I recorded this episode on August 13, 2020, Day Sixty-Freaking-Nine of my menstrual cycle. But guess what? I am typing these show notes on August 14, 2020, and it is DAY ONE OF MY CYCLE. That is right! Fire the confetti cannon! I got my period!

Oh Lordy, I feel so good. Zoloft did a good job of taking the edge off my Epic PMS, but I feel like my body is renewing itself now in the best way possible.

Okay, so back to the regularly programmed show notes. At the beginning of episode the seventh, I mentioned a podcast that I have been recently binging. It’s called Therapy Thoughts, and it is hosted by Tiffany Roe, a licensed clinical mental health counselor. I would like to talk about therapy in a future episode (sooner rather than later), but for now, I just wanted to share this awesome podcast because it is helping me supplement the work I am currently doing with my own therapist.

During the bulk of this episode, I talked about my transition from using a traditional Western doctor as my primary care physician to a naturopath. A naturopath is a doctor who goes to medical school and passes all the requisite boards but takes a more natural approach to helping the body heal itself. Instead of just quickly writing a prescription to alleviate a symptom, they dive deeper to figure out if there are any deeper issues and then recommend things like nutritional changes, supplements, meditation and exercise in addition to prescriptions. Yes, when necessary, my naturopath gives me a prescription! I am currently taking Naturethroid for my hypothroidism.

I love meeting with my naturopath. I feel like I have made enormous strides with my health since my first appointment three years ago. With my more traditional physicians, I have always felt like the doctor had one eye on the clock. My naturopath regularly spends an hour with me.

Traditional physicians also did not always seem to believe me when I told them about health issues. For example, when I started taking the birth control pill years ago, I noticed my periods suddenly got way more intense. I told my gynecologist, and he said, “Periods get lighter when you go on the pill.” And he gave me a look like he thought I was crazy. I had to talk to my girlfriends to learn that many women experience heavier bleeding when they are on the pill and even feel crazy. But my old gynecologist just wanted me to fit into a cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all-uteruses.

But that is not how the human body works! We all have our own biological nuances. Some of us have allergies. Some of us don’t. Some of us are lactose intolerant. Some of us can eat whatever we want. After years of being made to feel like my health did not matter to the doctors who were supposed to be caring for my health, I finally decided to take a chance on a naturopath.

Oh my god. I am never turning back. I love my naturopath!

A few appointments ago, my naturopath told me that I deserve to be healthy. My whole body tingled joyfully when she said that. After so many years of feeling like a nuisance to my doctors, I finally found a doctor who affirmed my right to be radiantly and joyfully healthy. I have felt so empowered the past few years and feel confident that even as my hormones go a little bat shit crazy, my naturopath will help me navigate the curves ahead.

Embracing Radiant Health is one of the themes I want to keep exploring on my podcast and blog. I might be in perimenopause land, but I still want to end this new decade of life healthier and stronger than I started it.

Last week, I told my therapist about a defining childhood moment that has had my brain churning ever since.

I went to Catholic schools for eleven and a half years. Mass was a regular feature. During elementary school, the entire school attended Mass together at least once a month. I can still remember being a first and second grader, watching all the big kids lining up to receive the wafer that the priest had turned into the body of Jesus and yearning to be a part of that exclusive club. It just seemed so grownup!

In the second grade, we had a special book to teach us everything we needed to learn in order to be ready to receive communion. This felt very important. In the spring, at a special Mass, the second graders would celebrate their First Communion. (In this case, “special” means very, very long.) The girls would wear fancy white dresses, and the boys were wear suits. Then there would be cake and donuts and everyone would go home and have a party with their family and get presents. All this pomp and circumstance seemed like a big deal.

Except on the big day, I would just be an onlooker.

According to the Catholic Church, I was not even eligible to take communion because I had never been baptized. (The horror! The scandal!) My dad had been raised Catholic; my mom was Jewish; and they were not religious. They sent me to public school for kindergarten and the first half of first grade. Then they switched me to my cousins’ Catholic school because long story short, I was tutoring kids older than me and the older kids were tormenting me with sexual jokes. (That’s a whole other post!)

