Menopause: the Great Initiation
Imagine how it might be if we experienced the menopause as a ceremony, a testing time. If our battle with symptoms and our victorious emergence marked us as ready to take over many important roles in our society: the teaching and initiation of the young; the continual guidance of all younger women; and the guidance and governance of our community.
Say we look at this transition as a spiritual ordeal. For some, the ordeal is easy to go through. For others it is a major trial. For all it marks the end of an era and the start of a new period of life. Adjustments need to be made. It is hard for those of us seduced by the medical profession into considering the menopause a medical condition that can be treated by drugs like HRT, to understand and profit from this time of change. Perhaps for some the expectation of a sudden fall into old age is too shocking. For others brave enough to stay with the process, the menopause marks a change which is followed by other changes so that the journey from youth to old age is gradual with much to be enjoyed at each stage along the way.
Yes, changes to our bodies can be shocking and frightening. Many women fear death at this time as the realisation that we are not immortal is forced upon us by changes to our skin, our hair, and our muscle tone. A smallish death, the menopause, reminds us of our mortality. As we view our mortality more clearly, so do questions about the nature of life and our place in it raise their heads. It is essential to our well being that we make space for spiritual nourishment at this time. It is frightening but salutary to face death and take her teachings. As Mary Oliver says:
When death comes
Like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
What is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
………………..
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
from When Death Comes by Mary Oliver
The menopause is indeed a spiritual ordeal or rite of passage. One of the characteristics of ordeals is that they present obstacles that it takes courage and fortitude to overcome. They are specifically designed to produce trials that will strengthen the individual, to prepare her/him for the responsibilities that lie ahead.
I have noticed how many formal ceremonial forms for men that include ordeals are passed on to us by indigenous peoples. Thus the Vision Quest where you sit out in all weathers with no clothing and no food or water for four days and nights. The Sun Dance where you run back and forth to a tree again with no food and minimal water in the summer often in desert heat for four days and nights. Many rites of passage in older cultures than ours include some form of physical challenge which has to be withstood bravely: cutting the cheeks, circumcision, filing the teeth…
And people often ask me – so where are comparative women’s ceremonies? Well, what I have observed is that our blood rites are our major ordeals or rites of passage. We have the menarche for a young girl moving out of childhood; the ordeal of childbirth for women claiming their power and their status in the community; and we have the menopause for women claiming their right to be elders and leaders of the community as a whole.
While ceremonies for the menarche are held for the girl as she moves into womanhood, those for the menopause stress the importance of the woman claiming power for herself. Jamie Sams has given out a ceremony for older women. You have to be past your last bleed by two years. The ceremony has a form that would be difficult to follow for women who had no experience of Native American traditions. But if you have those, then it is a gentle, empowering ceremony. When women come and ask me to run it for them, I tell them that that is not the way it goes. This ceremony is for women to run for themselves. If they make it through, then they have proved themselves ready to take on the power of the Elder. To join or form a Black Lodge which is run solely by post-menopausal women and which other women can attend only if invited.
The menopause is a period of transition when a woman lets go of her fertility. Her body goes through huge adjustments as it rearranges itself, relinquishing the task of being in a constant state of readiness for pregnancy and reverting to support of a well being centred solely round the life of the woman herself.
The Australian First Nation teacher, Lorraine Mafi Williams, once explained to me how her people view the menopause as a time when women come back into physical balance. She told me that while children and older women were considered to be in balance, the time between menarche and menopause was difficult and dangerous. Women were constantly falling out of balance (don’t we know it) what with their menstrual cycle, pregnancy, lactation etc. Only when the time of child bearing was past would they feel in proper balance and harmony and only then would they truly be so. Men also were considered to be out of balance in these middle years – often becoming too hot and fiery. The remedy for this was bloodletting.
So too, a woman’s horizons change. Even though she may well still have children at home, they are not as all encompassing as they were and this is a time when many women feel their homes becoming stifling and limited. When they need to break out and explore new features of their world. Go back to work, take a lover, explore their psychology, search for a spiritual path, and develop some form of creativity that may have been lying dormant for decades. Women go back to college, enrol part time on art courses, travel, read, and take up music making.
All good and important. And yet there is often something missing and perhaps that something is power in the world.
I love the metaphor of virgin mother and crone which relates women to the three phases of the moon. Yet it has its limitations. The crone is always depicted as a wrinkled old woman – her face like a puckered apple, her limbs thin and bent, her body a mere husk of its former self. She has moved way beyond the physical, you feel, and is standing close to the gateway of death looking at the other worlds.
