises me. I mean – this affects all my partners, too, not just me. My emotional reactivity, my unpredictable hormones, my everyday health and well-being don’t exist in a vacuum! I keep expecting more from the medical industry… but in a culture where it’s okay to call a scientist who won’t work for free a whore, because she is a woman, why would I be surprised?

Anyway… the count down continues, and only 264 days to go to get my final test results back determining whether I’ve reached the ‘pause.  Most accurate test available!

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, women

Battling the Ancient Enemy

October 7, 2013 //
0

Yesterday was lovely. The work day went smoothly, in that how-could-this-be-better sort of smoothness work days sometimes have. The walk home became a ride home when my partner reached out with the offer of a ride, just as I was realizing my notion to walk the 5k route again wasn’t planned with my fatigue and general physical condition of the day in mind.  The evening continued in the same pleasant way, and I actually did get to bed earlier, on-time-ish enough not to mess with my routine was my hope.

A sparkling autumn afternoon.

A sparkling autumn afternoon.

My night didn’t go so smoothly. I woke abruptly at 2:30 am, gripped by anxiety and dread, barely able to take a breath. My chest felt tight, and as I sit here considering it, I face an internal deluge of words to describe fear and anxiety, and little else; content capable of taking me over and leading me away from contentment. I got up, put on dim lights, and began going through the motions of regaining calm: breathing, yoga, meditation, a shower, more breathing, more yoga, a few mindful moments settling into the ‘now’… just after 3:00 am was when I took my first fully deep and actually satisfying breath. I remember it because at the time I thought “Huh, I wasn’t actually breathing deeply at all, this whole time!” Then, I took 4 or 5 really good deep calming breaths and felt my consciousness shift from real fear and panic, to the residual low-level anxiety that sometimes lingers once I’ve gotten past the bad bit.  I was able to return to sleep.  For the second day in row, I woke to my alarm clock, feeling groggy.

It’s a peaceful solitary morning, in spite of the difficulties of the night.  The fear I woke with has faded into words about the experience, which are much less scary than the feelings themselves. I may never know what the anxiety in the night was actually ‘about’… but, with a brain injury, PTSD, a lifelong history of sleep disturbances (seriously, since I was a toddler) adding to the natural emotional ups and downs of going through menopause – do I actually need root-cause analysis? Isn’t life enough? lol

Day two of seriously poor quality sleep starting my day. I do feel it.  Taking care of me, and meeting my own needs where I can, includes getting adequate rest – this isn’t it.  Maybe tonight will be better.  I find myself silently reviewing ‘the sleep list’ of things I can do to improve my sleep…  it is, however, morning. Time to face the day.

 

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Menopause, Mindfulness, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, Words

Another Perspective

August 31, 2013 //
0
Multi-tasking personal growth...

Multi-tasking personal growth…

It’s been many days since I had enough ‘bandwidth’ to write… the world is, as is so often the case, teetering on the brink… of something.  Again and again I find War on my mind, conflict, emotion…and growth. Because I am so prone to metaphors, even War reflects back onto my ‘right now’ experience.  Learning to stay ‘in the moment’ is not as simple to master as it is to take on as a practice. So I continue to practice.  “Taking care of me” is a more complicated puzzle of choices and observations than I’d like it to be, and there too, I get plenty of opportunities to give it another try.  I still make choices that don’t serve me well, more often than I’d like.  I still struggle to be fully who I am, and feel accepted and understood by people who matter to me…and by myself, too.  Change requires effort and, oddly, perspective.

...from another perspective.

…another perspective.

Today I am working on “Perspective” from another angle. Art.

I’ll talk about the inspiration, first.  My life felt like it was unraveling quickly at the start of the year.  The upheaval of moving mingled with my chaos and damage (that I’d managed to avoid dealing with in any notably successful way). I had spent decades allowing myself to be heavily medicated, out of desperation, but against any potential ‘better judgement’ – and went off them one by one, but without any real understanding of how that experience would go, after so many years.  I found out I’d had a pretty serious traumatic brain injury as a ‘tween’, that I’d never been told about, didn’t remember, but had always had evidence of… and it explained a lot of lifetime weirdness, and odd impairments and eccentricities.  My PTSD flared up, and news articles about the high rate of suicide among military veterans over 50 started looking like suggestions… and I was approaching 50, fast.  It was a very bleak bit of my life… (If I had had a different perspective, perhaps that would not have been the experience I had?)

I was at a place in my journey where my perception was that my life was entirely filled with pain, that the chaos and damage could not be overcome, that I ‘couldn’t do any better’ and that failure was inevitable, and a permanent state of being. I still had lucid moments, and I still existed alongside people who love me. In better moments it seemed obvious that things ‘couldn’t be that bad’.  I wanted more data. I wanted to change my perspective, to know something different, and to ‘see for myself’ without the complications of the wreckage in my head.  I was inspired to measure my experience in some way; “Perspective”- in acrylic, on canvas, with 3D mixed media, and of course – it would glow.

It became, over time, more than an art project – and it spoke to me.  Now it is time to finish it.

Every journey has a starting point.

Every journey has a starting point.

I had chosen the move to our new home, all of us together, as a not-entirely-random starting point – it was a big event that caused me a lot of stress and interrupted pretty much every routine imaginable, and it was in the context of struggling with that fairly every day sort of change that I found out about my TBI, and started to understand what a big deal that had actually been for me all along.  My basic concept was simple enough: I would use two glass canisters, and add items to each, representative of events and experiences, day by day from that point until I turned 50. I would watch my life unfold as data points in a visual display – positive events, happy moments, exciting and fun experienced, powerful epiphanies, and positive developments all in one canister – the other would hold the hard times, the angry moments, the pain, the tears, romantic spats, discord, confrontation, PTSD freak outs, stress, grief – and there too, epiphanies and growth, because those come sometimes from what hurts us.  I didn’t want to be bleak, but I figured, at best, the outcome would be a draw – pretty nearly balanced between the tough times and the good times.  It was already February when I started – so I carefully went over my journals, notes, and emails to friends, looking for documentation of the details, and ‘building the foundation’ of “Perspective”.  I was more confused than surprised to see that even from where I was standing in that moment, the wonders and joys, the good bits,  seemed the larger part of life, and it wasn’t a small matter – it was obvious.  That sat rather uncomfortably in my consciousness for many weeks as I added to one or the other canister… because, the good times were still a much bigger piece of my experience than it felt like.  I started questioning a lot of things about my understanding of the world around me, about my ability to understand my own experience, about what the hell was really holding the chaos and damage in place, after all this time… and I kept adding to each canister, day after day… and I kept observing… and I kept meditating.

My intention was to meditate on the progress of events in these canisters, until my 50th birthday, then use the elements on canvas to finish the project.  That’s where you find me now, considering my life, and my “Perspective”.

202 days of my life in "Perspective"

202 days of my life in “Perspective”

There’s certainly more to say about perspective, in general.  The pictures don’t lie – I may be in pain, my PTSD isn’t behind me, yet, and hormone hell is often just one misunderstanding away from seemingly unprovoked tears or anger – but I enjoy life, and life has a lot of joy and wonder to share with me.  My anger, the wreckage in my head, my struggles with chaos and damage are actually a pretty small part of my experience – so much so that it all has to be placed in a single canister to be visible at all.  I have the suspicion, untested as yet, that if I combined the contents of both canisters into one, it would be tough to pay much attention to the dark bits at all, because there is so much light.  Light is a powerful metaphor; illumination, gnosis, clarity…

Canvas is waiting.

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Categories Allegories, Art, Brain Injury, Free Will, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50
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