At first, I was actually okay with not receiving First Communion. Sure I would miss out on a party and presents but I still got Hannukah and latkes.

But then.

Oh, this is the part that makes my inner child hurt.

My second grade class was at our weekly music class. We had to learn songs for the special First Communion Mass. The principal, an Irish nun, arrived unannounced. She remained standing by the door so all had to swivel around in our desks to give her our full attention. We all got quiet and turned around in our desks so we could give our full attention to the principal. In her no-nonsense voice, she asked for a handful of students to come to the front of the room.

Theo.

Mei.

Courtney. (That would be me.)

I went to stand by the principal, not knowing what to expect. Was I getting an award? A prize? I felt so special.

Sr. Stella gestured at me and the other kids standing at the front of the room. In a loud, crisp voice, she announced, “These children are not receiving First Communion.” Then she gestured magnanimously toward the twenty-five seated children. “Everyone else is.”

My stomach flipped. My heart pounded. I felt a bit dizzy. I was special, but from the principal’s tone of voice I knew it was not a good sort of special.

After that music class incident, my friends liked to tease me that they were having parties. They would receive gifts. I would not get a party. I would not get any gifts. To add insult to injury, I still had to go to the First Communion Mass and watch my cousin Julie celebrate her first communion and then go to the family party where presents would be heaped on Julie and I’d receive a big heap of nothing.

This sucked. Why should my cousin and friends get parties and fancy dresses and presents and the right to receive communion with all the big kids and not me? I was studying all the same stuff in class. I was a good student. What was wrong with me? Why was I being left out?

I no longer felt special for having a Jewish mom. I felt ashamed that the principal thought less of me. Now, as a forty-one year old woman, I can look back and say, Hey, what was that bitch nun thinking? How dare she ostracize eight year olds that way?! How dare she use shame to push her religious agenda?! And then, a more compassionate part of me thinks, Wow, how sad for the principal. If she was that cruel to children, how cruel was she to herself?

But at the time this all happened, I was eight years old. I did not have the experience to process my feelings. Instead, I shoved them away and then told my parents that I wanted First Communion. When they refused, I sulked and pouted until they relented.

I received a shotgun baptism one month before First Communion.

And then, I received First Communion with my classmates, feeling proud and victorious. But also, hollow. Even when I was eight years old, my body knew that changing who I was for the sake of fitting in did not feel right.

Whew! It feels good to write that story. After sharing that incident with my therapist, I have been wondering about what other messages I internalized during my Catholic school years. For example, my therapist mentioned the concept of “original sin.” According to what I learned at Catholic school, a baby who dies and has not been baptized goes to hell. Holy shit! When my therapist mentioned that, I felt my entire body writhe uncomfortably.

I think I need to do a Catholic school detox.

I don’t like writing that because I know a lot of good Catholics. I am related to a lot of Catholics who love their faith and religion. But we can all have different experiences with the same thing. Just because Catholicism works for some of my friends and family does not mean it was a safe experience for me. I have a right to detox from a damaging experience just as much as they have a right to continue embracing a religion that works for them.

I want to dig into this work. Examine the things I learned in Catholic school and question them. I am forty-one years old. I get to keep the ideas that work for me and abandon the rest. But I will not know what internalized subconscious ideas are holding me back until I take a closer look.

When my son Julian was born, I knew I was at risk for postpartum depression because I had PPD after the birth of my daughter Pippa. With some help from my psychiatrist, and a lot of soul searching and journaling, I came up with a plan to keep my mental health as strong as possible:

• Zoloft!
• A night nurse!
• AND NOT BREASTFEEDING!!!

Yes, you read that right: for the sake of my mental health, I decided to forego breastfeeding entirely.

I breastfed my daughter Pippa for four months. It sucked (pun intended). I did not make a lot of milk, so poor Pippa would breastfeed for an hour and still be cranky. Then after an hour’s reprieve, she was back at my boob. In the evening, she would cluster feed, which in this case, is a fancy way of saying “breastfeed nonstop for three hours.” I spent more than half the day breastfeeding, and then in the middle of the night, I would be up for over an hour at a time just to get her fed.

