The Long Threshold

Menopause is a strangely long threshold.

Most rites of passage are imagined as a moment. A door crossed. A ceremony completed. A before and an after.

This one can take years.

The physical changes are real. Sleep may alter. Energy shifts. The nervous system can feel different. Bones, muscles, skin, sexuality and metabolism may all ask for different kinds of care.

But something else can be happening beneath all of this.

The woman we have been may no longer quite fit.

We are often encouraged to manage the symptoms so that we can get back to ourselves. Back to normal. Back to functioning as we did before.

But nature does not ask autumn to become summer again. Each season has its own work, and perhaps menopause does too.

There may be identities to loosen our grip upon. Roles we have outgrown. Expectations that have become too costly. Ways of living that the body is no longer willing to accommodate quietly.

Some of this carries grief. We can miss the woman we were, the body we knew, the ease with which we once moved through certain parts of our lives.

Yet alongside that loss, something else can gather.

Discernment. Authority. A clearer sense of what matters. Less willingness to abandon ourselves in order to remain acceptable to everyone else.

Supporting the physical body through this matters. Rest, nourishment, movement, medical care when we need it, time outside, and relationships in which we can speak honestly all belong here.

But this is not simply a body being managed through hormonal decline.

It is a woman crossing a long threshold.

There is no need to rush towards the other side.

There is only the walking, and the gradual discovery of who is walking out with us.