Menopause and Infertility

So hey there loves.
Yesterday was menopause day, aka CD 366. One full year with no period.

The past year has been filled with chin pimples and fading hair, skin that is thinning everywhere, showing the impact of gravity and estrogen loss.

As someone who lived, it seemed, cycle to cycle for so many years.  A late cycle would bring hope then torment and sadness. The year before last was a year of long periods, of wondering more than once if maybe, just maybe........ but then a panic would set it, what if? and what if I had a loss? And I think that might have happened but I did not check with sticks or temping... just waited things out.

Once, my first long cycle, I was sure I was pregnant. And the mixture of emotions was profound.  Amazement.  Fury. Hope. Fear. and then, when the bleeding started, such immense loss.  And then, the next time, I mostly felt loss, that I was officially out of the zone of possibility, no way for a good outcome even if... and to feel my body changing, to see it changing.... well, some changes are easier than others.

So today marks perhaps the first day of not wondering.
A feeling of in between. No longer that.  Not yet wholly and fully this.

Maiden, mother, crone. and the middle one holy moly mo-cro.
I am both.

not a day goes by where I don't feel wonder, even if it is wonder and madness.

So here we are.  in the middle of the middle.

Parenting and anxiety

I wish I could scribble in this space, a big wad of crossing lines of different thicknesses, thorny with barbs, wire maybe, all tangled up.
My anxiety
and Della's
and the non linear cycles they create.

Parenting is hard when it is easy. We have the most wonderful spirited, smart, sensitive child.
And those very things also predispose to anxiety, and holy fuck
hers and mine tango
and
it sucks beyond measure.

My panic disorder is finally ordered thanks to medications and EFT, TFT, EMDR and WTF.
But my child shares my triggers, has her own, and her anxiety triggers mine.
So off we go, into some form of hell.

A new therapist for her, interview on the 15th of April.
A new therapist for me, April 9th.
Empathy and compassion
exhaustion and blues
my adrenal glands probably look like craisins.

Got some great advice I am trying to apply: observe not absorb.

but it is like a tuning fork is struck and we share a harmonic frequency,
and the ground starts to shake, and the skies open, and I feel lost in it, to it.

***
so here we are.  thriving so much of the time, but the time when it's hard is like an eclipse when the ancients thought the world was ending even if the harvest had been mighty.