Celebrating the Change

© Melissa Gayle West

At 42, Lonnie Barbach's life fell apart. Strange symptoms, such as fatigue and heart palpitations, began to plague Barbach, a clinical psychologist and author of several bestselling books on relationships and sexuality. After a year of going from doctor to doctor, she discovered the cause: menopause. "Menopause? Me? No way!" was her response, as she described later in The Pause: Positive Approaches to Menopause. "My fear was that my years of productivity were over. Not reproductivity, but productivity," she added. "I couldn't imagine it all ending."

Barbach's fear of her life ending at menopause is not unique. American culture has long depicted older women as unattractive, unhappy, and incapacitated. But as baby boomers hit menopause-forty-three million American women are now at or past menopause, by the end of the century the number of women forty-five to fifty-four will increase by half-they are changing the stereotypes of aging just as they have changed so many other norms. In refusing to accept the cultural picture of menopause, they are forcing everyone, men as well as women, to reevaluate the stereotypes of who older women are and what they can contribute.

Both men and women stand to gain from this reevaluation. "It has been quite an education for me," says Peter Wallis, a teacher who designs and leads rites of passage for adolescents, "to see how menopause has been a threshold, both for my partner and other women. I've seen them move into greater power, rather than deteriorate and lose their status like women are 'supposed' to do."

Although men experience no biological shift equivalent to menopause, they go through a similar period of major transition in their forties and fifties. For some men, the process is triggered by their wives' menopause. "By opening to a partner's menopause, men can get an understanding that they're going through a similar awakening," says Steven Hall, a Seattle physician who works holistically with menopausal women. "We can have a positive influence on each other: a woman makes some big changes, and this gives her partner permission to make some big changes himself"

Indeed, menopausal women-and increasingly their partners-are beginning to acknowledge what indigenous cultures have long recognized; that menopause is a deeply meaningful spiritual and psychological transition, the threshold for what is potentially the most powerful stage in a woman's life.

Among indigenous peoples, postmenopausal women move into positions of power and status in the community, notes anthropologist Judith K. Brown, co-editor of In Her Prime: New Views of Middle-Aged Women. In New Zealand, Maori women lead ritual ceremonies and become the formal mourners at funeral rites. Among the Iroquois it is the women elders who choose--or depose-the tribal chief, And among the Northwest Coast Salish Indians, it is the older women who are charged with taking care of tribe members in transition: vision-questers, girls at menarche, women in childbirth, and the recently deceased. Anthropologist James Griffin points out that Mayan women in Mexico and Cree women of Canada must be past menopause to exercise shamanic and healing powers. In many cultures, menstrual blood is believed to have special power: the power to create life in the womb. When women reach the age of retaining what is called their "wise blood," they cross the threshold into "wise-womanhood." Holding their "wise blood" within, they become priestesses, healers, and keepers of the gates of birth and death through midwifery and funeral preparation.

Developmental psychologist David Gutmann, who has studied the status of post-menopausal women cross-culturally, sees their increased standing as a natural development of women's latent capabilities. So when menopausal women are disparaged, as they are in America today, it is not just women but the culture at large that suffers, he argues.

When menopause is labeled a medical phenomenon, the only recourse is to see women as victims of their failing reproductive organs and to treat their "problem" with drugs. Estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) has helped countless women, but this help has been embedded in the medical paradigm of menopause as disease and failure. In refusing to pathologize menopause, many women are honoring it as an initiation into a new and powerful way of life, the way of wisdom.

Having wisdom is different from having information. Information comes in pieces; wisdom sees the pattern that connects the pieces, the great rounds of birth and death and rebirth. Information is from the mind and for the mind; wisdom is from and for the heart and soul. Acknowledging menopause as an important rite of passage affirms the extraordinary changes a woman undergoes at this time.

In indigenous cultures a rite of passage celebrates and supports a major life transition that changes both the individual's relationship to the sacred and her role in the community. Any rite of passage consists of three stages-Severance, Liminality, and Incorporation, or as I call them, Leaving Home, Wilderness Time, and Coming Home. Each stage presents specific psycho-spiritual tasks that must be accomplished to complete the transformation into the next phase of life.

When seen as part of a rite of passage, menopausal "symptoms" acquire new meaning. In traditional rites of passage, initiates are tested--especially during the liminal stage-with such challenges as fasting, body mutilation, and isolation that are intended to wear down the initiate's resistance, break up old identities to make room for the new, and open the initiate to the sacred ground of being. Hot flashes, fatigue, and other "ordeals" of menopause serve the same function in a menopausal rite of passage. "Birth and transformation are never easy," says herbalist Susun Weed, author of Menopausal Years: The Wise Woman Way . "If women really knew that all these symptoms and pains of menopause were instrumental in birthing a new self, it would give them the hope to keep going and the knowledge of whether to go to a doctor. It's not about how a woman 'ought' to do it; it's seeing what the choices are when you have all the information."

