This is part two in a series on the biological and psychological portals of menopause.

We move to the heart, mind, and soul . . .

Developmental

It feels like a whole new developmental season for me. The first twenty years of adulthood felt like expansion while this season feels like contraction. It feels like coming home to myself, uncompromisingly. It feels like intrapersonal minimalism—shedding all of who I am not in the more ruthless pursuit of who I unapologetically am.

Upon turning forty, I experienced a sudden and unexpected awakening, as though I had crossed a developmental threshold. Three revelations reverberated deafeningly through every fiber of my being:

I have done enough.

I have carried enough, for long enough. Given enough. Healed enough. Grown enough. Learned enough. Evolved enough. I am enough. I have saved the world enough. Served my time. Made my contribution. Paid my debt. Completed my service. Fulfilled my obligation.

Gone is the desperate and passionate drive to go as far and as fast as I can (running my leg of the intergenerational relay race) for the betterment of all who are touched by my existence in the present and branch off of my legacy in the future. In its place is a proud and confident readiness and permission to rest.

What have you done enough of?

I am ready for peace.

I am no longer willing or able to hold, bear, transmute, carry, withstand, metabolize everyone else’s stuff for them. I have lived my life as a tree, inhaling the carbon dioxide of suffering and exhaling the oxygen of peace. But love is no longer enough to sustain that way of being within me. I have reached lifetime capacity for carrying the unfinished work of the rest of the world, my most treasured and beloved connections included (co-regulation burnout).

While I have never resonated with the pathologizing language of codependency, the sense of purpose that accompanied being needed is a well that has run dry. My gifts and potential perfectly aligned with so much pain and need around me. It now feels like that potential has been fulfilled and my reward is the gift of resting easy in the peace of a mission of love well lived—a reward that I must insist on claiming or I will disintegrate. Peace now feels like a survival need, and I am willing to run away and live out my remaining days as a crone in the woods with only non-human kin for company if I must.

What kind of peace are you ready for?

My time is finite.

I feel my mortality acutely, the finite time I get to live what remains of my “one wild and precious life.” And I am willing to let go of everything I spent my life building to live into my unfinished business. The parts of me that have been patiently waiting to step into the light are willing to wait no more.

After twenty years of centering mothering in all its forms, I am now centering myself.

I retired from actively homeschooling. While I still hold dear our lifestyle of connection and adventure as one of my most precious sources of wealth and still joyfully identify as a homeschooling mother whose children happen to be choosing to utilize formal education in this season of life (my oldest is in graduate school, my middle is in undergrad, and my youngest is in a sweet Montessori junior high in the woods—a neurodiversity affirming and values aligned learning community with a dozen teens and a handful of adult guides), it felt seismic to reach a place of willingness to share this piece more substantially with my community.

I completed my long-paused dream of becoming a licensed clinical psychotherapist. Twenty years ago I earned an associates degree in psychology with a minor in child development, a bachelors degree in psychology with a minor in sociology, and then a masters degree in marriage and family therapy, all while bringing my beautiful babies into the world. I completed the year-long part-time practicum and when the only available next step was full-time agency work, I pivoted to offering coaching, which harmoniously aligned with the attuned style of mothering my little ones needed to receive and I wanted to provide. I created a community, published books, produced a podcast, developed curricula, taught courses, supported clients, etc.— experiencing the growth and rewards of meaningful contribution, but outside the system. Through the pandemic, the therapy industry shifted into the model I had pioneered so many years earlier, allowing virtual sessions, wherein therapists could now work from home, on their own schedules. And so it seemed all the stars were finally aligned. I filed my associate application, hired out for the required supervision sessions, completed the continuing education units, expanded my business to legally accommodate a therapy license, passed a behemoth licensing exam, and documented the 3000 hours of clinical therapy experience for full licensure seamlessly alongside my long-standing coaching practice. Two years after stepping back onto this path, I can claim the fullness of the title of therapist (you can read more about that journey here). The expansion feels satisfying. And continues, as I complete the requirements to step into the role of clinical supervisor, mentoring new therapists in how to support their clients well. This role feels deeply aligned with my refreshed professional calling as a beautiful fulfillment of this season of life’s eldership.

