For some of us, we’ve been so busy running everyone else’s lives that allowing ourselves to receive love is one of the greatest challenges we face in the Menopause journey.
By closing ourselves off to our own desires and wishes for our own lives, a lot of us have blocked ourselves from receiving love.
We’ve been so busy and so involved in other people’s lives that now that we’ve suddenly arrived at a place that’s reserved for ourselves we don’t know what to do next.
This place is called menopause.
So why is it that we don’t seem to notice that the journey of menopause is leading us to a spaciousness we never knew was available?
It seems to me that in this day and age, everyone and their cat is talking about ‘self love’ and ‘self care’ but nobody seems to understand that the love we crave comes from within not from with OUT.
It’s no wonder we’re all so confused or frustrated about loving ourselves enough to change (said me in breathy, whispery, hushed tones whilst sitting crossed legged on the floor draped in crushed purple velvet).
I say <raspberry> to the notion that we can live our entire life loving everyone else up and then at 45 or 50 or whenever we go off to the occasional spa or massage or a boozy lunch or even a week in Bali with the girls… we’re fixed. I’m all for that stuff but it’s not going to help me through menopause.
I don’t think they’d let me move into the day spa (or Bali for that matter) for 6-14 years, depending on the time it takes.
If you’re like me you may have survived long enough in this world to reach menopause. In my lifetime I’ve spent many years caring for others but in recent years I’ve had to come to the understanding that if I keep doing that I’ll pay a high price – the high price of my freedom (not that I knew what that was until recently).
Often, for this generation of women born in the 60s and 70s love was given or withheld, to control us and have power over us. I hear it a lot. We weren’t shown how to care for ourselves in a loving and nurturing way. It was just the way it was. It never seemed safe for me to receive love from some people. So I got used to not receiving and not acknowledging my need for love.
At some point in our journey through menopause, we start to acknowledge that we, too, want and need to be loved. And in my humble opinion (usually not very humble) we can feel pretty damn awkward with this need.
Where the hell do we go with it? What on earth do we do with that? Who can give us love now? How can we know who’s safe and who’s in it for themselves?
For me, it was as if I had this constant feeling of being trapped, frightened, and unable to care for myself.
We can learn. The starting point is surrender to our desire to change. As human beings, we have this ongoing and everpresent need to be nurtured and loved. The journey through menopause is one way that we grow confident in our ability to change and to take care of ourselves.
We may need to get angry first. Later, we can be grateful to the people who have shown us what we don’t want, the ones who have assisted us in the process of believing we deserve love and the ones who’ve come into our lives to love us.
We are opening. Sometimes it feels too difficult. Other times it seems easy. Our heart is opening up to the love that is within us.
Surrender to yourself.
Surrender to love, without control or shoulds or shouldn’ts. Surrender to love for yourself.
Now what? Well, I made you a prayer/poem to read. Actually, learn it off by heart
Say this to yourself (often). Print it. Copy it to your phone. Write it out. Whatever you need.
p.s. If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up to Michelle’s MENO System workshop that launches on 18 July.
In the free workshop she’ll be sharing a practical 5-step process you can use to thrive in this season of your life.
How to get rid of stubborn belly fat. The right way to deal with hot flashes, mood swings, low energy, lack of sleep and much, much more. Sign up. You know want to.
We ?love sharing stuff ?… And we’d love you even more if you shared our stuff too! Clickety click to share to your favourite social outlet. Hell, why not throw caution to the wind and share everywhere!