Midlife & Menopause
The time of midlife and menopause can be a time of profound personal transformation.
A time for deepening into our true selves…
‘Midway upon the journey of my life I found myself in a dark wood, where the right way was lost.’
(Dante- The Divine Comedy)
The second half of life and the bodily changes it brings can make us feel that the life we have been living no longer quite fits, and a need for change can arise. But we may be unsure as to what those changes might be. We may feel lost, or at a crossroads, frazzled or overwhelmed, grief-stricken, angry, anxious, depressed...
As a dawning discomfort of the life we have been accustomed to starts to gnaw at us; we are called into the cave, the forest, the cocoon...
IF we follow this calling for depth and truth, we encounter what IS and within that- potential for change.
We meet the existential questions of...
Who am I now?
&How will i live the rest of my life?
Some might understand this as a ‘midlife-crisis’. Alternatively, we can view midlife as an opportunity for self-discovery and truth-seeking. An opportunity to sense in closer… to listen to what moves us. My body-based, intuitive, creative approach supports and sensitively accompanies this journey towards a sense of fresh meanings. Jungian analyst and author James Hollis refers to this process of transformation as the midlife passage; seeing it is a passage from one way of being in the world to another…one which expresses our changing values and aspirations, nourishing and supporting us toward becoming our authentic selves. Are you feeling that tug, nudge or whisper… that calling to listen, to move in closer, to sense deeper? If we do move in closer…if we do take time to listen and be with our deeper bodily experiences, we encounter a natural movement towards change.
In order to truly live our lives, we must follow that calling towards depth…we must listen....
‘The symbols of the self arise in the depths of the body’
(Jung, C.G. as quoted by Chodorow, J. Dance/Movement and Body
Experience in Analysis).
‘Most women experience major change in these middle years: physical change or professional; social or psychological; changes in our family and our relationships. Our children leave home. We are overtaken by disillusionment and dissatisfaction. We find ourselves unhappy in our jobs, in our marriages. We develop physical illnesses, anxiety or depression. Rage and grief threaten to overwhelm us. We begin to contemplate our own mortality. We question who we are, who we might have been, who we might yet become. We question our spiritual values and our material values. We begin to wonder what we are doing with our lives, what meaning we might find.’
(Sharon Blackie- If Women Rose Rooted)