|
Post by James on Aug 14, 2014 22:47:50 GMT 10
Menopause
Marion read out to me today about a woman’s menopause experience and how back in the fifties she viewed it as a bad thing, which made me want to write a little about Marion’s and my experiences with it. I have written a bit about it somewhere in my writings, but I can’t remember where or if I’ve published it.
I don’t how it’s viewed these days but of course it’s not a bad thing, how can anything that is natural be possibly bad? It only being bad because we turn everything that’s natural into being bad.
Anyway, as Marion’s menopause started it was nothing more than more bad feelings to accept, express and long for the truth of. The menopause itself didn’t make her feel bad, she had lots of hot flushes but those too were nothing new as she’d had them since we started doing our healing together and still occasionally has them - even I’ve had a few!
The hot flushes have always come when she’s felt scared. Suddenly she’ll be so hot she’ll have to take layers of clothes off, it’s all rather funny really as she races to try and cool herself down, but not funny if she’s already feeling bad. If she just suddenly has a hot flush but hasn’t been feeling bad, then she traces back inside herself what she was thinking or said until she sure enough detects that she felt scared. Repressed fear and sometimes anger seems to be the cause of them. And sometimes great anger or more fear comes resulting from the flush.
Overall she says the flushes help her bring up more of her yuk, her system firing up to break down blocks and barriers, forcing her bad feelings up, so she looks upon them as something helping her and not a bad thing.
In the few I’ve had, which are never as intense as Marion’s hot flushes, it’s the same thing, always fear at the bottom of them.
Mum took hormone replacements for her menopause, had masses of bad headaches and hot flushes and generally didn’t like the whole business. And on my part I didn’t take much notice nor care what she was going through, I wasn’t at home much at that time. Being with Marion I couldn’t say her menopause was anything that stood out by itself. She already had masses of headaches and hot flushes as I said, so it just came and went really with hardly a ripple, her healing already being so intense; and no way was she going to subject herself to hormone replacement therapy or go anywhere near any doctor.
And really for Marion the whole thing was one huge blessed relief that she never had to have her excruciatingly painful periods and ovulation again. It was terrible to see her writhing around on the floor in the bathroom crying from the pain as begged the Father to help her see the truth.
And having written this, please remember this is only briefly how it was for Marion, and that’s not to say how it might be for anyone else. Only I am sure that being able to freely express her pain helped her as she didn’t seek medical help, and I think that pain helped to take her deeper into all those feared parts of herself she was afraid of going into.
So her menopause she treated like any bad feeling: understanding they are only within her because of how badly she was treated when she was young, that they have to all come out, and however they do is best for her and as God wants it, and as they come out she understands how it’s all come about.
|
|
|
Post by samantha9 on Aug 15, 2014 6:57:32 GMT 10
I am right there with you Marion, I am sitting here with a fan at my feet and every 45 minutes I put it on with my big toe because I feel the inferno build up within me. I am writing a mini book about it presently as I am going through it and how I have come to understand the Menopause, writing the book has helped me express al of my feelings on the matter and I am now beginning to enjoy the process because it gives me so many feelings to express, like yourself. I have now come to understand the Menopause in such an amazing new way that I hope women will one day be excited to be going through it and meet it with open arms instead of the dread we have been conditioned to believe, I am very excited about my mini book and think it will be a revelation for many women.
|
|
|
Post by James on Aug 15, 2014 19:26:32 GMT 10
That's sounds great Sam, the book, not so much the inferno. Gosh what an intense time it is for you. I'm looking forward to reading it.
I told Marion what you wrote, and in talking more about her menopause she feels now that it wasn't such a big thing for her because she'd already done so much of her healing, and as I said, it was all just part of the ongoing liberation of her repressed feelings.
Another thing she wondered about was if women who don't suffer with their periods might suffer more during menopause as it stirs them up trying to bring up what they've kept repressed within themselves; whereas women who have suffered more during their periods don't have as bad a menopause as they are closer to the pain of their repression???
|
|
|
Post by desire2bme on Aug 16, 2014 0:51:35 GMT 10
I suffered from my first period onwards having cramps up until a couple years before they ceased. I began choosing not to take ibuprofen (pain killer) at the end, desiring to feel my way through my cycle. Being a woman in my farm family was not something that I ever felt safe to be and when the periods began for me there was no one there to guide me. There was such hushed communication in this area, that even though I had sisters who could have prepared me in some way being my mother didn't, there was dead silence. Sam, I would have really liked to have had at least a book to take me into what gains can be had by opening up to all my menses were there to give me.
