In the beginning of my menopause journey the only thing I was sure of was the fact that I didn’t feel like myself anymore. My energy was different, my body was different, and things that used to roll off my back suddenly bothered me a lot more. I had less tolerance for things I had accepted for years, and I found myself wondering what was happening to me and how I could get back to feeling like myself again.
But the more I sat with it, the more I started wondering if getting back was even the right goal. What if I’m not supposed to go back to who I was?
Because this season has opened up so much more than questions about hormones or how I feel physically. It has made me look at my life differently. I started noticing where I put myself second, where I second-guessed what I wanted, where I knew something and then immediately talked myself out of it. I started noticing the ideas that kept coming back, the things I kept saying I wanted to do but somehow never quite did, and the parts of me that wanted to be expressed but that I still held back because I was waiting to feel more ready, more certain, or more qualified.
My work has been one of the biggest places I’ve felt this. The interesting thing is that I love what I do. I’m not sitting here thinking I chose the wrong path or that I need to burn everything down and start over. I genuinely love it. And at the same time, I know there is more in me. There is more I want to say, more I want to create, and more I want to put out into the world.
That has actually been confusing at times because I think a lot of us were taught, directly or indirectly, that if we want something more, it must mean we’re ungrateful for what we already have. Or, why would we change something that is safe and secure. Honestly, I don’t believe that anymore. I think we can love what we’ve created and still know that it no longer holds all of who we are becoming.
Once I started noticing this in myself, I started seeing versions of it everywhere. I see it in women who are beginning to question their relationships, not necessarily because they don’t love their partner, but because the dynamics they’ve lived with for years don’t feel okay anymore. I see it in women who are caring for aging parents and realizing that loving someone doesn’t mean having no boundaries. I see it in women who have spent years being the reliable one, the accommodating one, the mother who figures it out, the friend everyone calls, the daughter who handles everything, or the woman who can always be counted on.
And then somewhere around midlife, something starts to change. She may not want to leave, quit, walk away, or blow up her life. She may actually love a lot of what she has built. But she can no longer ignore the places where the way she has been living doesn’t work for her anymore.
That is the part I keep coming back to.
Where am I saying yes when I really mean no?
Where am I keeping the peace and then feeling resentful afterward?
Where am I making everyone else’s needs more important than my own?
Where am I waiting for permission I may never get?
Where am I settling for good enough when something in me knows I want more?
And where do I already know what I want, but immediately start negotiating myself out of it?
The more I’ve paid attention, the more I’ve realized how easy it is to abandon yourself without even knowing you’re doing it. It doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like being easygoing, being the capable one, being the flexible one, being the woman who says, “It’s fine, I can handle it.” And maybe you can handle it but that doesn’t necessarily mean you still want to.
I think that has been one of the biggest realizations for me. Just because I’m capable of tolerating something doesn’t mean it’s right for me anymore.
Menopause, for me, has felt like an interruption. It got my attention. It made it harder to keep moving through life on autopilot, and once I started paying attention, I couldn’t unsee certain things. I couldn’t keep pretending I didn’t have desires. I couldn’t keep acting like wanting more meant I wasn’t grateful. I couldn’t keep assuming that being a good woman meant being endlessly accommodating, endlessly available, or endlessly willing to put myself second.
Instead of asking how I could get back to who I used to be, I started becoming much more interested in different questions:
Who am I now?
What do I want now?
What matters to me now?
What am I no longer willing to tolerate just because I tolerated it before?
What wants to come through me now?
Where am I still overriding that woman because an older version of me learned that being loved, accepted, successful, needed, or “good” required something different?
These are the questions I’m able to sit with and contemplate using tools that help me see myself more clearly, my patterns, the beliefs I’ve picked up along the way, and the places where I may still be living from who I thought I needed to be instead of who I actually am. They don’t give me the answers, but they help me ask better questions, notice what’s happening underneath the surface, and hear myself more clearly.
Maybe that’s what this season is really asking of us. Not to become some shiny, improved version of ourselves, and not to desperately get back to the woman we used to be, but to stop leaving ourselves behind. To get curious about the woman who is here now and let her want what she wants, let her change her mind, let her have boundaries, let her raise her standards, let her create the thing that keeps calling her, and let her own who she is becoming without needing everyone around her to understand it first.
If you’ve been feeling more restless, more honest, less tolerant of what no longer fits, or more aware that there’s something in you asking for more, I get it. I’m feeling it too. I’m beginning to wondering if maybe this season isn’t asking us to get back to who we were, but to pay attention to who we’re becoming.
If you saw yourself in this article, please share your experience!
Peace, love and good hair days,
Chris