We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere

Hormones

For many of us the onset of puberty marks the beginning of a monthly hormonal rollercoaster. Menstruation affects each of us differently, but mood swings, pain and changes in weight and libido can leave us feeling scattered and crazy each month. In fact, half of all women’s suicide attempts are made during the four days just prior to menstruation, or during the first four days of menstruation.

A few pioneering companies have introduced a ‘period policy’, so that their employees can take sick leave if they need it, but most of us have learned to just ‘deal with it’. This may mean going to work when we’re in pain, rushing around doing chores rather than resting or feeling guilty for being bad-tempered. During your next cycle, consider listening to your body more carefully and responding to yourself with more compassion and kindness.

Pregnancy, miscarriage, oral contraception and fertility treatments can also create hormonal chaos in our lives and then, as we get older, there is another journey that we all end up taking as women and that’s the menopause.

The menopause

It’s astounding what a taboo topic the menopause – the cessation of periods – continues to be when it affects 50 per cent of the population. Women commonly experience the menopause between the ages of 48 and 55. Each woman’s experience will be unique, but common symptoms include hot flushes, night sweats, difficulty sleeping, reduced sex drive, memory and concentration problems, vaginal dryness and pain, itching or discomfort during sex, headaches, mood changes, palpitations, joint stiffness, reduced muscle mass and recurrent urinary tract infections. The symptoms often arrive several months or years before the menopause itself, during the perimenopause, and can continue to affect women for up to 12 years after their last bleed.

For me the perimenopause was a sudden inability to cope with anything when I had been seemingly able to cope with everything simultaneously for years without many hitches. It came in the form of sudden uncontrollable emotionality and hysteria and feeling like someone else’s brain had replaced mine. I honestly think I have been in gradual perimenopause since my thirties, and when I finally identified and acknowledged what was going on for me – or I guess when it finally got so bad that I needed to seek out a solution: bio-identical hormones – I could not remember when my brain had felt that ‘normal’. I started to realize how long I had been living with some of the symptoms.

When I began discussing it with my female friends I was amazed by two things. One, how many women had been through it, but it had never been a part of our conversation. I felt like we were whispering in covens, discussing the best witchdoctor to go to in order not to turn into a toad. And two, how many women had no idea it was coming or that some of their ‘symptoms’ might be related to it. If someone had told me sooner, if the subject had been less taboo and I had understood earlier what to expect and what lifestyle choices could make it worse, I might have saved myself years of emotional turmoil.

How great would it be if we as women didn’t feel embarrassed talking about the menopause and perimenopause? If we embraced this transition as one of the natural rites of passage of being a woman? How wonderful it would be if we were able to immediately identify the signs because we had been educated about them, know that we are not alone, and could seek early help?

GA

There are a range of natural remedies, dietary changes and hormone replacement therapies out there, but unless we know we need help we can’t access them. Too many women suffer either in ignorance or shame.

We should no longer feel obliged to just ‘deal with it’ or educate our daughters to do the same. If women started to speak about it more openly, we would embrace our hormonal experiences with curiosity and fearlessness as another example of what joins us together.

Reflection

‘When a woman becomes her own best friend life is easier.’

DIANE VON FURSTENBERG

I used to think that it was selfish to take care of myself. I wanted others to love me so I spent my time caring for them. I abandoned myself in pursuit of my quest for love and acceptance. Now I know that the relationship I need to foster, especially if I’m feeling low, is with myself. The longer I spend developing a relationship with myself, the more rewarding and fulfilling are the relationships I have with others. When I treat myself kindly I’m able to relate to others from a place of wholeness rather than a place of need.

Action: I will notice my needs and attend to them.

Affirmation: I love and care for myself.

Essential Practice 4

MEDITATION: (#ulink_0a9b78bb-54bc-53df-88c2-b59d0ca54d84)

Creating a Safe Space

‘When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.’

PEACE PILGRIM

Many of us spend our lives searching for safety in one form or another. Some of us have looked for it outside of ourselves – in partners, in jobs, in families, in material possessions. Others have tried to keep safe by putting up a barrier between ourselves and the world around us.

But there is a genuinely safe place that each and every one of us can access. It’s a sacred space that we can enter at any point during our day – regardless of what is happening around us. In that place we find peace and we find healing. We create this space by meditation.

