Mom, Me, and Menopause

My mother was completely finished with menopause by the time she was forty-four. At least I think she was; Mom had an aversion to admitting that anything was not perfect. When my aunt found her lying prone on the living room sofa with a wet dishtowel draped over her head, Mom insisted that she wasn’t going through “the changes.” The pain behind her eyes that caused her to take to the red leather club chair and close all the shades so that the house was in semi-darkness on a bright, sunny day was discounted as ”just my headaches.” My sister and I found it hard to tell the difference between what might be hormonal mood swings and our mother’s natural prickly personality.

I started in my mid-fifties though, in retrospect, I had an opening salvo, what would now be referred to as peri-menopause, late in my forties (Hi, Mom). I was attending a holistic conference and while I was browsing the vendors’ display tables I suddenly felt as if I couldn’t breathe. It was suddenly so hot in the room that I wanted to run outside and throw myself onto the soda-filled bucket of ice I saw by the conference cafe. Instead, I went into a yogic breathing practice that helps cool the body. I didn’t realize Mother Nature was whispering (shouting?) in my solar plexus that I was heading for a more mature stage of life. Why should I have known? Mom never prepared me and even with all my reading on the subject, somehow I was unprepared for the signals.

But once I started in earnest, I decided I would not do it the way my mother had. I was going to be open about what I was feeling, thinking, doing. I would embrace this particular life transition with my friends and write about it and speak to women’s groups. I guess I wanted to bond with other women who were in the same space — for comfort, to learn more perhaps, to be able to laugh about it with those who really understood. I wrote a book called The Adventures of Swamp Woman: Menopause Essays on the Edge* and poured out what I was experiencing. I spared nothing and shared everything. I was Swamp Woman and boy, was I edgy.

I am now into the post period, yet I still hear the call of nature. There are still night sweats, though not as many or as wet. There are routine hot flashes every night around nine o’clock at night (my husband says that he can set his watch by me), which send me raiding the refrigerator for something cooling to tame my heat. But these aren’t as vicious as they used to be. And yes, there is the occasional headache and mood breakdown. Will it ever stop? My friend’s mother would sometimes flash when she was well into her eighties! For the most part, though, I am less on the edge than I had been.

My sister swears by bio-identical hormones (Suzanne Somers is her idol). So far I have not had my hormone balance checked but it does sound like a good idea. I have been putting it off because I think I would miss my alter ego — Swamp Woman does show up now and again. And looking back I wonder if my mother was just in the dark about the female aspect of life; maybe women didn’t talk about those things to each other back then. I wish I could tell her that what she was going through was perfect for the time of life she was in and that perfection is more a state of mind than anything else. I would hug her and teach her how to breathe.

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The Adventures of Swamp Woman: Menopause - Essays on the Edge

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Mom, Me, and Menopause

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