I believe, Marion that there is something to what you are wondering about as far as how much suffering goes on or not during our menses and how our time of menopause then is experienced. The only symptom I experience is a hot flash now and then and I have a welcome strategy, desiring all that can come for me through this time to show itself, I want to stay open to what the hot flashes can lead me into. And what I experience most often with them is this feeling of being trapped and unable to get free. Sometimes it feels like I am being smothered and other times like I am being held against my will unable to get loose. When I stay in the center of the feeling there comes with it a lot of fear.
|
|
|
Post by James on Aug 16, 2014 20:02:48 GMT 10
Desire, do you feel like you want to rip your skin off and run away - get away from yourself - all those terrible feelings, as that's how I often feel when feeling so confined and trapped - even strapped in, bound up. Marion often felt as you said you feel during them. All the memories of the number of agony days we've been through together, oh god, who'd want to do their healing and go through it all! Haven't we been tortured enough!
|
|
|
Post by desire2bme on Aug 17, 2014 2:38:02 GMT 10
James, today it comes to me that the feeling of not being able to escape but wanting to is a picture of my womb life (s-mothered). I can't get out but have to breath in all of the stressors my mother lives with...feeling it all, no choice in the matter...and this happening w/o my brain being formed yet. It is full on feeling it with no defense system in place. I'm bathed/drowning in it and even before I come to term and am birthed into this world, it is my "normal."
As I consider my interactions with others, the times when I am feeling drained or flooded by what they are feeling, is it pointing me back here? To this helpless defenseless place and time? It comes to me now, that as I have discovered this happening in my relationships that I am still having conversation about it, analyzing it instead of opening up to full on feeling it. And so it comes to me, offering itself during my hot flashes...where I can not get away from it until it ceases on it's own, coming in waves. To see this today from this angle gives me a desire to become even more willing to drop fully into it...into the fear of it...as it now comes offering itself through my flashes. Will I abandon this child who keeps on having to swallow it all down or learn to stay open more and more to it, until I can endure the " full on"? Yes, James, I think we are a bit crazy - "haven't we been tortured enough?" - yet if we truly want the torture to end, feeling like we want to run like hell away from this is what first needs to be fully felt.
|
|
|
Post by samantha9 on Aug 17, 2014 7:28:57 GMT 10
I have wrote down one of my experiences with a hot flush and my feelings felt at the time and I have noticed that when I am sat down with pen and pad next to me and I begin writing at the same time as having a hot one, the intensity is so much less as I am expressing my feelings of it blow by blow, yet wen I am unable to do this I have quite intense heat and pressure, so expressing my feelings definitely works and calms the flushes. I have felt exactly the same feelings as Desire and Marion, as sisters we share this xx.
I can feel the pressure and heat growing and it comes so fast, it is consuming my body and I cannot escape from this, it is growing inside of me and there is no escape from me. I have been trying to escape from feeling the intensity of my feelings all my life and I have no control over this growing heat. I feel like I want to run from it but I cant run from Me, I have always wanted to run from the depths of my feelings, it is like fight or flight response but I cant get away from it. The pressure and heat rises in me and it feels like when you experience intense Humiliation, embarrassment when you dying inside with humiliation feeling so ashamed but there is no where to hide, you have been found out. The heat burns up through your body as it does when you are severely embarrassed and all you want to do is die and hide, to be swallowed up, you can do nothing, there is no where to go but to face it. This heat and pressure is now in my face and burning at the back of my neck and the sweat is pouring out of me, it is now showing in my face as it burns red, it is now showing the outside world the state of my inner world, Panic, fear, humiliation, shame, pain, Anger, Greif all laid bare for the world to see the false me, the accumulation of my 47 years now has nowhere to hide. The condition of my soul is now leading the way, all that I am and have been, this is the time in my life now for revealing all of the false me without me being able to control it. All of the lies, humiliation and denial of my whole life is now at a pinnacle, the full truth of my denial and rebellion. All women come to this, the end of the false self but the struggle lies in the awareness of what is really happening. I see the Menopause as a Pause-from-Men, in the way that women, being closer to there feelings than men, now have the opportunity to become their true self. The Menopause brings an end of child bearing and an end of the role that Women believe they have to play and live up to, and play being the word, and end to the denial of them selves as they have done all there lives playing the typical woman role, and a majority of the time, against their will if they were true and honest about it all. The Menopause is a Pause from all that denial and it will be as hard or as easy as we want to make it due to our not wanting to be aware of the truth of ourselves. I saw my Mother suffer for many years from the age of 38 with awful symptoms of Menopause