I pumped to build up my supply, but it did not work. My boobs are just not programmed to make a lot of milk. in another day and age, Pippa would have been fed by the village wet nurse.

The difficulties of breastfeeding made me feel trapped. How could I leave the house if I might have to spend an hour with Pippa latched to my boob? What was I supposed to do if she got hungry at Target? Just sit down in the middle of an aisle for an hour??

When I was pregnant, I encountered numerous breastfeeding experts: a doula who taught a prenatal yoga class; another doula who taught a class on breastfeeding at our hospital; the authors of breastfeeding books that I read; and friends who had breastfed their babies. The message from all these experts was universal: Breast is Best! Breast is Best! Breast is Best!

Spoiler alert: just because something rhymes does not mean it is true.

But back in 2013, during the four months that I breastfed Pippa, I truly believed that in order to be a good mom, I had to exclusively breastfeed my baby on demand. This created a toxic belief that I had to prove my love for my daughter by sacrificing everything for her.

The more I think back on my experiences with postpartum depression and breastfeeding, the more I think that all that bullshit about “breast is best” laid the foundation for my mental health crisis.

Because here’s the thing: a healthy and happy mama, and a loved and fed baby, is best.

For some, this does mean exclusive breastfeeding. But for others, it means some breastfeeding and some bottles; and for still others, it means fuck breastfeeding, this baby likes bottles and formula.

After four months of breastfeeding Pippa, I was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit for four days. I started taking Zoloft and Mirtazipane and attending therapy. Every day, I started to feel a little better — except when I had to pump. Whenever I pumped, I felt anxious. Anxious that I was only able to eek out a tablespoon of milk at a time (how could that be enough for my baby?) and anxious that I had to keep doing this thing that did not feel right for me.

I can say that now: breastfeeding did not feel right for me.

But I hated even thinking that in 2013 because I thought it meant I was a terrible mom and therefore an evil human being.

Sometimes, when I think about the pressure to breastfeed, I wonder: what ever happened to feminism? To a woman’s right to be in charge of her body? Is there some breastfeeding exclusion that I missed?

When I was discharged from the psych unit and reunited with my baby, I tried to breastfeed her. She did this half-heartedly for a minute and then refused. Even though she was hungry, she went on breastfeeding strike for several hours until I realized something important: mother does not always know best. In this case, my four month old baby knew better. She knew that breastfeeding was not working for us. She preferred the milkshakes in bottles, thank you very much. At first, I was heartbroken but then I realized bottles and formula really were better for us. My daughter was happier, and I felt more connected to her as I fed her bottles, and gazed into both her eyes, than I ever did when her face was mashed against my boobs.

Pippa is healthy and exuberant, beautiful and brilliant. I don’t care what any expert thinks. For us, bottle and formula were indeed best.

So when 2015 rolled around, and I was pregnant with my son Julian, I knew immediately that he would be a bottle baby. After my c-section, a nurse urged me to breastfeed him.

“We just need a bottle, please,” I said. “I’m not breastfeeding him.”

“But don’t you want to give him the benefits of colustrum?” the nurse pleaded.

There were a hundred reasons I could give the nurse for my decision to skip breastfeeding entirely. But what did her opinion matter? I did not need her approval to do what was best for me and my family.

So instead of telling her the story of a mom who felt destroyed by breastfeeding, I smiled and said, “We just need a bottle, please.”

If you are interested in learning more about my postpartum adventures, check out my memoir, Adventures with Postpartum Depression!

This week, I talk about guilt on the podcast.

I have been hounded by guilt for most of my life. It was at its worst when I had postpartum depression, but I often felt guilty — for no valid reason! — long before I had kids. I remember feeling intensely guilty in the second grade because I could no longer read the words on the chalkboard and assumed Jesus was punishing me.

I have started examining my guilt when it pops up. I have found that beneath the guilt, there are some beliefs about my self-worth and lovability that no longer serve me. I am working on replacing those new beliefs with ones that build my self-esteem.

It felt really good to talk about guilt on the podcast.

