Menopause: A Uniquely Female Rite of Passage
As women in today’s culture, we curse “that time of the month” from our teens to our fifties and then we talk with horror about the abomination that is menopause with its hot flashes and night sweats, irritability, mood swings and most dreaded of all - weight gain. No-one talks about the benefits of being post-menopausal so I am going to talk here about how much I love being post- menopausal and how I consider these later years my “wise woman” years.
Why do we hate this part of our womanhood so much? Is it not the very act of menstruation that means we are the bearers of life? What a special privilege that is. We are the reason there is a next generation, we are the ones who give life to the beautiful little babies that everyone loves to cherish, hold and nurture. It is such a gift to be woman. As the mother of three baby boys, now all fine married men, I felt honored, privileged and delighted to be the means through which such precious lives were able to manifest. Menopause marks the end of the child bearing years and it is a rite of passage that we should appreciate and celebrate. It is a time when our children are going off to college, we are empty nesting, perhaps reaching a zenith in our career, possibly looking forward to retirement, or making changes in our career to find more satisfaction and rewards other than money. It’s a time when we have less responsibility, more financial freedom and more time to do the things we want to do instead of the chores and expenses of running the family.
Once we have entered menopause we blame absolutely everything on it as though it is an evil monster designed to rob us of our health and happiness. But that is not so. At least some of the health conditions that we experience during and after menopause are related to our diet and lifestyle, along with the aging process, not menopause itself. Menopause ought to mark a magical time in our life where we pass from the child bearing years, into our wise woman years. There is an undeniable hormonal shift going on inside us and this can cause temporary discomfort. But what comes afterwards is a wonderful phase of life where your time is your own, your money is your own, your body is your own, and you have freedoms you never experienced before. And on top of all that, since you now have a life time of experience under your belt, you also grow in wisdom.
I think we should celebrate menopause, hold women in high esteem as they pass through this special transitional time, and throw parties to welcome post-menopausal women into the wise woman club. It should be a wonderful time in our lives and something to look forward to.
So why isn’t it?
Modern diets and lifestyles contribute in a huge way… much more than you can imagine… to the negative way we experience menopause. It is well known among Holistic Practitioners that women in countries on more natural diets free of preservatives, processed foods, artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and modern medicines, experience both menstruation and menopause in a completely different way, often pain free. If you are a young woman reading this I encourage you to get on a healthy, organic diet, exercise from time to time and take up active hobbies and you will have a much easier time than your mother had when you reach peri-menopause.
Homeopathy is a gentle and effective form of medicine that helps the body to rebalance hormonal activity naturally. There are no side effects from like you would get with modern hormone replacement therapy or functional medicine. If you have never tried Homeopathy, menopause is a great time to start because results can be dramatic. Homeopathic treatment can dramatically reduce or eliminate hot flashes, night sweats and mood swings but without the risks and side effects of other types of treatment. Homeopathy does not work like traditional medicines. The risk of cancer goes down with Homeopathy, not up, as it does with hormonal replacement therapies. In fact, Homeopathy can treat fibroids, tumors, PCOS, endometriosis, and all the distinctly female conditions. It can even help with uterine prolapse and cancer.
Synthetic or bio-identical hormones trick your body into believing it is creating its own hormones. Every time one hormone level changes, there is a ripple effect throughout the hormonal system in response to it. This is called a negative feedback loop. The negative feedback loop helps the body to maintain proper levels of all the other hormones. So introducing arbitrary amounts of hormones into the body will affect the body’s balance in many ways. This eventually carries consequences. Both the contraceptive pill and HRT (which are essentially the same thing) are known as “hormone disrupters.” Your body is a finely orchestrated symphony of hormonal activity and when artificial levels of one hormone are introduced, this can throw the whole orchestra off key. One of the most common side effects of estrogen and progesterone supplementation is thyroid disruption leading to hyper or hypo-thyroidism. Then you need guess what, more artificial hormones. Homeopathy does not use hormone replacements. Instead, it helps your body rebalance its own hormonal system. This allows for rebalancing of all the hormonal activity, not just estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. It brings all the instruments in the orchestra back into tune, not just the main players. Therefore it allows you to become a healthier version of yourself naturally. You are not taking any chemicals or drugs, there is nothing addictive, no risks involved, and you only have to take it until you feel better. It is not something you have to do forever as with most hormonal therapy medicines.
