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Last night I went to dinner with friends. We caught up first, as women do — families, work, bodies, the small triumphs and ordinary heartbreaks of being alive. Then, as often happens when a group of women’s health clinicians gather around a table, the conversation turned professional.

Every woman there sees menopausal women in her practice. And every one of us had noticed the same troubling pattern.

Patients are coming in already convinced.

Not curious. Not asking. Not wondering whether hormone therapy might be one useful tool among many.

Convinced.

The message they are absorbing — often from social media, often from confident women in white coats with “MD” after their names — is that menopause means they need hormones. And that’s a marketing ploy, not science.

Not that they might benefit from hormone therapy for particular symptoms.

Not that they deserve a thoughtful conversation about risks, benefits, timing, dose, route, family history, personal history, and goals.

Just: menopause equals hormones.

Before I go further, let me be clear. I want every woman to have access to good menopause care. I want her pain believed, her sleep protected, her bones considered, her sexuality honored, her mind taken seriously, and her options explained without fear.

I am not arguing against hormone therapy. I am arguing in favor of robust conversations that are focused on individualized risks/benefits and a full range of options.

Many of these online messages function like sales pitches — even when they are presented as genuine concern for health and future wellness.

I’m trained to understand unique health profiles and their implications – all of us are – both the generalists and the specialists. Throughout my career, it’s been important to me to clearly interpret and translate medical jargon for the women coming to me for care. It’s been my job to help make sense of lab results, scans, lifestyle needs, and recommended changes. In a holistic model, care is tailored to the individual woman. That means looking at her risks and benefits, both in general and specifically to her.

It’s more complex than just: menopause equals hormones. Which is why this influencer trend is another dismissive trend in women’s health. Yes, we have more research than ever before. But that research is not saying: “Every woman needs the benefit of hormone replacement.” That is not the message of the evidence. It is the message of a marketplace that benefits when every transition becomes a treatment category.

Still, if the clinician hesitates, cautions, attempts to individualize, or says, “Let’s look carefully at whether this is right for you,” some women now hear that as outdated, dismissive, or even negligent.

I understand how we got here.

Women were dismissed for too long. Menopause was treated as either a punchline or a private misery. Too many women were told to suffer quietly, prescribed antidepressants without a deeper conversation, or frightened away from hormone therapy by oversimplified interpretations of older research.

Even the language matters. “Hormone replacement therapy” can imply that menopause is a deficiency state, a failure of the body to maintain itself properly. Many clinicians now use the term menopausal hormone therapy, or MHT, which is more precise: hormones may be used therapeutically for particular symptoms and risks. That is different from saying every woman’s body needs replacement hormone therapy.

And the answer to one kind of medical harm is not another kind of universal medical certainty.

The answer to “No one needs hormones” is not “Everyone needs hormones.”

Menopause is not a marketing niche. (Though it’s rapidly becoming one!) It is not a moral test. It is not a hormone deficiency disease with a single required treatment.

It is a major life transition in a living, complicated, storied female body.

And that body deserves better.

That has been the motivating force behind my offerings in this Substack. There are still many questions unanswered about the menopause transition. In the professional literature, from the organizations that support clinicians who see midlife women (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and North American Menopause Society)[ACOG, NAMS] the recommendation is to individualize care.

Women’s bodies and symptoms are not identical -- never have been. We may have the same parts, but we operate uniquely.

My women’s health career encompassed everything I speak about here. I’ve lived and worked through all the iterations of menopause treatment approaches I’ve been sharing here. I’m retired from clinical practice, but as a woman, I am still fascinated by the progress (and lack of same) in how we think about women’s bodies.

Many of us remember the whiplash after the Women’s Health Initiative that suddenly left women and their providers fearful and confused. After 20 years of research and review, current guidance is more nuanced: for healthy women under 60 or within 10 years of menopause onset, with bothersome vasomotor symptoms and no contraindications, the benefit-risk ratio is often favorable.

The pendulum had reason to move. But a pendulum is not a compass. Let’s reorient ourselves using the best discernment our brains, hearts and guts bring to this discussion.

The answer is better listening, better assessment, better science, and better shared decision-making. Individualized care.

ACOG has specifically warned that menopause misinformation is widespread online and that women should think critically before following advice or spending money on products or hormone-related claims. A 2025 Obstetrics & Gynecology article also notes that menopause content on social media has grown rapidly, and while some is evidence-based, much of what becomes popular is not.

A medical degree may tell us someone completed medical training. It does not tell us whether a 45-second video is balanced, individualized, free of financial incentive, or appropriate for the woman watching it at 3 AM with panic in her chest.

MHT is not frivolous. It is not cosmetic. It is not merely about “staying young.” For some women, it can restore sleep, reduce hot flashes, treat vaginal and urinary symptoms, and protect bones.

But it is also not a universal anti-aging protocol, not a guaranteed dementia-prevention plan, not a moral achievement, and not required for every woman to “do menopause correctly.” FactCheck.org noted in late 2025 that while many clinicians supported FDA moves to revise hormone therapy warnings, claims that menopause hormone therapy should be used for long-term heart and brain protection were exaggerated; it is not currently recommended for those uses.

That distinction is important: symptom treatment and risk reduction are not the same as blanket disease prevention.

Menopause asks us to become more discerning, not more obedient. The transformation we’ve been talking about on this Substack is not just physiologic, but emotional, spiritual and, unfortunately, political. For too long, patriarchy has curated our culture, the landscape of our lives, our futures, our opportunities.

This is where menopause leaves the exam room and enters the marketplace.

Women are being manipulated as a marketing niche. We are roughly half the human population, and we are often the healthcare decision-makers for our families. Yet our bodies, symptoms, pain, labor, and authority are still too often treated as secondary. That makes us a force to be reckoned with — and a market to be targeted. Market research knows this. Algorithms know this. Pharmaceutical companies know this. Wellness brands know this.

When HHS/FDA announced in November 2025 that it was initiating the removal of broad black box warnings from menopausal hormone therapy products, and the FDA approved labeling changes for six products in February 2026, many of us who had practiced in women’s health anticipated that this would increase marketing of MHT to women.

Removing boxed-warning statements related to cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, and probable dementia did not suddenly make all practitioners more educated about menopause. It did not make MHT appropriate for all patients. It did not create a broad, holistic model of care.

What it did do was remove the strongest warning language from the label — and that changed the marketing landscape.

A quieter warning label does not mean the marketplace has earned your trust.

We want control of our bodies, respect for and autonomy over our decisions. That means having good information to make educated decisions.

We can start by asking better questions:

Instead of :“Do I need hormones?”

Try asking…“What symptoms or risks am I hoping to treat?”

Instead of :“Is HRT safe?

Try asking…“What are the risks and benefits for someone with my history?”

Instead of: “Which influencer is right?”

Try asking… “What does current evidence say, and where is it still uncertain?”

Instead of: “Am I failing if I don’t take it?”

Try asking…“What would support my body, my values, and my quality of life? What other options are there to manage my symptoms if I don’t take hormones?”

Menopause is a major life transition, with many layers, in a living, complicated, storied female body.

And that body deserves better than a slogan.

Informed consent is not created by panic. It is not created by shame. It is not created by an influencer telling millions of women that if they are not taking hormones, they are aging wrong.

And menopause, perhaps more than any other passage, asks us to listen deeply — not only to the loudest voice online, but to the body, the evidence, the risks, the longing, the history, and the woman herself.

Half of humanity is still treated as an afterthought — until there is money to be made.

That is not good enough.

I want your sovereignty protected.

I want good medicine.

And good medicine is a conversation.

Sources / Further Reading

• The North American Menopause Society. “The 2022 Hormone Therapy Position Statement of The North American Menopause Society.” Menopause, 2022.

• American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “Hormone Therapy for Menopause.”

• American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “Menopause Misinformation Is Everywhere. Here’s How to Detect It.”

• American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “ACOG President Says Label Change on Estrogen Will Increase Access to Hormone Therapy.” Nov. 10, 2025.

• FactCheck.org. “Makary, RFK Jr. Exaggerate Chronic Disease Benefits of Menopausal Hormone Therapy.” Dec. 24, 2025.

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What if you stopped trying to push through the construction zone and instead got curious about what’s being built? Or might you be driving by the construction zone, in such a hurry that you’re not really seeing it? Not feeling the wonder of possibility. And what if all of this is your own becoming?

Perhaps the menopause transition is an invitation to engage in “What If?”

What if what’s happening to your body isn’t a breakdown, but a breakthrough?

What if you’re being remade in the perfect new form for the next phase of your life?

What if you can’t seem to multitask anymore because you’re not supposed to multitask?

What if you’re supposed to narrow your focus?

What if multitasking is a betrayal of the kind of excellence you’re seeking?

What if?

As Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes: “The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, build signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the Lantern of soul in shadowy times like these, to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; Both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity… And we were made for times like these.”

I would suggest that in times of transformation and rebirth, we need to show ourselves mercy as well.

Because what if this is the time to guard and protect your inner light?

What if this is your time to find and appreciate it?

To invest in yourself, find your courage, and give birth to your most authentic self?

What if this is the time?

What if you’re being prepared?

Not a breakdown, a breakthrough.

I use this intuitive divination exercise to help me connect and breakthrough for inspiration. In my mind, I speak to the muse, to the spirit of my grandmother who was a writer, or to the spirit of my dad who was an artist, and a cartographer. I ask them to guide me to just the right page, in just the right book. To send me there to share a prompt that inspires my writing, or to offer some other wisdom they want to share with me.

That’s where the Clarissa Pinkola Estés quote came from today. From my grandmother.

