Menopause - The Beginning of Fertility?

Menopause Goddess Blog (our mothership blog) and Fertile Goddess (a yoga and active wear company) are bringing you a chance to answer that very question AND win some very cool stuff. (See photo.) Here’s the basic premise:

Fertile Goddess believes in the inspirational connection between real women and the bountiful power and wisdom of ancient fertility goddesses. In nearly every culture of the world fertility means so much more: abundance, wealth, new life and good fortune. Fertility is the vibrant rose garden you created, the circle of do-anything-for-you friends, and the act of nurturing your "babies" -- whether they are children, pets or business ventures. With fertility, we are blessed with the endless capacity for patience, love and determination.

We celebrate women at the most fertile time in their lives: now! Tell us how you are a fertile goddess at this point in your life- then log onto www.fertilegoddess.com and tell us which goddess you most relate to for a chance to win one of three great prizes from Fertile Goddess:
1st prize: Flow pants
2nd prize: 3/4 Sleeve Tee ( choice of goddess)
3rd prize: Tote bag (choice of goddess)
Log onto www.fertilegoddess.com to see the prizes you could win!

As soon as I read the premise above, I was hooked. Actually, Fertile Goddess had me at “power and wisdom”, a perfect description of Menopause Goddesses everywhere.

Submit your answer either here in the comment section or in the comment section of our main blogsite Menopause Goddess Blog. You may also click the Contact Us button on the top right of our main blogsite if you don’t wish to share your answer right away. It can be as long or short as you want.

Don’t forget to choose the goddess that you most relate to on www.fertilegoddess.com. The contest runs until May 3, so you’ve got two weeks to ponder your own fertility. I’m musing on the question myself (even though I’m ineligible to win a prize; the answers I discover will be prize enough. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) We’ll post the answers of the winners - and don’t worry - we won’t share your name if you’re shy.

Okay goddesses, let’s see your fertile imaginations and thoughts! Women sharing wisdom - that’s how we all grow into the goddess we wish to become for the second half of life. Click the link below and get started. Fertile Goddess Yoga and Athletic Wear

Who Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

Auntie Kauila is a kumu hula - a hula master in Hawaii. She is 84 and can bend lower than I and most of my hula sisters. She passes on her vast repertoire of knowledge of chant and dance to her students, most of whom are midlife and older. Her day job consists of teaching Hawaiian culture to elementary school children. She is active, fit, and a powerhouse of energy. And she was bubbling over the other day about a new hula she had learned. That’s right - “learned.” She is a renowned expert and she’s still learning. I want to be Auntie Kauila when I grow up.

While I admire her accomplishments, grace, and stamina, I mostly want to be her because she is so interested. In everything. And being interested makes her interesting. She gets high marks on the role model scale for the second half of my life.

I read a quote recently from a midlife woman who said “I pay attention to women older than I am. They are my future.” To discover and create our future, we menopausal goddesses would do well to pay attention to older women we admire and hope to emulate.

My mom also pegs the needle on my role model meter. She bought her first home computer about 5 years ago I now refer to her as the Internet Queen. She finds and forwards the most thought provoking, insightful, and amazing sites. Great jokes too. Sister goddess Theresa gave her the highest compliment: “I never delete Lynette’s Mom’s emails.” She’s taken up painting in oils and acrylics recently - her art is unique and beautiful. She continues to explore her creativity. Yep, I want to be Mom, too, when I grow up.

Whom do we admire? And why? That’s a question the Venuses sat down to answer during one of our meetings. Each goddess wrote down two women that she felt were glowing examples of who she’d like to be when she grew up, and listed the traits that made them such shining stars for her. Then we shared our lists with one another.

While the individual mentors we chose were illuminating, the reasons we held these women up as our ideals were considerably more important. Each of us admired different attributes: grace under pressure, living largely, empathy and kindness, strength, optimism, creativity, etc.

The most stunning insight arising from this exercise and discussion revolved around how often the qualities that a Venus admired in her two role models were the very qualities she embodied for the rest of us! And each Venus was unable to see it for herself until her sister goddesses pointed out the obvious. Can it be that what we most admire, we unconsciously already are? We saw it over and over again in our round robin about the women we most esteemed.