I have written a couple of posts recently that dive more deeply into my experiences with guilt. In May, I blogged about Staying Wildly Alive Without the Motherhood Guilt. And just last week, I tangoed with the ways that Motherhood Guilt is Bullshit.

I don’t think this is the last time I will talk about guilt on the podcast. I was nervous about opening about this subject, but I’m glad I did.

On my most recent podcast episode, I talked about neglecting the housework so that I can have time to attend to my passions, creativity and deeper soul needs. I feel very strongly about that. But as much as I sometimes want to neglect the housework, guilt can still be such a bitch. I talk and write about neglecting the housework in favor of self-care but I still suffer from all sorts of motherhood guilt. Right now, as I am writing this, and my kids are playing in another room, I feel guilty. It’s like there’s a nagging whisper in my head. You should be playing with the kids. You should be giving them more attention. WHAT THE HELL? We are in the middle of a pandemic. I have been giving them tons and tons of attention. I am teaching Julian to ride a two-wheel bike. I do art projects with Pippa. I read to them as much as they want. I even made a worm farm with them when it was raining every day. I MADE A FREAKING WORM FARM AND YET I STILL FEEL LIKE I AM NOT DOING ENOUGH??? What the freaking hell?! I wrote a long blog post about motherhood guilt back in May. And then I backed off from that area of inquiry. That’s okay. I am figuring this motherhood guilt think out my way. To some extent, my motherhood guilt seems to arise from an internalized belief that a mother must sacrifice everything for her children. If I am being anything less than a martyr, I am failing at motherhood. But I think my guilt goes deeper than that. In the second grade, the words on the chalkboard got fuzzy. I asked my friends, and they could all see the board clearly. I realized I needed glasses. But did I tell my parents? No! I felt guilty, convinced that I had done something wrong and Jesus was punishing me. (Catholic school graduate writing here…) I hid my eyesight woes from my parents for two years before finally “confessing” the problem to my mom, who immediately assured me that I had done nothing wrong. My guilt had arisen from my faulty belief that failing eyesight was a punishment from the divine. When I had postpartum depression in 2013, guilt was one of my strongest symptoms. And holy shit, I suffered from some intense guilt during those early months of motherhood. I felt guilty if I took a shower and Pippa woke up and cried. I felt guilty if I put her down to make myself some lunch. If she so much as whimpered, I was stabbed with intense guilt. But by labeling that guilt as a symptom of postpartum depression, I overlooked the possibility that the guilt I was experiencing in 2013 was just an exaggerated version of something I have been experiencing my entire life. I am not blaming myself here! Countless books and doctors and experts have declared guilt to be a symptom of postpartum depression, just as puking is a symptom of the flu. So just as the puking only happens while you have the flu, the guilt must only happen when you have PPD. Right? WRONG. Because I felt guilty as a little girl in the second grade for not being able to read the words on the chalkboard. Because I feel guilty now, as a woman of forty-one, for writing a blog post while my kids are busy playing. This next bit is difficult to write, but I am going to write it anyway: I think I feel guilty because I do not feel like I am worthy of feeling good about myself. I think my propensity toward guilt stems from a belief that I am inferior and unworthy of love. That I must prove my worth, again and again, by sacrificing myself to others because everyone else is more worthy than me. Holy shit, that was difficult to write, but it also felt damn cathartic. I am a woman, and for most of human history, women have been subservient to men. In Biblical times, women were wives, servants and whores. We were valued for making babies and taking care of the men in our lives. OF COURSE I HAVE INTERNALIZED A BELIEF THAT I AM INFERIOR AND UNWORTHY. Women in the United States have only had the vote for one hundred years! I see my guilt and I see its absurdity. I see that it arises from toxic beliefs about my sense of worth in the world. Now I need to revise those beliefs so that I truly, deeply and profoundly believe in my value as a person. I need to take a really critical look at the world around me and call bullshit when I see bullshit. Starting with motherhood. The idea that a good mom must sacrifice everything for her children? Total and utter bullshit.        