I took my first intercontinental trip. Adventure, in all forms, is a core lived value. I have always been endlessly exploring, traveling, and experiencing, but leaving the continent as a family of five had not been within financial reach without sacrificing other core values. Not only am I now feeling acutely the ticking clock of the gift of my time on this earth but the even more limited time in a body that is capable of fully engaging in the raw wildness of every invitation while traveling. This now felt imperative to my lifelong wanderlusty heart and recently weakening body. And so, I leapt. The experience of our trip to the Mediterranean was illuminating in so many ways that I appreciate as I integrate that experience into my hopes for my future.

What unfinished business is calling to you?

I regret nothing about the way I have lived the first half (if I’m lucky) of my life. If anything, it’s because of the way I have lived so ruthlessly in full alignment with my values that I feel I now get to enjoy the peace of a life well lived—my memory savings account brimming with love and joy. Because I have given love so thoroughly, I now get to more thoroughly love myself. It’s in the same way a toddler does not regret their first year of life in dependency. Quite the opposite, in fact. They needed that dependency to develop the trust required to launch into the next developmental imperative of independence. I have simply progressed into a new season of development and am shifting into alignment with the needs of this new version of myself—to work with the wisdom of my nature and honor my needs well. My mission now is simply to savor.

Spiritual

I have never felt more authentically connected to myself and everything else. It feels like completely seeing through all the noisy bullshit on the way to clarity of the soul, the purpose, the meaning, the LOVE that is the atom of my spirituality science, like the external crap is now transparent.

Entering the menopause transition is like walking through a fire that burns away all that needs to be released and leaves only what is true.

I have developed roots.

I feel rooted to my place on this earth for the first time in my entire life. I used to tell my children that home is wherever we are together. That felt true in our last season of family life. It feels different on this side of the portal. My children are taking flight into their own lives and that individuation feels natural and beautiful and right. Home, for me now, is right here, where the evergreens dance in the wind and the orcas splash in the Sound. My rightful place is breathing in mutuality with my bald eagle and cherry blossom neighbors. Perhaps it is a step closer to the ultimate calling home to a final resting place. But my newfound rootedness feels natural and beautiful and right too.

Where are you feeling rooted?

Social

I know who, what, when, where and why I am. For this more pure essence of me, connection with other beings feels different, as though its purpose has evolved.

Friendship and community are good, instead of good enough.

It’s more spiritual, less practical. I’ve moved beyond the vulnerable child-rearing season of dependence and the roles within community that support it. I no longer crave acceptance and belonging as a survival mechanism for meeting needs, but enjoy the companionship of easy, weird, wise soul-connection. Goodness of fit and value add are less diversified across obligations and identities and I am free to simply center what feels nourishing and let go of my attachment to anything that does not.

Narrower, but deeper.

What fresh kind of friendship and community does this version of you enjoy?

My career evolves.

All of the biological symptoms of perimenopause collide with cultural prejudice to result in an involuntary career evolution for many women in this season of life. While the value of men in our patriarchal society increases with age, the value of women decreases, and that is reflected in the salaries, performance reviews, and job opportunities for women in the workplace.

While self-employment certainly offers me protection from discrimination at the hands of an employer, it does not immunize me from the forces of capitalism and the pedophilic preference for women to function as athlete professors while looking like prepubescent girls.

Setting the forces that are beyond our direct control aside, it is common for women in this transition to go through a career metamorphosis. Our needs, interests, and assets have evolved profoundly from that 18 year old version of us who chose a college major or that 30 year old version of us who settled onto a track. It might look like changing careers altogether, going back to school, pursuing that promotion, or pivoting within your field.

This is your invitation to welcome a redefinition of professional success, centering yourself this time.

I chose to become a marriage and family therapist and clinical supervisor.

Who do you want to be when you grow up?

The psychological portal of menopause is developmental, spiritual, and social. I’m welcoming the heat as it burns away all that no longer serves me and frees a more true essence of who I have always been.