but never heard her say one word of her experiences with periods, so I guess it wasn't a problem for her, but Menopause certainly was. I suffered most of my life with awful periods but have only had the intensity of hot flushes to contend with but the great thing is I am willing to experiment with them and try to break the chain of Women suffering. I feel that through feeling them to there limit they are becoming easier to handle. For me, mine have brought up so much past humiliation and anger that I can access and express through my feelings with the symptoms of the Menopause. The "Men-o-pause" has now become my "Pause-from-Men" and is now my time to connect to my true spiritual self having played the roles of Girlfriend, Wife, Mother and all the other roles I played all the time denying my true self, now I no longer have to do this, all of that false me is being forced out of me to feel and the symptoms of the Menopause are bringing all of that denial and rebellion to me in a physical way that I can no longer deny, they are happening so I may as well use them to there fullest as nothing is for no reason and I believe Woman comes into her true power as Spiritual leader when she connects to her self through her feelings and this is the time to embrace what is happening to her, through her feelings at this incredible time of transformation through the Pause-O-Men (Pause from Men) This is our time to become who we were meant to be but we just don't know it, we as Women have been kept away from this incredible knowledge, blindly following the struggle and path of our Mothers and accepting the medical information and advice and medications, this is our time to become the true Spiritual Leaders we were always meant to be. I would love to see a time when Women could look forward to this time in their lives and know that they are coming into a transformational journey of truth and their will be a mourning and death to go through as we realise that the past has been false and not the true us. I feel very excited to be going through the Menopause as I know through my feelings that I have cause to be excited as I am becoming truer to myself and for me to put away the role of traditional Woman and go through the transformation to become True as My Mother and Father want me to be. This is my time to take a Pause in life and every Woman has been given this incredible Transformation to become her true Majestic Self in all her power once she has played the false role of self denial.
|
|
|
Post by wesley on Aug 17, 2014 10:43:09 GMT 10
Oh yes. I am also ready for the women to step out and lead. Man also needs it.
|
|
|
Post by desire2bme on Aug 17, 2014 13:02:58 GMT 10
WOW...just WOW! All that you wrote Samantha has a glow on it. Thanks so much for sharing your writing/feeling process as you felt through your hot flash and for all that you poured out after that.
|
|
|
Post by James on Aug 17, 2014 14:15:16 GMT 10
WOW to you both Desire and Samantha, you're both radiant. And I concur with Wes; I feel like I'm wandering around like a lost sheep in the fog compared to how clearly and intensely you both feel things.
And I like that Pause-from-Men Sam. And I'm so glad I didn't keep putting all the sex shit on Marion when we first came together, when she started to express how much she didn't want to keep doing it all and being untrue to her feelings. And as she said, had I, we'd not be together. She needed the space, the Pause, just as you said in your post, so she could come to terms with all she felt about it all, all of which she's still doing. And as a man, I'm still breaking down all my erroneous beliefs about how a man should be, and coming round to understand that a different type of relationship can be had, one without all that sex role yuk on either side, and one of being true equals, together on a completely different and foreign level to anything I've known or heard about.
|
|
|
Post by desire2bme on Aug 20, 2014 0:44:06 GMT 10
Sam writes:
Sam, I have come back to this post several times re-reading it and taking in the intensity of the words and what they represent for me. These few that I have plucked out are so true as I apply them especially to all of what would arise during my periods and now the hot flashes when they arrive. And what came to me as I think on the physical pain and deep distress I would feel during my periods was how I believed I was crazy for the intense feelings I would have during these times. As you wrote of you bi-polar like emotional movements, it coincides somewhat with my own patterns of emotion. I learned that women are just bitches and emotional out of control creatures acting mentally deranged during their periods and should be "put out" for those 5 days, ignored, as those around her roll their eyes and shake their heads saying "Here we go again." Such shame for feeling the depth of emotion, especially the anger that was always screeching and calling out for me to LISTEN to it and find out why it is there, what it has to say to me.
When I think about the place where Wisdom lives and waits for me to hear Her, it was here in this place She was always trying to introduce Herself to me, but I feared Her as She always pointed toward and not away from these fiery intense emotions. She wanted to nurture and mother me, but I was so completely in agreement with what seemed even the bible concluded about the uncleanliness of a woman during her menstrual cycle and the need for her to "go away"..."I can't trust what's going on", I thought. "I can't open up to this womb asking to unload and shoot up and out all it's hot lava. They think I am out of my mind now while I do everything in my power to suppress all of my emotion, what will come should I lift this lid off? They shall put me away."
