ageing gracefully?

Being at midlife, I am watching as my body, and mind, age. With reflections on how the seasons come and go, and leave their inevitable mark, I feel the ripening of my own wisdom. And also with it comes more intimacy with the suffering of ageing — the pain and discomfort of a body which is no longer supple and youthful. 

I can't say this is an easy time, nor that I am always able to navigate it with grace, however I do feel that I am finding ways to make peace with the changes.  Being in this body, which experiences peri/menopause, I feel like there is a new symptom every day that I need to find ways to meet.  This is a dance, and someone has turned up the heat, while also increasing the tempo!  

Some nights I find it hard to sleep and then this causes the inevitable impact on how I experience the things i need to do and meet during the day. This is a common symptom for those going through peri/menopause, and until a few months ago I would have said that my sleep was great.  So I adjust what I am doing. 

A year ago I took up a daily yoga practice (after having done yoga less regularly since 1989), and I do think that has helped this year, with so many changes coming at once.  A new job, training to be a therapist, hot flashes, sleep disturbances, very sore hips and joints, brain fog, fatigue, and the grief that inevitably marks any transition. I am losing the familiarity of my monthly cycles, and while this is very welcome, it marks the change of my life into something new.  I am standing at the edge of the unknown -- with serious sleep debt!  

So as the winter turns to spring, and then to summer, I work to meet each day with gentleness, and kindness, bearing with the pains and discomforts with tenderness.  And when it feels too much and my mind feels strained and bleak, I aim to meet that too with care, and acceptance.  All of it is a part of this great dance, the seasons of change, of life, and ultimately of death -- another unknown, but not the end, a stage of the cycle.

REFERENCES

What Fresh Hell is This: Perimenopause, Menopause and Other Indignities and You - By non-binary author Heather Corinna

Hormone Repair Manual - by Naturopathic Doctor Lara Briden