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Quite a while back, a friend recommended The Wisdom of Menopause by Christiane Northrup to me. I bought the book in April, but it sat on my shelf waiting for me to be ready to hear what it had to say.  I thought it might be time to broaden my perspective on my emotional and physical health and the passionate desire I have to reorder my life.

When I read the opening paragraphs of the first chapter, I felt the author had climbed into my head with a laptop and written it based on what she saw there:

It is no secret that relationship crises are a common side effect of menopause. Usually this is attributed to the crazy-making effects of the hormonal shifts occuring in a woman's body at this time of transition. What is rarely acknowledged or understood is that as these hormone-driven changes affect the brain, they give a woman a sharper eye for inequity and injustice  and a voice that insists on speaking up about them. In other words, they give her a kind of wisdom--and the courage to voice it. As the vision-obscuring veil created by the hormones of reproduction begins to lift, a woman's youthful fire and spirit are often rekindled, together with long sublimated desires and creative drives. Midlife fuels those drives with a volcanic energy that demands an outlet.

If it does not find an outlet--if the woman remains silent for the sake of keeping the peace at home and/or work, or is she hold herself back from pursuing her creative urges and desires--the result is equivalent to plugging the vent on a pressure cooker:  something has to give. 

June 14, 2008

Guard within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.

-- George Sand

Photo by Di

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. 

 ~e.e. cummings

Without understanding, there cannot be true love, and without love there cannot be true understanding.

--Thich Nhat Hanh

You can't be wise and in love at the same time.

--Bob Dylan

There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves...

--Lucy Maud Montgomery

April 24, 2008

Sometimes some of my best writing and insights emerge in the comments I leave on other people's blogs. This week I wrote the following in a comment on  Jack's blog in response to a post he wrote on marriage and housework:

"Coercion, threats, and keeping score? That's the Mafia, not marriage."

Jack suggested that little nugget of wisdom would be great on a t-shirt.

Today he has a great post on blogging that expressed my own sentiments perfectly. He wrote:

"I blog because I am unsettled, unsatisfied and unyielding in my search for the things that provide meaning and substance in my life. "

 He goes on to explore how he reacts to his own writing and what it means to him, a post that inspired me to write a long comment on why I had changed the format of my blog and how I feel about it months later.

On an unrelated (and lighter) note, here's a snippet of conversation I had with my son at Wal-Mart the other night while we were in a checkout queue. We noticed that at the adjacent checkout stand, which was closed, there was a big, shrink-wrapped steak sitting at the end of the counter where the food is normally bagged and loaded into the cart.

My 12-year-old son said, "What's that doing there? How does someone leave the store and forget their steak?!"

I responded, "Well, clearly forgetting it was a mis-steak."

He answered, "Or a missed-steak. Whatever."

Physically, my son doesn't resemble me at all, but when he opens his mouth, I have no doubt whose boy he is.

April 23, 2008

Photo by Di Mackey Photography

The past retrieved from a distant place, cut open, unwrapped, laid bare

When she was 18, he bought her a diamond ring that she accepted with ambivalent feelings. She wrote to him:

"People act as if this ring has changed me. It's as if this addition to my left hand suddenly makes me dumber, domesticated, less likely to do well [in college]. I feel like people are saying, 'all those brains and she's going to be a housewife!' You and I know that's not true, but how the hell do I convince others I'm just as smart, just as independent, and just as ambitious as ever? I may put this ring into retirement. I want people to see me as myself--a whole person--not half of a couple."

"...I know you love me but don't let your love turn into a chain on me...Trust me and let that trust be a bond. I will love you more for giving me freedom. The freer I am, the more I'm drawn to you, but if you try and keep me through possessiveness, I'll resent it.  Let me go my own way and I'll always come back to you."

April 7, 2008

What will see me through the next 20 years (and I am less sure of those 20 than I was of "forever") is my knowledge that even in the face of the sweeping away of all that I assumed to be permanent, even when the universe made it quite clear to me that I was mistaken in my certainties, in my definitions, I did not break. The shattering of my sureties did not shatter me. Stability comes from inside, not outside...

--Lucille Clifton

Only in growth, reform and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.

--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

March 21, 2008