No One Talks About It
Mature Women Conversations Part 1
This conversation started quite by accident, well, not accident but with some hesitation. We don’t talk about it, it’s not glamorous, we are averting our startled eyes from our reflection. We are spending small fortunes on cosmetics and treatments and surgeries. We use filters and cleverly disguise our changing bodies with foundation garments and strategically fitting clothes.
And we suffer in silence, completely unprepared for what is to come once Flo vacates the premises. Sure, we start to age from the day we are born and we roll with the changes as they come along. But once your period stops and the oestrogen disappears, well thats dramatic!! Who knew oestrogen was responsible for so many things mentally and physically!! It’s embarrassing, when our bladders let us down and crotch fat starts to appear (what???) and ugly age spots in the worst possible locations, course black hairs growing out of our chins, our girl parts start to whither and dry out. And our metabolisms!!! What is that at this stage of the game?? All you must do is look at food the wrong way and it creeps on to our backs and belly’s where it never was before.
We are tired and we don’t know why? Why can’t we keep up to all that we used to do, and it’s confusing, what is happening? We are forgetting some of the millions of things we used to keep straight in our competent multi tasking brains!!! What is going on??? We are irritated and and we’d rather sleep alone and spread out across the entire bed to just get one good nights sleep, if we could just get to sleep and stay asleep the whole entire night!!! And sex? Ya most days in all honesty would be a ok without that too, never saw that coming!
I came into early menopause as a form of treatment for oestrogen receptive breast cancer and I was so ready after battling that for so many years to find an end to it! I was also grateful to put an end to the haemorrhaging periods that had started to occur too. However, I was truly unprepared for what was to come literally over night. The emotional part hit first and all at once the grief I had stuffed down into the abyss came bubbling to the surface and poured out of me, I could be cleaning a toilet and suddenly find myself in a ball on the floor weeping, ugly crying, uncontrollable sobs, what was happening to me??? Of course, the hot flashes, (everyone talks about that) and not being able to sleep...... The list goes on and we suffer in silence.
Truth, is we need to talk about it we need to know we are not alone. There is so much pressure all around us to be vibrant and youthful, relevant and inspiring and all the while there’s all these other things going on. It is a struggle, everything is harder, its harder to lose a pound and build a muscle, to remember and do all the things. We are our own worst critics, and we suffer in silence when what we need to do is talk about it. We need commune with our sisters more than ever and as a dear friend shared with me we need to give ourselves some Grace......that hit me.....how about extending just a little bit of that grace we so freely give to others to ourselves.
Much grace to all my sister’s
A. xo