Because Homeopathy treats you as an individual we do an in depth consultation. There are no tests or examinations involved, we just sit and talk. Everything in nature has a signature or an energy. The energy of a flower, for example, is very different from the energy of a dog, and the energy of a daisy is different from the energy of a rose. This is not hard to understand at the macro level. At the micro level everything in nature has subtle energy and this energy can be matched to diseases in the body. This is called the doctrine of signatures. Homeopathy leverages the doctrine of signature to find a remedy that energetically matches an illness. We call it “like cures like.” Everyone is different and even though you may share symptoms in common with other menopausal women, your personality and your way of being is completely unique. So that is what we look for - your uniqueness - we look for who you are at your core essence and we match a remedy to you precisely. Once we hit the right note, your body begins healing itself. When healing happens, it affects all the imbalances in your body, not just those related to menopause. A single remedy, once isolated, will help you with most of your physical and emotional imbalances, conditions or diseases. Sometimes we use more than one remedy to clean up any lingering issues after the primary treatment has acted but often we only need one single remedy.
In ancient times they talked about the three stages of womanhood; young maiden, mother and crone. Today, since some women choose not to have children, and no-one wants to be a crone (withered old women) we might talk about the three stages as young woman, adult woman, and wise woman. The wise woman is the post-menopausal woman who has moved gracefully into the second half of her life and has learned much along the way. Here are all the things I love about being post-menopausal or a wise woman:
Goodbye PMS!! I always knew when my period was on its way because I would get mad and sound off at an unsuspecting colleague the day before. I was always so embarrassed by my own behavior but felt powerless to stop it. Today I never have to worry about blowing up at someone. I don’t get triggered in the same way. No more body hair. I went from shaving my legs every day to… oh… maybe once a week or less. You can’t really notice the tiny fine hairs that grow in now. No arm hair at all. I love the freedom of getting up in the morning, pulling on a pair of shorts and not even thinking about whether I’ve shaved my legs. No more mood swings. I am a much calmer and more graceful version of myself. I attribute a lot of this to the slow down of the hormonal changes we go through during the menstruation years.
During the course of the month, the female body releases the egg from the ovaries, passes the egg into the uterus, if fertilization does not occur, it then passes the egg out of the uterus, along with the endometrial lining and then starts all over again. All of this activity is triggered by the release of hormones. That means there is a continuous interplay of hormonal activity, an upswing of this one, a downswing of that one, going on inside our bodies all month long. All of this affects our moods as well as our bodies. After menopause all this hormonal activity comes to a stop and you enter a period where there is grace and harmony within yourself. When I travel I never have to worry about whether I’ll be on my period and whether I have adequate supplies of tampons etc. You don’t have to use any form of contraceptive or ever worry about getting pregnant.
No more embarrassing leaks.
No more headaches.
I spent most of my forties on ibuprofen. I didn’t realize how my headaches were tied to my hormones until after menopause when my headaches just stopped. Today I am rarely bothered by headaches. As women we have a special role. Even if we choose not to have children, we still embody the feminine principal, the soft, nurturing energy of a woman is like no other and that’s why men love us - because we bring that gentle side and that distinctly feminine viewpoint. I say, embrace your womanhood, embrace your menstruation years, and embrace your menopause and post- menopausal years. Each of the phases we pass through as women is a special time in our lives that needs to be seen as such and not cursed. Using Homeopathy, it is possible to get healthy, to have a relatively pain-free and mood-free menopause and not have to run the risk of health dangers down the road as a result of interfering with the body’s natural hormonal activity.
Homeopathy helps with many conditions, not just menopause. It is also very effective for conditions that are not responding well to traditional medical treatment such as auto-immune diseases and long-standing chronic conditions, and it can resolve conditions that require lifelong medications. Pretty much anything you would go to see a regular doctor for can be addressed effectively with Homeopathy. Staying in touch with your primary doctor for testing, diagnosis, reducing your prescriptions and so on is both helpful and recommended.
If you are interested in learning more about Homeopathy I would love to hear from you.
Mary Fielder is a Holistic Health Practitioner, Homeopath and Reiki Master Teacher. She is also
a Biofield Tuning Practitioner. Today Mary uses all of these energy modalities to help her clients
achieve health and wellness on all levels of their being. She also teaches Reiki. Mary offers a
free 20 minute discovery session so you can get to know her, ask your questions and find out
whether Reiki or Homeopathy is right for you.
Website: https://thereikiplace.us
Email: mary@thereikiplace.us