One of my girlfriends is newly in the throes of perimenopause. And she has just experienced her first full-on Menopause Moment. Yep, one of those mental lapses that previously would have been simply unthinkable and would cause a woman to doubt her very sanity. I think that we can safely assure her that it won’t be her last.
Just a little background on my friend to put this all in context. A (for Anonymous, which is how she wants to be known just now) is a CEO, multitasking go-getter who still finds time to play and hang out with friends in between running her business and her bicoastal life. I think of her as one of the most balanced and together people I know. Which is why her story of her Menopause Moment is all the more hilarious and revelatory.
Menopause doesn’t discriminate and it takes no prisoners. It affects every woman in her own unique way while providing universal Menopause experiences; those Menopause Moments that remind us we are in the second half of our lives.
Okay, enough background info – back to the story. Our heroine has just finished closing up her East Coast house for the winter and is embarking on a circuitous journey to her West Coast home via New York, Miami, Kansas, Atlanta and Seattle. She’s all packed and is on a last minute business call as she climbs into the taxi for the airport.
A couple of minutes of driving and her phone loses service. She’s puzzled. Usually she has such great service with her network all the way from home to airport. She starts to dial again, when she realizes that the phone in her hand is not her cell phone. It is the cordless HOME phone and she has just taken it with her. After a few minutes’ consternation, she begins to laugh out loud and calls to tell me all about it, proclaiming, “I now understand how women put the mail in the freezer.”
So hey, no harm, no foul. She’s sending the phone back to a neighbor to put back in her house. The best thing about all this? She knew that it’s NORMAL and she LAUGHED at it. Because, girlfriends, that is all we can do in the face of such disorienting change. Like the calypso poet / singer Jimmy Buffett says, “Breathe in. Breathe out. Move on.” Words to live by now and for the next 50.
Lynette Sheppard, RN, writes and moderates the Menopause Goddess Blog – www.menopausegoddessblog.org – where women share their wisdom for the pivotal journeys through menopause, midlife, and the Second Half
http://www.menopausegoddessblog.org/