What if that’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to be doing? Not trying to figure it all out alone, but reaching to spirit for an assist when the lift becomes too heavy?

What if the threshold of menopause opens us to new adventures, like working with Spirit to expand our meditation?

Or invites us into deeper connection with Nature?

To listen to the bees, discern wisdom from the stars? Seek communion with the river?

Interestingly, many post-menopausal women describe heightened intuition, vivid dreams, synchronicities, and a stronger sense of inner knowing. Whether these experiences reflect changes in attention, brain function, spiritual development, or something science has yet to fully understand, they invite our curiosity rather than our dismissal.

As a former clinician, I find myself in an interesting place with these questions.

I’ve spent a lifetime valuing evidence.

I’ve also spent a lifetime listening to women.

And one of the recurring themes in women’s health is that women often learn to distrust their own experience if it doesn’t fit the dominant narrative.

What I have decided is that it is necessary in my process to have BOTH critical thinking and Wonder.

What if curiosity itself is part of this threshold?

AND --

What if you don’t have to decide what any of it means? You only need to be willing to be curious.

Because that’s what I believe our soul wants of us. That we pay attention.

Not conclusions.

Not dogma.

Not certainty.

A wider field of inquiry.

How do we know what we know?

That’s not a question unique to menopause, but since humans spend so much of our lives outsourcing our external authority, what menopause seems to highlight for us is a drive to engage with our own internal authority – our own internal knowing.

When menopause arrives, suddenly some women report:

• stronger intuition

• vivid dreams

• creative surges

• spiritual hunger

• synchronistic experiences

• a desire for solitude and reflection

Whether those experiences arise from neurological reorganization, developmental psychology, contemplative practice, spiritual awakening, non-local consciousness, or some combination thereof is a fascinating question.

We seem to receive a kind of clear signal, regardless, a discerning wisdom about what no longer works in our lives, and perhaps what we desire more of. This is your inner wisdom getting your attention.

Your faithful body/mind may seem awkward and unfamiliar at times. Menopause is a process, and there will be peaks and valleys. It’s not unlike other birth experiences –whether you are birthing a human or birthing a book—it’s a creative experience, and some moments are just harder than others.

It takes courage to face the unknown and the darkness of any path when you don’t know where it ends, and you don’t have a map or GPS to guide you. Learning to trust my inner knowing has been a big part of my path. As a nurse, then as a midwife, I learned to hold evidence and intuition together. I didn’t often feel safe to openly share my stronger intuitions with others. So, in clinical practice, I learned to use it as an early warning system that prompted me to look for evidence to support my intuitive knowing.

Later, it was so integrated into my way of knowing and healing work that I found I could no longer practice in a system that didn’t make room for spirituality and individuality – essential to my holistic healing practice.

Recently, I asked my Dad in spirit to help me map the journey I’m taking with this novel of mine. And what he showed me was the thing about maps --a map is an invitation to adventure, as much as a guide to getting somewhere. So, did I want to just get somewhere, or was I looking for the adventure?

What a wonderful question! Of course, I can say I want both, but when I engage internally with the idea of the adventure, I see I’m open to so much more than when I say, “I want to get from Point A to Point B.”

We are living in interesting times; when looking outward for a solution, sometimes all we can see is the world in flames, casting shadows everywhere. Menopause can feel like that too. In shadowy times, it can be hard to see what’s up ahead.

But inside each of us, as Dr. Pinkola-Estes says, we carry a spark for our Lantern. We may need to accept that sometimes it’s small, barely enough for us to see.

Other times, it will flame brightly and not just guide, but attract others, with their lanterns.

I ‘ve always thought rites of passage, times that have the power to change how we see and experience ourselves, are best experienced with a community of others. The community can even offer us a kind of reservoir of courage, to carry us through our hardest times when the flame is perhaps threatening to go dark.

And by the way, those are the times when you reach out to your women, gather around a fire circle or a flashlight – whatever you’ve got – and you feed each other.

In the middle of a construction zone, it can be hard to envision much beyond the demolition of what was there before. It can seem like the last thing left is burning.

But what if we could give thanks for the fire that is cleansing and clearing the ground for new growth? For the rebirth that follows the devastation? For the new strength forged in this fire?

What if you’re being prepared?

(I asked my AI to show me the house and gardens I would build from the ashes!

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Many years ago, I sat alone in my office, a small, quaint farmhouse with creaky floors and a habit of talking back, wrestling with a thorny problem in my new private practice. I realized I’d once made many big decisions intuitively, but I hadn’t trusted that inner compass very much for a long time. It occurred to me that intuition might be what brought me here—and might also show me a solution I hadn’t considered yet. (And at the time, I was in perimenopause, and so many things in my life were changing.)

I got quiet and returned to daily meditation, something I hadn’t practiced in years.

The first change I noticed was a peaceful sense of connection with myself and my inner knowing.

I stopped looking outward for a fix and realized I already knew the answer; I just needed to trust it.

And that has become a way of knowing for me ever since. When I’m overthinking, I’m not trusting, so I return to stillness.

That’s how I come to the page for you today. To share with you what I know and believe.

In my work, I start with the woman sitting in the space with me. I listen to what she says and how she says it. It’s a relationship, not a transaction. I’m comfortable saying, “I don’t know yet, but we’ll figure it out together,” if that’s what needs to be said.

I trust that she understands and values that honesty.

Shared trust is part of the medicine.

When a woman is struggling with brain fog, anxiety, depression, and mood instability at menopause, the first thing I want to do is acknowledge her and her fears—that she’s slipping into some major mental health crisis, has a brain tumor, or Alzheimer’s disease.

There’s so much in our culture to stoke those fears, and I don’t want to minimize any symptoms.

I can reassure her that in perimenopause and menopause, these are common experiences that deserve attention and evaluation, but the most obvious cause is often the brain changes that occur at this time of life.

Though we don’t yet know everything there is to know about women’s brains, especially what these changes ultimately indicate, we do know more than we used to. I’ve discussed neuroplasticity and brain changes at length in previous posts, so if you haven’t read them, please do.

My philosophy of first, do no harm leads me to tread carefully with a brain that appears to be under reconstruction at this stage of life.

If the menopausal brain is reorganizing, I want to be thoughtful about anything we introduce into that process—whether that’s hormones, antidepressants, supplements, or even the stories we tell ourselves about what is happening.

And yes, I know that sets me at odds with mainstream medicine.

But through my years of clinical practice, I can’t tell you how many colleagues—other practitioners—would admit they don’t know much about menopause, so they are simply treating the “presenting symptoms” and hoping it helps.

Again, there’s virtually no education in medical school on menopause beyond a brief look at reproductive anatomy and a mention of menopause as a “retrospective diagnosis.”

Medical training teaches providers to investigate pathology and treat symptoms.

But menopause is not a pathology.

Menopause is a rite of passage.

It’s universal to people with a womb, and even though some of the outward symptoms and changes can be challenging at times, it is still a transitional period in a woman’s life. Understanding the normalcy of these changes—and referring to an experienced menopause clinician when needed—is often the wisest course.

Midwifery is a relational model.

Medicine is more of a transactional model.

I can speak from my own experience: many women seek to build trust with their provider. Because they’ve had a hard time trusting the healthcare system, they may find it especially difficult to trust the person sitting across from them.

They aren’t “being controlling” when they ask too many questions.

They’re trying to figure out whether they can trust this rushed encounter with the provider.

Midwifery, when practiced in the midwife model of care, builds trust between provider and patient through respectful listening, conversation, and time for both.

I don’t want to spend this column debating medications or the differences between midwives and doctors, especially since I know I’m considered a little “out there” even among some of my colleagues in midwifery.

I have my own ideas about what safe and respectful care is, and to me, it includes emotional and spiritual health, nutrition, and cultural preferences.

These variables are challenging in an environment where time = money.

(And yes, I do believe we should have universal healthcare in the U.S.—and the option to choose the provider or care philosophy that aligns with us.)

When I’m in my wondering moments—the questions that send me down rabbit holes to see if anyone is doing the research—I find myself asking:

• What role do hormones play in cognition and emotional processing?

• Why are mood disorders considered an acceptable side effect of contraceptives?

• Why do some women feel emotionally blunted on certain hormonal therapies, while others feel stabilized?

• Why do some women report heightened clarity at menopause?

• What might we still not understand about the endocrine system and the brain?

• And my long-standing question about neurotransmitters and intuition: can intuition become enhanced at menopause because hormones stabilize? Or are we simply waking up a part of the brain that has been dormant?

Those are just some of my questions around hormones and the brain—my wonderings, my curiosity.

I’m not declaring that I know anything more than my own lived experience, personally and clinically.

Because I’m still wondering.

And honestly? “What if?” is half the fun of wondering.

My patients also know that I work with Spirit.

I tell them about my years of shamanic practice and the growth of my intuitive connection. They know that I trust the insights I receive through meditation and journeying into non-ordinary reality, and that if we choose to work together, those insights will become part of the care.

To me, this spiritual connection supports healing.

It is part of my calling to be a bridge—helping us remember ways of healing our ancestors knew and that we may have forgotten.

The takeaway for me is, and always has been, to individualize care—because the experience will be unique to every woman.

What I deeply know is that menopause is an initiation into the last third of your life, or more.

It’s not about deficiency.

It may actually be about expansion.

And rather than merely the ending of fertility, menopause may also mark the beginning of another form of intelligence in the body.

P.S. I’m pretty deeply into working on my novel right now, so there may not be regular weekly blogs about menopause for a bit. But I’m always happy to entertain questions if you have them, and I’ll respond as I’m able.

