Judith Boice - Menopause with Science and Soul: A Guidebook for Navigating the Journey

Copyright 2007 by Judith Boice

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except brief excerpts for the purpose of review, without written permission of the publisher.

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The Red RoomThe Hysterectomy reproduced by permission from Clarissa Pinkola Ests, Ph.D., 1979, 2006. All rights including but not limited to performance, derivative, adaptation, musical, audio and recording, illustrative, theatrical, film, pictorial, reprint, and electronic are reserved. For permissions: .

Menstrual cycle chart [, fig. 3-1] from Danforths Obstetrics and Gynecology, 6/E, Edited by James R. Scott, Philip J. Di Saia, Charles B. Hammond, and William N. Spellacy. Copyright 1990 by J. B. Lippincott Company. Reprinted by permission of Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

We awaken in Christs body [Symeon the Theologian, ] from The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacrd Poetry, Edited by Stephen Mitchell. Copyright 1989 by Stephen Mitchell. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Instructions for walking meditation, , from Dont Just Do Something, Sit There: A Mindfulness Retreat by Sylvia Boorstein. Copyright 1996 by Sylvia Boorstein. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Menopause with science and soul : a guidebook for navigating the journey / Judith L. Boice.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-77821-5
1. Menopause. 2. Middle-aged womenHealth and hygiene. 3. MenopauseMiscellanea. I. Boice, Judith L. II. Title.

RG186.M486 2007
618.175dc22
2006035662

v3.1

For the blood that flows through us, linking us back to the sourceof all Mystery. For the women who have served that river ofblood, and kept its wild, exuberant currents alive by welcomingits passage through their wombs, their lives, and their souls.

I am deeply grateful to the wise women whose interviews appear in this book. I appreciate your generosity in sharing both your personal wisdom and the pearls from your lineages to light the way for those of us who follow.

Thank you, River Woman, for being a Way Shower for this project. I delight in your ongoing presence in my life. My deep appreciation goes to Kathleen Luiten, Ann Marie Holmes, Shelley Warren, and Laura Rose for your skillful comments on the manuscript-in-process. Thanks to Jo Ann Deck, Lisa Westmoreland, and the crew at Ten Speed Press for your support in birthing this book. Thanks to Vincent and Sebastian, my exuberant sons, for (mostly) tolerating my long hours at the computer.

I want to take you on a journey, she whispers, motioning from the boat.

But where are you taking me? I ask hesitantly, eyeing this womans dark, tattered clothes, her loosely braided gray hair, and the bone beads jangling on her chest.

Why have you come to the river? she asks.

I am annoyed that she answers my question with one of her own.

I came for refreshment.

You have come to be renewed, she corrects me. Her hand wraps around a rope on the bank of the river. Her grip is steady, patient. I realize I wont be able to decline the invitation. I could turn away from the rivertemporarily. Eventually the river would come to reclaim everything: my home, my possessions, my life, my soul.

I step into the boat and sit on the aluminum seat of the bow. I want to face the river, to see what is ahead, but even more I am fascinated with this woman, so I sit facing her. I watch the way she deftly throws the rope into the boat. I observe how she digs an oar into the sand at the rivers edge and pushes the boat from shore. Her muscular arms surprise me.

Every movement reflects her intimate knowledge of this stretch of the river. I watch her eyebrows lift slightly in anticipation of a rapid; she instinctively digs an oar into the current to round a bend. Every muscle moves with precision, guided by familiarity and

What? I pause, scrying her face, her thin-skinned, blue-veined hands. She moves with patience and weighted wisdom. Yes, wisdom, I realize. She moves with the certainty of someone who has traveled this path many times. She reminds me of the elderly woman who has tended children all her life and can anticipate each developmental stage of an infant, a toddler, a preschooler. Her charges, though, are much older. This is the childs development in reverse. I am embarking on the journey of aging. The baby is preparing for life; I am preparing for death. The revelation startles me. The baby accrues life, gathering the bulk of flesh and experience around itself. I am dropping all that is extraneous. This is aging in reverse. I am entering the infancy of cronehood.

Suddenly, in her presence, I feel young and protected. My thigh muscles relax a bit against the seat. I can shift my gaze to the banks of the river and appreciate the scent of pine trees and patterns of river rock strewn in the currents. Yes, this will be a journey, I decide. Yes, this River Woman knows the currents. She will be my guide. My shoulders recede from my ears. Yes, I decide. I can trust her.

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Ests is an author, poet, and psychoanalyst. Her books include Women Who Run With the Wolves and The Faithful Gardener.

The Red RoomThe Hysterectomy

Gone is the tiny room they came to.

From far star roofs

they once jumped, giggling.

Tiny travelers with no baggage

came here,

hoping to find all they needed.

And I brought some here safely.

Now, the waiting room is gone.

This station is closed.

But a thousand other rooms

that once seemed sealed with steel bands

I find now are only held shut with cellophane.

I find that there are rooms between

rooms in me,

and they can open fully.

If, as in the days of my childbearing years,

I let this ancient rope

with child attached grow in me, then when ready,