The Menopausal Pause

I have been passing through a Rite of Passage over the last 5 or 6 years.

A threshold… a transition… an initiation. One that is very often overlooked by our modern culture, as so many are.

The Rite of Menopause.

From what I hear others say about this threshold crossing, it seems, so far, to have been relatively easeful for me. Easeful - as in spacious and with room to rest, to breathe. Absolutely NOT to be confused with easy!

I'm still in the process... I most definitely don't claim to be sure about any of it right now. But, as I Pause in the moment in the moment of Menopause and take in the view looking back on where I've wandered, I've been musing about some of it.

The journey through Perimenopause certainly had its challenges, as it should - for challenge is required for any true Rite of Passage. There have been moments where I’ve felt entirely broken by life - physically, emotionally, energetically.

But I feel I’ve been navigating this path with enough awareness of the journey of life that I’ve been able to lean into the initiation with compassion and trust. Understanding that has become embodied over decades of lived experiences, learning, and deep personal integration. For that I am deeply grateful.

I've come to recognise Perimenopause as the first phase in the full Rite of Passage process - the time of separation from all I was and all I knew to be true. 

Traditionally in the Rites of Passage of many ancient cultures this separation phase is often disruptive, painful, and sometimes heartbreaking. A separation from community. And it has certainly been that for me. Outwardly, I closed the business I had been dreaming of for decades, just as it was gaining traction. I removed myself from a career spanning 30 years by relinquishing my teacher accreditation. I began consciously showing up differently within my relationships and my work.

On a deeper level, I’ve been releasing a version of myself that could not be carried forward… the death of all previous knowing and beliefs about who and what I am and the world as it is. 

Most recently I've crossed another threshold - the threshold of transition. The essential and liminal time of isolation and the sometimes excruciating challenge of introspection… a deep wintering phase. A deep and long lasting pause from the external world, while the internal process becomes increasingly and even more intensely activated.

There have been moments during this season where I’ve beaten myself up about my inability to function as the society tells me I should. Expected myself to push through, to get over it, to keep showing up and doing the things regardless of what my body, heart and soul are yearning for. 

I've been provided by life many opportunities to see clearly the deeply ingrained constructs of my conditioning. Neural pathways wired largely by the industrialised masculine dominated culture I have grown up within - not anti-male or anti-men as is often the perception when patriarchal society is spoken of - but a culture dominated by the energy of the masculine. Productivity, action, and solutions.

I’ve been asked to release all of this in ways beyond my control - and I’ve certainly tried really hard to control it at times.

Instead, I’ve been asked to lean into a deeper, softer place, a nurturing, creative spaciousness where the stories can be rewritten… a space and grace that allows life to unfold as the messy, unpredictable, and sometimes chaotic perfection of nature that it is.

This is the place of the feminine that is, I believe, the antidote to the imbalance. Not to over-ride or diminish the masculine, but to meet it with the counterbalance of equal feminine energy. A perfect union of both that is the essential energy of Creation itself.

As a way-shower and an edge walker… a leader of a new way beyond the known limits of the village... this is familiar but uncomfortable territory.

Stepping into new terrain is almost always confronting. 

Deep in my bones I remember this landscape but to dare to venture into it is daunting. Territory that was once known so well… for which the maps have been long forgotten. The paths are overgrown and hidden, we take up the tools we have available - machetes, sickles, and sometimes the sticks we pick up along the way - and begin to follow the remnants of tracks barely visible. 

Along the way we meet all the parts of ourselves we’ve been able to avoid while within the safety of the village. Fear, rage, betrayal, abandonment, shame, grief. It can feel lonely at first… like we are the only one beating this path forward for the rest of humanity to follow.

As we travel we bump into others… and discover there are many way-showers and edge-walkers also reclaiming the forgotten paths, clearing the way, and that mostly these paths converge toward the same place of re-membering.

There’s no guarantee our work will be smooth or even turn out ok in the end. No guarantee we will rediscover that place we long to find again.

It requires faith, commitment and a depth of trust in ourselves and The Mystery that is often difficult to find… a knowing we’re rarely taught how to access.

It asks for time, and space, and loving compassion… and the witnessing and holding of others.

For me at least, even though I don’t quite know where we are actually going yet as a species, it’s sure as hell worth showing up and finding out… and maybe, just maybe, if enough of us keep showing up, we might stumble across a path of remembering that leads us all just a little bit closer to the more beautiful and peaceful world that we know, deep in our hearts, is possible.

For now, I embrace this season of transition… seclusion, introspection and wintering… and I honour the process. 

Like the seeds beneath the soil, invisibly doing the work of creation as they germinate and prepare for their journey upward toward the sun in spring, I too feel the movement occurring within… New and beautiful things are stirring and when the time is right, the Return phase of the Rite of Passage will come - reunion and reintegration with the village - a rebirth into a different role, different responsibilities, and different ways of being within the community. 

Until then, I am… 

exactly as I am in each moment.