Perimenopause - I wasn't anticipating8 years of extreme hot flushes every 15min/30mins. While we're coming into ourselves as women, we're losing our faith in a gaslighting body! Brain fog! Ugh! So feel for you, thank you for being open about something so many millions of women have suffered through in silence!
As to how we use the power of this fractured moment to come together and repair our broken world, broken people, broken system... The Quiet Revolution: Debt Free & Working Less, How Our Species Survives - the amalgamating the research of 500 people/orgs and creating a realistic plan for change.
Hi Kirsten, I appreciate your words, so dearly, in these troubled times! I am approaching a similar life stage to you and navigating many of the same themes. Your writing is a balm.
3/4 of a century old, often a cheerful crone, yet the mud for often a place for me of wallowing– then healing. Here in a dry part of our continent, WA, coast near sandy, wonderful Freo, mud is a rare thing. Yet is is there in my heart/ mind, especially when I glimpse Garden Island, once sublime, now a naval base from which submarines glide past our sweet beach almost unseen.
My love goes to you, and this journal is a source of delight.Thank you for your words!
At 72 I'm still doing hot flushes - peri- tumbled chaotically and extendedly while my body tried to hang on to its hormones, giving up gracefully in the end but with overloaded an worn out adrenals coping in their own way to burn out the imblances. It's an interesting journey coming into acceptance, slowly, surely, just plain ordinary acceptance helps to smooth the bumps in the road. They are what they are.
So honoured to join you here in the mud and share in what grows and blooms in your beautiful mind, deep feeling heart and connected soul (soil) out of this very relatable trouble... there is so much beauty in the darkness... it's where it all begins I suppose.. it has been for me in many ways. Much love Kirsten! Your work / explorations are a gift to this world xx
Lovely to meet you! I see that light on your face as you hold the chick, see the blatant, simple joy. You are in the wonderful muck of it, and your lyrical way of telling of the wonders of your day makes mine all the more beautiful. Thank you from the woods and wilds of Maine, US.
I am along on a similar ride: my only kid born in the early days of the pandemic, but I'm still wrangling perimenopause, Alphabet soup of brain issues, garden establishment and a keen awareness of the polycrisis we live within.
Wow. Hearing someone else articulate their oh-so-similar struggle so beautifully somehow makes it easier to sit with my own. More able to accept that this is a kind of normal, and it's okay to just sit through it if that's what it takes. Thank you for the gentle wisdom.
I have found so much clarity and understanding of so much of myself that I struggled with, especially in my younger years which I am very grateful for. The Aha! Moments of why so many things have gone the way they have is like a fog lifting off what was the unknown. I am so much more comfortable with all of the strangeness that is my brain ha!
The frustration I have though is not understanding during those times, which is helpful when guiding your own children through it, I have found at least 😉
Yes! So many aha moments, including those reflected back to us by our kiddos. It is truly a wild ride. I’m grateful for it all, even though big chunks of it suck.
As someone who lives and in rural Scotland, we would think that we are able to remove ourselves from colonialism to some degree. So it was quite a kick in the butt to discover that the big house not five minutes from my own home were slave owners.
Add to that the huge extraction from the more-than-human world that has gone on here, I too in my peri-menopause am feeling a need to repair and love on the land I find myself dwelling in.
Sorry to hear you have been through the wringer. I relate, perimenopause is a totally unexpected upset to my apple cart, how come our mums never complained? Here is to the mud and possibility! Grateful for your sharing and company on the wild ride.
My Mum and Grandma both had a hysterectomy before they turned 40. I'm 48 and navigating the whole peri-menopause thing with no ancestral roadmap. It's a wild ride! The mud is a good place to start, I reckon 🙂
ah yes, but then mucking about in the mud and finding the light — wouldn't expect anything less — I have no doubt that this will be a beautiful journey, embracing the discomfort and the unexpected with grace and .. be careful... as you might exit the other side well on your way to becoming the elder !!! actually, I think that has always been your trajectory — wanting to engage and teach and share — in your own way... thank you for taking care of you xoxox
Kirsten I’m so moved by all you’ve shared here. Been a quiet but enthusiastic Milkwood student, slow on the learning curve while I navigate similar ponderances and circumstances, drawing deeply from the well of knowledge and perspective you’ve so beautifully tended all these years. So it is with great compassion, love, kindredness, and even joy that I learn of this latest phase of your journey and look forward to walking alongside from afar. The inspiration I feel from your words even to choose to reply here speaks volumes (to me, anyway) of the value of your offering and for that - and you - I feel enormous thanks.
Perimenopause - I wasn't anticipating8 years of extreme hot flushes every 15min/30mins. While we're coming into ourselves as women, we're losing our faith in a gaslighting body! Brain fog! Ugh! So feel for you, thank you for being open about something so many millions of women have suffered through in silence!
As to how we use the power of this fractured moment to come together and repair our broken world, broken people, broken system... The Quiet Revolution: Debt Free & Working Less, How Our Species Survives - the amalgamating the research of 500 people/orgs and creating a realistic plan for change.
thank you Linda, as always x
Hi Kirsten, I appreciate your words, so dearly, in these troubled times! I am approaching a similar life stage to you and navigating many of the same themes. Your writing is a balm.
thank you Kath!