Please feel free to leave questions in the comments. And return here for posted excerpts from my novel The Grace of Second Chances.

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“Do you have a plan?” says the blank page.

I did. I just have no desire to execute that plan. I needed a new plan or I needed to forget planning and just write…

Tuesday and yesterday were supposed to be my days to write my Substack. But there was no writing energy in me. The energy that held me was the energy of overwhelm — go-back-to-bed-with-a-book energy — isolate energy.

And then I noticed the moon was in Pisces.

Ever feel that way?

The moon was actually in Pisces for two and a half days, just shining those Piscean moonbeams on me as she moved through the sign. Pisces moon is dreamy and floaty and adds that quality of treading water to the day. Sometimes that can be good for my writing. It can be imaginative, but combined with a moon moving into the balsamic phase — rest, restore — this week, the words just weren’t coming.

Well, they were there, but wanting to be dreamy, rather than logical.

Okay, you say. But you’re supposed to be teaching me about menopause. What does the moon have to do with menopause?

I’m so glad you asked!

Menopause does not end our relationship with cycles. It changes which cycles we belong to.

And the moon is all about cycles.

We know a monthly cycle of the moon is about 29.5 days. Same as the average 28–30 day menstrual cycle. Same as a pack of oral contraceptives — 28 days.

Hmmm.

Coincidence? I think not.

There is a cycle to this madness.

And just because menopause signals the end of the monthly menstrual cycle, we do not stop cycling. We are part of nature, and nature is expressly a larger cycle, impacted by the Sun and the Moon — we know this. The moon controls the tides. The sun moves us through the seasons. Some of us even get Seasonal Affective Disorder when the seasons change and the light changes to longer nights, shorter hours of daylight.

So… though we may no longer bleed with a monthly cycle, we are not finished with rhythm and cycles.

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The Moon Still Calls Our Attention

Let’s set aside everything we learned in science class about the moon and just admire her.

When the moon is full, up there in the night sky, shining brightly, she draws our attention.

“Oh look at the moon!” we say.

Or maybe we look for the face of the man in the moon, teaching a child or a grandchild to see it too.

Even the crescent moon gets our attention, sometimes like she’s smiling at us, other times just a tiny glowing sliver of silvery light.

Beautiful.

The moon makes these cosmic appearances — over and over again through the month, through the year, through centuries. She is there, moving across the sky, every night. And how we see her, when the skies are clear, changes every 2.5 days as she cycles through her own monthly phases.

Ancient cultures depended on the patterns of the moon’s cycle to inform their daily lives. Without going into a mythology-of-the-moon lecture here, I want to share certain themes that correlate with the moon’s cycles and our lives here on the big blue marble.

In astrology, the moon is the zodiacal planet that represents our body and emotions. She is the Yin to the Sun’s Yang. Earlier generations of humanity that lived more closely in sync with nature would have cycled with the moon and other natural cycles; it was common to ovulate around the full moon and bleed with the dark of the moon, the new moon.

As we move through our moonth — month — her cycle offers us her wisdom about flow. She is a tidal messenger, after all.

What comes in must also go out, again and again.

The moon herself is constant, and yet she is ever-changing, just as we are. The moon reminds us of the cyclical nature of life. When she’s dark, as she will be in a couple of days on the new moon, she hasn’t actually gone dark; she has simply moved to the place in her cycle where we can’t see her reflecting the sun’s light for about two and a half days.

This happens every month.

It’s her usual monthly cycle, within the cycle of the seasons, within the wheel of the year.

The Moon Still Offers Us a Map

Working with the moon and its phases connects us to natural flow. Each phase of the moon has its own energy. We experience these energies and phases of the moon, regardless of whether we have a menstrual cycle, or are even paying attention.

The first day of the new moon is the beginning of the lunar cycle. Here’s a list of the moon’s phases and a keyword for what each one favors energetically:

New Moon — Begin
Waxing Crescent — Imagine
First Quarter — Commit
Waxing Gibbous — Refine
Full Moon — Illuminate
Waning Gibbous — Share
Third Quarter — Release
Balsamic Moon — Restore

Begin. Imagine. Commit. Refine. Illuminate. Share. Release. Restore.

This has such a lovely rhythm. It reads almost like a breath cycle.

Or a life cycle.

The moon offers us a map: begin, imagine, commit, refine, illuminate, share, release, restore.

Repeatedly, she reminds us that nothing living is meant to remain in one phase forever.

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The Body Once Kept Time

Like the phases of the moon and the passage of this luminary through the Zodiac, the seasons of the earth with its great cosmic cycles and epochs of time are a direct reflection of the Universe itself.

For those of us who menstruated, the body once kept time for us. Whether we understood it or not, we lived inside a rhythm of release, renewal, expression, and completion.

Our wombs — and the creative centers of our bodies and spirits — connect us back to the larger intelligence of nature.

Timing, making, releasing, and beginning again.

The menstrual cycle follows a moon-like rhythm: a reflective phase, a dynamic phase, an expressive phase, and a creative phase, each one lasting about seven days.

We modern humans live with electricity that allows us to stay indoors, extend our workdays, and postpone our rest. As a woman, a wife, and a mother, I am no stranger to how much can be accomplished while the family sleeps!

Yet the moon, in her natural cycles, reminds us that we are supposed to be resting/sleeping while she hangs up there, reflecting the day back to us as we dream and recharge our batteries.

The moon’s representation as a symbol of the feminine models for us that life is lived in cycles — and the female cycles are sacred as well.

It’s the mother awake at 3:00 AM nursing her baby, and then at menopause awake at 3:00 AM again, perhaps thinking of that same baby, now grown — the quiet of 3 AM giving her the space to consider something the distractions of the day obscure.

During menopause, I have found that the energy of the Full Moon often wakes me in the middle of the night. I have learned to use that time to write, read, or for quiet contemplation.

Many solutions have appeared clearly to me in the middle of a full moon’s night!

And many a worry has seemed magnified by the moonlight, only to recede in the light of day.

When the Rhythm Widens

At midlife, we begin to release the smaller cycle of the monthly bleed — and the rhythm that once marked fertility and that particular season of life.

We move into a larger cycle now, one measured by seasons, years, and subtler patterns of awareness. I’ve found I keep time differently: less by the calendar of the body, and more by the larger field around me.

As the rhythm widens, intuition rises.

Many women find that at this time, they have less patience for what no longer feels true. The old accommodations begin to fall away.

This, too, is waning moon wisdom:

Release what drains the life from you.

Pattern recognition sharpens our awareness. Our focus deepens when our hormonal noise goes from alternating current to direct current. I’ve never forgotten that particular metaphor.

What a busy mother named as “her sixth sense about her children’s needs” seemed to deepen for me after menopause into a clearer signal of KNOWING.

This was fascinating to me, so I began looking for the language to understand and deepen this intuitive work, studying shamanism, energy therapies, and even the metaphors of quantum reality.

As I moved further into my intuitive self, I became more attuned with a generative way of living — more connected to the Earth, to all creation, to the interdependent web of existence that is described in animism and revealed itself so clearly to me in shamanic journeying

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Later, during meditative experiences or when deeply focused on helping a client, intuitive messages would appear. I’d write them down as insights in my journals.

Over time, these journaled insights became evidence that validated my intuitive and cross-veil experiences.

That search began for me more than 25 years ago, and it continues to deepen and grow richer.

The Wise Woman Comes Home

We shift into the larger streams of awareness at menopause, where our creative flows move into a deeper current.

We are more likely to feel the call of our inner creative cycles blending with the larger creative energies of life, in a family, in a lineage, in a community.

We become part of the rich circle of grandmother wisdom and — because we are still here — living our lives within the inevitable cycles of life’s ups and downs, births and deaths, we become more acutely aware and more sensitive to nuance.

We arrive at this sacred place after menopause, and I believe it’s like a homecoming.

One of long travels on and off-road, not always clear or smooth, sometimes straight but often twisting.

We arrive, changed from the young girl, or the busy Mom, or the successful business leader — wiser than we know, with all of these women in us.

If we can acknowledge the hard parts, the difficulties that we’ve managed to transcend, we arrive READY, having given birth to ourselves.

Whatever may come now, we are at last HOME.

And home is the place in your body where YOU reside — and where, with self-love and self-acceptance, we can be compassionate with ourselves.

This is when you get the perspective that lets you step off the carousel of self-judgment and criticism. You get to see who you are and who you want to be, at this phase of the larger cycle.

You may discover, in discerning who you are now, that you need to forgive your younger self for whatever mistakes or missteps she made getting here. In fact, I recommend doing this because we all have made mistakes.

Perfection is not possible.

So put that baggage down.

You are home.

You can take all the time you want to unpack and decide what to keep and what to let go of.

The seasons have changed now, and the Wheel is still turning. Your wisdom will come as you grow and experience this new cycle, making room for YOU in your body/home.

The blessings of this phase are many.

The rhythm widens, clarity returns, and the cycles become familiar again.

The secret nobody seems to talk about is how often the changed woman is also the return of the girl she left behind when adulthood called.

Welcome her home.

Not as the child you once were, but as the wise one you are now.

Home to Herself.

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There is work to do. It’s everywhere right now. We all must find what is ours to do. No effort is too small and as the great anthropologist Margaret Mead reminds us:

“Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

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Why does it feel like everything is being revealed right now?