This week, I talk about why you should NEGLECT THE HOUSEWORK. I am not suggesting you let your house look like it was hit by a tornado, but I do think it is important to let yourself take time to answer your divine call and do whatever creative work fires you up, even if that means there is a little dust on the picture frames.

I talk about one of my favorite books, If You Want To Write: A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit, by Brenda Ueland, especially the chapter with the fantastic name “Why Women Who Do Too Much Housework Should Neglect It For Their Writing.” Amen!

If writing is not your jam, you might still enjoy Why You Should Write. Just substitute your creative passion as you read along. I have read this book twice now, and I think I am due for a rereading. As I flipped through the book looking for the chapter I wanted, I kept seeing passages I had highlighted that resonated deeply with me.

I still remember this commercial I saw as a kid. There was a mom stressing about the cleanliness of her floor before having her mom friends visit. She frantically cleaned the floors with the product being touted by the commercial. At the commercial’s end, she talked about how proud she was when the other moms let their baby crawl around her floor. That commercial left a deep impression on me. I often catch myself criticizing the cleanliness of my home and then feeling like I am somehow inadequate because my floors are not as immaculate as the ones in commercials and magazines.

UGH.

I want to follow Ueland’s advice and neglect the damn housework. I want to free up time to express my creative self.

Now, I’m not saying I want my house to look like it was hit by a tornado. That’s not good for my mental health either. But if I keep aiming for perfection in my housework, I’ll never have time to do the things I feel called to do.

It feels like housework is something meant to oppress women, keep us in the kitchen, too busy scrubbing floors to worry about bigger ideas.

On my deathbed, I don’t think I’ll regret that there were dirty dishes in the sink. But I will regret if I was so busy dusting, that I missed out on writing or painting or gardening.

Now, with the pandemic, my family is spending more time than ever at home. There are more messes and the dishes are reproducing and having dirty dish babies. I could spend every day cleaning and never have an immaculate home. It takes a real effort on my part to rise about the messes and sit down and write.

But it’s worth it.

I’m a woman with a fierce soul and I want to write and tell stories. I can’t keep delaying that part of myself.

For most of my life, I avoided, numbed, suppressed, mocked and ignored my negative feelings. I saw them as a sign of weakness and a source of shame.

For the past few years, I have been trying to allow myself to have negative feelings. I have done this work mostly through therapy and journaling; and for the most part, this work concentrated on just feeling my feelings instead of running for ice cream the moment I felt a twinge of a negative emotion.

I have made a lot of progress. I sometimes catch myself numbing crappy feelings with food, but those moments are coming less and less often. Last year, when my son’s school had to close temporarily from asbestos contamination, I gained twenty pounds. This year, the Covid-19 pandemic closed my kids’ schools and turned our lives upside down – and still, I have lost fifteen pounds since February. I know this is because I am not stuffing down my feelings with food.

But as much progress as I have made, I am ready to level up.

Recently, I have realized that my feelings require more than being felt. I need to pay attention to my feelings and be curious about them. Why am I feeling a particularly strong emotion? Is there a subconscious belief at the root of this feeling? How do I feel about this subconscious belief? Does it still work for me or is it time for an upgrade?

Then it’s time to take action!

What does it mean to “take action” in response to my feelings?

Well, I’m still working on that. Like I said, I’m a Feelings Novice.

But at the most basic level, I have learned that if I am feeling something good, like joy or happiness or contentment, that is my body’s way of saying, This is awesome! Do this more often! I recently took the kids to the park and felt so happy sitting under a tree, enjoying a breeze. I smiled and thought that I have to keep making an effort to get us out into nature. Everything feels better in nature. It’s where we belong.

If I am feeling something negative, that is my body’s way of saying, Holy shit! This sucks! Do something else! Change! Make some changes! I have recently felt frustrated when I do not have enough time to write because hello, 2020 cancelled summer and my kids are home a lot more than usual. When I realized my frustration came from lack of writing time, I started making an effort to take more time to write, even though that meant letting my kids entertain themselves. I have felt much better, and my kids are thriving as well. Turns out they do not need me to plan their every waking moment. Thank you, negative feelings!

