Mid-life - a time of many changes
Mid-life can be a confusing time
for women. Changes in our own lives, in the
lives of close relatives or friends, and in society itself can generate
a series of blows to our understanding of what our lives are about and
what our purposes are. Children may be leaving home, elderly relatives
may die or need care, there may be either redundancy or extra responsibilities
at work, and partners may have similar or different issues to handle.
Women are often expected, and expect themselves, to cope with other people’s
difficulties as well as their own, and this inevitably takes its toll.
In addition, women at mid-life go through a set of hormonal changes which
can make extra demands on body, mind and spirit. Menopause may introduce
more uncertainties into an already complicated situation.
Puberty and menopause have many parallels. Both are a time of transition
from one way of being female to another. In both cases no-one really
knows
what the new state will feel like – least of all the woman at the
centre of the change! And since our bodies and our feelings are intimately
linked, changing patterns of hormones tend to affect the way we feel,
and what we think matters most. At menopause women produce less of the hormones which
encourage us to nurture others; we may thus become more choosy about
who we look after, and more willing
to look after ourselves.
This
is one of the reasons why menopausal women get a bad reputation, and family
traditions can underline this, with stories about how impossible Auntie
Annie was. It could be that she had had enough of being taken for granted!
In any case, there is no evidence that ‘having a bad time’
is inherited. Our generation of menopausal women have far more options
than our mothers and grandmothers, and thus need not suffer from the same
frustrations.
Mid-life can also be seen as a time to pause and consider. Many of the
physical signs of menopause encourage women to want to rest and take
things
more easily, at least for a while, and to review their commitments. This
can be a very productive process, but difficult to get started; Western
society encourages busyness, and wanting time to be quiet can feel rather
odd at first. A period
of reassessment, however, can pay dividends. Reflecting on the present
can make it easier to identify causes of current strains, and also to
see what are the most promising ways forward. So much can be going on
at this stage of life that single explanations are rarely helpful. Mid-life
can be a very stressful period, and it is useful not to blame everything
on the menopause – or to allow your nearest and dearest to do so!
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