There’s an op-ed piece going viral on HuffPo about menopause and perimenopause, and it’s got some really excellent points, some poignant anecdotes, and is quite funny.
However, it also takes a view, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, about aging and bodily dysfunction that I don’t think is helpful.
That was the moment I learned that before menopause, there is a completely separate, though somehow related hell called perimenopause. According to the nurse, this marked the beginning of a gradual decline in estrogen in my body ― and, “by the way,” she added, “it can last for years.” She said that last bit like she was indoctrinating me into a special invitation-only club. I half expected to get an ID card.
But I could read between the lines, and what she was really saying was, This is when both your body and your mind begin to betray you. I called up my girlfriends to discuss and, in doing so, became the bearer of bad news.
Betray you? Bad news? Oh, I don’t think so.
Firstly, there has been no secret cabal of women “hiding the truth” about bodily changes in perimenopause or menopause. Plenty of women have been talking and writing about what happens to our bodies and minds as we age for a very long time. She didn’t hear it, you didn’t hear it? That’s on you, sweetheart. Were you not listening?
Secondly, if there’s any betrayal going on, it’s generally us betraying our bodies… not the other way around.
I had to ponder this idea in 2015 as I was waiting to find out whether or not the breast biopsy I’d had would turn out to be positive or negative, and wrote about my “Black Beauty” moment in my memoir.
In the novel Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, there’s a chapter where Beauty is working as a cart horse. He’s starved, exhausted, and has to pull loads that are much too heavy for him. When he stumbles, trying to pull an overloaded wagon up a steep, icy hill, instead of treating him with pity and compassion and lightening the load, the driver screams at him and whips him mercilessly until he falls to his knees.
Beauty still tries his best to get up, to pull that load.
As these thoughts passed through my mind, tears streamed down my face. How often had I starved my body with diets, deprived it of sleep, exercised too much or not at all, stuffed it with garbage, and then resented it for not being the “right” size or shape, instead of recognizing what an amazing and loyal companion it has been to me all my life? My body stumbled on gallantly, as best it could, loving me and giving me pleasure, allowing me to work, parent and do so much physically. Even when I didn’t love it back.
What if, instead of looking at the changes of menopause and perimenopause, at the illnesses most humans are subject to, at the aches and pains and natural effects of aging (and often, a life lived hard), as a betrayal or bad news, we looked at these signals as our bodies saying, “Hey, can I get a little help here?”
What if we treated our bodies with kindness and compassion, instead of hating on them for “failing” us?
I think it’s okay to mentally and emotionally struggle with this, a bit. Humans don’t like change. Especially not change that feels like a negative. Ranting about it is not the worst way to deal with those feelings.
But what if we focused on what we can do, as well as making accommodations for the ways our bodies are changing?
There’s a term I have been seeing on social media: TAB — Temporarily Able-Bodied. Because (for those of us not born with disabilities), no matter how many crunches we can do or laps we can run or how much kale we eat, eventually we will either die suddenly, or become disabled in some way. We all will.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes talks about, in her terrific audio series, The Joyous Body, that 81% of humans have some kind of disability. We need glasses, medications, hearing aids, walking sticks, canes, or wheelchairs. We need to eat several times a day because of diabetes or other health conditions. We have allergies to ragweed or shellfish or peanut butter. We need accommodations for these things and that is okay.
Two writers I love who deal with aging in sensitive and wonderful ways, without seeing it as a negative, are Walker Thornton of Aging Unapologetically and Kathy Gottberg of Smart Living 365. (Hint: their books and websites have not required an ID card, ever, and there are many other good writers who address these issues, too.)
One of the positive things that having breast cancer forced me to do was To Accept Help From People. Like my sister, who came every week while I was getting radiation treatments to clean my apartment and dump the catbox. It was a good change, to learn how to accept help, to learn how to ASK for help, though the thought of not being able to Do All The Things Myself would have horrified me, five years ago. I’m not sure that it is better to give than to receive, but it is certainly easier, emotionally, to be the one giving, and not the one receiving without being able to reciprocate.
Now I am learning to listen to my menopausal body, and to the voices of midlife women, and although in some ways it’s not as much fun as being 22, it’s not all “bad news,” either. In some ways it’s even better.
Just ask any of my boyfriends.
