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The Change of Life

Growing up, I would always hear the women whisper about, “The Change of Life,” and many times, I wondered and feared about how devastating it will be. However, in all the women I’ve known in my life, from all around the world; I have to say, that the percentage of them that do not experience menopause as a negative thing, is high. In fact, about twenty-five percent of women do not experience any symptoms of menopause at all. The Mi’kmaq women I have grown up around were so strong, so it’s hard for me to tell how it really impacted them, if at all. But in the last decade knowing that I’m approaching this stage myself, I have been looking deeply into the lifestyle, attitudes, diet and natural remedies that lend to a promise that “The Change of Life,” can be the most positive time of life for a woman, after all.

Reflecting on the issue of aging and its implications for women, reminded me of a movie I watched several years ago starring Halle Berry, “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” The movie takes places in rural Florida, where a young Janie (Halle Berry) was married off to an older man and forced to conform to the Southern ideals of marriage and womanhood. Her husband was abusive with her, eventually died and left her widowed, with an inheritance, at age forty. During the marriage, she was old in every respect of the word. I truly believe that people who are unhappy in love, age faster. But in her mourning period, she met a man twelve years her junior, Tea Cake (Terrance Howard), fell in love and ran away with him. This clip is what I think the best expression of how their love affair exposed her optimum age and her sexual vibrancy.

For me, the significant point in the movie was when Tea Cake told her it was like she saved all her young years up for him. The point of the movie is all about the self-discovery of a woman after age forty. I understand that after forty is a time in your life when so many combinations of YOU meet at the equilibrium point of your very LIFE; it’s the sexual, physical, emotional, mental, financial and spiritual assets all looking to converge and bless you, in harmony; if you give in to it. In this phase, a woman is at her optimum age and should look and have a tone about her that oozes wisdom, divinity, child-likeness and sensuality. It’s true you know? After forty, is the time you saved up to be young and a time to spend it!

~Chief Liz LaSaga

Photo by germanyengland

Further Reading

This menopause site http://www.geocities.com/menobeyond/positive.html; speaks to the positive outlook that women reported about menopause:

• Increased empathy;
• Freedom from monthly periods;
• No more worry about getting pregnant;
• Flashes of deep creativity and insight;
• The ability to problem solve more effectively and creatively;
• A balance of using both logic and intuition;
• A sense of deep autonomy, becoming more assertive and in control of oneself;
• Feeling grounded in the present moment; by avoiding dwelling in the past or obsessing about the future;
• Hot flashes sometimes act as pointers to underlying stress;
• Need for less sleep giving more hours in the day, thereby extending daily hours of productivity and creativity:
• New surges of emotions that enliven and energize and lead to new risk taking, adventures and rewards;
• Increased awareness of one’s own body and how it works;
• Periods of “Menofog,” brief vacations for the busy brain;
• Increased ability to laugh at flaws and moods and take oneself less seriously;
• The ability to discern petty things from things of more importance in life;
• The ability to find peace and quiet within oneself and to develop Wisdom through inner reflection:
• A sense of closeness with nature;
• Beneficial reassessment of lifestyle, habits and diet;
• Desire to clear out/up the accumulated emotional baggage;
• Recovering past joys, past interests and talents;
• The ability to remember dreams in detail and enjoy them;
• In creased sensitivity and the ability to cleanse emotional clutter by crying more spontaneously;
• The disappearance of hormonal migraines;
• Freedom in the empty nest stage to do explore and do more for oneself instead of doing for and pleasing everyone else;
• The ability to examine oneself with some degree of objectivity and to learn to accept and appreciate oneself;
• The ability to send off a signal that prompts others of trust and openness;
• A deeper bonding with other women;
• A greater ability to go with the flow of life and not harp so much on having to plan everything