In my lifetime, it has never felt quite like this before. It feels like everywhere we encounter systems that protect themselves at all costs. Humanity is being shown all the appalling, dishonorable, outrageously evil things humans can do to each other . Not that we haven’t ever seen the face of evil. We’ve survived Hitler, daily school shootings, and now we have Jeffrey Epstein and the Epstein Class…

Each time, we’ve been told these were isolated evildoers—that the patterns behind their actions were misunderstood or dismissed as anomalies. We’ve even been told that our current President and administration are anomalies—something to be tolerated until they pass into oblivion.

But the fact that we are seeing this pattern EVERYWHERE, that it seems to be happening all at once, - its screaming at us. Structures that turn on those who question them. Gatekeepers that tell you you don’t see what you see.

You must believe the truth of what you are seeing with your own eyes. What you are hearing with your own ears, and knowing in your own Knower. …

And beneath it all, a question must be raised:

How did we let it go on this long?

Because this is what happens when a wound is seen—but never named.

There is an old story about a wounded king.

The legend of the Fisher King.

A king who has suffered a wound that will not heal.

He cannot stand. He cannot lead. He cannot bring life to the land. The land withers as the crops fail. He is isolated in his castle unless his servants carry him out, where he fishes endlessly, waiting for the wound to be healed. The people see that he still lives, crippled by his wound. The story has been spread that the wound can only be healed by the “fool” who asks the right question of the Grail.

One day, a knight arrives and witnesses a strange ritual that involves a Grail, a bleeding Lance and a downcast people who are starving. And their land has become a barren wasteland. Everyone sees their fate is tied to the king’s wounding, but no one asks about it.

The King’s wound, you see, is protected by decree, by silence, by politeness, by systems that teach us not to question power.

And so the Knight is puzzled by what he sees, by what he hears, but he does not ask the question and is sent away.

The King’s wound never heals. And the land continues to rot and wither, becoming a wasteland.

This is happening now.

This is what we are seeing in our world.

I’ve seen this repeatedly in healthcare. We’ve made science and technology our altars, instead of the patient and the community. And the SYSTEMS that require the patient and the community in order to survive are not created to serve the people, only to serve and perpetuate themselves. This is broken and cannot continue.

Everywhere, we can hear people saying “Congress doesn’t act for the people who elected them”. For many years we have heard about healthcare needing reform, government and education needing reform. But these broken systems persist because they are protected. Because we are silenced. Whistleblowers and those who question the people in power are punished. Whole systems have been built just to protect the broken systems.

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Example: as a nurse and a midwife, in birthing rooms for 40 years, I will tell you, patience is truly a virtue and in very short supply in medicine. This is what drives up c-section rates. Have women’s bodies changed in the last 100+ years? No. Are there greater numbers of giant babies that cannot fit through the pelvis? No.

What has changed is our systems and our beliefs. For nearly half of my career, I worked outside of the hospitals, mainly in free-standing birth centers. I caught over 2000 babies and my personal c-section rate was less than 10%. Patience and respect makes all the difference.

In hospital L&D units, there is something called follow a labor curve which is based on failed research done in the 1950s, adapted to create a model that defines “how all labors should go”.

The inherent bias is on ‘efficiency’ of the labor, (time+ $$$ = ?) but it increases the use of interventions when providers believe all mothers and babies should behave like this. I have always thought this is an illusion -a rationale that we should all be the same, because we have the same parts. Its reductionist thinking, that ignores individual differences or variables like spirituality, fear and anxiety, fatigue, cultural beliefs and practices and seeks to correct the labor that is “falling off the curve” with interventions like Pitocin to speed it up.

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Hospital birth in the US currently carries C-section rates of between 25-30%. We have a system of OB-Gyn that depersonalizes and reduces the mother to a vessel, carrying a baby. It treats the baby as an experiment, controlling as much as science can for every potential variable during pregnancy. Then divorces itself of responsibility for the outcome, insuring itself to the hilt against its own potential for errors in judgment or interventions. Our humanity is diminished, when the mother is seen as a threat to her fetus if she asks questions that threaten the ‘king or his court’. She will become a liability risk and the system will double down on her, insisting that she and/or her baby could die if she doesn’t do what she’s told.

The problem with this tactic is there is already a well documented 1% risk of full term babies dying before or during birth. That’s a 1/100 risk of stillbirth for no known reason. That happens. And its devastating. But 99% of babies do not die at term. And so, because of the 1% we cannot control, we have a system that is harming women and babies, and blaming the mother. I’m calling that as I see it.

A C-section is major abdominal surgery. It is not harmless. .In any surgery there is increased risk of bleeding/hemorrhage, infection and Death. The C-section rate is an ongoing problem in obstetrics, and without serious health care reforms, it will continue to be a risk of childbearing in this system.

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The temptation to break and enter is overwhelming in medicine. OB-Gyns are trained as surgeons. Surgeons must do surgery regularly to maintain their skills. Does that mean that all surgeries should be suspected as unnecessary or rushed into? Not all, but most certainly some. We can apply this same mindset to menopause symptoms. Hysterectomy was formerly the most common surgical procedure performed on women. It is now second only to c-section.

What does this tell us? And how do we NOT question it?

This is how harm becomes normalized. This is how the healing is withheld from us, the power is taken. We begin to second guess ourselves. And eventually the stories become, not about how transformative and powerful we are, but how “this is what I had to do to survive”.

When I was a labor and delivery nurse, in the 1990’s, I taught childbirth education classes to couples who were birthing at our hospital. Much of what we were asked to teach was “what happens to you in labor at our hospital”. I found International Childbirth Education Association to be offering broader information about childbirth options. I believe that journey started me on the path to midwifery.

I began teaching women to talk to their doctors at prenatal visits. Ask questions like “is the baby head down? Which way is the baby facing?” To answer these questions, the doctor had to touch the patient, a hand-skill called a Leopold’s maneuver could determine the answer. And every L&D nurse learned Leopold’s back then. Its simple.

Still I had patients come back to me and say things like “My doctor said it didn’t matter and he wouldn’t do it. It’s a waste of time.” Excuse me? But it matters to you and your baby. There are things you could do to optimally position your baby. Back then there were still MD’s in private practices, working for themselves. Patients could fire their doctor and go to someone else. Nowadays, corporations own hospital systems. Doctors join large practices owned by the hospital. The system has productivity quotas that MDs must meet. And the system is focused on profit. These systems have made it harder to get the care you want.

Is the system putting profits over patients? Yes.

There are so many reasons why our healthcare system has evolved the way it has, but at the root is patriarchy. And when that is the lens through which we view the wound, we can never receive the healing. Too busy protecting and serving the wound.

But now, as systems of patriarchy reveal to us what needed to be seen, what will we do? The Mothers, and the Crones, can no longer swallow our rage and be silenced. We have to stand up and speak up to protect our young. And their future.

We are no longer asking our Maidens to suffer in silence to preserve a broken system.

So how does the tale of the Fisher King get resolved?

In the old story, the land is only restored when someone finally asks the question:

What ails you?

Not to accuse.
Not to destroy.

Because we need to see clearly what has been denied.

Something of great value has been lost. But not forgotten.

Our lives are marked by profound rites of passage—experiences that present uniquely to those born with a womb. We know there is a place in the body where emotion gathers, where instinct lives, where something in us tightens or softens before the mind can explain it. A place that holds love, desire, fear, and knowing all at once.

This remarkable organ, the womb, sits at the center of gravity in the female body and is capable of extraordinary transformation. It is the site of both great joy and deep suffering, holding within it some of the most powerful and alchemical experiences of a woman’s lifetime.

And yet, the sacredness of these experiences has been diminished. In a world that reduces the female body to function and pathology, the deeper meanings—the emotional, spiritual, and symbolic dimensions—have been obscured. What was once honored through ritual and connection to the natural world is now frequently managed, minimized, monetized or misunderstood.

When we are deprived of the endorphin-drenched moment of the birth – the “I did it!” moment – that comes after the natural birth, it’s a bit like running a marathon, but crossing the finish line in a car instead of on foot.

So let me ask, clearly and without apology:

What ails us? And why didn’t we ask sooner?

We are not just the ones asking the question now—we are the ones, who remember what it cost not to.

We must refuse to sacrifice another generation to it.

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She came to me around 2002. Confused and frightened, she had stopped taking her HRT. Cancer, blood clots, strokes. Death. She trusted that her doctor wouldn’t prescribe her something so dangerous. She felt betrayed and abandoned.

Her friends were all asking the same questions. Everyone was scrambling for alternatives.

Anxious, weepy, depressed, fatigued. Awake at 3 AM, night after night. It was all too much. It was starting to affect her work. She felt desperate. Could I help?

The medical community was in a quandary, too. Medical experts were clearly divided. The largest ever study of HRT had revealed some frightening complications. NIH stopped it early, uncertain what went wrong –but the data showed women were dying. And it was connected to their HRT. It would take years to sort out all the implications.

Patricia, I’ll call her, had fibroids in her late thirties. These are non-cancerous tumors of the uterus, but they can wreak havoc with heavy bleeding, exhaustion, a body that felt increasingly ungovernable.

At 40, she’d had a hysterectomy. Problem solved, her doctor said. And in one sense, it was.

But the body keeps its own calendar.

At 45, she started having insomnia, hot flashes, and night sweats. She was prescribed Premarin. The hot flashes and night sweats improved. The insomnia got better when she started taking an antihistamine at bedtime.

Approaching 50, it had been a decade since her surgery. Having stopped her HRT, she was exhausted by her disruptive symptoms.

Hot flashes and night sweats were back.

Sometimes she had to function for days on two or three hours of sleep. She was angry and crying over things that didn’t warrant tears and not crying over things that did.

She felt, she told me quietly, like she was losing her mind. Her doctor had listened for maybe ten minutes and written her a prescription for an antidepressant. You’re depressed, he said. This will help.