And so then here we go...lifting the lid and finding ourselves going this way and that way, up, down, back and forth, energized and wiped out, zig-zag, bing bang boom...and I with you am saying this "insanity" feels right, feels true, it could be nothing but this way when we have lived buttoned up and ashamed for feeling our angers and bitterness secretly inside. Granting ourselves permission to hear and feel Her, seeing the womb's offering has always been a gift to us as women never intended to only be used during pregnancy for childbirth. And it is during this time, when the shedding of the blood once a month ceases that the choice to listen or not to our feelings held within our womb becomes such a critical decision place and time...leading to a life opening up to all it was created to blossom into or shutting it down for the latter years just being grateful that the periods are over and continuing to live underneath the shadows of using the mind alone to lead us to our deaths beds. Men and women watching wait for us to choose this way of intensity and to call it right and good, respectful and honoring of what has been for so long neglected and shamed and sent away.
It came to me yesterday, being reminded that for every truth, there comes a counterfeit. And what it was zeroing in on was this "mothering" that goes on between men and women in their relationships. The counterfeit is a s-mothering and does to men/children what women have learned to do to themselves...discounting their own emotions, they try to live off from what little life they can find still brewing in their children. With the men they have to live passive-aggresively being the kind of mother their partners are used to...constantly having to hold down their anger and focusing on trying to change the man they have chosen to be with...controlling and manipulating them provides a way away from their inner turmoil. "If I can change him, maybe he will finally give me permission to feel and be the woman I was created to be...to not be seen as "the bitch" when I allow an emotion to flow." But that day will never come for that woman for it is she herself who holds the permission key. And the true and real "mothering" can only begin when she uses it.
I believe man waits to know this true mothering way, that he so wants to stop living off his intellect in his head and also honor his feelings, greeting and coming to know his heart. And what a gift we as women have been given to show the way...to prove by living true to our own womb and all that is contained within that this is where sanity, not insanity, resides. Without having the ability to see through the waiting we have been doing with men (who to me represent the suppression of emotion that both our parents bought into), hoping/expecting they would give us the permission we can only give ourselves to live fully feeling, we will not exercise and honor our own personal will power to lead the way in this arena of life. Our hearts and bellies know the way and the head truly desires to live in submission to them giving them all the assistance they could possibly want or need.
So it's back to the intensity of this roller coaster ride, this a way, that a way I go. And as I do, I find that the intensity that was living in these fiery repressed pockets inside, when released, is creating something...something I could never create by using my mind.
|
|
|
Post by samantha9 on Aug 20, 2014 5:28:56 GMT 10
Hello Desire
I felt so much anger as you did during my periods. My anger was at having to repress all I felt as not to upset anyone else in the family. I felt if anyone knew how angry I truly felt I would receive even more quips about it being the "time of the month" I feel it has become such a joke in society now but it is no joke to not be able to express your painful feelings that feel as if they could erupt endlessly. I felt very unclean and ashamed of myself at this time of month and even remember crying the first day I ever had a period because my eldest sister hadn't begun hers yet. I felt like I had taken something away from her and jumped right in when it was for her to go first, when she found out she cried too and felt robbed. I was full of guilt and pain for her and their was nothing I could do about it, it was not within my control and I just kept apologising to her saying I am so sorry to do this to her, all so painful adding to my shame and my anger was covering the deep feeling of grief I felt because I had hurt my sister and it felt like a death, a loss, I was no longer a child and I was not ready for womanhood, my sister was older and was ready but I took it from her, I was in total guilt, grief and shame, feelings I have since had to feel the truth of and I understand now. My daughter also had a similar experience when she started hers last year. She didn't tell me she had started but I found her crying in her room so we had a long feeling conversation where she expressed the depths of her pain to me as she didn't want me to find out about it as I would no longer think she was my Baby, she was not ready for it either and I understand that she had this feeling because it was unhealed and not addressed within me, so she brought it to me, just what I needed to know about the pain I felt at the same age, I needed to feel that pain and grief that she had brought up in me through her same feelings, we both healed this together and when it had left me, it also left her.
I have just been called to go and pick her up so I will continue later Desire but I have loved reading your writing, and have felt it all, speak soon xx
|
|
|
Post by desire2bme on Aug 21, 2014 23:53:45 GMT 10
Yes, a joke that is so powerful it takes most to their grave with the duct tape still criss-crossed over their own mouths so to not let one true feeling ever see the light of day. And for anyone who is giving themselves permission now...to go through this tunnel that surrounds us that says you will "erupt endlessly" if you dare begin...this is the leap of faith we take and find out that it isn't true. What a RELIEF to find out it isn't true!!!!
And as you describe walking in on your daughter crying and all that that led into as you followed your own feelings as she was helping bring up more in you:
Such beauty - her own grief coinciding with the very grief in you, enabling yours to come up more fully and both of you leaving free, having expressed it all out together.
|
|