Last week the same theme came up for three very different clients.
Menopuberty.
No, you can google all you like but you won’t find anything. I made that word up.
Women in their 50s. Successful on the outside. Whatever ‘success’ may be – a certain degree of ‘having it together’. Yet on the inside they feel anything but ‘having it together’. That is because the woman who created and organized this life, is a well-adapted girl.
A girl who learned not to argue. Who learnt not to ask questions. That she shouldn’t get angry. That sex is dirty. That she has to work very hard, but that that still isn’t good enough.
That girl became a grown woman and, without her noticing, continued to follow those rules and make her choices that way.
And now it she feels oppressed. The straitjacket has become unbearable, for some. Her authentic self, which has been quietly languishing at the bottom of her heart, is so fed up! She wants to be heard! She wants space! LOTS of space! She finally wants to realize her dreams, damn it!!
What are those dreams? Well… she doesn’t know exactly, of course! And she doesn’t want to fuss about that either, okay?
And so I came up with menopuberty. The authentic self has not matured along with the rest of you. She has just been sitting there waiting, wilting. Hidden by layers of fear. Nooooo, you can’t come out because they can’t handle it. I’ll be punished, hurt, cast out for sure!
One of my clients fears that her ‘authentic self’ is not very likeable at all. And so she will lose friends.
But what if you can’t know that? Because she never got a chance to grow up at all? What if she will indeed go off the rails, not because she is an unpleasant person, but because she has yet to go through puberty? To experiment with new behaviour, try things out to see if it fits? Explore boundaries, by trial and error?
And what if you, a grown woman now, are perfectly capable of being a good mother to that adolescent? To give her space, support, encouragement, and security too by setting some boundaries – all in a spirit of mildness, sprinkled with a good dose of humour? And be there hold her when things go wrong?
You may have felt her, the rebel in you, this summer. The holidays are the perfect time for her to come out. So what now? If you want to save yourself detours and dead ends streets and want to safely embed your transformational process, why not hit me up for a free exploratory call. I have spaces opening in September.