I feel a little silly writing this post. After all, there are tons of experts who know way more about feelings than I do. Why should I be sharing my thoughts when they have doctorates and research studies and fancy knowledge about physiology and mind-body connections?

Because I am a novice, and there are far more Feelings Novices than Feelings Experts. For me, writing is a way to understand and transform. If I share my struggles with my emotions, I will keeping getting better at feeling my feelings, paying attention to their messages, and taking action. If I do this work enough, it will eventually become second nature.

I am still only a novice. It will take a lot more than a blog post to help me become a Feelings Master. But with time and work, I believe anyone, including myself, has the ability to become a Feelings Badass.

Today is Day 48 – 48!!! – of my menstrual cycle.

I have been back on Zoloft now for three weeks. When I first started, I thought I needed the Zoloft for pandemic anxiety. But when I started Zoloft, I was just on Day 28 or Day 29 of my cycle. Now I am seeing that there must be a hormonal component to my anxiety as well.

I do not want to discount pandemic anxiety. My god, there is so much going on these days. I am definitely affected by all this ongoing uncertainty and the complete upheaval of our daily lives; and I am grieving the 2020-21 school year that I thought we were going for have.

But still, holy shit: hormones!

I had insomnia the past four nights. I would fall asleep just fine, wake up to pee, and then be up for hours. A couple nights I did manage to get a little more sleep. A couple nights I did not.

Last night, as I lie awake, and felt surges of adrenaline rushing through my body, I remembered that when I had postpartum depression after both my pregnancies, I needed to take 150 mg of Zoloft. After I had Julian, my doctor started me on 100 mg, and that worked for about two and a half months. Then I had three nights of insomnia. My doctor bumped me up to 150 mg and I was fine. Maybe I need to go back to 150 mg of Zoloft now that I am on Day 48 of what appears to be perimenopause. Or maybe not? This is uncharted territory for me!

I emailed my psychiatrist. I have a feeling she will agree with my assessment, but if she suggests something else, I am willing to try.

I also scheduled an appointment with my primary physician. She is a naturopath and is great with recommending dietary changes and supplements.

I have also completely quit caffeine. I did quit caffeine at the beginning of July when I first felt all these surges of anxiety, but I was still having decaf coffee. When this new wave of insomnia started, I looked up the caffeine content in my Venti Iced Decaf Americano from Starbucks – 25 mg! That is not nothing! Now I am just drinking water, tea and caffeine-free soda. I’d like to wean myself off soda completely, but baby steps, folks. I am not a saint.

I do not know if Zoloft is good for perimenopause. If it is: hooray! If it is not, I am sure there is something that will help me soothe all this agitation and insomnia.

Here in Pasadena, the public schools are starting the year with distance learning. The way things are in Los Angeles County, Nathan and I both feel it is unlikely that our daughter Pippa will ever get to attend school in person for the 2020-2021 school year. (Her brother Julian is still in preschool which gets to stay open with its daycare license. Fingers crossed there!)

We did distance learning in the spring and it was a shit show. Our school district says it is switching systems and distance learning in the fall will be very different, so I am trying to keep an open mind… but I also bought an ass shit ton of second grade workbooks on Amazon in case distance learning does not work for Pippa again.

I can teach Pippa just about anything she needs to learn in second grade, but we see a lot of benefits in traditional school: socialization, time away from home, and exposure to different teaching styles. Distance learning loses all of these benefits and creates all sorts of misery.

And the pandemic is creating enough misery without the help of distance learning!

As I try to navigate the 2020-21 school year, I am going to remember my values:

• Being healthy – that includes mental health!
• Paying attention and being curious
• Honoring my intuition
• Doing my best – whatever that means at any given time
• Believing in abundance, not scarcity
• Surrendering to reality. This does not mean being passive. It means accepting what I can’t change and then making the best of the distance learning situation.
• Paying attention to my feelings! My feelings are a call to action. I am learning this. Last spring, my feelings told me: this is bullshit. Yet I kept forcing my kids to do it. If my feelings tell me that distance learning does not work for Pippa, I will make necessary changes.
• Stop judging others – because when judge how other parents are handling distance learning, that means I’m judging myself even more harshly.
• Authenticity
• Being conscious and intentional (hence this podcast episode!)
• Flexibility
• Courage

I also want to pay attention to my mothering and parenting values. Maybe I need a Personal Motherhood Bill of Rights! Some things I know that I value about mothering include:

• Not comparing my kids to other kids
• Not comparing my parenting to other parents’ parenting
• Getting outside and into nature
• Joy
• Curiosity
• Letting my kids follow their passions

Bottom line: both my kids love school and love learning. I will not let distance learning ruin that for them!