This description seems highly inappropriate for a woman in her early fifties or even in her sixties. I believe that we need to add another ‘age’, a fourth age where woman is powerful in the world and has much of her creative work to do and is still definitely a sexual being.
It is sad to see how much is written about the menopause as if it is an illness. In fact it is a transition time and like all transitions it can pass almost unnoticed or it can be a difficult time of adjustment. In our society where youth is worshipped almost as much as money and a young sexually alluring body is seen as almost more important than the ability to give birth, the menopause is seen as the start of a short passage to death. This is far from the case. Perhaps the menopause developed as a natural survival technique so that women without birth control would not have to continue to bear children until the process killed them. Perhaps it was also to protect the first children from an endless line of babies, so that their mother would have some energy and time left to look after them on the long journey from birth to maturity. Imagine if we could reclaim the understanding that the menopause is a boon, a gift granted to all women, which frees us to take our rightful place of power in the community.
If you look around western society, it is interesting to note that the majority of men who hold the power in big business and for the most part in politics and in the great religions are in the 50 – 70 age bracket. The time when women are conditioned to feel ‘past it’.
Germaine Greer ( The Change) suggests that the menopause is the beginning of the long, gradual change from body into soul and she claims that sexual drive leaves us at this time. I believe that she overstates her case. In fact, postmenopausal sexuality can be the best of all. No longer need we size up every man in terms of a long, family holding partnership. Now we can love and play and move on when a relationship has reached its natural end. What a delight!
I would like to close with a quote from the book that I would most recommend to menopausal women: Menopausal Years The Wise Woman Way by Susun Weed. This book deals with the physical, emotional and spiritual challenges of menopause. It is written by a herbalist who will also describe surgical procedures in her desire to give every woman the full picture of options available. Here is part of her description of the woman who has emerged the other side:
In the ancient past, in the days of the matriarchy, and in some matrifocal cultures yet, the woman who had completed her menopausal metamorphosis initiated young men into the ways of love play most pleasing to women. She was honoured as the teller of truth and the keeper of peace. She was the keeper of traditions and the link to the spirit world.
Let us face the initiatory rites bravely and reclaim the second half of our lives as a time of delight, power and wisdom.
Say we look at this transition as a spiritual ordeal. For some, the ordeal is easy to go through. For others it is a major trial. For all it marks the end of an era and the start of a new period of life. Adjustments need to be made. It is hard for those of us seduced by the medical profession into considering the menopause a medical condition that can be treated by drugs like HRT, to understand and profit from this time of change. Perhaps for some the expectation of a sudden fall into old age is too shocking. For others brave enough to stay with the process, the menopause marks a change which is followed by other changes so that the journey from youth to old age is gradual with much to be enjoyed at each stage along the way.
Yes, changes to our bodies can be shocking and frightening. Many women fear death at this time as the realisation that we are not immortal is forced upon us by changes to our skin, our hair, and our muscle tone. A smallish death, the menopause, reminds us of our mortality. As we view our mortality more clearly, so do questions about the nature of life and our place in it raise their heads. It is essential to our well being that we make space for spiritual nourishment at this time. It is frightening but salutary to face death and take her teachings. As Mary Oliver says:
When death comes
Like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
What is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
………………..
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
from When Death Comes by Mary Oliver
The menopause is indeed a spiritual ordeal or rite of passage. One of the characteristics of ordeals is that they present obstacles that it takes courage and fortitude to overcome. They are specifically designed to produce trials that will strengthen the individual, to prepare her/him for the responsibilities that lie ahead.
I have noticed how many formal ceremonial forms for men that include ordeals are passed on to us by indigenous peoples. Thus the Vision Quest where you sit out in all weathers with no clothing and no food or water for four days and nights. The Sun Dance where you run back and forth to a tree again with no food and minimal water in the summer often in desert heat for four days and nights. Many rites of passage in older cultures than ours include some form of physical challenge which has to be withstood bravely: cutting the cheeks, circumcision, filing the teeth…
And people often ask me – so where are comparative women’s ceremonies? Well, what I have observed is that our blood rites are our major ordeals or rites of passage. We have the menarche for a young girl moving out of childhood; the ordeal of childbirth for women claiming their power and their status in the community; and we have the menopause for women claiming their right to be elders and leaders of the community as a whole.