3/4 of a century old, often a cheerful crone, yet the mud for often a place for me of wallowing– then healing. Here in a dry part of our continent, WA, coast near sandy, wonderful Freo, mud is a rare thing. Yet is is there in my heart/ mind, especially when I glimpse Garden Island, once sublime, now a naval base from which submarines glide past our sweet beach almost unseen.
My love goes to you, and this journal is a source of delight.Thank you for your words!
thank you for reading, Jenny - and oh how I'd love to make it back to that coastline, one day. So magic -
At 72 I'm still doing hot flushes - peri- tumbled chaotically and extendedly while my body tried to hang on to its hormones, giving up gracefully in the end but with overloaded an worn out adrenals coping in their own way to burn out the imblances. It's an interesting journey coming into acceptance, slowly, surely, just plain ordinary acceptance helps to smooth the bumps in the road. They are what they are.
Blessings to all.
thank you for your wisdom, Eadie :)
So honoured to join you here in the mud and share in what grows and blooms in your beautiful mind, deep feeling heart and connected soul (soil) out of this very relatable trouble... there is so much beauty in the darkness... it's where it all begins I suppose.. it has been for me in many ways. Much love Kirsten! Your work / explorations are a gift to this world xx
aw babe, right back at you xx
Lovely to meet you! I see that light on your face as you hold the chick, see the blatant, simple joy. You are in the wonderful muck of it, and your lyrical way of telling of the wonders of your day makes mine all the more beautiful. Thank you from the woods and wilds of Maine, US.
oh thank you lovely - love to your woods - Maine is one of my bucket-list wildernesses. One day :)
I am along on a similar ride: my only kid born in the early days of the pandemic, but I'm still wrangling perimenopause, Alphabet soup of brain issues, garden establishment and a keen awareness of the polycrisis we live within.
oh my goodness yes. And we were MADE for these times. But fark, wtf, universe?
Sorry, discussions of mud always bring me back to this Vonnegut piece, despite my atheism.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"
"See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the
sky, the stars."
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look
around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly
couldn't have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to
think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and
look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
I will go to heaven now.
I can hardly wait...
To find out for certain what my wampeter was...
And who was in my karass...
And all the good things our karass did for you.
Amen.
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
That is awesome. Thank you.
Wow. Hearing someone else articulate their oh-so-similar struggle so beautifully somehow makes it easier to sit with my own. More able to accept that this is a kind of normal, and it's okay to just sit through it if that's what it takes. Thank you for the gentle wisdom.
thank you for reading Jules - good luck and much tea to your journey -
As others join in the mud, I am also bathing in the alphabet soup 😉 buckle up, its a wild ride haha. X
the alphabet soup seems to come to the surface, in this territory, hey? And... i guess I'm grateful. In some ways, at least...
I have found so much clarity and understanding of so much of myself that I struggled with, especially in my younger years which I am very grateful for. The Aha! Moments of why so many things have gone the way they have is like a fog lifting off what was the unknown. I am so much more comfortable with all of the strangeness that is my brain ha!
The frustration I have though is not understanding during those times, which is helpful when guiding your own children through it, I have found at least 😉
Yes! So many aha moments, including those reflected back to us by our kiddos. It is truly a wild ride. I’m grateful for it all, even though big chunks of it suck.
As someone who lives and in rural Scotland, we would think that we are able to remove ourselves from colonialism to some degree. So it was quite a kick in the butt to discover that the big house not five minutes from my own home were slave owners.
Add to that the huge extraction from the more-than-human world that has gone on here, I too in my peri-menopause am feeling a need to repair and love on the land I find myself dwelling in.
Yessss. Plenty of work to be done for each and every one of us in that realm, i rekon...
Sorry to hear you have been through the wringer. I relate, perimenopause is a totally unexpected upset to my apple cart, how come our mums never complained? Here is to the mud and possibility! Grateful for your sharing and company on the wild ride.
glad to have you here Gillian! To mud and possibility, indeed.
My Mum and Grandma both had a hysterectomy before they turned 40. I'm 48 and navigating the whole peri-menopause thing with no ancestral roadmap. It's a wild ride! The mud is a good place to start, I reckon 🙂
oof! Same. What a ride.
Also currently mud-dwelling. x
we should probably make some tshirts... Mud-Dwellers Unite, or such?
With a lotus blossom arising from the mud ....
Oh yes. Definitely
Waving hello from Aotearoa, where I too am sitting in the mud 🐌🤎👋
From one mudskipper to another x
ah yes, but then mucking about in the mud and finding the light — wouldn't expect anything less — I have no doubt that this will be a beautiful journey, embracing the discomfort and the unexpected with grace and .. be careful... as you might exit the other side well on your way to becoming the elder !!! actually, I think that has always been your trajectory — wanting to engage and teach and share — in your own way... thank you for taking care of you xoxox
and thank YOU for being here, Jenny x
Kirsten I’m so moved by all you’ve shared here. Been a quiet but enthusiastic Milkwood student, slow on the learning curve while I navigate similar ponderances and circumstances, drawing deeply from the well of knowledge and perspective you’ve so beautifully tended all these years. So it is with great compassion, love, kindredness, and even joy that I learn of this latest phase of your journey and look forward to walking alongside from afar. The inspiration I feel from your words even to choose to reply here speaks volumes (to me, anyway) of the value of your offering and for that - and you - I feel enormous thanks.
Thank you so much for your words, Rachel x