okay get ready I’m talking about a taboo subject, or at least one that doesn’t get a lot of air play … I’ve been thinking of my mothering and the peri-menopausal symptoms I have … it’s quite a balance … motherhood and menopause…I will be turning 50 this year and our daughters will be 7 and 5 this summer, both entrusted to us at birth through adoption as you know.

Although becoming a mother was a journey I embraced, I am not quite embracing this latest journey in my life to menopause through the myriad of obstacles and symptoms that have become my latest routine.  Some nights are filled with ‘the night sweats’ others with insomnia.  During the day I may have a hot flash (luckily not often) and feel more blue than usual.  Irritability may be promoted from misbehavior of our girls or just the way I feel that day … it’s quite a balance and somedays I win and well others the symptoms win …

I realize parenting as a whole has its own obstacles in teaching our children to be good people of integrity and independence and as they get older their resistance to our oversight becomes stronger and stronger and with that clashes occur some for real and some because of my peri-menopausal self. It’s a ridiculously slippery slope, this midlife motherhood. I don’t think that any of us could have imagined how we’d need to balance it all, and especially at this juncture. Thankfully my husband is doing his best to understand and is the even tempered of the two of us at this point in my menopausal journey …