Perimenopause, Sexuality, and Aging- Thoughts on Dismantling Conditioned Thinking In Practice
I will be 50 this August. Honestly, I wouldn’t think about it much if people didn’t keep asking me about it. And yes, I am in perimenopause, which I probably wouldn’t think about much either except that when I say I feel fantastic in perimenopause, I get a lot of advice about symptoms I don’t have and horrible things that will happen that just haven’t hit me yet. Even as a woman with strong self-esteem that I have earned and owned, even as someone who trusts experience over cultural expectation, I find the negative bias about my aging process challenging.
When I look at my life and the cycles and initiations my body has given me- the way my period started the day my baby brother was born; the way my pregnancies and births and the feeding of my babies gave me a trust in my physical instincts I did not know I had; even the crushing breakdown into mysterious chronic illness and crashing of my whole metabolic system; healing from that illness; and at midlife, in my forties, unearthing a fullness in my life, my capacity to live, and in my sexuality I never had the opportunity to own as my body simultaneously lets go of its fertility. If I were to take the beliefs handed to me at face value, I would be viewing menopause as decline, because I would be accepting the idea that my fertility is the governing force of my vitality and sexuality. But simply because my experience of my body’s cycles seems to revolve around my fertility as a cis- gender woman, I do not believe this is true. I think my biology is one part of the story. Menses, pregnancy, childbirth, the postnatal period, and menopause are all powerful passages. So is the choice not to have children. So is wanting children and not having them. So is adopting. So is having an abortion. So is the process of gender-affirming hormonal treatment or surgery. So is the onset of puberty in any gender. So is andropause. So is dying. Sexuality is one powerful aspect of life force. Sexuality is sacred energy. It does not need to move into sexual action to be alive or valid- it is also creative energy and the nurturing, sensual world.
However, I do think it is important to talk about sexuality in regard to menopause in our present culture. Because the messages those of us who are experiencing this get is that all of this energy is about babies. That sexuality is about and revolves around procreation. That viewpoint is inherently harmful. It prioritizes heteronormative sex as the only legitimate sex, prioritizes youth, cuts out trans women entirely, and gives those of us born with uteruses the message that our whole lives and our entire sensual being are about reproduction. This dramatically impacts self-image. And it cuts us off from our potential as connected and connecting beings. I notice the way this view affects my sense of myself as I age. I notice that given a world that seems bent on insisting that I will be less, it becomes more and more crucial that I utilize practice to work through the ways these messages might manifest.
Our hormonal systems don’t exist by themselves. NICE, discovered by Harvard and other Boston-area hospitals, stands for neuro-immuno-cutaneous-endocrine network, which describes the interactions of our neurological, immune, skin, and hormonal interactions. So social stress- and all of the other kinds of stress we encounter in our lives- has a huge effect on the way our systems function. In fact, what have been considered “female” hormonal fluctuations are actually symptoms of stress. When your system is in constant sympathetic activation, meaning the fight or flight response is always on, your body will convert the precursors of your main “sex hormones” into cortisol. Meaning: your body’s sloughing/ releasing hormone and/or your happy, energizing, connecting hormones will not happen and instead your adrenal glands will keep pouring out stress hormones.
So, if you feel hijacked by your hormones, regardless of gender, you are right- but it’s not irrational “female” hormones, it’s your stress hormones robbing you of your natural regulation messengers.
What does this mean? It means that self-care, in terms of you having autonomy over your space, your body, and your life, is paramount to your health on every level. Think on that when you think it’s “just” hormones, or when you think saying “no” would be an imposition. Or when negative or confining social messages feel like they are eating you: They probably are. Negative self-talk and shame about our bodies or our sexuality has a similar effect.
We- and other closely related primates like bonobos- make sexual contact not just to reproduce, but to make peace, to caretake, for the sake of pleasure, and as an act of connection. And more than anything, we live our lives not just to reproduce but to create, connect, love, and evolve. I think that when we limit our view of our sexuality to reproduction, we simultaneously limit our view of our capacity to live. And we limit our capacity to feel and utilize this sacred energy. And this disrupts every system in our bodies.
Yoga is about connecting to this life energy, with the understanding that it is already part of us. The disciplines of yoga give tangible ways to tap this. They teach us that our body’s messages- in pleasures, symptoms, changes, and even struggles- are instinctive parts of us asking for reconnection. There are lots of moments that this is not an easeful thing. In moments of rejection or overwhelm, or when I make a mistake and I am tasked with examining and sitting with a shadowy part of me in order to be accountable, it can be challenging to listen to the instincts that I feel have sent me off-kilter. The truth, though, is that the challenges are opportunities to draw deeper into practice and to bring practice into life. When I come back to my practice in the space of challenge, whether that challenge is a physical symptom or an emotional response, I find that I have the capacity to shift. And that it is my instincts that have brought me to a place where I can open towards that shift. My body teaches me this, too- when the cushioning hormones come off premenstrually or in perimenopause when I feel upheaval when I am ovulating, I know I am hearing things from my body’s messengers that finally have a chance to speak. They are asking me to reconnect with myself, to listen, and to act to restructure the internal dialogue that is creating reactions that disrupt me.
One thing I do notice moving into the second half of my life, is that awareness of moving towards my eventual end makes me appreciate the beauty of my temporary life and the experiences my body gets to have. It doesn’t feel like decline. It feels like evolution.
copyright 2020 by Deborah King