fear and THE PORTALS OF CHANGE: MENOPAUSE AS YOUR GUIDE
***An alert about this article. I talk about my mom’s cancer diagnosis and the lessons learned. For me it was a tender write, but I feel tender all over these days and so I am sharing it with you in the hopes that fear can be a valuable alley. Please take care of you***
I inherited many things from the matriarchs of my maternal line. Some really wonderful things and some very hard things. My mom was as strong as they come. She was an epic warrior in a modern suit. She would stop at nothing to pursue justice. During her years in education she was a champion for students who needed all different types of support. She cared deeply. She would work tirelessly at schools and then come home and begin her “night shift” with the mental/emotional work of supporting others. I am endlessly grateful to have learned so much about caring for people, being human and showing up for our humanity from her. I cherish it.
I also learned fear. I learned fear from a place in her that I did not know or understand its orgins, but it certainly occupied prime space. I will never be able to separate in my mind that fear and that cancer that reared its head when she was 60. It changed her life. It changed all of our lives really, and in ways that would play out for longer than I could ever dream. As the matriarch of our family, she ran a tight ship, but she had values that aligned with her heart and I know that was always true. I have been able to do some good reflecting over these years since she passed (7 1/2 yrs as of 3/2025) and especially so as I have more space for it with my kids moving more and more into their own lives as young adults. And so when my long time doctor, Vaidya Yash Mannur, strongly suggested I come to India last year for some treatment post menopause and feeling my body, mind and spirit needing some medical care, I knew I needed to go. I needed to go in spite of every reason that said I should stay.
I am 56 next month. I watch the “time” like someone who has just bet everything they own on the horse race playing out in front of them. I’m 56 and in 4 years I will be the age my mom was when everything changed.
4 years
Shit, my partner has a car warrenty longer then that.
So when Yash said please come to India, stay for some time (6 weeks), I did it. And while the treatments and medical care was outstanding and so many times I was brought to my knees at the vital force that moves from within us, I also knew I had to tend to something else as part of it all. Because while it is true and important to tend to the physical ailements and imbalances, Ayurveda has also taught me that equally important is the mind and spirit connection. These connections are so important to our health and well being they are considered revered and wise teachers in many holistic medical practices, holding a place of high regard and importance. It is believed when the mind is stable and our connection to spirit is strong, it is a solid indicator of health. In fact, with a strong and stable mind and spirit, little else may be needed…not forever, but you get the idea.
As I started treatment, and fell into the requested open space of nothing much to do other then to be present to my experience (easier said then done) somethings began to crystallize. The thing I really needed to look more closely at was the thing I saw lay quietly inside of my mom, only rearing its agonized head when absolutely necessary.
Fear
Fear as in the verb and the noun. Fear as in the fear that I inherited. Fear. Epigenetics gives us the modern language to what ancient cultures have known for thousands of years. We can pass traits along that are not necessarily part of our DNA structure, but they sure feel like they could be. I inherited this type of fear that has felt so much bigger than any one thing I can trace it to. Fear that holds a special place inside my heart and is connected through my mind. Fear that gets in the way of the deepest parts of me that honors my spirit to be me. Absolute Fear. So while I was in India, it felt very important to sit with my Fear. And one day in particular, Fear answered me when I boldly and sincerely asked:
Fear, what do you have to teach me?
Fear said “I show you how to be small so that you can go big”
Fear said “I show you how to be cautious so that you learn to define and push your bravery”
Fear said “I show you how to feel trapped so you can break free of your own confines”
I thought for a while and wondered if I could look at my own fears and find some agency within to help me re-define my relationship to it? You know, turn it on its ear, twist it until I could see it differently. After all, menopause and this life full of experiences and messy, awkward, impossible and completely alive moments has been suggesting that I might really trust the wisdom that flows.
I know this is no easy task and for me some of the hardest of it all is doing it now, inside the noise , the chaos, the unbelievable. But fear can be an important conversation and now seems like a good time to consider it. It is not stagnant and/or fixed, it moves and breaths. And I find that when I make space for deepening my own internal connections and attune to the deepening that menopause has escorted into my world, my heart and my spirit feel that expanded awareness in a very different way than at other times of my life.
Could it be that menopause is the key to unlocking the parts of us that fear has hijacked?
At a time when it feels easy to get trapped in the physical maladies that menopause brings, what if menopause was also about shedding the layers of what is no longer needed?
What if menopause gives us more direct access to insights and awarenesses that could help us make the changes we are ready for?
And what if these changes support the incredible shift going on in our systems from an angle that is not solely reliant on pills, patches or invasive medical treatment to do so?
I know for me I am working on my deeper relationships to fear, staying present with it and being gentle with myself. Watching it move and slither about especially as I make underlaying pattern changes that span generations. But the years through perimenopause and on the other side have prepared me well. Ayurveda and Yoga have too. It takes a whole team to confront the parts of us that feel unequipped and our society rarely supports this type of of work. But it is essential, I believe, to lay the lines of intention so that the haunting ghosts can follow the trail to the end of the line.
The menopause years are a gift. A gift from our younger selves to our older wisdom walkers. Be soft with your tender heart. Stay close to people who see you. Seek others who feel the same.
Most sincerely,
Danielle