Like the habit of gratitude, meditation creates a new muscle group that will enhance your emotional balance and intuition while cultivating the resilience to handle whatever life throws your way.

Making way for the sacred

Most of us spend our lives rushing. If we’re not physically racing around, our minds are full of mental hurry. We’re thinking of what we ought to do, what we’ve done wrong, what we should have done better, what we’re going to do, and so on and so on. When we meditate we get a break from those thoughts. We create distance and the chance to connect with what lies underneath the bustle of our chattering minds and our ever-lengthening to-do lists.

‘I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.’

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

You may already have your own meditation technique and, if so, you know what we’re talking about. But if you don’t have one or you’re new to meditation, this section will get you started with a practice that you can use for the rest of your life.

For now, just think of meditation as a moment away from the rush of your day and the clutter of your mind. A moment of stillness.

Of course, stillness can’t be forced, just as healing can’t be made to happen. But what you can do is create an environment in which stillness and peace are fostered and can grow.

‘As your mind grows quieter and more spacious, you can begin to see self-defeating thought patterns for what they are and open up to other, more positive options.’

SHARON SALZBERG

When you get to the Sixth Principle, Peace, you’ll learn how to deepen and strengthen your meditation practice, and the Eighth Principle, Joy, will introduce you to prayer, which you can use whether you have a faith or not. But for now all you have to do is decide to commit to taking a few minutes out of your busy life at the start of each day. And when we say a few minutes we mean just that. Two minutes each day. That’s all you need to begin.

Even though all of us can manage to find two minutes, it’s quite likely that at this point you’ll experience resistance or even self-sabotage. You may start to find excuses before you’ve even read through this section. Perhaps your mind is defending how busy or tired you are. Or maybe you’ve just remembered that you took a meditation course once before and it didn’t work. Or that there’s meditation at the end of your exercise or yoga class, but you just fall asleep each time.

Be aware of all these rationalizations and do this exercise anyway.

EXERCISE: Daily Meditation Practice

This exercise is to help you establish your own daily meditation practice. Two minutes, that’s all. You can download one of many free meditation timer apps or use the regular timer on your phone. Leave it to the bell to remind you when the time’s up. Tell your mind that it can return to thinking as much as it wants as soon as this brief exercise is over.

Then, when you are ready, sit cross-legged on the floor or on a chair. Make sure you’re comfortable before you start. You can close your eyes or keep your focus fixed on a point just in front of you – placing a candle in your sightline is both helpful and calming. Try not to let your gaze drift around the room looking for distractions. Remember, this short time is about peace of mind.

Now just breathe, in through your nose and out through your mouth, slowly and gently.

Try to let your out-breath take slightly longer than your in-breath. Notice the gap between each inhale and exhale. Relax. Don’t worry about any thoughts that come – just try not to engage with them, gently returning your attention to the rise and fall of your breath.

Although two minutes may not seem very long it is enough to start creating a very important space and a very important habit. Remember that from tiny acorns grow mighty oaks.

If your mind objects to this practice, that’s great news. It means it knows it’s about to be rumbled. The mind likes to pretend it knows everything and sadly, too often, we believe it. The truth is that the mind is an excellent servant but a terrible master. It’s great at solving crossword puzzles or reading train timetables, but it’s not so good at helping us to find fulfilment or love.

So for just two minutes every day you’re going to suspend its operation. You’re going to ask it to take a short break and then see what happens when you give yourself just that small amount of time away from your thoughts.

Don’t worry if this doesn’t make any sense. Don’t worry if nothing seems to be happening. This is not about sense or meaning, and there is no right or wrong way of doing this. It is about very gently starting a new and vital habit: training your mind and body to get used to being still.

Each day, when you have finished your two minutes of silence, read the affirmation that corresponds to the chapter you’re reading. Allow what’s written there to seep in gently as you continue to breathe in and out. Then softly say the affirmation to yourself.

You might like to commit it to memory or jot it down in your journal so that in moments of doubt and indecision you can return to your affirmation and use it as a way of keeping yourself calm and centred. It will help you to recall your safe place, as well as reinforce the lesson contained in the chapter you’ve just read.

It’s simple. All you have to do is do it!