Think of us as adolescent boys...

Here's a way that men might possibly be able to think about (peri)menopausal women in a way that makes sense to them:

Think of us as 16-year-old boys.

Remember those days, when your body was doing things you didn't fully understand, and that you certainly weren't able to control?

Remember those days, when your nether regions were hyper-active, and your moods were all over the place, and all you wanted to do, was rumble... break things, speed through town in your dad's sedan, defy authority figures (and everybody else, for that matter)...?

Remember those days, when you were starting to sprout hair in unexpected areas, your voice was changing, your hormones were raging, and you didn't know whether you were coming or going?

If so, you know what it's like for a lot of women who are going through menopause. We're essentially going through the same thing -- which can be frightening for the men around us, I know.

But if the men of the world who deal regularly with (peri)menopausal women can think of us in the same way they think of 16-year-old boys, maybe they can find it in their hearts to feel some sort of compassion for us in our situation.

After all, they've been there, too.

Survival skills for the (peri)menopausal

Been giving a lot of thought to sharpening my survival skills over the next 10 years or so. That's about how long I can look forward to this "process" (how I hate that word - but it's better than "journey"!) and my life isn't about to stop, because my body is going through changes.

If more people knew about what the menopausal process involves, they would bow at the feet of post-menopausal women who have managed to keep their family, their career, and their sanity intact. I'm serious. It takes a tremendous amount of mastery to balance it all, when your body is being completely unpredictable. Especially nowadays, when women and women's bodies are so suspect, and we're out in the public eye more than ever before. It's no easy thing, to manage to keep your composure, when everything around you is going haywire at the same time everything inside you is going haywire.

No joke.

Of course, there are those women who do the HRT thing and get around a lot of the symptoms with drugs or denial. And there are those women whose symptoms are not so pronounced. I've heard about the latter type of women, so they must exist, but I think that over the past couple of decades, it's been mostly HRT and denial (and divorce?) that's been the saving grace of countless women approaching and going through menopause.

HRT isn't an option for me, however. It just isn't. I don't trust any concoction that comes out of a male-dominated pharmaceutical industry that seeks to cause women's bodies to approximate the behavior of men's bodies (i.e., not act up/out during their change). It's not man-hating, it's just practical. How can a bunch of folks who don't understand what it means to live in this sort of body -- and who are often wary/mistrustful of this sort of body, in the first place -- possibly come up with a reliable solution to our symptoms? Considering that the folks doing the concocting are (often) operating from a mindset of "normalization", and their efforts are aimed not at easing or facilitating the transition, but suppressing all appearances of it "till the coast is clear", HRT is about the last thing I plan to do to myself. I'd sooner move to the tundra.

I may need to, eventually, of course, if my hot flashes come back the way they were, for a while there. I haven't had a "power surge" in a number of weeks, which is pleasant. But it also makes me a little nervous. I haven't been entering much info into my Cycle Calendar, lately, in part because things have been "quiet" and I haven't really wanted to think about menopause, whilst I get up to speed with this new job of mine.

Of course, I will have to think about it. Sooner or later, my symptoms will re-appear. And then my life will become that much more interesting again... But not just yet.