I'm done.

Happy end of the winter term! It's been real. Every September, I'm grateful that the summer is over and this summer I was even more grateful because My Kids Are Back In School! #nomorehomeschool And since I don't teach in the fall, I made big plans: learn guitar, speak Spanish... you know, small things. Anyway. We all know how that goes. If you don't schedule it, it won't happen. I didn't schedule it.

Instead I worked on professional development, which also synchronized with my emotional development. I'm a fellow in the 2021-22 ELATES program, which is a leadership training workshop for women faculty in STEM fields. We have three week-long meetings and I got to meet some incredible and inspiring women who have struggled and persevered as only women in STEM can. I will write more about my experience and what I've learned after the program is over. But for now, it has given me perspective, focus, and insight into what I can work on, what I am good at, and how I can share my gifts.

On the personal front- I have been struggling. I do not like to talk about private things in a public forum, but this needs to be said. I am not alone in this space and I am done being quiet about this shit. So here goes.

“I want Papa.”

“Why?”

“Because he doesn’t yell at us.”

I have the yellies. I have them All The Time, between 6 pm and 10 pm, during the only real close family time that I have with my three children and when my partner is still at work teaching courses at the University. It’s gotten worse, and I suspected quarantine fatigue. In March 2020, my children came home from school and didn’t leave me alone for the next 16 months. We all started working from home, carving out space in basements, closets, bedrooms, and kitchens, and I began accumulating rage, grief, anxiety, and overwhelm. I started sweatily catastrophizing at 2 am every night. My skin broke out. Intimacy fled, hugs were scarce. My concentration and memory fractured. I gained weight. Reading about real life and humans was impossible; dragons and aliens populated my Kindle. My colleagues gently told me that I lacked composure. I perfected a sublime margarita. I bought a spin bike and treadmill and finally starting using my Peloton subscription. I took workshops in non-violent communication.

I was 45 years old and felt like I was going crazy. All my friends clamored SAME. Except, when pandemic-related shit started settling down, they found equilibrium and I added joint pain, lethargy, and headaches to my list of fuckery. And even though I was using all the filters on Zoom, my beautiful face did not please me anymore. I bought makeup and looked up Instagram tutorials for people who don’t wear makeup. I found a mature lady on YouTube who explained how to hide my drooping eyelids. In one of her videos, she interviewed a gynecologist called… Menopause Barbie. I know. I watched all her videos anyway because MB is an effervescent Black medical doctor who described Every Single Fuckery that I was experiencing. Apparently, I’m not crazy. I am peri-menopausal, and women of color enter the journey earlier. So 45 is not “too young” as my 30-nothing-year-old White ob-gyn had told me.

I went to see a different doctor. And another. And another. No, I do not want anti-depressants. No, I do not want sleeping pills. No, I will not stop running and lifting heavy weights. Ok, I’ll go see a dermatologist. And a pelvic floor specialist. Not one of the doctors I went to would broach the topic of menopause, and my own research yielded far more robust solutions than those that they offered. If half the human race will spend just about half their lives in menopause, why are doctors so ignorant about this? Why didn’t anyone tell me what was going to happen to my mind and body? My non-menopausal friends are excited to have hot flashes because they think that they will not be cold anymore. Most people think they will get breast cancer if they take hormone therapy. We are all led to believe that our lives are basically over and we will become obsolete at menopause. There are so many myths around this journey. I waded through many of them.

It has been 2 years since I started feeling crazy. I’m still grappling with it, but now I have named it, acknowledged that it’s happening, and meditated the hell out of my 2 am catastrophes. Nothing has really changed, except my attitude, which is everything. I am still not reading about real people and real things, but I can now credit that to the M-word, as well as the general shit state of this planet, dismal diversity in STEM, anti-vax activists, the prison-industrial complex, school start times, climate change, aging parents, and that I never want to wear hard pants again. Like most things, menopause is intersectional, and I really cannot attribute my symptoms of malaise and pain to just one thing.

I know that I am not alone – half of us will go through menopause - so we should talk about this with each other, our partners, daughters and sons openly, factually, and joyfully. There are days that I feel almost normal, giddy with the idea that I am finally getting started, because what other people think will not stop me from being me. It is such a relief to just leave when I want. Everything that I have learned and worked towards for almost five decades has been a glorious prelude to my real story, the one that I am going to tell now with more humor and honesty than ever.

Stay tuned...