Open Palm.

Remember algebra? No, me neither. I mean, not really. I don’t remember exactly what I learned, but I do recall that there was a lot of manipulation of equations. It starts out with numbers and letters on one side of the equal sign and a solution you are solving for on the right hand side of that equal sign. Solve for x, solve for y. And to solve it, you might move things around, divide, multiply, do more arithmetic…all these things to get numbers and letters onto the right side of the equal sign. It was a long (and for me, arduous) process of getting in there and sifting through it all. Until after multiple lines showed up, one right after the other, growing smaller on your paper, you had solved the equation.

Undergoing the transformation that I am right now, I keep thinking about how to solve the equation. There’s all these new symptoms of x, y, z that occur at varying degrees of power squared, cubed, or whatever you would say for 4 times, and all at various points in the course of a day, lasting for various amounts of time… It makes my head hurt to think about this equation. It’s too much! Trying to figure it all out becomes a variable all on it's own that makes the equation breakdown or implode.

Then I stopped looking for a solution. That, I said, will come on it’s own and I don’t even need to know what that will look like right now. It’s all about the equation at the moment for me. That’s where the power is.

I take all those things that I can’t fathom and lay them out on my palm. I let them all exist there, together, without forcing them to make sense. I look at each individual variable, the hot flashes, the anxiety, my wrinkles, the crepe-like skin, the new weight I’m carrying SIT there. I add in my feelings towards all of those things. They SIT there. No fights break out, they kind of all ignore each other come to think of it. They aren’t trying to combine and twist themselves into an overarching REASON with MEANING.

And I can breathe again. I don’t have to be this or that, do one thing or the other. I just AM. As is. I find calm in letting ALL the things exist without trying to solve the equation. I let myself breathe into the anger that wells up at not understanding everything the way that I’d like to and the anger abates and my fist doesn’t close and I don’t shake that fist at the sky screaming why, why, WHY!?

Sometimes I feel myself begin to tighten up, but a deep breath brings me back to the visual of that open palm.

I do not need to make it all make sense. I do not need to make decision about what it all means at this moment. I can look more closely at one of those variables, see all its facets and then let it continue to sit there. I can do that to each one in turn for as long as I need to. It’s a little bit of magic when I go back to something I thought I had investigated fully to see it has sprouted something new, “what’s that new emotion that comes along with that hotflash?”, I think. “Wow.”

Letting all of these things be what they need to be right now, letting them all morph, move around, buddy up, split apart is the best thing I can do for myself.

It’s a marvel, this perimenopause experience. I’ve made the intentional choice to see it as a rich and wondrous journey and keep that palm open. I can smile more. I can find gratitude more. I can enjoy more happiness moment to moment.

I’m not interested in solving this equation for anything more than that. I intuitively know that as I discover more and more about each variable and how they work with each other, I will organically come to the solution. I have a pretty good inkling that the solution has to do with me leveling up to be the person I know I can be, have been trying to be for a lot of my life. TIME is the variable that is important here and is therefore also placed on the open palm. That’s all I need out of this equation right now, to let the equation just BE, acknowledge that there’s an alchemy in process.

So if H stands for happiness:

(All + the - things / on * the + Open Palm) = H (Evolved Me)

And I so look forward to all the amazing, silly, awesome (in the true sense of that word), magical things that will make up that parenthetical. I’m not solving for x, y, or z. I’m solving for the all-encompassing Evolved Me. When I think about that, I know not to rush this. It’ll be worth this pause to let all that magic happen. I’m in it. I’m doing it. I’ll keep doing it.

I AM WORTH IT.