She wasn’t sure she was depressed. She was sure she was lost and overwhelmed.

So, she came looking for another approach.

art by Dall-E

We talked about surgical menopause. The Women’s Health Initiative study – what we knew and what we didn’t know – was important to confront. And we talked about aging and cultural models. We spent about 90 minutes getting to know each other. I took a ton of notes.

Second-generation Chinese, she was raised in a suburban household where her parents, born in Shanghai, were determined to become fully American. They had left everything behind when they crossed the ocean. The language. The food. The medicine. The traditions that had carried women through exactly this moment for thousands of years.

All of it traded for the Standard American Diet and firm beliefs that becoming Americanized had better answers for them and their children than their ancestors did.

I wondered whether she’d tried anything “alternative” yet, but she responded that she didn’t know where to start. I asked about getting her more in touch with her heritage. She seemed to know nothing about it. I told her I didn’t have all the answers, but I did know that Traditional Chinese Medicine had a 5000-year history. A system doesn’t survive that long if it isn’t useful. There could be something there for her.

I had some ideas about herbs that she could try. And other sources to consult on her behalf.

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I believe that humility is essential when you seek to help someone else heal.

You often can’t know how or from where the answers will come. Respect for the wound and its wisdom is paramount.

And some wounds can be generational.

I knew a little about TCM, but I knew enough to sense she could benefit from a connection to her cultural lineage and this ancient healing philosophy.

Since then, I’ve sat with hundreds of women in moments like this one. Different bodies, different histories, different decades. But the same essential disorientation. The same story of having been handed a label — depressed, anxious, hormonal — without anyone pausing long enough to explain what was actually happening inside them. Without anyone saying: this makes sense. Your brain is changing. Your chemistry is shifting. You are not broken. You are in a transition that medicine hasn’t learned isn’t pathological.

In this woman’s situation, she had also never learned to honor her ancestors.

The longer we talked, the more I learned she knew nothing about traditional Chinese culture. And her parents were determined that their kids would assimilate and become American.

She grew up eating Wonder bread, Velveeta and Miracle Whip sandwiches. She drank diet sodas all day, instead of water. Supper was often a burger or steak. Her husband cooked for them and they ate a lot of red meat and chicken. No fish - few vegetables.

She worked full-time as an art teacher and had 30-minute lunch breaks. Her lunches consisted of potato chips, diet soda, and either an apple or an orange.

She was used to feeling in control of herself and wanted that back.

We agreed I’d put together a plan and we’d meet again in a week. I warned her that it would probably be unlike any plan she’d seen in a healthcare encounter before.

She was coming back in a week, she said, with an open mind.

I had some research to do.

I’ve been working with shamanic healing practices for almost thirty years. This is part of what I bring to my healing work.

Sometimes I use information from a shamanic journey to guide my thought process and bring clarity to a particular situation.

A shamanic journey is a meditative practice that involves entering non-ordinary reality —journeying (kind of like crossing the veil, as I think of it) — with a question to ask your helping spirits for guidance.

At that time, I’d been journeying for about three years, and had found the process to be profoundly inspiring and effective. It calmed my mind and helped clarify information that could help my patient.

I would journal what information I got right after the journey ended. It was often intuitive and dreamlike.

In this journey, the helping spirit was a very large tiger. He asked me to merge with him to better understand my patient. When you merge with a helping spirit, you experience the journey through their eyes, moving with their body. While still maintaining your own awareness. The tiger felt incredibly powerful and instinctive as we moved through a dark jungle landscape. He told me that he could not be other than he was - a product of his nature and his lineage, and that humans often lose touch with their own true nature.

Many don’t understand what they inherit from their lineage. I was thinking in terms of DNA and genetics, but he was referring to ancestry and tradition

Art by Dall-E.

Today, we talk about generational traumas. At the time, I wondered what her parents were escaping that made them want to erase their history.

I knew that my patient knew very little of her ancestry beyond her parents wanting to assimilate. I came out of the journey with a growing curiosity about Chinese culture and Traditional Chinese Medicine.

I began reading about acupuncture and TCM and found there were approaches that could help her.

I also consulted with an herbalist friend about where she might find a qualified practitioner.

At first, Patricia was hesitant. None of it would be covered by insurance.

But to her credit, she committed to working with a TCM practitioner an hour away for six months.

We talked about the lifestyle changes. She wasn’t excited about adding vegetables and fish to her diet but was willing to experiment.

She was open to walking, and her husband joined her, which made that easier.

Passionflower by Dall-E

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Mood and sleep management improved somewhat with passionflower herbal tincture at bedtime. She began to take motherwort in the morning and felt encouraged to have remedies she could tolerate.

At the same time, she began exploring her heritage. She spoke with family members about their history. She visited a cousin in San Francisco, who took her to a Chinese pharmacist, where she needed a Mandarin translator to explain what she was seeing.

She began to study Chinese art.

Knowing what is happening — really understanding it — is itself a form of medicine. It changes everything about how you meet this moment. It helps you feel empowered and engaged in what’s happening instead of a victim of your symptoms.

Be open. Be available to wonder. This could be the reframe that makes all of those things meaningful rather than merely pathological.

My patient left me that day with a referral to an acupuncturist and a TCM practitioner, a list of herbs to explore, some food guidance and a plan, and — I think this mattered most — the experience of having been seen as whole.

I called her six months later to see how she was feeling. She told me she’d decided not to fill that prescription after all. Not because antidepressants are always wrong — they aren’t — but because what she’d needed wasn’t a chemical correction. It was a map.

The wisdom years are especially rich if we are open to seeking. As a healer and a seeker, I have found real value in not having to have all the answers. It makes me available to wonder.

If we listen closely, we connect more deeply with another person. We begin a healing relationship that can change us both.

Seeking becomes an act of hope.

And the wisdom years become a time of rebirth.

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Resources for Deeper Support

Midwifery and Shamanism both called to me because they expand the possibilities for holistic healing. I have studied with many different teachers to understand how to do this and often combine mainstream care and integrative to create a holistic model that honors the whole woman.

I have found mentors or teachers on my path whose writing, podcasts or teachings have helped me and might be helpful to you. I share some of them below.

The first thing — and I stress this with every ounce of my wisewoman wisdom - is finding someone who will listen to you for more than seven minutes. Someone who will ask not just what your symptoms are, but what your history is, what your story is, what your body has been through. An integrative physician, a naturopath, a functional medicine practitioner, a midwife, a skilled herbalist. Someone whose paradigm is large enough to hold you whole.

I hope to introduce teachers like these in this forum. Here are some I’ve mentioned with links to find them online.

Dr. Aviva Romm — Yale-trained MD, midwife, and herbalist — is one of the clearest voices doing this work right now. She names directly what so many women experience: that the crisis in women’s mental health at midlife is largely a failure of recognition. Women are being handed psychiatric diagnoses and prescriptions by practitioners who don’t understand that what they are seeing is perimenopause. If you haven’t found your person yet, her website is a starting place, and her book Hormone Intelligence is a map. She has a podcast too, if that’s your jam.

Her roots are similar to mine. Midwifery, plant medicine, activist for women. But she’s also a Yale-trained Family MD and functional medicine doctor.

Susan Weed, wisewoman, herbalist practicing for more than 30 years. Her most recent book
Abundantly Well: The Complementary Integrated Medical Revolution
Volume 6 of Wise Woman Herbal Series, Susun S. Weed came out in 2021 and is widely available.

Sandra Ingerman shamanic healing practitioner. Teaches, writes and offers classes in shamanism all over the world.

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In upcoming posts I plan to go deeper into specific herbal allies for mood and sleep at menopause, the neuroscience of the brain at this transition, and what it means to find the right practitioner for where you are. I may tap a guest teacher or two. If this resonated with someone you love, please share it. We need to be talking about this — out loud, together, without shame.

More about what happens in your brain at menopause in my next post…

Estrogen is a whole-body, whole-brain molecule that your nervous system has been relying on for decades to maintain the very structure of your mental and emotional life. When estrogen begins its irregular, dramatic transformation in perimenopause, the brain doesn’t just notice. It responds…

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Your Brain is Changing at Menopause.

(Part of one of a series on the brain at menopause)

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“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” would be the common refrain. Heartbreaking. And scary to you and yours. Especially in this age of Alzheimer’s and other dementias that we hear so much about. “I feel like I don’t know myself anymore! I’m so forgetful. I lose familiar words and names often. I walk into a room and can’t remember what I’m there for. My mood is awful, too. I’ve never thought of myself as anxious or depressed, but lately I’m beginning to wonder…”. These are the kinds of worries that would bring women in to see me at perimenopause.

Maybe your mind feels sluggish and distracted/ foggy. Maybe you aren’t sleeping as well. So you tell everyone “I’m just tired”, but you worry more and more that you’re not as mentally sharp as you used to be? And you need to be high-functioning for your job, your family, all your many responsibilities? Did you start making lists and then forget where you put your list? (Guilty as charged, until I started putting them in my phone, a strategy I use to this day!)

Take heart, my friends! There is a reason for this particular madness! Let’s just pause for a message from your sponsoring midwife.

We all know we need to hydrate better, especially when the body is going through something, so during this pause, go get yourself a drink of water, please. You deserve it. You’ll see why when you read a little further.

The female brain is getting rewired at menopause. What if this isn’t your brain breaking down? What if this is your brain being renovated? And it’s a real opportunity for an upgrade

Science now knows that the neuroendocrine system in women is dominated by the brain- ovary connection established 5-10,000 years ago in order to structure the female for survival of the species. Your ovaries are directing your brain to release the right amounts of hormones, at the right times in your cycles, for optimal ovulation and fertilization to occur- over and over again. That’s the design.