Rituals are a powerful way to honor the physical, emotional, and spiritual changes in each stage of menopause. The most meaningful rituals are those a woman designs herself, trusting her own creativity. Ritual space is sacred "play space." One can invite other women who are in this passage or a partner to participate, or one can perform a solo ritual. No matter how menopause is celebrated, rituals can deepen and enrich the transition.

In severance, the first stage of a rite of passage, the old is left behind forever. When a woman begins to experience the symptoms of menopause, she leaves the "home" of the first half of her life. Grief, disorientation, and anxiety are hallmarks of severance. A woman beginning this passage has much loss to grieve: her biological fertility; her "youthful good looks," (historically the currency of women's power in this culture); her children's childhoods; her own youth; even, in some cases, her marriage.

Mary Allen recalls the grief and shock of this stage. The year she began menopause-she was forty-eight-her husband left her for a younger woman. "My husband told me he was too young to be married to an old woman," she recalls. "It seems like I lost it all in a year: my marriage, my 'youth,' my old self. My menopausal symptoms reminded me of all I was losing. I wanted my husband back. I wanted my old self back."

Allen stayed with her pain and grief, however, and with the help of ritual work and her women's group, learned to dignify her menopause, not be ashamed of it. Now, five years later, she acknowledges the gifts she could not see at the time. "I really did lose my oId life. It was the hardest thing that ever happened to me. But the life I'm living now, this me who has emerged from the ashes, the wisdom I've gained from the process-I wouldn't trade that for anything in the world."

Beginning the menopausal rite of passage requires a woman to recognize and grieve all that she is leaving behind. And when she crosses the threshold into the new, the unknown, she enters the wilderness.

This betwixt-and-between stage in a rite of passage is called the Liminal stage by anthropologists. Limen , the root of liminal, is Latin for "threshold." Since menopause may be anything but a brief crossing of a threshold, I prefer to call this stage "Wilderness Time." This is when the initiate, stripped of her former identity, is most open to the sacred. It is the testing time, traditionally, when initiates are deprived of food and sleep and sent out into the wilderness alone to be challenged and renewed.

The wilderness is the place in so many spiritual beliefs where the hero and heroine must wrestle with demons, find their strength and power, and connect in a new way to the sacred. The trials that spiritual heroes and heroines must undergo are similar to the three tasks that menopausal women must face: confronting the shadow, accepting death, and embracing power and wisdom.

Women often come to menopause mature on the outside yet wounded and confused within. This wilderness sojourn can be a powerful time for recognizing and healing the wounds of the first half of life. Often, women are so busy in middle adulthood-working, raising families, caring for elderly parents-that they lose touch with their inner lives. Menopause is an opportunity for them to slow down and become conscious of-and resolve-old wounds that have kept them from expressing their creativity, honesty, and passion.

Often, the emotional roller coaster rides of menopause make a woman confront previously unacknowledged feelings and aspects of herself. Her heightened emotional sensitivity offers an invitation-even a command-to open to darker, pushed-away parts and integrate them into her new identity.

When menopausal women begin to look into the depths, often what they first encounter is a fear of death. As they acknowledge the metaphorical death of their younger, fertile selves, their biological death looms larger. As painful as it may be, accepting their own mortality at the deepest level opens menopausal women to rebirth in a new life.

"We design so much of the way we live our lives-the compulsive consumerism, the compulsive relationships-out of a profound cultural fear of death," says Tamara Slayton, founder and director of the nationally acclaimed Menstrual Health Foundation in Sebastopol, California. "Menopause can shatter that. It represents very clearly and overtly the aging process, and the inevitable movement toward death. This has given me a great deal of courage and motivation to not fear consequences or disapproval. I am getting filled with a sense of ' I came here to do something.' "

Menopause can trigger a deeper awareness of death in a woman's partner as well. "When we see our wives age, go through menopause, we could really resent that," says Bert Hoff, editor of M.E.N. Magazine , "since we don't want to look at the fact that we're pot-bellied bald old guys instead of dashing youthful figures." When a woman goes through menopause a man is forced to confront his own mortality, what he's doing with his life, and what he, too, must leave behind. If a man can confront his own aging and mortality as his partner confronts hers, "the process can be painful," Hoff says, "but ultimately so empowering-for the woman, for the man, and for the life they share together."

The other gift that accepting death brings is an increased appreciation of the present moment. During menopause, when a woman realizes that the future no longer extends indefinitely before her, she is snapped back into the present moment. "I was always telling myself, 'When . . .' or 'If. . . " says Allison Eng. ''All of a sudden, it seems, I'm in menopause and my kids are grown. Menopause has helped me realize that I'm not going to live forever, that the present moment is really all I have if I want to start living."

