For today’s share on menopause, I wanted to go through some of my books I was hoping would have a little bit more to say about menopause. Because menopause is a rite of passage. It is something that’s very meaningful in the second half of life. So I went to look at some of my books.
The Rites of Passage. Nothing in here on menopause. Finding Meaning In The Second Half of Life. Incredible book — nothing in there in about menopause. Kind of thought it might be in here, Collapsing Consciously. But, no, this is about societal collapse. Maybe it’s just because we're all Civilized To Death that we just don’t have any discussions about menopause.
I thought it might be in a book like this one: Women and Madness. You know, mental illness but not menopause. Rage Becomes Her? Nothing. Good and Mad — couple of pages, but not much.
Finally, Some Elderhood Wisdom
Finally, I found one that has a little bit on menopause. That is Hagitude by Sharon Blackie. It’s not a lot though, and this isn’t really about menopause, but it is about growing older and it is about Elderhood. This is about as close as I could get today in in a lot of these books.
I wanted to read just a little bit from this. Sharon says: “Sometimes we need to tell uncomfortable truths and warn about problems that maybe only we with our decades of lived experience can see coming. But all we can do is pass our wisdom on. The world might not listen to our warnings, and we might have to accept that, too. People — even people we might expect to understand this better — will purse their lips and roll their eyes, will dismiss us or mutter that we’re overreacting or out of touch with the zeitgeist.
Telling Uncomfortable Truths
“People would often prefer the women who challenge cultural mythology and insist on engaging with forbidden issues …” (Like menopause, apparently.) “… to just keep quiet and stop rocking the boat. Nevertheless, in a world which is still, and in more inventive ways, dangerous for us — especially in a world which is still dominated by patriarchal values and structures — we need our elder women.”
There it is. We need our elder women truth tellers today more than ever. In other words, we need women in menopause at the front lines.
So: Call to action. Let’s bring menopause into more books that don’t just have to be about menopause specifically. Let’s find ways to bring menopause into our conversations about what it means to get angry, what it means to live in society, what it means when the world is collapsing, what it means in the second half of life — and definitely what it means as a rite of passage.
If you found this helpful, please check out my book Embodying Soul: A Return to Wholeness for more insights into healing and personal evolution.
And find my podcast, Awaken Your Power, for conversations about disruption, breaking the status quo, and building a world from a place of consciousness and compassion.