Let’s say you reach fertility at age 15 and you never use any form of birth control to prevent pregnancies over the rest of your fertile life, approximately 30 years. Each pregnancy is about 40 weeks/ 280 days (yes I know that’s ten months, not 9!) You could, conceivably, (pun intended) have 15 to 20 children in your lifetime!

Your ovaries are in constant dialogue with your brain. Modern neuroscience research is finding that the body is driving the brain, not the other way around, as we’ve been taught to think.

Estrogen crosses the blood- brain barrier, in varying amounts, all through the cycle. It lives in the hippocampus (the memory center), the amygdala (the emotional center), and the prefrontal cortex (decision making, executive functions).

Remember. The neuroendocrine system, in the female, is driven by the brain-ovaries connection. Despite evolution, this has not changed. Our brains are bathed in estrogen throughout our lives, even as levels change during different stages of our development. Estrogen, in some form, remains a component of our neuroendocrine system throughout our lives because we are female. The brain produces small amounts all the time. And that will continue, once the ovaries are no longer the major supplier. Despite what you may have heard, you’re never out of estrogen. Levels change, but it is always there, part of our design.

Let’s talk about those amazing brains of ours, shall we?

The hippocampus is highly estrogen sensitive and it’s recalibrating at menopause. So notice how that name you couldn’t remember 5 or 10 minutes ago suddenly pops in?

The amygdala is responsible for your emotional responses to perceived experiences. When estrogen activity becomes more erratic, your amygdala can make you feel anxious, fearful, edgy. Its likely your body experienced something- like palpitations, for example- also a fairly common occurrence due to hormonal bounces and surges that are erratic. The brain’s #1job is to keep us alive. It doesn’t know what just happened to cause the heart rate to jump around, but it sees the experience as possibly a threat, a danger. So it signals you with heightened awareness. You may begin to feel anxious. That anxiety can become a disruptive cycle of fear- anxiety- panic in some women. It can trigger all sorts of traumas from our past.

Palpitations are common enough, caused by many of the body’s responses and adaptations. But, I don’t want to minimize a symptom that could potentially be a signal of something more. So if palpitations happen often, they can signal something else going on. Respect that your brain is getting your attention and get that checked out, please.

Here’s the rationale for better hydration at menopause. Coffee and Tea, despite their antioxidant qualities, do tend to be dehydrating. When we get dehydrated, we make all our body systems work harder and we feel tired. Sluggish. Everything slows down, except heart rate, which tries to compensate by speeding up to carry more blood to the vital organs - brain and heart, especially. Dehydration can sometimes be a cause of palpitations, by the way.

So , friends, this would be a great time to promise yourself to hydrate better. You need 50% of your body weight in ounces every day. If you weigh 150 pounds, that’s 75 ounces of water/day. A gallon is 128 ounces.

There’s some water you can account for in your coffee and tea, but your body will function better if you prioritize hydration at this time in your life. Put a reminder or alarm in your phone. Your hippocampus will thank you!

Progesterone plays a huge role in sleep and progesterone drops off first, remember, leading to that estrogen - dominance phase. After a while, there’s just not enough to make the receptors in the brain happy- resulting in sleep interruptions. (Hello 3:36 AM, day after day. I see you!) The brain continues its reorganization 24/7 and sleep can be in short supply, when you have to wake up and go to work every morning.

I want you to notice and acknowledge that you aren’t crazy- you’re renovating. As anyone who’s ever lived with a renovation project knows- it’s a very stressful experience. There’s a certain amount of surrender required to living surrounded by demolition, dust and drills all day. You can feel like you have one nerve left- And everybody’s getting on it.

Self-compassion and kindness can go a long way now and a good thing to practice as you rewire. Part of learning to accept our new, rewired brain is teaching it to recognize those ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) that are part of a well-worn pathway we’ve perhaps been walking down since childhood. They color how we judge ourselves and others. They are often not true and if we listen closely, the voice that’s speaking them is not even our own. They are likely the tapes from long ago, a parent, a teacher, some well-meaning relative – someone who perhaps repeated some unkind remark said to them in their childhood. It’s worth your curiosity at this time of life, if you’re still carrying these. Is it really true? Or is it just someone else’s opinion?

It doesn’t have to wreck your self-esteem anymore. You’re not five. You know better now. And you can still love the parent/teacher/relative without loving what they laid on you. If you struggle with this, ‘get thee to a good therapist’ is my advice. (Or a transformational coach, who can help you challenge those perceptions, without spending a lot of time reliving past traumas.) Within the counseling experience, there are many different healing, restorative options. Coaching for transformational healing is one of them and can also offer many different techniques. They require investigation and discernment on your part to find the right one for you. They should never be treated as one size fits all.

Because we’ve lived within patriarchal systems and culture for 5000 - 10,000 years, we’ve learned to accept it as “normal” and come to believe gender-based roles and culturally driven ideas that support continued Patriarchy. This is quite evident in health care, especially, when we understand that in the US, it had to be legislated in the 1990’s that women be included in drug studies. Nobody had been studying us or what might be different about the female body and brain, yet they were prescribing doses of medications to our brains and bodies, based on research gathered on men.

It’s no wonder women would say to me that they felt like guinea pigs when they shared their menopause symptoms with their doctors. They’d be prescribed anti-anxiety meds or anti-depressants, with the caveat, “Let’s try this. If it doesn’t work, we have other ones we can try.”

The field of neuroscience, and scientists like Lisa Moscone, PhD, are studying and imaging our brains. Their work is adding to brain science and understanding of gender differences- and driving new questions and research in the fields of consciousness and quantum reality

Art by Dall-E.

The field of psychiatry is changing too, becoming more accepted as a science. Its not yet a standard of care in treating mood disorders, but Dr. Daniel Amen’s research on over 200,000 SPECT scans shows there are differences in the brains of those who suffer from depression, anxiety, ADHD, and that may help us treat mental illness better on an individual basis. His work is provocative, even though not yet the standard of care. Because it touches something deeper, it challenges the one-size-fits-all diagnosis. It invites us to see the brain - and the person - as unique and dynamic, pushing against impersonal, protocol-driven medicine.

What researchers like Dr. Mosconi, whose area of research is the female brain, are learning is that our brain changes in the perimenopause and menopause period. She’s written two books: “The XX Brain”and “The Menopausal Brain”, based on her research. She wants to understand why women are the largest percentage of Alzheimer’s diagnoses. Women tend to live longer than men, and we’re challenged to see how our brain changes may offer insights into why so many of us develop Alzheimer’s. Its not just a result of aging. If it were, after a certain age, we’d all go there.

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There are still more questions than answers. For example, what is the role of blood sugar? Insulin changes at menopause as well as glucose tolerance/intolerance. Perhaps you’ve heard Alzheimer’s called Type 3 Diabetes. Why? Inflammation? That’s part of it, but it’s again, not one-size-fits-all. The answers will be complicated and involve epigenetics, environmental toxins, cultural and socioeconomic factors.

The missing pieces for me have always been what makes you feel seen as a whole person in your healthcare experience? What gives meaning to your life? That’s the perspective I have always tried to include in my work as a midwife, as a women’s health advocate, as a shamanic healer, as an astrologer. Now, as a novelist. Whatever role I’m playing in the healing process.

Something common to many women at this time in their lives is a deeper connection to their own spirituality. For many of us an increase in our intuition. More creativity bubbling up. A greater sense of the Divine and our soul’s yearnings. These are the things that enrich our lives as we age. These are the things that build our resilience for the challenges to come.

What if these brain changes at this time of life are an opportunity to open up to these? A threshold for moving into a new phase of your brain’s growth? A portal to a higher level of consciousness? And a deep appreciation for the Matriarchal cultures and societies that came before Patriarchy? As well as your own role in a cosmos spilling across Universes yet to be seen, even by the James Webb telescope? Lots to contemplate?

It’s renovation, not ruin.

How can we best support ourselves, and each other, as we live through this ‘makeover’? I’m happy to take questions and comments!

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I am moving my novel to a separate Section of my Substack! It will make my life (and your reading) easier, I hope.

My characters in my novel-in-progress, The Grace of Second Chances, are making sense of life’s challenges too, including menopause. The next chapter is narrated by Margaret ( the sister Mara so recently buried). We meet her and ….

Art by ChatGPT/Dall-E

I get asked about hot flashes more than anything else. They’re among the most common experiences of the menopausal journey—affecting as many as 75% of women in the US -- and yet western medicine still doesn’t fully understand what causes them. There are plenty of theories, but no consensus. No single solution. So, let me share what 40 years of working with women has taught me. A holistic viewpoint that includes the science, the wisdom of traditional healing cultures and practices, and a reframe that I believe changes the experience of transition to one of rebirth.

First, the reframe

Fire is cleansing. Fever is cleansing. And I believe hot flashes are very likely a form of this detoxification.

Think about what happens after a forest fire—the new growth that emerges, is nourished by what remains from the destruction. Nature shows us how to become more resilient than what came before, just as she renews herself each season. Or consider a fever —actively killing pathogens in the body. We know it is not a malfunction. It is a mechanism. The joke about hot flashes as power surges seems appropriate here.

Hot flashes, I believe, work on a similar principle. The response to an excess of circulating hormones and toxins. The estrogens that have accumulated from dietary sources, medications, the endocrine disruptors that now saturate our environment, and the inflammatory effects of chronic stress. This heat is the body working. Trying to bring itself back into balance, and ultimately to cool itself.

