The Freedom of Menopause

Our weekly theme of freedom is one I’ve pursued throughout my life. I’ve left the world of employed work, I home educate my child, in my outer world I’m as free as can be, and yet…

And yet the culture that got inside me as a child when I was at school and taught me that I had to work hard to be of value (or even worthy of existence) is still sometimes there, holding me prisoner. Sometimes it’s more brutal than any boss could be.

The work of freeing myself from this voice is the big work of menopause, breaking free from the old chains. It’s work that takes sustained effort over time, repeated noticing and returning, reflecting and nudging. The more I practice, the easier it gets to notice when that voice is holding me prisoner and each time the move towards freedom is quicker, tapping makes it quicker still.

Even though I’ve been doing this for years, I still find it hard to believe that one five minute tapping round could free me from a lifetime of conditioning, and yet when I tapped along with myself in this week’s video, it did. Admittedly the sense of freedom I reached lasted only a few minutes but if I can get there for a few minutes I can get there again and again until my body becomes used to this new way of being and starts to find familiarity and safety in this feeling of freedom.

As I reflected on the theme of freedom this week I thought about an experience that highlighted beautifully the difference between inner and outer freedom. I had written a complaint against a patriarchally run organisation with some gender equality issues. In the outer world I had total freedom to send the complaint and that is what I did, one of the best gifts of midlife and menopause is the unwillingness to continue to just put up with things and it served me well here.

Almost as soon as I had sent the email though, I felt a huge surge of anxiety in my stomach. My inner world was telling me this wasn’t safe, I wasn’t really free to do this.

Some very wonderful women had questioned whether it was a good idea to send in the complaint and at the time I didn’t understand why. Surely those of us with a voice must use it, especially when it affects those without a voice? When the anxiety wave hit though, I realised why they were concerned for me. Although I’m free to use my voice, the terror I felt when I had done so was huge!

Fortunately, because I have the freedom to manage my own time and the tools to unpick my feelings, I was able to pause in the middle of my work day to go inwards and discover the inner child part that sent the anxiety wave. She was terrified of being hit, yelled at or having things thrown at her by big angry men. I wonder how many women can identify with this part? I wonder how many of us are governed by it, trying to be nice to stay safe, with or without realising it. I know I have been many times.

Although we might rationally know that we are free to do certain things, we often carry around very young parts who believe that we aren’t and who, without us realising it, step in to stop us, making us believe that we didn’t really want to do that anyway.

As I sat with my inner child part and soothed and healed her, I became aware that this isn’t just about me but about all the women, past and present, who can’t speak up and be safe. That by stepping into my freedom now I can speak up in my own small way for others without a voice, this is how the ripples of our own healing spread out into the world.

Although we began today by tapping on freedom in a very general way, the things that are happening now in my life took me quite deeply into a specific situation, a specific type of freedom. Tapping is really good at taking you where you need to go if you’re willing to follow that little inner voice of truth. If you’d like to see for yourself, Join us on Patreon, we have loads of tapping videos to start from.

You can find our short video and our deep dive here patreon.com/healingwomanhood