Perimenopause is an UNDERWORLD JOURNEY

Perimenopause is an Underworld Journey.

Embracing this as a Rite of Passage prepares you for Menopause.

Perimenopause and menopause are not the same thing, although they are on a spectrum leading to the other side of the bleeding years. However in perimenopause, or the Wild Woman Years as I call them, there is a Rite of Passage taking place.

A Journey that descends into the Underworld.

One that is full of rage, tears, frustration, and physical changes as the inner and outer landscapes of your Temple change.

The descent happens whether you want it to or not.

For some it is quick and easy, nothing to notice.

For others it is a descent into chaos.

And still for some it is an unraveling that leads to the essence of who you are.

I am in this last category.

As a women’s health practitioner, herbalist, ceremonialist, and all around witchy woman I have found it challenging to have my experience lumped into an initiation I have not yet gone through, menopause.

I am in throws of unraveling BEFORE I get to the rewiring.

What this means is that the messengers of my body, the nervous and endocrine systems are shifting like tectonic plates of my body’s landscape, creating contradicting feelings of movement and compression within.

My whole life expereinces this development through relationship upheavals, financial fluxing, passion waning, agitation and desire dance batteling with the need to escape to an underwater cavern far away from everything.

However, if I slow down, allowing my body to envelop me, getting quieter, more intuitive, I feel held by a protective NO creating a boundary of discernment around me. The friction is just a mirror of what no longer works and the deeply held longing for paths I dared not walk before reveal themselves as the only options for true joy.

In Chinese Medicine perimenopause is akin to the Metal Years of inner Autumn, the beginning descent before entering the Winter Years of menopause, and before the Second Spring of life. While I have been a practitioner for decades, I see this story only slightly extended due to the increase in our living years, regardless, the concept is still the same, a journey to the Underworld is made.

Our Metal/Autumn Years are about Harvesting which can be seen by the changing colors of purpose and the dying off of what is ending. Perimenopause to menopause through this lens is a natural process of reorientation, not a failing of fertility.

Each Season has beauty in its expression and the embracing of this natural rhythm brings alignment with something far greater than our individual lives, lending magic, sensuality, wisdom, and empowerment.

With all the information out there how do we know what is right? Even me with medical training in various fields gets overwhelmed by the myriad of possibilities and scare tactics that are flooding the scene.

So I get quiet and listen.

I let go and descend, slowly removing the layers of outdated beliefs, old habits, and stories that I have told myself.

What lays beneath is my essence tattooed to my bones with ancestral traditions, moon wisdom, and the Earth’s Divine cycles painting the picture of my next incarnation.

This is my wild nature tearing apart the domestication that has held me in place all these years.

This is my homecoming, a Rite of Passage reclaiming the fierce bliss of becoming.

My Underworld Journey is not to be medicated or seen as an afterthought to the endgame, rather it is the point, the fiery swan dive into the abyss of mystery.

And I am here for it.