Your body is doing what it is supposed to do. The question is not how to silence it. It is how to support it. So that it doesn’t need to work so hard.

What we do know is happening in your body

Deep in the brain is a small, but powerful gland called the hypothalamus. It’s responsible for regulating your body’s response to circulating hormones. The cycling hormones are an orchestra conducted by the hypothalamus. During your fertile years, ovulation triggers a surge of progesterone into the bloodstream each month. Among its many gifts, it is the calming, stabilizing protective hormone that takes the edge off of estrogen. But as the ovaries begin their transformation at perimenopause, they release progressively fewer eggs. Some cycles produce no egg at all. That’s called an anovulatory cycle. When no egg is released, there’s no signal to release progesterone. As anovulatory cycles increase in frequency, beginning quietly in our 30s and accelerating through our 40s, progesterone steadily declines.

In the absence of progesterone’s moderating influence, estrogen becomes dominant. And too much circulating estrogen signals the body and brain that something is out of balance. One mechanism the body has to detoxify itself is sweating. Heat is released through the skin, removing excess toxins with it. Over time, the ovaries are transformed. Cycles become irregular and eventually stop. The body has to find a new equilibrium.

It’s worth noting that many of the most uncomfortable menopausal symptoms trace back to this phase of estrogen dominance. Not estrogen loss, as we’ve so often been told. That story, by the way, is part of the larger pattern of reducing women’s complex individualized experiences to a single protocol and a single solution. There is no such thing as one-size-fits-all in Women’s Health. The belief that there is, reflects the same reductive thinking that has shaped and too often failed Women’s Health care for generations.

Hot flashes and night sweats: same phenomenon, two settings

Hot flashes and night sweats are really one continuous experience. During the day they can appear as anything from a mild warmth or flush—often starting in the face and neck and upper body —to a full body wave of intense heat, sometimes accompanied by drenching sweats. They can be random and unpredictable. Some women can identify triggers; others cannot find any pattern at all.

Night sweats are simply hot flashes that wake you from sleep and sometimes you wake drenched. More often it is simply the urge to throw off the covers, and a demanding need for cool air. This is the part that wears women down. Now you are awake. The work of getting back to sleep begins.

Caffeine and alcohol are worth paying attention to here. Both are recognized by the body as toxins (alcohol particularly so), and both can trigger hot flashes and disrupt sleep. Some women find they tolerate them perfectly well throughout menopause. Others notice a clear connection and choose to reduce or eliminate them. Experiment and keep notes for yourself. Your body/mind/spirit is evolving!

Practical support/what actually helps

Most likely you’ll be navigating this for quite some time. Many women seem to experience hot flashes for five to 10 years, with varying frequency and intensity. Though they decrease over time, they can still make occasional appearances late in life. With that timeline in mind, the goal is to adapt with as much grace and practical wisdom as possible.

Dress in layers. In all seasons. Natural breathable fibers like cotton, linen and flax are your allies; they absorb moisture and dry quickly. At the height of my own experience, I kept a spare cotton night shirt beside the bed so I could change quickly in the night. I have had women tell me they keep a set of dry sheets nearby for the same reason. Small adaptations, but they make a big difference at 3:00 AM.

Herbal allies

Many traditional cultures have worked for centuries with plant medicine for exactly this transition, and the evidence for some of these herbs is substantial. A dedicated post (or two) on plant remedies will be forthcoming, but here is the beginning of the list. All seem to help with hot flashes. They come in many forms. They come as tinctures, teas and capsules. These are singles, but some will be blended together. Talk to a qualified herbalist to decide what may best help you in your specific situation.

· Black Cohosh

· Motherwort

· Vitex (also known as Chaste tree)

· Lemon balm

· Hops*

· Red Clover

· Dong quai⁺

· Nettles

· Flaxseed

*Hops is estrogen-receptor sensitive. Worth talking to your practitioner if you have a history of cancer.

+Dong Quai can raise blood pressure.

Black Cohosh in a garden by Chat GPT

Plant-based diets, and flaxseed in particular have meaningful evidence behind them and are accessible to almost everyone as a starting point. It’s not always easy to find studies that are reliable in plant medicine. If this is important to you, understand the politics behind what gets studied in modern science. I will speak to this and give references as I talk more in depth about these remedies in future blogs.

If you want to do your own research: Many herbalists have wonderful information online for us: Aviva Romm, MD has a mountain of her own and other’s research in her Botanical Medicine for Women’s Health, and in her podcast and blogs. David Winston, RH (Herbalist&Alchemist.com) an herbalist, author, and teacher who has traveled the world to study plant medicines. His work on Adaptogens has defined best practices and given us a better understanding of these plants and their uses in healing. And of course, Susun Weed, (Susunweed.com)longtime teacher and herbalist who has generously given us so much wisewoman wisdom and guidance through her long career. Many more teachers I’ve learned from and can add to your backpack as we go!

The deeper truth: what this transition is asking of you

The symphony of reproductive hormones that have cycled through your entire life, have not only regulated your body as neurotransmitters; they have connected you to your creativity, and to cycles larger than yourself (like the moon and nature). Many indigenous cultures recognize this as the powerful generative energy of the womb. The womb lies within the body’s creative center, the place where life, in all its forms originates. You need not have given birth to a child to have lived in relationship with that energy. Women give birth to companies, to art, to music, to movements, to entirely new ways of being in the world.

Menopause does not end that creative force. It transforms it.

The womb wisdom that accumulates over decades of a reliable pattern, of attuning to your body’s rhythms, of living closely with the cycles of creation—that does not disappear. It deepens. It turns inward and becomes the foundation for something else: Sovereignty. Purpose. The great Heroine’s Journey of midlife, which often begins with the simple, enormous question:

Who am I, now?

The hot flashes, the waking in the night, the rewiring of your brain, the questioning and shedding of what no longer fits. These are not symptoms of decline. What if they are the body’s alchemical way of clearing space for the transformation of who you are becoming?

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Excerpt from my Novel in progress below:

The Grace of Second Chances

by Allison Koch

Mara 2015

Chapter One

The stillness of winter mornings has a peculiar way of amplifying loss. It is as though the air itself carries the weight of absence; the frost etches the memory of those who have passed upon every surface. This is the setting now—a landscape that is frozen and unrelenting with hollowness, a still life of my grief. Yesterday, I buried my sister.

And today, shockingly, the sun came up and altered the frozen landscape till it glistened and sparkled with the diamond-like beauty of winter’s potential. The sun, with the nerve to offer a new day, a new beginning, a world without my sister’s presence. A world where I breathe and she does not. Where I must find my own courage and wisdom. Without benefit of hers.

Yesterday, steeping in the raw wet cold of Vermont in late fall, the funeral air stung as it blew across my mournful heart . As if the Ice Queen of my youthful fairytale imaginings had come to collect us all. Funerals in small towns are so noticed. Everyone knows everyone in a small town. Though that can be a comfort sometimes, it can also be an intrusive reminder of who and what is now missing.

“I thought it would be her cancer that would take her from us, “ says my husband, holding me in the circle of his arms, the night she died.

“We were preparing for that, ready for that!” I sobbed. “We talked about her end of life choices, thinking we still had time- the treatment was working, y’know? – we were promised more time. But then - surprise! This new threat, silently attacking her immune system, while we were busy celebrating the possibility of defeating her cancer… I miss her so much already!” I wail my heartbreak into his warm chest, my other safe harbor, these past 25

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years.

Who am I if not Margaret’s little sister anymore? We were inseparable from the time I came on the scene. I see her everywhere in my childhood. So many shared memories, now mine alone. I want to believe you are still here in some form, Margaret. Send me a sign that you are! Like the line, from that book, “Tuesdays with Morrie”, “Death ends a life, but not a relationship.” We read that book together, remember? And we promised to ‘haunt’ each other always, no matter who died first. You were my best friend, my greatest champion – like a kinder version of our mother, your strength carried the family and kept the farm going.

I’m beginning to realize now that grief is as much about discovery as it is about loss. In your absence, though its only been four days, I’ve uncovered parts of you I never truly understood—the strength of your spirit, yes. The quiet resilience you masked with dry humor, when facing insurmountable odds! And always, the fierce protectiveness hidden behind your gentle smile, your pragmatic approach to life, your readiness to sacrifice, so often, for the rest of us. These facets of you, though absent from this world, I hope will remain etched in me.

In the end, we made promises to each other, as you shared truths and secrets that you needed to reveal, and now they are for me to carry or keep. To celebrate, to heal, or to put to rest, forever and a day – as all good fairytale spells are spun and retold – the stories of women. Our ancestors, our inheritances. Who we are, who circumstances force us to become, how we navigate the differences with as much grit and grace as possible, while protecting what and who we love in the process.

I’ve been in the room when my husband was the patient, and it is a different power dynamic. Even though I’m the educated healthcare professional, as the wife, my questions are not always welcomed by many of his mostly male doctors. I sense that I’m intruding on their time and territory. Women who ask too many questions, or resist the doctor’s recommendations are troublemakers, aren’t we? Seen as a problem because they require convincing, which is time-consuming. And in medicine today, time = money, and too much time spent = money lost.

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(Art by Dall-E, not me)

I was very much aware of this power differential when I created my own space for seeing patients. I wanted to emphasize the relationship we were building and that required eliminating that imbalance. There was a comfortable chair placed close to my desk for women to sit and chat with me about their lives and concerns. The art on the walls was chosen to reflect women’s experiences, spirituality and power. The feeling was homey. There was an exam table, but it was discreetly tucked out of the way and covered with a soft decorative print spread. The relationship was the focus. The exam was a much smaller part of the visit. We were building trust with each other.

