My perimenopausal years: uncharted territory

by
Lately I have been living in uncharted territory.
My female cycle has been really unpredictable and so are my emotions and thoughts. My ‘inner seasons’ are not what they used to be any more and I have been experiencing utter uncertainty and unpredictability.  I am writing about this because not many women talk about it and I think that we all need to know and write more about this peculiar time of our life, so that other sisters might feel better discovering that they are not alone. Furthermore, I want to capture my thoughts of the moment so that I might be able to read them again in the future when I will be on the other side of the barricade called menopause and then hopefully understand more about it all.
 
 
Where I am at right now
 
At present I am in my 44th day of my cycle, if it is still a cycle …
Last month could have been my last cycle and I didn’t know.
As far as I know I might experience just a delay of my ‘inner winter’.
Whatever might be the truth, and time will tell, I have been feeling in ‘no woman’s land’ more than ever before.
My cycles in the last year or so have been particularly short, especially in the last six months, so it might be that now I am experiencing a bunch of longer cycles that will balance out the shorter ones. The fact is that I really don’t know and am at the mercy of the Unknown!
If I look inside and check what I am feeling, I can say that I am at peace with my cycle which has always been my ‘best friend’. I hope that it will visit me a little bit longer, but if it wants to go, I am okay with it and will bid farewell to it.
I have been preparing myself psychologically for this in the last year and felt the sorrow coming up for me. If more sadness will pop up, I will welcome it, if it won’t, I will enjoy my happiness or whatever will show up for me.
What’s the big deal, you might think or ask?  Well, for me my female cycle has been a good companion since the moment when it started, even if I don’t remember any more the precise day of my menarche; I wish somebody had told me back then to write it down …
 
 
My menstrual history
 
I started writing down my cycles in 1983 and possibly my first bleed was on 31st August, or it could have been the second or third cycle of mine, I am not sure.
I don’t think that I still have my diaries of that time at my parents’place, if yes, one day I might find them; anyway my cycle has always been my good friend even then when I didn’t know what ‘menstrual awareness’ is or what it means to track one’s cycle.
Proof of this is the fact that I started writing down my cycles which means that unconsciously I knew that it was important to do that. At the time I was only 16 years young, almost 17.
Even if I wasn’t tracking my cycle as accurately as I have been doing in the last eight years, the simple fact that I was writing them down seemed to be enough to make me feel good. It was maybe the fact of keeping a record for future reference or my personal body knowledge.
Whatever might have been the unconscious reason that made me do it, it definitely was a very good reason.
It took me 26 years to find out that it was a good idea to do that.
 
 
 
My menstrual awareness
 
When I found out all about the ‘inner seasons’ of the female cycle from Alexandra Pope, the penny dropped quite quickly for me, as I was definitely ready to hear what she had to say.
It felt like coming home and eventually understand it all, what a lovely feeling indeed!
Since March 2009 I have been religiously tracking my cycle and inspecting it with a magnifying glass and I enjoyed all my cycles even more than I used to do, because my awareness was now so much deeper.
I blessed every one of them always hoping that it wouldn’t be my last one as I was already in my 40’s.  I enjoyed and studied my ‘inner seasons’ with devotion and dedication and that allowed me to increase tremendously my self-knowledge and self-awareness. A new chapter of my life started to unfold and I started sharing with other women and the world at large my new found life calling.
 
My new experience

I can’t say that in the last year I witnessed proper ‘seasons’ any more and so I resigned myself to accept that I am in my perimenopause and I consciously ventured in this new territory and way of being.
I haven’t read any books on menopause yet because I decided that I want to live my own adventure first and not being influenced by other women’s thoughts about it.
The opportunity of this adventure is too good to be missed, therefore my thoughts and experiences come first, even before the experiences of women that I follow and admire like Alexandra Pope, Christiane Northrup, Barbara Hannelore, DeAnna L’am, Leslie Carol Botha, Suzanne Mathis McQueen, Sara Avant Stover and several others that I have encountered on my female journey in the last few years.
My message to women as a Female Cycle Consultant is a message of freedom and inner authority, therefore I want to walk my talk, nothing matters more to me than being coherent with my beliefs and values: honesty and integrity are extremely important to me.
 
 
What is the big thing about not experiencing my ‘inner seasons’?
 
As I have now got used to my inner rhythm of the ‘seasons’, I find it tricky to live without it. For those of you who don’t know what the ‘inner seasons’ are I will say that the four phases of our female cycle correspond to the energies of the four seasons and precisely as follows:
the pre-ovulatory phase is similar to Spring,
the ovulatory phase is like Summer,
the pre-menstrual phase is similar to Autumn
and the menstrual phase is like Winter.
Human beings are creatures of habit and I am no exception to that.
I am grieving my lost rhythm and am doing my best to be patient to discover the new one that will replace my usual one, because I know that, once my periods stop, I will slowly settle in a new chapter of my life and new rhythm too.
Any type of life has a rhythm and a cycle, so this is the only certainty I have at the moment.
Why do I find it so challenging not to have a pattern in my daily life?
Well quite simply, when one doesn’t have a predefined track to follow, it is more difficult to keep one’s balance and one has to be utter present in any given moment, which is not such an easy thing to do for any of us!
Therefore what I have been doing more and more in the last year is reminding myself that my life is my meditation, hence I have to live with what is in the moment and accept it as it is.
Whenever I don’t do that, which happens quite often frankly, I loose my inner balance and I become victim of my moods, thoughts, fears or anything that shows up for me.
Sometimes I just accept that balance is too high of a goal for me at the moment and content myself with the messy feelings that I experience. Would I like it to be different?
Hell yes! But it doesn’t look like to be what I am supposed to experience at the moment, so I enjoy my feeling a ‘mess’ and remind myself that life is an adventure and I have to make the most out of it, whatever ride I am on …
My new ride brought about new friends and am considering befriending them the best I can.
Here are my new found friends of the moment: anger, frustration, impatience, sadness, low energy, loneliness, unresourcefulness, clumsiness, forgetfulness, shyness, hesitancy, inaccuracy, indecisiveness, thoughts about death and … sorry I forgot the rest!
Of course I am looking forward to welcoming my ‘inner winter’ that hopefully will grace me with its presence again soon.
If you are in a similar period of your life, I would love to read your comments and thoughts.
If my experience intrigues you and you would like to find out more about my work with women and their female cycle, check my website: Flying Inspiration
 
 

0 thoughts on “My perimenopausal years: uncharted territory”

  1. I'm interested in Learning more about internal rhythms, but I, too, have been experiencing being out of rhythm for the last 4/5 months. No period. I will be 50 years young in two weeks.

    Reply

Leave a comment