My blood leaked around the edges, destroying countless pairs of underwear, spotting my pants, staining not just my clothes but my car’s seat, my friend’s couch, my good living room chair (years later, when I finally had a living room and enough time had passed for me to actually have a good chair!), even the bleachers at my kids lego robotics competition. Requiring emergency trips to bathrooms in shopping malls, convenience stores, downtown, school, and various offices in countless towns. My blood made itself known. It ran down my legs, sometimes gushing, and generally remained relentlessly like an endless creek flowing steadily for 5 days. It tufted in my pubic hair. Reliably, Day 2 was always the messiest.

I’ve no idea how many women are like me, but I’d like to know. I loved having my period. Do you? Did you? Maybe because I got it later than my friends, I was 14 and in 8th grade, and it was so anticipated and so welcome. Finally my body was doing this thing that my friends’ bodies already did. Finally I was a member of this secret club. A grown up. A woman. I loved it despite the fact that it was messy. Really messy. And irregular until I turned 19 and went on birth control. What a blessing to know when my moon flow would arrive!

I never managed to get the hang of containing the blood. I remember trying my mom’s tampons early on. Gritting my teeth in the downstairs bathroom as I tried to follow the instructions on the box – hunched over in the semi-darkness of early morning, painfully trying to penetrate myself while my whole body clamped down. There was no YouTube back then (yes, I’m that old!) and while my mom had talked to me about getting my period, and I had carried a pad around for what felt like forever, I had no idea how to use a tampon. Later I bought slender tampons for myself and managed to insert them, but they never felt comfortable. My body rejected them and I stuck to period pads. And though I had an awareness of when my period would arrive, those pads never contained my flow.

Eventually I got a Diva cup. And while I loved how eco friendly it was, no more buying and consuming plastic to regularly absorb my moon flow, the Diva cup, like the tampons, never really felt comfortable in my body. Despite my giving birth to two incredible children and knowing my body could open, open, open. Despite enjoying penetrative sex. There was something about my menstrual flow that did not and could not be dammed.

And during all that flow, as the moons waxed and waned, as my children grew and my marriage cycled through ups and downs, my period was a constant. Though I didn’t really give it much thought at the time. Mostly it just was.

It was something my girl friends complained about. It was something messy that demanded my attention on a regular basis even when I was “too busy” to be bothered with my body. It was something that stopped, or temporarily paused, my husband from wanting to have sex with me. To be honest, that was sometimes a relief. Though I wasn’t honest with myself, or with him, at the time. This I regret and if I had a time machine and could go back in time to my younger self, I would explain…

Because perhaps like some of you, I had fled my body during most of those years. Culturally-induced and family-fed body shame insidiously planted itself like a weed in that menstrual flow, arriving about the same time. As it does for far too many girls. And so while I was present in my life and in my relationships, I often wore my body like a set of clothing for my mind. Only I didn’t know it at the time. This continued as the years cycled and the seasons turned, and still my river flowed. Eventually I uprooted the body shame weed. Attending my first Bodysex® was instrumental in this. As was time, affirmations and education, followed by hope and changing habits.

And then, at 55, my period ceased. Not so surprisingly I suppose, as once again my friends went through their change before I did. And yet, I was surprised. I was surprised by how much I had come to associate my period with my vitality, sexual vigor and aliveness. It somehow represented my growing empowerment as a woman. I was surprised at my sadness about no longer having the ability to provide a home for another human being, to be the portal into our world, this incredible super power we women have. Although that was long behind me, my children grown and flown, now it was really gone. And unlike a lot of women, it had simply slowly slipped away. I never had bad cramps or migraines or bloating or problems other than the inability to contain my flow. It felt easy. And so it was with menopause. Or so I thought.

My main symptom with perimenopause, which I believe I experienced for a few years, is something I came to simply call “hot legs”. At some point during the night, my whole body would heat up. Especially my legs. My legs would get unbearably hot and I’d stick one of them out from underneath the duvet cover. That one leg would hang off the bed, uncovered. Naked. And it magically made my whole body the exact right temperature again. I trusted my body. I valued it’s communication to me. And it was capable of flowing and regulating, of lubricating, of walking and breathing, and of providing me with much pleasure – especially once I learned to come home to my body.

So it was a shock when, after getting divorced from my beloved, something I put in motion because while I wanted to stay married, while I dearly loved (and still love) my now ex-husband, I came to realize that between covid and empty-nesting, our dog dying, moving from monogamy to ethical non-monogamy, losing my period and my hot legs and entering menopause, something in me had changed.

Maybe it’s not fair then, for me to blame menopause for my divorce. And yet. I wonder if it’s true, that in no small measure, menopause contributed to my changing.

In prior years, my husband and I had pruned ourselves to carefully fit and grow together. And it was good. Really good. We were lucky, and truly happy. But menopause, I think, made me… desirous of more freedom. I felt a little suffocated, under a heavy blanket of love. I don’t know why, but increasingly I wonder and suspect that this has to do with reclaiming the glory of being a Crone in menopause. Crones, older women, used to be revered. We used to recognize and honor the experiences life grants our elders.

This is still true in some cultures, though after many years of the denigration of the feminine, most cultures and religions no longer worship Goddess, feminine wisdom and the sacred feminine. And this is something some of us are working to change in the world.

Truly, Crones are the bearers of wisdom and the preservers of knowledge. They, no we, are the healers, mentors and advisers to younger women – those in their maiden and mother years. And so while I still don’t fully understand what I’m supposed to learn from the painful experience of divorce, from the loss of my moon flow, from the grief of no longer being able to hold and rock my children when they experience loss, I keep telling myself that I’m right where I’m supposed to be.

As a Crone, I celebrate myself and my friends. Those of us in the last third of our lives have a new role to play. We can choose to honor the contributions we have made to our families, our friends, our communities. While at the same time, allowing and fully feeling the loss of our youth, our attractiveness, our fertility and our bleeding. We can be Both / And.

I am: Radiant. Lit up. Fully Female. Sovereign. Engaged in the World. Proud. Accomplished. Confident. Beautiful. Sexy. Embodied. Joyful. Creative. Passionate.

And

I am: Grieving. Sad. Intentional. Allowing. Supporting. Challenged. Angry. Mourning. Contemplative. Reclaiming. Aging. Dying. Beginning again.

Perhaps you are too.

Some of my feels in menopause include welcome relief at being free of the fear of getting pregnant, and of endless years of birth control and family planning. A bit more economic freedom as I no longer have children at home, and at the same time less money as I’m no longer the beneficiary of my ex-husband’s substantially larger paycheck. My metabolism, never high to begin with, has slowed down. It takes me longer to heal. I am learning to make peace with the wrinkles on my face, rejecting botox and other messages that say I am anything less than I was. I earned every single one of these wrinkles. I am embracing change and transition, along with my silvering hair. I am embracing myself. Both And. While it’s true that some days grief sticks to me

like a shadow, I also feel joy creeping around the corners. I am growing and changing. I am enjoying sex. I am in my body. I feel desire and love and grateful.

I am entering post-menopause, and while my moon no longer flows, my spirit does. And it’s fierce and flowing.

Questions? I’m always happy to talk. amy@joyfulselflove.com. More about me and my 1:1 coaching as well as workshops is here: www.JoyfulSelfLove.com

Wishing you much embodied pleasure,
Amy

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