Menopause is often spoken about through the language of symptoms. Hot flushes, disrupted sleep, changing hormones, brain fog, mood changes, aching bodies. These experiences are real, and for some women they can be difficult enough to affect work, relationships and everyday life. Having good medical information and access to appropriate care matters.
But menopause is not only something happening to our hormones. It arrives at a particular time in our lives, and for many of us it can coincide with changes that reach much further than the body.
Relationships may be shifting. Children may need us differently, or begin to need us less. Parents may be ageing and requiring more care. Work that once felt meaningful may no longer fit in quite the same way. Our bodies are changing, sometimes in ways we welcome and sometimes in ways we find difficult. The roles we have carried for years can begin to feel heavier, less certain, or simply no longer ours.
In the middle of all this, questions can begin to surface.
What do I need now? What am I tired of carrying? Where have I been giving more than I have? What still matters to me? What doesn't fit anymore? Who am I becoming as this part of my life changes?
Perhaps this is why I find it helpful to think about menopause as a rite of passage — not as an idea that needs to be imposed on every woman's experience, but as another way of understanding the magnitude of this transition.
A rite of passage marks a movement from one part of life into another. It acknowledges that change is taking place, that something familiar may be ending, and that we may need time before we understand what is emerging in its place. Menopause can contain something of this in a very tangible way. The menstrual cycle that has accompanied us for decades begins to change and eventually ends. Our bodies behave differently. And sometimes the ways we have organised our lives, relationships and identities begin to shift alongside them.
There can be grief in that. There can also be relief. For some women there is anger, confusion or a sense of no longer recognising themselves. For others there is an unexpected clarity, a stronger awareness of their limits, or less willingness to keep doing things simply because they have always done them. Often several of these experiences live alongside one another.
This is where I am interested in menopause not only as a biological transition, but as a time when we might become more attentive to our own lives.
Not because menopause automatically makes us wiser, freer or more powerful. There is no particular version of the menopausal woman that we need to become. But change can disturb what has become habitual, and that disturbance can sometimes allow questions we have postponed to become harder to ignore.
Perhaps you notice where you are exhausted from caring for everyone else. Perhaps your tolerance for a relationship, situation or way of working has changed. Perhaps you find yourself wanting more solitude, more creativity, different kinds of friendship, or simply more space. You may feel drawn inward for a while, or find yourself wanting to move decisively towards something new.
And you may not know yet.
I think there is value in allowing that uncertainty too. We don't always have to turn change immediately into a lesson, an opportunity or a new version of ourselves. Sometimes we need time to live inside the questions before we know what they are asking of us.
For me, this is one of the gifts of approaching menopause as a life passage. It allows us to care for what is happening physically while also paying attention to what may be changing emotionally, relationally and within our sense of ourselves.
Our bodies deserve care. That might mean rest, movement, food that supports us, attention to our nervous systems, medical advice or treatment where we need it. But perhaps the wider transition deserves care as well: conversations in which we can speak honestly, time to reflect, companionship with other women, and space to notice what we are leaving behind and what we may be moving towards.
There is an old archetype of the older, wise woman that appears in many stories and traditions. I am interested in her, but not because I think we need to become her. What interests me is the possibility she represents: a woman whose value is not dependent on youth, fertility, pleasing others or remaining endlessly available. A woman whose experience counts.
Perhaps there is something worth reclaiming in that.
Not a new ideal of the powerful menopausal woman. Not another expectation that this stage of life must be transformative or liberating. Simply the possibility that ageing does not only mean becoming less. There can also be depth, discernment, freedom, creativity and a different relationship with ourselves.
This is not necessarily a time of diminishment. It can also be a time of deepening.
And perhaps that is why menopause is a transition worth marking. Not because you need a ceremony in order for it to matter, but because there can be value in stopping long enough to acknowledge: something in my life is changing.
For some women that might happen quietly, alone. For others it might happen through conversation, writing, creativity, a gathering of women, or a ritual that gives shape to something that can otherwise be difficult to name.
Menopause is not only a medical event. It is also a life passage. And like other significant passages in our lives, perhaps it deserves more than simply being managed. It deserves our curiosity, our care, and enough space to discover what this particular change means for us.
If you would like to read further
There are many different ways of thinking about menopause, from medical and physiological perspectives to psychological, cultural and spiritual ones. These are some of the books that have accompanied or influenced my own thinking:
The Wisdom of Menopause — Christiane Northrup — a well-known exploration of menopause that combines discussion of physical change with a much broader psychological and spiritual interpretation of midlife.
Women Who Run With the Wolves — Clarissa Pinkola Estés — not a book specifically about menopause, but a collection of stories and reflections on instinct, creativity and women's inner lives that can offer rich companionship during periods of change.
Second Spring — Kate Codrington — an accessible and holistic exploration of menopause that looks beyond symptoms to the emotional and personal changes that can accompany this stage of life.
The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power — Barbara G. Walker — an exploration of the cultural and mythological figure of the older woman and the meanings attached to ageing, wisdom and female power.
Wise Power — Alexandra Pope & Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer — a psycho-spiritual interpretation of menopause that approaches this stage as a significant transition in a woman's inner and outer life.
Irida Hysenbelli — Rite of Passage Doula