While ceremonies for the menarche are held for the girl as she moves into womanhood, those for the menopause stress the importance of the woman claiming power for herself. Jamie Sams has given out a ceremony for older women. You have to be past your last bleed by two years. The ceremony has a form that would be difficult to follow for women who had no experience of Native American traditions. But if you have those, then it is a gentle, empowering ceremony. When women come and ask me to run it for them, I tell them that that is not the way it goes. This ceremony is for women to run for themselves. If they make it through, then they have proved themselves ready to take on the power of the Elder. To join or form a Black Lodge which is run solely by post-menopausal women and which other women can attend only if invited.
The menopause is a period of transition when a woman lets go of her fertility. Her body goes through huge adjustments as it rearranges itself, relinquishing the task of being in a constant state of readiness for pregnancy and reverting to support of a well being centred solely round the life of the woman herself.
The Australian First Nation teacher, Lorraine Mafi Williams, once explained to me how her people view the menopause as a time when women come back into physical balance. She told me that while children and older women were considered to be in balance, the time between menarche and menopause was difficult and dangerous. Women were constantly falling out of balance (don’t we know it) what with their menstrual cycle, pregnancy, lactation etc. Only when the time of child bearing was past would they feel in proper balance and harmony and only then would they truly be so. Men also were considered to be out of balance in these middle years – often becoming too hot and fiery. The remedy for this was bloodletting.
So too, a woman’s horizons change. Even though she may well still have children at home, they are not as all encompassing as they were and this is a time when many women feel their homes becoming stifling and limited. When they need to break out and explore new features of their world. Go back to work, take a lover, explore their psychology, search for a spiritual path, and develop some form of creativity that may have been lying dormant for decades. Women go back to college, enrol part time on art courses, travel, read, and take up music making.
All good and important. And yet there is often something missing and perhaps that something is power in the world.
I love the metaphor of virgin mother and crone which relates women to the three phases of the moon. Yet it has its limitations. The crone is always depicted as a wrinkled old woman – her face like a puckered apple, her limbs thin and bent, her body a mere husk of its former self. She has moved way beyond the physical, you feel, and is standing close to the gateway of death looking at the other worlds.
This description seems highly inappropriate for a woman in her early fifties or even in her sixties. I believe that we need to add another ‘age’, a fourth age where woman is powerful in the world and has much of her creative work to do and is still definitely a sexual being.
It is sad to see how much is written about the menopause as if it is an illness. In fact it is a transition time and like all transitions it can pass almost unnoticed or it can be a difficult time of adjustment. In our society where youth is worshipped almost as much as money and a young sexually alluring body is seen as almost more important than the ability to give birth, the menopause is seen as the start of a short passage to death. This is far from the case. Perhaps the menopause developed as a natural survival technique so that women without birth control would not have to continue to bear children until the process killed them. Perhaps it was also to protect the first children from an endless line of babies, so that their mother would have some energy and time left to look after them on the long journey from birth to maturity. Imagine if we could reclaim the understanding that the menopause is a boon, a gift granted to all women, which frees us to take our rightful place of power in the community.
If you look around western society, it is interesting to note that the majority of men who hold the power in big business and for the most part in politics and in the great religions are in the 50 – 70 age bracket. The time when women are conditioned to feel ‘past it’.
Germaine Greer ( The Change) suggests that the menopause is the beginning of the long, gradual change from body into soul and she claims that sexual drive leaves us at this time. I believe that she overstates her case. In fact, postmenopausal sexuality can be the best of all. No longer need we size up every man in terms of a long, family holding partnership. Now we can love and play and move on when a relationship has reached its natural end. What a delight!
I would like to close with a quote from the book that I would most recommend to menopausal women: Menopausal Years The Wise Woman Way by Susun Weed. This book deals with the physical, emotional and spiritual challenges of menopause. It is written by a herbalist who will also describe surgical procedures in her desire to give every woman the full picture of options available. Here is part of her description of the woman who has emerged the other side:
In the ancient past, in the days of the matriarchy, and in some matrifocal cultures yet, the woman who had completed her menopausal metamorphosis initiated young men into the ways of love play most pleasing to women. She was honoured as the teller of truth and the keeper of peace. She was the keeper of traditions and the link to the spirit world.
Let us face the initiatory rites bravely and reclaim the second half of our lives as a time of delight, power and wisdom.