While it might be possible that I am already interested/interesting and creative, my midlife growing up is still a work in progress. I expect that Auntie Kauila and my mother Betty will keep me focused and challenging myself. The same goes for the other Venuses and their chosen role models. These elder women are our future. And the future looks very good indeed.

Midlife Dilettantes Unite

Theresa-Venus and I are passionate about golf. We love to play, and we especially love to play together. She observed just the other day how much better our respective golf games have become now we’ve reached our fifties vs how much we struggled and fought to improve when in our forties. (Yeah, we’ve been playing that long and we still have substantial handicaps!) Yet, we seem to be striving less and enjoying more. Is it possible that we are finally relaxing into our pursuits, finding the simple joy and pleasure with less of the internal pressure to “be good at it.”? And in some bizarre twist of fate, we’ve actually gotten better? It sure seems like it. While we don’t have a literal scorecard for our artistic endeavors, but we think we’ve gotten better at those too.

One of the ways we Venuses are growing ourselves in the “heat” of midlife comes down to finding and expressing a passion. As we explore creating a Vision for the second half of our lives, we begin to ask ourselves what we want to do, be, or manifest. What we are passionate about, what excites and moves us? And we discover that passion doesn’t necessarily have to be about doing. We can be passionate about peace or contentment as easily as we can thrill to a project or endeavor.

At a recent annual gathering, one of the goddesses was wrestling with her own search for a passion. “How do you know what you’ll be good at?” she queried. “I’m trying yoga and biking (where I also connect with my husband). I enjoy physical pursuits, but there’s no real passion there. It’s hard to start - every one of my friends is already good at something. So many here [the Venuses] are good at photography.”

Karen-Venus jumped in with sage advice. “You need to make a distinction between doing something and having to be good at it versus doing something just for the delight and enjoyment. I tried dancing. I’m the worst tap dancer in the theater group. I’m never going to be good. But I love it and I do it for the passion and joy, not for the achievement. And the more I accept being the worst dancer in the class, the more I relax and the better I dance.”

She went on. “It doesn’t have to be just one thing - it can be many things. Let yourself try things on: are you a beader? A knitter? As we grow older we can open up rather than focus on one or two channels. Try something. Start with a one day workshop. See what takes, what fires you up. Again, maybe it’s not one thing; maybe it’s many. Dilettante is not a dirty word for a midlife woman!”
With that in mind, let’s make a midlife pact with one another. We’ll boldly, passionately do whatever we like. And if we don’t yet know what that is, we’ll jump into something, anything, everything that catches our interest with our whole being. And we sure as heck won’t worry about being good at it! Let’s be divas of dilettantism, practitioners of passion, and mavens of marvelous things!
(Visit our mothership blog and join the community of Venuses at www.menopausegoddessblog.org

Menopause Is A Hair Raising Experience

Great - we’ve entered the “goddess” phase of our life, only to find that we are androgynous. We are growing beards. The first time a Venus feels that coarse “hair” poking out of her chin, she is equal parts horrified and fascinated. Unable to reconcile this new reality with her view of herself as a member of the feminine gender, she obsessively strokes and touches it to see if it truly is still there. Perhaps it is a new mole, a zit, or just a figment of overactive imagination. She can’t believe that she is actually hoping for a pimple. And when she realizes that the hair truly is protruding from a follicle on her own face, she rushes off for tweezers, hot wax, or electrolysis.

All of us goddesses suffered from this, but each of us feared we were the only real (werebeast, until we came together. So while we are still horrified, at least we now know that this is NORMAL. But the hairy difficulties don’t end there.

Sensitivity to Hair
In our youth, we certainly had bad hair days. These were temporary and referred generally to how our “do” looked at a specific time and place. However, now we find ourselves visited by the oxymoronic “permanent change”. Our hair actually turns against us. We are being attacked by our own tresses - in the tiniest puff of wind, individual hairs will reach out and TOUCH your skin! Like a dozen tiny spiders crawling all over your cheeks, forehead, FACE. Some Venuses have seriously considered taking a pair of scissors and just hacking it off. (The scissor attachment on my micro Swiss army knife was inadequate to the task or I might have done it at the lunch table one day.) Much calmer now, I just carry a small pump of hair spray so I can shellac it into a helmet when the torture begins.

