Hello ladies! WOW!! The response to my Facebook post regarding my journey with menopause has convinced me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, there is a need to talk about this subject together as a community!! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR ENCOURAGING WORDS OF SUPPORT!!
As we move forward, I want to say that this is my journey. It doesn’t make it right, it just makes it mine. The way I went about it may not resonate with you and that’s ok!! My goal in sharing is to just walk you through my process of information gathering, deciding about my course of action, the steps I took, why I took them and the ultimate outcome I’ve experienced.
As I look back on the last 3 years, it has been a journey of incredible highs and lows, ups and downs and everything in between. My poor husband, as many of you know, I’ve known him since I was 14. He was my tennis instructor, I was his student. Our first date was a banana split at DQ because I threw a bag of balls to his students to help him out. Fell in love with his legs first, the rest grew on me. My kids always say, “Mom, geese, TMI”!!
We married young. I was 20, yes, I know, especially today THAT’S YOUNG!! After 32 years of marriage, I can honestly say, he’s my best friend and he’s stayed by my side through puberty and now the other end of that spectrum, the “change of life”. Kind of a double whammy, poor guy!! Are you feeling for him yet…you should. Do you remember puberty? Do you remember crying at the drop of a hat, for really ridiculous reasons and having very little control over it? Do you remember feeling anxious, foggy in the head, did body image mean a lot to you? Ha…if any of those things ring true in your memory banks…I hate to be the barer of bad news, but you’ll get to do lots of it all over again. Our bodies during puberty activate all 7 of our amazing hormones that prepare us for our childbearing years. (Quick side note to those readers out there who have not had children, but wanted to and those who chose to not go down that path, LOVE TO YOU!!) Menopause is our bodies response to no longer being in our child bearing years.
I’m an AVID READER!! I’ve always been that way, so my journey began with a book. This link will take you to the book. http://www.colganinstitute.com/store/p9/The_Perimenopause_Solution.html I know this Dr. personally. I’ve spent literally hours in his presence, because he provides continued education seminars on nutrition, that I’ve attended over the years. We became really great friends. One day we got into a conversation and he asked me how my transition of life was going. I was a little surprised because I hadn’t mentioned anything about the fact that I hadn’t had a period in about 6 months to him. I asked him, “How did you know that about me”? He said, “My wife and I have successfully supported hundreds of women through the transition and I can tell based on how your body has changed since the last time I saw you”. Of course I was intrigued because he was able to draw that conclusion simply by looking at me fully clothed. He shared his book with me and strongly encouraged me to read it. Whenever I am in the presence of brilliance, I listen and this guy is BRILLIANT!! I read it several times. I treated it like a text book. I highlighted, I dogged eared, I wrote in the columns, I DEVOURED IT!! It just made so much sense to me!!
That’s the first step. EDUCATION!! To become our own best advocates, we must be educated about what is going on with our bodies.