My Menopausal Musings

Between the next rounds of dating was a little more down time than usual. It wasn’t just me; everyone was spending less time on personal matters and turning all attention to politics and the war. It seemed as though my hot flashes were running as hot as the political debates. The hot flashes were never ending. I was not sleeping as well as usual. I wake myself up in the middle of the night because I am wildly ripping the clothes off my body. I am alone. I am just hotter than hell. It’s unbelievable. I am finally comfortable and drift back off to sleep only to awaken because I am so cold that I must get up to retrieve the duvet from the floor. Months of practice have enabled me to strip and merely throw the duvet to the side for easy recovery. My sleep is interrupted a bit less. Friends are considering hormone replacement therapy to subside their hot flashes. Others are talking about herbal teas and tincture of sage. I am not ready to go there yet. While I am occasionally...

I am in menopause. I am at my beginning. Again, I have come of age. We all do it. We all do it differently – hormone replacement therapy; hot flashes; loss of sex drive; increased sex drive; the tragedy of new facial hair; fear of bone loss; antidepressants – and none of us know what will come next. Very few of us share our secrets. I have spent the last few years discussing these issues with girlfriends. We have shocked and surprised each other as well as found comfort in some of our common stories. After years of being single and keeping my eyes on nothing but my career, it was clearly time to take control of myself and my body. I had just gone through a record emotional dry spell. I felt very alone, but imagined that I was not in a place so different than other women. Women in the workplace spend years losing themselves in order to gain advancement that, even if it does come, won’t be as satisfying as they thought. It is that time in your late thirties, often through your forties, t...