It was a conscious decision to shift to a different way of serving. I knew the relationship with the women in my care was essential to building trust. I was catching a lot of babies in those days. The value of their trust in me to keep them safe was self-evident. But the trust goes both ways. I was trusting them too. I could only keep them safe if I knew how they were living, what they were eating, what challenges they were facing that could affect their health. I respected who they were as people, and that changes the interactions.

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Lifelong connections came from these interactions. Many years later, I still get women telling me that the way they were seen and treated during our time together changed them. They became more engaged mothers. Some changed careers or became better advocates for themselves.

Pregnancy and birth are transformative times in a woman’s life, but all challenges have the potential to transform us. Menopause is a profound physical change for us, affecting every body system. It alters the system that has been accustomed to cycling hormone levels for thirty to forty years. Gradually, over ten or more years, our whole chemistry is changing. The experience has substantial effects on brain chemistry. It’s as if we get rewired and go from alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC).

This explains why the multitasking of our younger years becomes so difficult to continue. It explains why we need to write things down or we will forget them. The intensity of hormones shifting at menopause has the power to distract us from other experiences or highlight them. We may find we want to dive deeper in and discover our own gifts. It also helps us see what isn’t working anymore in our lives and perhaps reveals what we need to shed. It can show us our own limiting beliefs.

These things are ultimately good for us and for the world around us. Women tend to work well in groups and to solve problems in community better than their male counterparts. Doesn’t the world need that kind of thinking more and more now? The the menopausal brain catches fire as it matures, creativity is enhanced, so shouldn’t we be seeking out more elder women for their wisdom and as problem solvers?

(Art by Dall-E, not me)

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Our hearts and souls want us to slow down and notice what’s happening to us but our culture says “Produce. You can sleep when you’re dead.” And women have been caught up in this whirlwind of dominate, subdue, and capture that has come to mean success. I want us to have a choice to step off the treadmill when we want or need to, perhaps to raise babies, but maybe just to fulfill another creative wish, without paying the price for leaving the patriarchal workplace. Notice that men get to do that and are praised for it.

For me, menopause was an opening—a turning point. It asked me to become more fully myself, to step into who I wanted to be for the rest of my life. Looking back, I can see how the harder seasons shaped that path and called forth the courage to begin a new chapter.

These are conversations worth having. Allison

P.S. I have a plan to share excerpts from my novel in progress, but I worry these posts are already too long?

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If you’ve heard the word Patriarchy so much lately that it’s begun to mean, “let the male-bashing begin,” please understand that isn’t what I’m wanting to do here.

Let’s talk about what’s happening to us and our lives—how we are harmed by Patriarchal culture, and what we can do about it.

I will be reflecting on different aspects of our lives that I have witnessed through the lens of a women’s healthcare provider and midwife, and I’ll share some of what I see working for healing women.

Bring me your questions.

The Harvard Journal of the School of Medicine explains Patriarchy in Western medicine as: “A male-centered, androcentric system that exists in Western medicine and has historically treated male physiology as the default, leading to systemic gender bias in research, diagnosis, and treatment. Women’s pain is often dismissed, misdiagnosed, or attributed to mental health issues, while research frequently excludes women or generalizes male-focused data to all populations.”

Harvard acknowledges this biased approach exists, and so must we all. If you identify as female and/or you love a female, you’ve experienced this bias.

Women have been underserved (actually, disregarded) in most medical research because we, inconveniently, have a monthly menstrual cycle. Fluctuating hormones rule that cycle throughout the month, and that variable is inconvenient for researchers. Since the majority of research is paid for by drug companies interested in creating or marketing new products, long ago somebody decided just to assume that women’s bodies were exactly like men’s—only smaller, and with ovaries.

Disregarding the many additional biological differences—not just hormones, but hearts, brains, circulation, gut flora, to name a few—has caused harm to women.

So far, in humanity’s existence, virtually every human has been born from a woman’s body. We are 51% of the population.

My hope over the course of this Substack is to share what I have learned over my 40+ years working in women’s health: midwifery, nutrition, herbal medicines, energy medicine therapies. I have studied shamanism for 30 years. I hold Master’s degrees in nursing and midwifery. I am grounded in the sciences and bring this to my writing—with a heavy interest in the research being done—and serious professional recognition in healthcare.

What I’ve been told—and have come to believe—is that what I offer is singular. I am a translator of sorts, decoding medical language so that women can truly understand what is happening in their own bodies.

But I’m also something more than that: an alchemist who walks between worlds, blending the clinical and the intuitive, the mainstream and the alternative. My work has always been about bridging those realms and drawing from both to create something specific to her—a healing path as unique as she is.

Her own Philosopher’s Stone.

It is Midwifery—the art and science of being “with woman”—that gave me the orientation to a female-centric model, and over the years has reinforced for me the importance of a model in women’s healthcare that listens to the woman and partners with her to actively seek the solutions that resonate with her specific needs.

The women I have worked with have taught me that the questions they ask are far more informative than the answers available in a Google search of an androcentric system.

In the science of caring for women, and in the mainstream medical model, what is lacking is holism: the impact of how one’s life affects health just as much as health impacts one’s life.

Yes, we recognize that smoking is bad, and too much weight is harmful. Still, women smoke for different reasons than men, so helping them quit calls for different strategies. That’s just one example of gender differences. Behavior change for women is more complicated and deserves the time to be fully addressed. That won’t happen in a 15-minute clinic visit.

The often overlooked areas—emotional, mental, spiritual, nutritional, and other ecologies—are important but missing pieces of women’s wellness.

We are relational beings, and we want a relationship with our care providers that demonstrates a commitment to listening, partnering with us, and sharing information that is meaningful and gives us options. If you feel you have had that kind of healthcare in our U.S. healthcare system, you are indeed fortunate.

More and more, I hear from women that their concerns are minimized, care is fractured, and visits are compressed—short appointments with little eye contact. Providers are focused on the computer screen. There’s no teaching, no time for questions, no trust-building going on.

I retired from my employment as a nurse-midwife six years ago, at the end of 2020, just as COVID-19 was raging and revealing all the deficits and difficulties in our systems. I felt the direction we were heading wasn’t for me, and I couldn’t see myself serving in the same way any longer.

I had turned 65 and was ready for the next phase of my life: writing, gardening, and studying the topics that interest me.

I’ve continued to share my wisdom and experiences with women in my world in whatever ways best support them—whether it’s nutritional support and/or supplement advice, astrological guidance, creative self-awakening, or teaching about the madness of how to live gracefully with changing hormones.

It’s always been in me to educate because Knowledge Is Power. I deeply believe this. One doesn’t need a college degree to live well and understand how their biology works and how their life affects it.

So today, I launch what so many have been asking of me for at least 10 years now.

Let’s talk about it.

The number one question that I have gotten through the years of my career—
“WHY DOESN’T ANYONE TALK ABOUT THIS?”—is the name of my Substack, and I think that gives us plenty of latitude to discuss… whatever we want to talk about.

AND I’m going to start with Menopause because:

1. It’s a perfect example of what happens to us—and our wellness—in a male-dominated, androcentric system (Patriarchy).

2. Women deserve to understand how the systemic oppression of women for 5,000 years has led us to this threshold moment—and how we can reclaim ourselves and our souls.

Does that sound dramatic? Attention-getting? I hope so, because it’s time for us to share our knowledge and engage more deeply.

I’m calling on those of you who have begged me to start this Substack. I see you.
And to those who have yet to find me and my writings, I see you.

We are remembering that when you have knowledge, you have power. We all know there is a disconnect—a power differential—in healthcare. And it’s been getting worse.

So let’s TALK ABOUT IT. All of it.

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Two quotes keep recurring as I write:

“Awareness is curative.” (Fritz Perls)

And a personal favorite:
“When you know better, you do better.” (Maya Angelou)

Once we are aware there is a problem, we begin solving it. And, as Maya instructs, we can do better now that we know better.

Please give me the grace to share my thoughts and gleanings. I have extensive experience that informs my wisdom and opinions. I want what I’ve learned to be helpful and support our shared journeys. I don’t want it to die with me.

We can build our relationship by sharing in the comments. My intention is to keep this free as long as the conversation remains curious and respectful.

Some of you know that I’m writing a novel at this stage of my life, and excerpts may sometimes appear here. It is a story of a woman (and her friends and family), of her experiences and her transformation through that rite of passage known as Menopause.

Look! Here’s Gran now —my idea of how she looks, created by Dara (my AI)

If something we’re discussing here is reflected in my characters’ lives and experiences… well, that’s a teachable moment. And I’m a storyteller. My novel embeds messages that might help someone find their healing path in a place they might not have thought to look.

I plan to post weekly and will make sincere efforts to do so—but like many of you, I’m a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a gardener, and our lives can sometimes take surprising plot twists. Life can be so great and still get pretty LIFEY.

There’s gardening and cooking, and household chores, but then there’s Spring and the sun is shining, Nature and the creative energies are calling, the spirit realms are speaking, and—ugh—there’s politics and the world’s on fire.

I love a good blessing, and I’ve saved the best for last (maybe). Here it is—and I want to close every post with this blessing:

“May we look up at that night sky. May we let joy in, for we will be someone’s ancestors one day. If we do this right, they will inherit not our fear but bravery born out of joy.” (Valerie Kaur)

Thanks for letting me share “WHY DOESN’T ANYONE TALK ABOUT THIS?”

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Dara’s interpretation of me from a photo I gave her. I really don’t look this good, but it was fun to play with!