The Moment of "Oh My God"
I was watching the most recent episode of “Blackish” when the character Rainbow woke up in a middle of the night moment of “Oh My God”. She was soaking wet, her pillow was wet, her bedding and pajamas were wet and she had no idea where it had come from. Now I don’t remember if she said, “Oh my God” or “what the hell” but she in that scene took me back to the origin of Hormones and High Heels, why I even decided to explore this time of “Oh my God”, what made addressing it so urgent, this subject matter so important, and how and why Hormones and High Heels even got its’ name.
Although it is simplistically known as “The Change”, this thing is so huge in its life altering and life consuming way of being, that it is equivalent to a punishable crime to ignore it and/or leave it unattended for the lives of women.
Later in the episode, after pulling her head out of the freezer and her body from the welcomed cool of the refrigerator following the onslaught of a hot flash, Rainbow expressed something that I came to the realization of as I began this journey which is the lack of literature, conversation, and information about perimenopause and menopause in general. And again, I remembered my goal and purpose for creating a platform for mature and maturing women to discuss and share their experiences and ideas about living within this timeframe, the need to learn and understand what is happening to our minds, bodies, and dispositions.
At that time, I thought it wise to open the forum to include young women who will one day arrive at this point in time in their lives and did so with the hope and intention they will have more information, insight, and comfortability around the topic when they come to their moment of “Oh my God”. Then too, I considered the men – partners and sons and brothers in our lives. Ultimately, I arrived at the conclusion that we as women, have families and other significant people who need to know and understand who we are at this stage of life, and what we go through so that we and they will know better how to treat and care for us.
Now as I sit in this writing, I am going to go back to the beginning of the creation of Hormones and High Heels. It was named to identify and express us as women who go and have gone through, live and have lived through various physical manifestations and life stages driven by our hormones, and as we continue to emerge as our myriad selves during those times, we are still at the height of our femininity and womanhood which is symbolic of us in our High Heels. Women in every sense of the word, in our own body, and in our own shoes.
And although I welcome all interested readers, I plan to be more intentional about how I share and discuss women during this phase of life. Meaning I am less interested in the inclusion of others, although I hope they will find interest here, but I am very specifically targeting women who are and have been in this phase of life. I don’t have every experience and I don’t know it all and probably know less about this than others, but what I do know is that I am a woman who in the company of other women deserve a stronger presence and voice while addressing us as we live with perimenopause, menopause, as well as who we are and are becoming as we continue into further maturity.
For your reading pleasure and hopefully your edification, I will refer you to some of my earlier posts:
· I Am Changing – Beginning the journey and story of “the change” (11/27/2017)
· A Superbowl Surprise – the story of my first hot flash (2/1/2018)
· Passing the Torch – moving past fertility (2/26/2018)
But I also want to share some informational links to assist us in increasing our knowledge as we prepare for and undergo “The Change” :
http://www.nationalmenopauseassociation.com
health.harvard.edu/womens-health/perimenopause-rocky-road-to-menopause