My husband observed when we were in a restaurant recently that nearly all the women appeared to be over 50. "Look around at them. What do they all have in common?" he asked. When I shrugged my shoulders, he laughed, "They ALL have short hair!”
(Adapted from our upcoming book "Venus Comes of Age, The Wit and Wisdom of Menopausal Goddesses" If you'd like to comment, share or be part of our menopause community, we'd love you to visit our main blog at menopausegoddessblog.org )

Riding The Waves of Midlife

As mentioned in the Thanksgiving blog entry, I have joined many of my menopausal goddess sisters in giving up worry about looking silly or foolish or clumsy. Which is why I’m suddenly willing to try anything and everything that interests me. I’m asking myself “What do I want to do, to be, to experience?” At the age of 52, I am giving myself a signed permission slip to go on any field trip I wish. (It does help to have family and friends who are in favor of my growth and development!)

So on a glorious day this November, I found myself on the beach in Waikiki for my first surfing lesson. My buddy Jack Davis (guru of the Photoshop WOW books) coaxed and coddled me through catching my first waves on a board roughly the size of an aircraft carrier. My couple of actual rides were exhilarating and addicting. The dozens of wipeouts and falls were less so, but definitely part of the whole experiential package. I dragged my weary carcass back to the beach exhausted, fulfilled, and inordinately proud of my “board rash”. (Accompanying photo is courtesy of Jack, my surfing coach.)

Am I now going to be a surf bunny? (Is there even such a thing?) Probably not. I will likely surf the baby waves once in a while. I don’t know if I’m ready to invest the time and energy involved in actually mastering the sport.

This I do know: the changes of midlife come in waves - and I’m gonna be ready to ride them with as much grace as I can muster. Sure, I’ll fall. Spectacularly at times. And then I’ll drag myself back up on the board, yell “Woohoo” and paddle out to catch the next swell.
(Visit our main blog to comment and for lots more: www.menopausegoddessblog.org)

Thankful For Menopause

It’s Thanksgiving already - time to take stock of things that inspire gratitude. I find that I have so much to be grateful for: family and friends, the beauty outside my window, cats, sunsets, Jimmy Buffett songs, art projects, home renovation that is FINISHED, rain, boat rides, and cheeseburgers. The list goes on and on.

And strangely enough, I’m also grateful for menopause. Oh, don’t get me wrong; I’m not wild about hot flashes, weight gain, dryness, or hair thinning. I am an incurable optimist, but I’m not crazy! (Yet). I’d give up the physical changes, emotional rollercoaster and mental derangements in a hot minute.

I’d be less anxious to give up the unexpected side benefits of the big M. I love this newfound feeling of comfort in my skin. I’m enjoying dabbling in art and dance and other “electives”, since I worry less about looking foolish. I give more out of genuine desire and less out of obligation.

I don’t do things anymore just because I always have or because I should. My husband suggested that we go out for Thanksgiving dinner this year. I loved the idea and made reservations right away. There won’t be a turkey roasting in our house this year, but there also won’t be a menopausal woman (moi) roasting. How great is that?

So yes, I’m grateful for menopause for startling me into questioning just about everything. I don’t have any answers yet, but I sure am delighting in the inquiry. Most of all, I’m grateful for my goddess sisters who are accompanying and supporting me on this journey. Thanksgiving blessings to you all!
For more on menopause and midlife issues visit our main blog at www.menopausegoddessblog.org. Our new book "Venus Comes of Age, The Wit and Wisdom of Menopausal Goddeesses" will be out soon.

Burn It Again For The First Time, Menopause Goddesses Escape The Tyranny of Constrictive Clothing

While I didn’t actually burn my bra the first time back in the late 60’s/early 70’s, I did so symbolically. I simply refused to wear one in honor of the emancipation of women. Of course, I caved later when I entered the workplace, strapping myself into my 34B harness every day. It didn’t bother me all that much at the time. Now with the advent of menopause, a lot of us are ‘burning’ our bras. (Okay, not really - we don’t want to contribute to air pollution.) However, we are saying good-by to discomfort, binding, and entrapping clothing. Maybe it’s also time to let go of uncomfortable and constricting ways of being. We can break free - just like we did in the 60’s. (Visit our site at menopausegoddessblog.org)