As a menopausal woman allows the death of her old self, a new self is born out of the matrix of her earlier life. This new self is both powerful and wise in ways she may never have experienced.

The third task of the wilderness time is to honor and integrate this newfound power and wisdom. This power is heart power, which arises from becoming true to oneself, from having the courage to face the shadow and surrender to the inevitable cycle of life.

This new power brings with it authenticity, an inner authority and fidelity to self, even if that self is at odds with family, friends, or the culture. This woman no longer looks to others, especially men, to define her worth.

For a woman's partner, this new power is both a gift and a challenge, suggests holistic physician Steven Hall. "Most men in our culture aren't really empowered," he says. "If they can take a menopausal woman's new power as an invitation to move into their own, instead of being threatened by it, they have the chance to begin a new life themselves and a new phase of their relationship."

Wise-woman wisdom is both the seed and fruit of this power. Tamara Slayton says, "Women who at menopause have been able to heal their wounds and understand the lessons and gifts of those wounds are able to be reborn and offer wisdom."

When a menopausal woman has reached what indigenous cultures call her "fourteenth moon"-her fourteenth month without a menstrual period-she moves into the final stage of this rite of passage. This stage-"Incorporation" to anthropologists or what I call "Coming Home"-means arriving at a richer, deeper, and more soulful state than the one the woman left before venturing into the wilderness of menopause.

This is the abode of the wise woman, the woman who has experienced not just the death of her biological fertility but also the birth of a deeper, wilder fecundity. Freed from both internal constrictions and the external binds of our culture's definition of women as sex objects and baby-makers, the wise woman can be idiosyncratic and deeply herself-a creative risk-taker.

A new responsibility comes with this wisdom and creativity, notes Ann Kreilkamp, editor of Crone Chronicles , a journal for older women. "We have this huge life span that exists beyond menopause," she says. "We have this wisdom: what are we going to do with it? We can begin to see the responsibilities we all have to the planet, to each other. It's an incredible responsibility and an incredible opportunity."

Adds Tamara Slayton, "Wisdom is understanding the interconnectedness of all things. The image of the one who cares for both future generations and the ancestors begins to emerge during menopause. The wisdom is, no matter what field you're in, to plead with the world to wake up and acknowledge that we are one very large family."

This is the aspect of the woman's lifecycle that Joan Borysenko, author of A Woman's Book of Life , calls "the Guardian archetype." "The Guardian," she says, "is the one who, through the clarification of values-love, serenity, and service -and that kind of 'fierceness' that comes with the hormonal changes of menopause, is going to protect the circle of life."

Margaret Mead said that the highest creative force in the universe was the post-menopausal woman. Throughout the ages, examples abound: Hildegard of Bingen, Golda Meir, Isak Dinesen, Margaret Thatcher, Mead herself ''As a group now coming to power," writes Honora Lee Wolfe in Second Spring: A Guide to Helping Menopause through Traditional Chinese Medicine , "we have the possibility to make history, to halt environmental degradation, to tame technology for peace and humanity." Furthermore, she adds, "I believe that we can be a major part of those solutions. By so doing, we may find a second spring, the strength and purpose that we need to live whole and healthy through menopause and beyond."

When women honor menopause as a rite of passage, everyone wins. Men, too, are given the opportunity to honor their own aging as they pay homage to the flowering of women's menopausal awakening and influence. "Seeing my partner deepen," says Peter Wallis, "and become so much more forthright and 'out there' during her rite of passage forced me to grapple with my own aging process and made me want to 'sage' -age with wisdom-rather than just age."

To acknowledge this new life many women choose to enact a ritual after their fourteenth moon. This is when a woman presents her new self to the members of her community so they may welcome her as a wise woman who brings new gifts. "For me," says Susun Weed, "one of the most joyous messages of menopause is that this is not the end of my life, but the end of part of my life and the beginning of a very new, wonderful, powerful stage."

Lonnie Barbach, initially so afraid that her creative life would be over at menopause, now also views it as a beginning. "Menopause can truly be thought of as a period of gestation, culminating in our own rebirth," she writes in The Pause . "This is a time of renewal, not the beginning of 'death.' "

Tamara Slayton stresses that the most important question menopausal women should ask themselves as part of this transition is: What is the relationship of my menopause to my soul?

"How does this passage relate to my soul?" responds Mary Allen, who "lost it all" the first year into her menopause. "You might as well ask, what is the relationship of the sunshine to the sun? Doing menopause is soul work. I'm a different woman than I was when I was bleeding. More outrageous, perhaps; certainly less afraid, juicier, more passionate about my life and about making the world better for the children and grandchildren and great grandchildren-mine and everyone else's. This isn't about my body 'wearing out.' It's about more life coming through me than ever before. "Let those guys think I'm 'done for' if they want to," she adds. "Little do they know I'm just getting started!"