The Dreaded Change
Bringing to light the unspeakable in our family history.
Note - I am going to talk about women, menopause, periods, and other taboo topics in genealogy so please skip this article if this is going to bother you.
Last weekend I posted a question for my genealogy friends on my Facebook page. I asked about women, menopause, and all the other things we never talk about. This came about as I was updating my family patterns classes in preparation for a launch of fall online workshops. I was also creating some new classes.
Now, some people will say if I speak publicly about menopause and our family history, that I’m diving into topics that are TMI. We shouldn’t be asking or documenting this info in our family trees. To them I say, Really? And ….Oh well…. I’m still talking about it even if it triggers you.
I believe we’ve reach a point in the shift in consciousness on the planet that family historians need to talk about the TMI and Taboo topics so we can better understand ourselves and our ancestors. What do you think? I feel strongly that there are many things our ancestors experienced that still impact us today and we need to stop hiding those things and talk about them.
Women and the Change
Two of those topics we rarely discuss or research are having our period and menopause. Yea, I said it. Moving through menopause in particular. How we can go months without a period and BAM there it is when we are just about to hit the finish line. Yes, that was me recently.
Perimenopause. I’m not sure this was a “word” until the last decade or so. My ancestors and even mother probably had never heard this word. Yet they certainly went through some of it unless they had a hysterectomy and then maybe got to skip some of the hormonal changes.
Did your ancestors know perimenopause was a thing?
No one tells you how your brain, body, hormones, cycles, weight, moods, etc. will shift. No one tells you how bad it can get each month and then be normal. Society shames us for feeling how we do or asking for time off work because we are in pain or have a migraine or simply can’t leave the house for a day beacuse it’s just so heavy. So we keep it a secret. Maybe we discuss with our closest girlfriends. I was lucky to have girlfriends I could talk to about all the things. I can’t imagine having to go through it alone thinking I’m going to die or have gone crazy.
Almost there…. I was three months from being free. You have to go one year without having a period to be considered in menopause. Now, I had a sense I wouldn’t hit a year because I learned about Wild Yam Cream and how it helps to naturally balance hormones. Actaully it does a lot more than that for men and women, but I started using it because I wanted a holistic way to start balancing things out. I’d been using the cream for three months and had a sense it would balance me out enough to restart things. And, it did.
I have mixed feelings about this, which I vented to my boyfriend.
Support. Men have no idea what that feels like to move through all this. I can say, some men do try to understand. I’m lucky in that way, my boyfriend and I talk about all this and how it impacts not only me but us. He has learned to not only give me space when he senses I need it, but also asks how I am, what I need, how he can help, and if he needs to skip town cause I’m in a “mood”. HA! I’m pretty certain my parents and grandparents never had discussions like this, nor did the husbands help the wives through this period of their lives.
Did the women in your family have any support during those hard months before menopause or during?
Hormones. Mental and Physical Changes. It’s long been said that women go crazy when they hit the years that change begins. Our moods swing, we often feel discombobulated, or mentally challenged, brain foggy, not quite ourselves but we don’t know why……and on and on. There have been many days the last year I thought I was losing my mind. Turns out I wasn’t.
I know I'm not going crazy as I move through this. I know because my girlfriends who have gone through this and I talk in all the gory detail. I know because I listen to TikTok strangers and female doctors who woke up to what’s really happening, talking about their experiences.
I've also done a lot of research into holistic ways to heal my body and hormones. I’ve also researched because I don’t trust the medical “professionals” to actually help me. Being put on a pile of pills or shots does not interest me. That being said - what works and feels right for me is not for everyone. You should do what feels right and works for you.
Years ago I was on anti-depressants and anxiety meds because at that time I thought that was my only solution to feeling “normal”. They made me feel numb and not “normal”, but kept me more balanced. Once I found meditation, energy healing and better ways to eat and move my body, I was able to quickly get off those pills and have never gone back. But that is what worked for me. You do you.
Through all of these discussions about periods and menopause, my own experience, and what I’m hearing leads me to question how my female ancestors went through all this.
How did they handle their cycles, did they talk about it?
How did they handle perimenopause, which wasn’t even a word until more recently?
How did they handle menopause and all the feelings that went into not being able to have children?
How did their family members view them as they moved into this new phase of life?
How many were hospitalized or shunned or something because they had gone “crazy”? How many had to undergo shock therapy, lobotomies, loads of drugs, and other “treatments”? How did that change who they were?
What happened when these women were released from the hospital? How did their families react or support them?
I have friends who have told me their mothers were put into the hospital for psychiatric reasons because their husbands or kids thought they'd gone off the deep end. Or worse, put into a mental hospital or psych ward, not knowing back then that menopause changes our brains in addition to shutting off the baby making factory.
All of this makes me wonder - what OTHER topics do we hide from and choose not to discuss related to women or even men? A discussion on men is for another time but they deal with low testosterone, low drive, erectile dysfunction, and have their own bodily cycles - yet we never talk about those things either.
How might all of these patterns and the experiences (negative or traumatic) that my ancestors experienced from child loss, miscarriage, menopause or anything else you weren't allowed to talk about - impact their live and relationships? How did those things impact how they raised their daughters? How does it all impact me and my life? I’m sitting with all those questions.
Family Patterns and Healing Generations
Family patterns and epigenetic changes are real and can help us understand why an ancestor or parent was who they were (are). But only if we are willing to set aside the shame, secrecy and whatever else holds us back from talking about it.
Have you explored these sexual topics in your family history? What did you discover?
What other topics should I be exploring? Feel free to message me if you don't want to share publicly.
If you’d like to learn more about family patterns, visit the Ancestral Souls Wisdom School.
What a great topic to peel open. Bravo. It's been nearly 15 years for me but I think every woman over the age of about 55 can relate to the experience — many of their partners too, I imagine.
As I reflected back on my pregnancies and helping our daughters navigate through those slammed-doors moments of adolescence, I've come to regard hormones as the most powerful drugs to ever affect the human bloodstream (male and female). It's humbling to realize we still we know so little about it.
No, nothing was shared with me about my ancestors or their experiences. I have looked back at times when I remember my mom acting completely irrationally to realize that she was probably suffering migraines and hot flashes. It does open a level of empathy doesn't it?
It wouldn't be very hard to create a calculator to apply to a family history timeline calculating the decade between 45-55 years of age in which most women in the family probably went through perimenopause and menopause. 🤔 interesting all by itself!
Very interesting article - thanks for writing this and bringing it to mind! My mother and her sisters all had hysterectomies, and I'm the only female to have made it through the change without surgery. So, I was alone in that journey. In the late 1990s I belonged to an online group (remember newsgroups?) that dealt with the change -- and the term "perimenopause" was definitely a thing then, about 1998 or 1999. We talked each other through it, sharing information and commiserating with each other's situations, and I'm so grateful.
In my professional capacity, I had to resort to subterfuge at times because I was simply too heavy or had too much of a headache to function in the office. I remember calling my boss one day to say I'd be working from home. Worried, he asked if I was okay, and I decided that since his wife was also in the years of change, I'd just go ahead and let him have it: "My personal office of flood control dictates that I stay home today." "Ick," he said, sympathetically. "See you tomorrow," I said. (He definitely understood).