Stepping Into Your Creatrix Energy
I’ll admit, when I used to think about menopause, I thought it meant drying up and becoming an old lady. Like my time was over, and I would be retired across some line and wearing clothes that fully covered me from head to toe. When I was young, it seemed far away and like it would never really happen to me. I think this narrative is, unfortunately, still really ingrained in our culture, but I like to believe we’re on the edge of a revolution, and you’re coming with me.
What is actually happening in our bodies? Three things I wish someone had told me:
Menopause is a single point in time. It is the natural cessation of ovarian function, and it is defined by Western medicine as the time point one year after the final menstrual cycle. Which means, you don’t know if you’ve hit it until it’s way over
What people are usually talking about when they say “I’m going through menopause” is perimenopause. This is the transition time from fully fertile to no longer able to have babies. It can be up to a decade or longer, and can start as early as your mid-30s, and you may still be able to have babies even though changes have started
These are NOT diagnosable diseases! This is a 100% nature based change, essentially a reverse puberty and your second coming of age. Imagine if someone told your teenage daughter or niece, “you’re just at a certain age- it’s called puberty. But don’t worry, we’ll help you with (name ten drugs that don’t address the root cause of symptom) and you’ll be fine.” OR, worse yet: “you’re just at a certain age. We don’t know what causes (insert your symptom) and there's nothing you can do”
In short, this transition is a powerful time where we transform from funneling energy into creating babies (whether we became mothers or not), to energy we can use to create what we want in our lives: Creatrix energy.
You were meant to get through this transition with minimal to no symptoms, without hormone therapy. Ayurveda gives us the tools, and here’s a little secret I want to let you all in on: the tools are EXACTLY the same for those in perimenopause and those that don't go through it. The number one tool?
Honing our capacity to digest.
If we can fully digest our lives and our food, that’s going to go a long way.
I wanted to lay some groundwork before I start delving more deeply into perimenopause + Ayurveda. I’ll admit, I wish we had different language for peri and menopause, and some pioneers ahead of me have attempted to do this, but none of it has stuck in the greater vernacular. Soon, I’ll also address a burning question I (didn’t) know I had: how do I know if I’m in perimenopause?