Been a long time, been a long time…

Hi my friends over here at Menopausal Mommy. I have been absent for almost a year. Things in my life have been, well, challenging, shifting and I’ve been waiting to start writing again until I felt like I could bring an open heart to y’all. Just know, it’s been a season of great change, great personal growth, and a lot of stuff that affects my Menopausal Mommyness. But I’m here. And I’m writing and listening…

Let’s speak about Menopausal Mommy. Because when I started writing this blog I was more like Pre-Peri-Menopause. I thought I was starting the journey when I lost my cycle for around 8 months, only to have it come back like a freight train. But all the other signs and symptoms are there: hot ‘blooms’ (a better term than flashes), night sweats, mood swings, etc. Of course they’re coming on. I’m 54. I’ve been thinking lately about having a baby at 50 and what having a baby does to any woman who has birthed a human out of their body, whether naturally or by C-section. This is not to put more emphasis on the birthing aspect of mothering, as any mother is mother. There is just some toll this whole physical enterprise takes and we don’t talk about it enough. Like we don’t talk about Menopause, well, at all. So let’s talk.

I had a baby literally cut out of my body at 50. Granted, I’m a very healthy human and I had an easy pregnancy. But I didn’t plan on the C Section. I have loads of old old trauma. Now, in retrospect, after having gone through the last 3 years of my life excavating old wounds, triggers, and finding my way back from the darkness to the light, I can see how opening up my body and pulling a human being out of my womb may have literally and figuratively opened up old wounds. Don’t you think that’s possible, and not just poetic? Then, soon thereafter, my father died. And so much of my denial about my own issues is wrapped up with my relationship with my father (which was, at the end of his life, wonderful, thank God/dess). Then the world exploded. Then my trauma just came roaring out, triggered by everything, creating a path of wreckage. I wasn’t myself. Or I was fully myself. But I hurt people and I lost things very important to me, that I now am working on seeing as essential to my growth.

This birth/excavation of trauma/isolating spurned by the Pandemic/grief stuck and then pouring out of me – it all coincided with this onset of menopause symptoms. Anyone out there have similar experiences? And I found myself isolating and depressed. Feeling like the only part time single mother in a coparenting relationship at 54, tired, cranky, depressed, getting no sleep, waking up bathed in sweat and having to carry a fan around from the flushes that kept happening. I long for a community of women around me who are doing their best to raise their kids in a single parent home (regardless of the relationship with the other parent, if there is one, because I know a few single foster mothers and they have my vote as the bravest women in the world). I long for a community of over 50 year old women with PreK children. I long for neighbors with 4 year olds where I can go sit on porches with swings with other women and drink iced tea and compare notes on parenting. I feel half the time like I’m flailing.

Menopausal Mommy was a monikor I made out of bravado. Now it’s just truth. I long for connection. We all do. Isn’t that the human condition? To want to belong? Where are the conversations about menopause? My mother, god bless her, never warned me. Nobody talks about this. I’m looking up every book on the symptoms. I’m calling my gynecologist with ‘is this part of the journey here?’ questions. I have to pee every 20 minutes at night. Is that part of menopause? I cry all the time. Is that part of menopause? I stopped eating and lost 10 pounds in 6 weeks. Is this part of menopause. I’m dehydrated because all I drink is coffee and I know I need to pound water. Is this part of…

I started this blog to find similar women out there struggling and celebrating the journey of aging and mommy hood. Or who bring whatever part of the journey of being a woman in this world to the table. I started this blog as an expression of honesty and humor. It’s taken me a year to get my humor back, but I’m back.

Now what? I wrote the book. It’s 66,000 words. I’ve been lazy and haven’t shopped it to agents, so that’s the next step. I have a PATREON page for my writing and music. Basically a place I can connect directly with fans of my music and writing where I give glimpses into the creative process, share my new songs by streaming or by video. Share my poetry (I’m working on an MFA in Creative Writing in Poetry right now). And I”ll be serializing the book there for my Patreon family. I won’t be publishing any other part of it widely as I really would love to get the book published by a publisher, not self published. If you’re interested in reading it in serial fashion, come on over to Patreon. It’s a nominal fee a month to have access to everything. I’ll be starting next week, bit by bit.

In the meantime, thanks for waiting on me to come back. I have lots more to say but I’ll save it for the next few posts. I’ve got a bunch of poems I’ve written about motherhood that I’ll be posting as well.

So carry on. Much love and gratitude for being here. And if you like this blog, please share it to all you think may like to be part of the conversation.

xo

Amy