I recorded this episode on July 16, 2020, which was Day 41 of my menstrual cycle. As I write this, it is July 17, Day 42. What the what!?!

Two important observations:

(1) My period is SUPER late, and

(2) I am not pregnant. (I had an appointment with my gynecologist earlier this week, on Day 39, and asked my doctor to check.)

So now I am left to wonder: is this perimenopause? or pandemic stress?

My mom missed her period for NINE months when she was forty-one years old. I am forty-one years old. Does that mean I am just going to be in menstrual limbo for another seven or eight months?

And: I did not talk about this on the show, but what is my period going to be like when it arrives? Super mega heavy? I need to stop thinking about this.

I have been tracking my period for years, and I looked back at my menstrual cycles for 2019 and the first half of 2020. They bounced around with lots of irregularity, which has always been my uterus’ favorite mode. In case you are geek about numbers like me, the cycles were: 30 days, 23, 31, 31, 26, 27, 27, 28, 26, 28, 28, 28 (OMG! almost regular!), 26, 25, 31, 28, 30, 24, and 29.

My uterus is a creature of mystery and intrigue.

My gynecologist told me he could “jumpstart” my period if I hit Day 50. I told him that I’m feeling great (thank you, Zoloft), so he said to touch base after five months.

I have no idea what is involved with jumpstarting one’s period, but I am imagining something like this:

Before I let the Automobile Club have its way with my uterus (or ovaries? I seriously have no idea what this entails), I am getting educated. I have started reading Dr. Christiane Northrup’s book The Wisdom of Menopause: Creating Physical and Emotional Health During the Change. I have only read about 50 pages, but so far, I am loving it. I love Dr. Northrup’s approach to woman’s health. She is very much about the mind-body-heart connection and using health issues to dive into deeper soul work. She writes:

It may not feel like a rescue at the time, but the clarity of vision and increasing intolerance for injustice, inequity and lack of fulfillment that accompany the perimenopausal changes are a gift. Our hormones are giving us an opportunity to see, once and for all, what we need to change in order to live honestly, fully, joyfully and healthfully in the second half of our lives.

The Wisdom of Menopause, pg. 19.

This is exactly how I want to approach perimenopause! I don’t want to look at it as a burden or cross to bear. I want to see it as an opportunity to do whatever work my soul needs me to do.

Dr. Northrup also writes:

Regardless of where you currently stand in your menstrual or perimenopausal transition, chances are you’ve inherited a few beliefs about your cycle that boil down to a variation of the following: “The issues that arise premenstrually have nothing to do with my actual life. They are strictly hormonal. My hormones exist in a universe that is completely separate from the rest of my life.”

The Wisdom of Menopause, pg. 37.

I feel like I need to insert a victory dance here. (I think I need to enlist my husband and get some photos of me doing a victory dance so when appropriate, I can pop them into show notes and blog posts.)

But seriously, as women, we have been brainwashed into thinking we are crazy because of our hormones. But maybe we just seem crazy because we try to accommodate everyone until we cannot take it anymore, and we explode. Maybe our hormones are just magnifying the issues we try to ignore.

I don’t want to keep ignoring my issues! Dr. Northrup writes:

PMS and the escalation of symptoms that is so common during perimenopause are really our inner guidance system trying to get us to pay attention to the adjustments we need to make in our lives, adjustments that become particularly urgent during perimenopause.

The Wisdom of Menopause, pg. 37

I want to tune into my inner guidance system! I want to make the adjustments that my soul requires so that I can be my authentic self.

I want to treat perimenopause as another adventure.