Step by step
If you’re looking for a theory, I’ve usually got a few to spare. They won’t have any scientific backing, or any backing other than my instincts, but I have thoughts.
Here’s one that circles on the regular: oestrogen = being accommodating.
I was going to write this from a “We do this…we feel that…” angle but who am I to be talking about other people’s thoughts and feelings? All I can do is share my own experience and sprinkle it with what friends and others have shared with me. So here’s my not so humble opinion:
It’s not just our physical bodies that oestrogen keeps soft and flexible, it does the same to our minds.
It makes sense to me that, on an evolutionary level, women needed to be the people who held together communities, be that the family, the village, the clan…
Without someone at the centre who was prepared to put up with everyone else’s bullshit and put themselves at the bottom of the priority list, children wouldn’t survive. Men would simply kill each other. The species would die out pretty damn fast. So I’m not complaining or blaming The Patriarchy, just making an observation of something that seemed to fill a necessary role and worked quite well.
This is an animal part of us that happens during a specific part of our lives - for most, not all, the years when we could expect to be finding mates, giving birth, and raising a new generation. It doesn’t fit well with our current culture and awareness that women have a right to put themselves first. We don’t need self-abandonment anymore; after all, the species has thrived to a point where it’s removed itself from the eco-system and become the monster that destroys it. But women, in one way or another, still sometimes feel that pull to accommodate first the needs of others, don’t we? Am I imagining it? My reading/listening tells me I’m right.
Spoiler: it doesn’t last. HURRAH!
Over time, as my operating system changed, I simply lost the ability to ignore the voice asking, “What about me? I need [insert un/reasonable request] too.” I’m not here as a sacrifice to the continuation of the species; I’ve done my martyrly “bit”; I’m here to live my life. I know some people are born knowing this stuff, or realise it early. I did not. It took plummeting oestrogen levels to shake me awake.
It doesn’t mean that I simply packed my bags, shouted, “Adios, losers!” and flew off to sunnier climes (although some days I’d dearly love to, not gonna lie), or that I stopped loving the people I loved. Far from it. For some there will be disengagements and goodbyes but I - like most middle-aged women, I think - am learning how to do my relationships differently and, importantly, the other people involved have also adapted. When it works, it’s so. much. better. New boundaries are set up and enforced, which can come as something of a shock to some.
I did expect these changes, and they’ve happened quite slowly for me, definitely softened to a small degree by HRT and aided by some good plant medicine from Yarrow. What I didn’t expect was that my relationship with just about everything would change. I suppose that as we emerge into post-menopause a changed person, so naturally our interactions change too.
I have a different, deeper, richer relationship with nature. The Earth.
My relationship with time has changed and I experience it differently.
I’ve even moved from the dread of hitting the “snipers’ alley” of my sixties to finding myself looking in the mirror at my 58 year old bare face and saying out loud, “Just let me be 60 now. I’m done with this arse-end of an age. I want to start again.” Sixty suddenly sounds cool. I look sixty and I’m good with my version of that.
Currently, I’m deep in an existential crisis, which may or may not be my Saturn Return, depending on where I am with my renegotiation of the relationship I have with astrology. My long-held beliefs in what underpins our existence have, er, left the building. From our society and culture (that’s always been shakey), to my engagement with the Divine.
I am not and never have been religious. I do not believe in a god. And now more than ever I cannot believe that there is any kind of benevolent, engaged authority that could witness what the human race is doing to this planet and just stand by. Miss me with your “but free will tho”.
I can’t find God, Source, Gaia, Flying Spaghetti Monster anymore. Any decent, worth having, embodiment of a Higher Being who is able to intervene would have done so by now. There is no heavenly parent coming to pick us up, dust us off and tell us to get on and play nicely so we can have a treat later. You may disagree but I respectfully ask say, don’t try to change my mind and I won’t try to change yours. There are many, many versions of what a god is or is not and I’ve mentioned but two: paternalistic and non-existent.
Moving on…there is light in this tired soul!
I still believe that the multiverse is conscious. Some days I might refer to that as spirit or soul but both those feel as if they have some kind of moral code. A good and bad. A right and wrong. Nope. As I once wrote, many moons ago, I think the multiverse is like Lego. Neutral, intelligent, building blocks. It’s with our consciousness that we can build. We can do it with love and awareness, from fear and suspicion or - most often - by default and look where that’s got us: chaos.
I do believe in energy. The Field we come from, live within and return to. Humans seem to have a particularly strong talent for co-creation with the multiverse consciousness and we easily over-ride the efforts of other beings. Imagine if we were conscious co-creators of our personal and collective lives, including all beings. From elephants to amoebas to rivers to mycelia. We have a say. We can make something beautiful.
In my darker moments I think that there are those who’ve reached this knowledge way before me and my like-mindeds, and they’ve decided to co-create something purely for themselves while keeping us so distracted by the sparkly lights of consumerism, competition and outrage that we never look up. But that’s a whole other theory and far from new.
Today, with a migrainous brain and a tired heart due to the constant switch between various forms of HRT (shortages of every type) and the fluctuations that causes (IYKYK), the idea that I can co-create with the Field is a lifebuoy just out of reach. While I drift closer, I’ve decided that I’m going to do what I can to stay afloat, which for now is just to make what is right in front of me, beautiful. Literally what I can reach. Then step forward and do the next bit.
Yesterday, I cleared and weeded the flagstones outside my front door. Under the porch where the garden bench sits. It’s about 6ft x 8ft and it is beautiful to me. As co-creations go, it’s a good start.