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
.
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.
