“Will you please bring me the…. the…. um…. the thingy!”

Word retrieval problems. Its actually a clinical thing. And it’s a symptom of the shift that happens in our normally crisp, clear minds as we make this transit to elderhood.

It isn’t permanent! But it is embarrassing and disconcerting. Our minds start to feel fuzzy. Not unlike the fuzziness we may have experienced if we nursed our babies. There are complex hormonal reasons for this fuzziness, but what I am interested in talking about today is the idea that this brain fog is actually a gift.

Yes, a gift. An unlikely gift.

Menopause is a powerful transformation. We are moving into wise womanhood, into the essence of elderhood, which is wisdom, deep knowing, profound calm, and confidence in our inner voice. We may have been struggling all our lives to trust our instincts and feel confidence in our deep knowing, yet we have most often defaulted to the rational – speaking from our intellectual awareness, relying on research and lists of pros and cons to make our decisions.

There is nothing wrong with this. But by midlife most of us have realized that this over-reliance on the rational has sometimes led us astray, into choices that were not right for our soul’s growth, or into actions that have hurt ourselves or others.

I think our rational capacity takes a back seat for just a little while at menopause to help us to learn the strength and power of our intuitive knowing. Just for a year or so as we complete this transit, we are thrown into an unfamiliar and uncomfortable place where we MUST listen more deeply to our inner voice, and we begin to realize that we can trust her.

So by the time all the crisp rational thoughts and all the words for all the things come pouring back into our heads, we are ready – we are ready for our rational self to work in partnership with our intuition, probably for the first time.

If we can relax into this process, in trust and calm, our journey to elderhood will be deeply supported by our inner knowing.

xo
Bronwyn