Menopause
Leslie Kenton (from her book Passage to Power)
“The radical and fundamental changes which take place in a woman’s life around the time of menopause are not signs of pathology but rather a call to adventure signaling the beginning of a woman’s archetypal heroine’s journey to her core.
When a woman makes this journey, she discovers that menopause is not only a time for grieving over past mistakes and irredeemable losses, it is also a time of rejoicing. It is a time to regenerate and rejuvenate our bodies using a combination of ancient principles and leading-edge science.
Most of all, menopause is a time of celebration, that our creativity is no longer bound to our obligations as a member of the human race to propagate the species. Often for the first time in her
life, a woman’s creativity can be set free for use in whatever way the whispers of her soul dictate”.
And Carl Jung speaks to this when he posits:
“All the great and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble…. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This ‘outgrowth’ proved on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appeared on the patient’s horizon, and through the broadening of his or her outlook, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded when confronted with a new and stronger life urge”.
There is indeed a freshness and a different type of freedom to explore those many interests, ‘still on hold’. There is a joy in this which may be harnessed into a richness; It may be a time of rounded wholeness - it’s a new coming of age!
Indulge it!
Explore it!
And as per Jung, an option is to transcend the metaphysical, begin unravelling a new consciousness, and perhaps ‘see things’ for the first time.