Perimenopause as a Sacred Rite of Passage
Thoughts on approaching the perimenopause midlife transition as a sacred rite of passage for your soul.
What do you know about perimenopause?
Hot flushes? Night sweats? Insomnia? Periods all over the place? Flooding? Putting on weight around your midriff? Bits you’d rather not think about drying out?!
…Dun, dun, duuuuun!!!
<Cue dramatic music and a portentous pause…>
Oh no! It’s “The Change”.
You’re over the hill, getting old and wizened and will be ignored for the rest of your life as you slide down the slippery slope to the inevitable end.
<Cue screams of despair>
Ew.
No wonder no-one wants to talk about the menopause!
But I am.
And, as you’re reading this, I’m assuming you’re wanting to know more … and perhaps also wanting to reclaim this process as an empowering rite of passage in your life – and not an experience to fear and dread.
Medicine & Misogyny
Peri/menopause is SO much more than the cliché I outlined above (with my tongue firmly in my cheek).
Furthermore peri/menopause is a natural process.
If you have ovaries, you will go through it.
And truth be told, yes, it is a time of great change – both physiologically and within the psyche (it’s not called ‘The Change’ for nothing I guess).
However, it’s also a time in life that, historically, has rarely been spoken of.
Even now it’s shrouded in embarrassment and silence. To be called ‘menopausal’ is too-often to be sniggered at, shamed and sidelined.
Growing older in a culture that prizes youth is challenging, so admitting to yourself – let alone telling anyone else – that you’re going through a process that signifies you are moving past your fertile years is perhaps something about which many of us feel deeply conflicted.
Negative cultural attitudes towards menopause and the lack of respect for older women may be shaping your attitude towards this process.
There is little cultural appreciation for women becoming sage Elders: women who know themselves, claim their wisdom and speak their truth.
That said, here in the UK, menopause is gradually being talked about more.
But the dominant discourse seems to be focusing on not letting peri/menopause interfere with the status quo of your life in any way, and your right to get Hormone Replacement Therapy.
For too long the peri/menopausal process has been a taboo or mocked but now it’s being sold to us as a hormone deficiency order with a very long list of symptoms (which may or may not be linked to perimenopause in the first place).
I’m not sure that’s the progress we need!
Whether derided as hysteria, or medicalized and labelled a hormone deficiency disorder, this speaks to a millennia-old patriarchal view that women’s bodies are inherently weak, problematic, prone to malfunctioning and abnormal.
Society is still pathologizing a natural process that happens to all human beings who menstruate.
We’re still being treated as victims of our wayward bodies.
But instead of labelling us hysterical and locking us up in asylums, society now seeks to drug us into submission instead.
I’m tired of this. Are you too?
ENTER THE SOUL FORGE
So, I propose we dump these damaging patriarchal attitudes.
I suggest we re-vision peri/menopause as a sacred rite of passage.
For this time of your life has the capacity not to be an ending but a rebirth.
A rebirth into potency, truth and wisdom (and let’s be honest, patriarchal cultures have never welcomed powerful, truth-telling wise women, have they?).
I’m not saying it’s easy.
In many ways you’re dying to the old so you can be rebirthed into a new state. That’s going to feel challenging!
But how would it be to consider it as a necessary transition where you can be reformed and reborn into your most fully expressed version of yourself?
How would it be to see your 40s and perimenopause as an invitation to unravel the toxic patriarchal conditioning that has colonized your mind, body and soul to this point?
An invitation to root into the truth of who you are so you can rise in sovereignty, confidence and clarity?
How does that feel?
A Sacred Rite of Passage
I absolutely acknowledge that this process can be difficult and demanding, and that you might be feeling vulnerable, confused, lost even.
But my love, please know that you are not broken.
You do not need fixing.
You are not losing yourself.
You are entering a soul forge where you are being worked on the anvil by the archetypal energies of the Sacred Feminine.
You are being offered the opportunity to die to the old so you can rediscover and rebirth yourself through this sacred soul initiation.
This is the perimenopause midlife transition: a sacred rite of passage. An initiatory process of descent and return.
And all of this asks you to hold yourself in fierce compassion.
It asks you to rediscover yourself and to mother yourself and hold strong boundaries and to prioritize self-care and soul-care so you can withstand the strength of the energies working on and through you.
It asks you to transition from Wounded Maiden to the Mature Feminine archetype of the Queen and be reborn as the wisest and most fully expressed version of yourself.
A Different Approach
Let me help you answer this invitation.
Because this is the approach to perimenopause that I am offering.
I do not focus on hormones and “symptoms”.
I’m not working from the assumption that you’re broken and need fixing.
The foundation of all that I offer is rooted in a belief that life is cyclic and that peri/menopause is a sacred rite of passage to be honoured, revered and consciously engaged with.
I believe that perimenopause can be an empowering experience that has the capacity to guide you into your spiritual sovereignty so you can then take your place as part of the next generation of post-menopausal women who claim their wisdom and power as society’s elders and sages – something our culture so desperately needs.
This is soul work.
I don’t pretend I have all the answers. I’m going through this process myself. But I have many questions and observations and inspiration to share. My 20 years’ experience of personal and spiritual development are supporting me in caring for my soul through this sacred passage.
And my mission is to inspire and help others going through this process to question and observe using their soul’s guidance as the key to unlock the door.
I am sharing the insights and tools which are helping me so that you can experience this shift in your body, mind and soul as an ultimately empowering experience.
I wish to be clear that I am sharing a path through this journey. It’s not the only path.
And truth be told we all need to navigate our own route in alignment with our unique combination of needs, preferences, life experiences, callings and desires.
But, if what I am sharing resonates with you, I would love to offer you space and spiritual holding, as your Priestess, to help guide you through the shifting sands of the midlife perimenopause transition so you can heed the whispers of your soul and birth your wise and true self into the world.
