On mothering myself into menopause - Part 1
Helpful tools and support services to make the journey a little more gentle
Ahead of World Menopause Day, I’m sharing my menopause journey and all the helpful tools and support systems that I’ve enlisted to keep me as well as I can possible be during this transformative time in life. I didn’t have enough information when I was making my way through this journey, so I’m keen to share all I’ve learned with as many people as possible. Please don’t get surprised like I did!
Click here to read about how I went from stressed sprinter to menopause marathoner, then follow on here on my Journal for support services parts 1, 2 and 3.
My first set of tools are a mixed bag of mindset changes, mental health support and putting distractions on mute. And don’t worry… #postmenopausalzest is a real thing, so rest assured it gets way better after you’ve made it through the gauntlet!
Coaching
One of the first things I did post surgery was participate in the Playing Big coaching programme facilitated by women’s leadership expert Tara Mohr. I had read her excellent book Playing Big back in 2017, which was a transformative experience (the Inner Mentor visualisation alone is worth the price of the book), but I felt so lost after my sudden thrust into menopause that I knew I needed something more to support my journey. I joined the 12 week programme and Tara’s gentle, thoughtful and intelligent approach to coaching the group through our various challenges helped me find my way back to myself.
The communicating with power and values exercises were particularly useful, as well as the amazing community that Tara and her team nurtured through the weekly live calls and engaging online platform. To be in the company of women who were also going through struggles, that were being addressed with helpful coaching tools and conversations, was so healing and reassuring. It provided me with direction and clarity at a time when I really needed it and it inspired me to go back to study to do the work that I do today.
If you’re curious to find out more about coaching, you can visit Tara Mohr’s website and you can read through my journal posts on what coaching is and what it’s not, on understanding when it’s a good time to get coaching support and on some of the differences between coaching and other helping professions.
Social Media Sabbatical
After being online since 2007 and at my peak running six different social media handles for various businesses and voluntary positions, I hit a wall. What started as an innocent fun way to connect and share with friends overseas, became a overwhelming and burdensome task that was not anything I felt I signed up for and was something that was maniacally and manically controlling me.
I read Jenny Odell’s brilliant book How to Do Nothing - Resisting the Attention Economy in 2019 and it completely changed how I viewed social media (and life). Menopause is fantastic for burning down anything extraneous that isn’t essential to your life, so you can make space for all the juicy #postmenopausalzest that will eventually come your way. My personal social media accounts were one such thing that got chucked on the pyre. What a blessed relief that was and once you’re off you realise how little you actually GAF about so many things that happen on the WWW. I’m gently making my way back online but only in limited amounts and with a huge dose of wariness.
We shouldn’t know as much as we do about so many people, especially strangers… it’s not human and it’s terrible for our nervous system. But developers prey on our dopamine levels and get us used to the regular hits that social media likes and comments provide us.
It’s an insidious and complex situation that has no easy solution. There are so many positive benefits to connecting through social platforms, but when the bad outweighs the good and it gets too addictive, it can be hugely detrimental to our mental health and wellbeing. Remember when we all survived without a whole world in our hand 25 years ago? It’s good to sometimes question why we need it now.
Therapy
Menopause often brings up many unresolved challenges that we have faced in life, so it’s great if you can get help and support with these issues before or during perimenopause.
Going through surgical menopause triggered some old traumatic experiences that led to me going back to therapy, but this time with a different flavour. I’ve done plenty of talk therapy in the past, but this time I really felt like I needed something that would help me get reacquainted with my body since I’d become so disconnected from it.
Much of my life I’ve felt like a brain in a jar floating above my physical form and I started to realise that I was missing out on half of the human experience. Embodiment is key to living fully and so I found an amazing therapist, fully funded through ACC, who focuses on somatics, movement and art which has been life changing. I can feel things! I inhabit my skin! I’m connecting my body and mind! And she is slowly and gently helping me develop new pathways in my brain and behaviours so that I can start to live a life that is not so burdened by the shadow of trauma.
If you’re based in Aotearoa and you’ve experienced sexual abuse or assault, you can use this online search tool to find organisations that have therapists who can support you. This therapy is free of charge and funded by ACC.
Meditation
I’d dabbled in meditation and yoga asana for many years (I still vividly remember my first ever guided mediation when I was at school camp, which looking back on it now seems quite progressive for a Catholic girls college in the 90s!) but it wasn’t until last year that I committed to daily practice. After doing a lot of research and nine months of daily meditation through an app, I became a student of Vedic Meditation.
This is a transcendent (beyond thought) style that is mantra based, effortless and utterly life changing. Twenty minutes, twice a day, everyday might seem like a big commitment, but it is in fact only 3% of a 24 hour period and I’d rather spend that time with my eyes closed, away from my phone and many other distractions. The changes are profound - increased awareness and clarity, stronger connection with the senses, heightened intuition, the ability to follow charm effortlessly, learning to say no to anything that nature doesn’t intend and… no more road rage!
I’ve just completed my advanced technique which has taken my practice to an even deeper level and I can’t wait to continue learning the knowledge that my wonderful teachers share and applying this wisdom to make my everyday life more joyful, easy and charming.
If you’d like to learn Vedic Mediation and you’re based in Aotearoa, you can contact either of my teachers, Lauren Godfrey or Lauren Fitzgerald and book in a free introductory talk to find out more. You can also listen to The Vedic Worldview Podcast hosted by Thom Knoles, Master of Vedic Meditation who has taught 40,000 people to meditate worldwide.