Menopause, the Great Disruptor!

Disruptor…such a strong word, I thought.

And I have wondered if this has just been my experience of menopause and perhaps everyone else who reads this might think ‘No, not me’.

But I feel a deep calling to share what my experience has been and to offer some insights.

That calling is within my very soul, and the more I deny it, the harder I find it to talk about menopause in terms of just the symptoms and what to do about them.  The more I acknowledge it, the stronger it grows in me.

I’m currently dancing between what I now know is my sacred calling to open up and share my beliefs, and my past conditioning to stay quiet (because my ego is telling me not to take up too much space).

But I’m slowly owning MY story and what’s happened to me knowing it will resonate with the right women.

My menopause is Messy with a capital M!

It’s not like this for every woman, and if you’re reading this before your menopausal years, I’m not suggesting your experience will be anything like mine.  What I wish for you is an awareness of how menopause can be more than the symptoms you may or may not experience.

For those women who find themselves right in the throes of menopause, riding those waves in a storm, not knowing what the hell is going on, where the woman they used to be has gone, nor why they now feel so much ‘less than’ the woman they were before, this is for you.

I’ve felt for so long that my version of menopause doesn’t fit the current narrative out there.  My experience of it has cut me to the core, disrupted my life as I knew it, and it’s felt like I’ve been swirling around a funnel, slowly circling my way down until I started to notice the path it was leading me to.

All my life I’ve been afraid to express my opinion for fear of not being liked, not fitting in, being too much.  I look back and can see how I’ve just shrunk over the years, to be the tiniest version of me possible.

Yet the thing about menopause is it makes you question everything in your life.  I started being curious and asking myself if my beliefs were actually reality or something I’d just taken on because that’s what I’d been shown and told over the years.

There’s no ‘one’ to blame for this.  It’s the way we’re brought up, it’s how society works with the minimum disruption (there’s another version of that word disruptor!).

I want to show you another perspective aside from the symptoms we may experience…and this is not me saying they aren’t important, because I know only too well that left unaddressed they can and do wreak havoc.  Without my HRT I’ve felt suicidal.

But what if menopause is disrupting your life to guide you to where you were always meant to be?  To be the version of the woman you were always meant to be?

What if, as you look back at your life over the years, you see where you’ve compromised.

You see where you’ve dimmed your light.

You see where you’ve settled.

I look back at my life of nearly 59 years and see this as a beautiful journey to make me who I am now, who I’m becoming, who I will be in the future.

My menopause HAS taught me so many lessons…IS teaching me so many lessons…WILL teach me so many lessons, and I’m here for it.

Yes, it’s been tough, but underneath it all it’s my undeniable belief that I needed to experience what I have to find my true path.  One that fills my heart every day.

The more we talk about menopause and what we’re feeling and experiencing, the easier it becomes for those women who come up behind us.  The more role models they have.

If you’re silently struggling because you feel your version of menopause doesn’t fit the narrative, I’m here for you.  I see you.  I feel your pain like it’s my own.

I never found someone to guide me through menopause…yes, I did have a doctor to prescribe HRT, but no one who could help me make sense of the unseen side of menopause.

So I’m asking myself this question…

If the woman to lead this is not there for me to see, then maybe I have to create that woman that leads others through this.

Maybe it’s for me to step into that role and be the lighthouse for others.

If not me, then who 💜

With love 💫

Caroline x

#ifnotme #menopause #disruptor #anotherview #belief #trust #healer