Jaki Jean & itchy, bitchy, sweaty, sleepy, bloated, forgetful & psycho women

 

My friend, Caryn, whom I love & adore & admire & thank for correcting God’s one mistake & making me a redhead, posted the above on Facebook.

And it gave me a pause for a bit of thought on the subject of women’s reproductive cycles.

Specifically, my own reproductive cycle.

As amusing as this post is, menopause is not a condition, but an event. 

 

It is the last menstrual cycle, the last period, of a woman's life.  Just as the first period of a young woman's life is called a menses.  

Older women are either perimenopausal (entering the years before the final event) or postmenopausal (the years after the final event). 

Menopause is the final event.  The last period of a woman’s life.

I waited until I was fifty-five to experience menopause.  

Believe me, it was not for want of wanting to cease my position as a potentially viable reproductive body.  (That thought constitutes the subject of a horror movie).

I simply was tired.  And after all, I had contributed two lovely male specimens & thus fulfilled my duty (in a patriarchal sense) to the gene pool. 

Because I am terrified of anything that involves sedation or a knife, I went through years of treatment that involved estrogen & progesterone therapy. 

Then one miraculous day, after I had stopped the therapy, I had my final period.  It was only a year later that I acknowledged it as my menopause (just to be safe).

Women should have parties to celebrate menopause.  It is liberating on so many levels. 

The fluctuation & absence of hormones causing the symptoms experienced during the years building up to a woman’s final period & following her final period are very real

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I understand that.  But we have options to counterattack the loss of hormones.  Diet, the judicial use of a fine skin cream, supplements, meditation, yoga, praising God, taking joy in being alive. Sex.  Celebration.  Attitude. 

The whole concept of a women being "menopausal” or that menopause is a prolonged state of being defies biology & reduces what can be a very difficult experience & adjustment to a simplistic subject for humor. 

Sometimes women are just itchy, bitchy, sweaty, sleepy, bloated, forgetful & psycho by nature. 

Or by choice.  

But most often, women soar.