Let’s Talk About It

On menopause, midlife, connection, and creativity

Photo by Content Pixie on Unsplash

“Sometimes you just have to go through the crash and see if you can walk away on two legs.” Sandra Tsing Loh

I wasn’t going to write about menopause. I wasn’t even going to notice menopause, except maybe Margaret Mead’s zesty part. I have a hazy recollection of other plans. Based on experience and anecdotal information, I figured it would be a blip on the landscape, followed by blessed relief from the bloody inconvenience. I always wanted to write, and flailed around the empty page whenever a thing inspired me. The inconvenient body was never the thing, though. Until it was the only thing.

For most of my adult life, my body was a reliable machine. I bled every 28 days, a calendar in the flesh, with no cramps and negligible mood swings. I had four kids, with easy pregnancies and natural births (not easy, never easy, totally normal). I nursed everyone long enough to make my mother-in-law nervous and, aside from a few brief breast infections, all went well. And then I lived on the island of children for a great blur of time, growing them all up and keeping everyone alive. I rose every morning and set each night, like a disheveled nurturing sun. When my youngest assigned us all the roles of the Teletubbies, I was literally the sun. My body worked. I had good enough (sometimes…