The book I just finished writing had many incarnations. I started out wanting to write about menopause. Not that I am an authority on the subject, just that I was experiencing it. As a poet, I write about my experiences, my thoughts, my wonderings. My brain was coming unglued, and like Alexander Hamilton in the play – and presumably in life – I needed to write my way out.
I was in the middle of coming undone. I was in the obtrusive thoughts phase where a random idea would pop into my head in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday, and my mind went scurrying down every rabbit hole in the vicinity to figure out where that idea came from – was it from school, church, society? How many plans and projects had I undertaken with that idea at the helm, which, now, my brain was suggesting – was never an idea I agreed with in the first place. So – unraveling to the nth degree would ensue.
Not so much crying in a heap on the floor, although, there were those days too. Mostly for me it was my head doing holla-hoops around my whole existence, like in adolescence, like when hormones are surging and whole new operating systems are being installed in the brain. It feels like demolition. It is demolition at the same time all the new things are being built. In the thick of it, it can feel so stretched in every direction and coming undone.
I had teenagers at the same time this was happening and the similarities are uncanny.
The weird thing is that I didn’t really know I was in menopause or perimenopause. I’m currently menopausal – I’m inching toward Crone and couldn’t be happier. There is a level of radiant female archetype that also starts happening in the unwinding. There is a stirring toward ancient wisdom, the older magic (I refer, of course, to Narnia), the garden pathways, the bright little flowers.
Some of us stop wanting to focus on the big picture, and start looking at things close up. We photograph beauty as if having these trinkets in our pockets can save us. They are lifelines to something other realm out there in the world – a whisper of holiness in sacred places where butterflies flitter over mounds of growing color.
Oh, sorry, lost my way. I didn’t realize I was menopausal because I didn’t experience hot flashes, and that was the only thing I’d ever really heard about the change of life.
I thought I would write about it from a field guide perspective, the little notes and poems and whimsy’s I write every day. Those had started to get focused in on what was happening in my head. It was interesting. I thought others might relate.
My muse had other plans.
This is a series and I’ll be sharing more of the back story of the manuscript I am working on getting published. If you are curious and want to be in on the very beginning of the buzz around this book – I’d be honored if you followed along.
And, because I follow whimsy with a steadfastness of spirit – I am absolutely grabbing hold of an autocorrect mistake this morning.
I was writing a note to myself on my phone – shrinking from sharing my writing with friends – posting little breadcrumbs on my Facebook to this space – I was saying I didn’t want to bombard my friends.
Autocorrect changed friends to:
Fluff Egg Ones.
I am in love with that moniker – for you – the people who stumbled in here and decide to stick with me. If you are here for the telling of the story of how this book came to be – the twists and turns it took on its own, being unruly like its author, I am delighted to get to know you.
Cover Photo by Maria Kovalets on Unsplash
