Metamorphosis
Good morning, friends!
Yesterday was International Women’s Day. In the past I’ve been pretty good at taking note of such events, doing something to mark the significance. More so when I was on social media, perhaps because everyone was doing it and I felt some odd, nagging responsibility to post something, too. Some powerful quote. Some powerful story. There are certainly enough to share. But over the years I’ve become almost numb to the grand proclamations that seem to only happen one day a year. I didn’t just start being a woman yesterday, and I didn’t stop being a woman at midnight last night. My value doesn’t begin and end on March 8. Nor does any other individual’s worth begin and end on a single day of the year. Our stories and our existence cannot be contained in a single day.
In honor of yesterday’s designation, though, I would like to share a different kind of essay (and short poem) about being a woman.
As I age, I’m finding that not enough women (or men) talk about the actual process of aging. What it feels like, physically and emotionally. How we cope. How we continue living a life that feels empowering and fulfilling. How we learn to be at peace with losses, internal and external to our physical bodies. This is something I’m very interested in, particularly as an athlete. That might be the first time I’ve used that term to describe myself, but as I age, I’m realizing it’s true. I climb mountains. I walk miles and miles for days with my dogs in the wild backcountry and it’s hard. It’s also hugely meaningful to me. It’s one of only two things that has remained an unmovable force of inspiration and awe in my life, and it’s one of only a handful of things that still makes me cry to think of losing. The thought of someday being unable to walk across miles of mountains is unimaginable. I can’t be the only one who is feeling this particular type of impending loss with increasing magnitude, and I’ve wondered lately why there aren’t more people—more women—talking about it.
We hear so much about puberty, about becoming a woman (or man), coming of age. We hear nothing about this part of life. This change. This coming of age. This becoming a woman.
Recently I was chatting with a slightly younger woman friend about the experience of perimenopause. I told her that it feels like an actual physical metamorphosis.
And it does. But it’s not just physical. For me it’s come with a sense of quiet that I haven’t known since growing up in rural Northwest Missouri. A sense of peace and calm. A sense of confidence in who I am. A refusal to waste anymore time. And while I’ve experienced a strong sense of purpose for decades, it’s somehow different now. Before, I was still very much putting the needs and feelings of others before my own. If someone else in the room had a bigger, louder energy, I silenced mine. As an inherently quiet person, it was very easy to do. Now, it’s not so much that I’m louder or less considerate of others, but more that I no longer waste my time in places where there’s no room for my energy.
So what is it about this point in life that prompts us to begin to see things with more clarity? Is it the tipping of the scale, so to speak? The fact that, despite knowing that life could end at any age, death somehow feels closer now than it ever has before? Is it the sobering realization that I will never have a child of my own at this point? I don’t want children, but it doesn’t matter. The realization is that I’m now too old. Someday I will be too old to climb my mountains, too.
This process of aging, and particularly as a woman, is a becoming of sorts. I don’t know what or who I’m becoming, exactly, but I’m trying to stay open and positive about it. I don’t want it to feel like a constant struggle to continue doing the things I love, but I also don’t want to just give up and become resentful of a slowly failing body. So I’ll keep trying to find a balance in it all, and take each day and each adventure as it comes. We make time and allowances for what we love most, and I’ll always find a way to be in my mountains and forests. No matter what.
Take care, friends.
metamorphosis-- slowing, stretching, giving way becoming woman
