It’s the start of something amazing.
Once upon a time, a group of moms and aunts, stood around me with bright expectant faces, eagerly awaiting for me to find the word I was searching for. I can see them so clearly in this memory. They are excited for me. Their heads bob up and down in that coaxing, “you’ve got this, we believe in you” way. Their cheeks dimple with their stretching smiles as they give me space to form the letters, their eyes bright with wonder at what they are witnessing. I am about to say a name.
I fumble and stumble until finally I get the much-anticipated word out and fill the space they so graciously granted me…“Sarah!” Their relief at my accomplishment is as palpable as my own. They continue the conversation and have the decency to not bring any more attention to this hiccup and I smile and laugh and go along. For I am not a young child learning someone’s name for the first time, I am a 52 year old woman going through perimenopause. And I am freaking out because, “what the actual fuck” was that brain fart all about anyway?!
I think that I’ve been in perimenopause for about 6 years. No one knows. Doctors didn’t know. It’s only after having accumulated a list of symptoms over the years that I can put it all together. It’s a connect-the-dot-big-picture and I’ve traced my pencil line through all the adrenaline rushes, the flushed skin, the raging hormones, the sleep deprivation, and these brain fog moments to come up with a self-portrait that is a little droopier, a little greyer, and with more sun spots than I’d like to see. That number, 6 years, tells me it was a long process, but the mirror reflection is a jump scare of change that seemed to have happened in an instant.
I’m not surprised that this is happening, I mean, I’ve done the research and I’ve heard the stories. I AM surprised that I didn’t know what was going on when it was all happening though. It feels a bit like the ol’ adding an insult to the injury of aging. I’m big on self-awareness, you see. I don’t want to brag, but…it’s kind of my thing.
I do yoga, even have a teaching certification. I meditate, practice my pranayama and have been known to encourage others to find their breath on occasion. Yes, oftentimes it’s my significant other, and often some of those times it’s when we are arguing and they are getting frustrated with me. (I admit it. I am aware that I am a bit much sometimes. Don’t tell him I said that.) I am empathic to the degree that I know when someone is agitated with me. (Is there a theme here? Making a note to come back to that later.) I feel it in my chest and it’s a roiling, unctuous, cloying elephant weight of a feeling.
I read tarot and love it as a tool of learning about myself and understanding others. Usually when an archetype comes up in a reading about say, someone who I don’t get along with well, it’s because we share this common trait. If you’ve done any work on your Self you’ve heard the line that you usually hate what you see in someone because it’s also what you see in yourself and you’re being brought together so you can grow and evolve and yadda yadda yadda. I’m also aware of that, and still I push back at it because it is so much easier to just be mad at them and go gossip with a coworker that feels the same way.
Or, it was easier. Remember puberty? That’s when I developed this coping mechanism along with my breasts.
I thought puberty was tough. There’s the first period, the training bra, the push to get permission to shave your legs, and oh, the zits and blackheads. So many zits and blackheads. And the relentlessness of getting picked on for my bulky pad in my gym shorts or getting singled out for my long shin hair being smushed against my nude pantyhose (I thought it would actually make it less noticeable. I was in the 8th grade, what did I know!?). It was all about fitting in back then and wearing the right things, having the jelly bracelets, accumulating the most friendship pins. It was about passed notes and slumber parties and being part of the in-crowd because being “out” felt like the end of the world.
So I learned to laugh at people, to not say what I was thinking if it didn’t match the going preconception. I can say now that I overcompensated. I have many memories where my “friends” made fun of me because I went along with everything they said so I could fit in. And, I desperately wanted to fit in. That was how life felt full. And meaningful.
The whole of my teenage years was trying to ride this risky wave of doing what I needed to fit in and figuring out who I was on the down-low. My twenties weren’t that much better since having learned to just go with the flow of what others are doing could get me into bigger, less-forgiving trouble. My thirties and forties are a wild ride of office jobs, romance, break ups, multiple moves, switching coasts, finding my voice, losing friends, changing my name, learning tarot, finding magic, and learning how to live life to the beat of a deeper, truer and more divine drum.
All of that…all the partying, searching, hoping, loving, hurting…was a continued attempt to find where I fit and find success and feel fulfilled, content, satisfied. All through those decades, I may have caught glimpses of that warm full-up feeling, but it never stuck.
It’s all coming together in my fifties, though. And as much as I hate to say it, it’s not in spite of perimenopause…it’s absolutely because of it. Why do I hate to say it? Because it’s hard to look at this new, visibly older person in the mirror and allow myself to recognize the real me. It’s so much easier to have the flowing long hair instead of the more wiry silver-streaked style or wear the form-fitting jeans when your form isn’t round and a little squishy in the middle. It’s much easier to complain about someone rather than do the work to heal yourself so you never have to learn certain lessons again.
But I do recognize the real me being reflected back. She’s so grounded her neck droops. She’s so wise, she’s got those crow’s feet around her eyes. She has embodied her unique voice so much, there are new lines around her lips to hold that awareness. This woman doesn’t talk shit about people to just make herself feel good in the moment, she knows she needs to face her demons. Oh wow! I just put it together. That’s the reason my reflection feels like a jump scare. It’s the “well, shit, this isn’t going away unless I make it” moment. I’m going to have to actually practice all that I preach and show up and believe 100% in my magic-filled path, 100% of the time.
Well, shit.
It’s time to do this for real. It’s time to stop making excuses and settling for what others are telling me this time in my life is supposed to be. I’m not the follower anymore. And I refuse to think of perimenopause as this long, vague, run-on sentence of a journey that is only deemed to have reached its end when I, myself, am no longer considered a grammatically correct statement marked by appropriate punctuation. I refuse. Period.
All those ways I thought I was self-aware, aware of others, “in the know” divinely speaking…I’m challenging myself to level up and become that wise woman in the reflection and walk this magic path more fully than I ever have before.
I choose to see the brain fog as a moment full of promise, where magic lives and anything is possible. I can make that hesitant, halting sentence end any way I want.
I’m stepping through the perimenopause portal.
I am going to work all my magic.
And, I am going to create the fulfilling life I’ve always wanted. On my terms, in my way. Exclamation Point.
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