The Waning Moon

Menopause and Beyond An excerpt from The Moon in Your Life, by Donna Cunningham. Published 1996 by Samuel Weiser, Inc., York Beach, ME. and reprinted with permission. The Moon, in astrology, shows how women meet the major shifts in their reproductive life cycle. Many women regard the so-called "change of life" with a combination of dread, shame, and fear of losing their femininity. One key to understanding menopause is that it is a major lunar threshold, a time when the lunar body functions and lunar roles are undergoing profound shifts. (Other sharply distinct lunar thresholds include puberty and the birth of the first child.) Because of major changes in the lunar areas of life over this century, each such threshold is a potential crisis when much can go wrong unless there is support for the woman undergoing it. As the traditional supports are increasingly eroded, there is need for conscious work on developing new and appropriate supports and coping mechanisms. This is especially true of the menopause, because of its sometimes intense physical and emotional changes. Third Quarter Moon--The Menopausal Years Because the Moon is so connected to womanhood, it strikes me that the phases of the Moon, as delineated by Dane Rhudyar in The Lunation Cycle, are a metaphor for the various phases of a woman's life. (Aurora Press, 1986) He described the First Quarter Moon as the Crisis of Action, in which people experience conflict between the solar and lunar aspects of their being, but act it out upon their environment. This is similar to the menarche, in which the young girl first experiences herself as a woman and experiments with femininity while adjusting to her new role. The Full Moon is analogous to the thirties, the fullness of womanhood, when the mature female is most fully and publicly recognized for either the traditional female roles or as a career woman--or both. The Third Quarter would represent the menopausal years. Rhudyar called this quarter the Crisis of Consciousness. The conflicts between the solar and lunar aspects of the personality are no less keenly felt than in the First Quarter square. However, they are internalized rather than externalized, the emotions turned inward and often intensely turbulent. While the teen looks to the world outside herself for validation of her femininity, the menopausal woman must all too often draw on her inner strengths and find validation of her femininity inside. In other respects, the two phases are similar. Both the adolescent girl and the menopausal woman are plagued by mysterious physical and emotional changes over which they have little control. They often feel at the mercy of their bodies, embarrassed by external manifestations, which they imagine everyone around them must be as aware of as they are. They are at a point of questioning what it means to be a woman and to fit into the roles society has assigned. Given the similarities, you would think they would feel a natural affinity for one another's struggles. Too often, however, they are at odds and likely to view one another as competitors or adversaries. There are, of course, fundamental differences, particularly physiologically, in that the teen is just beginning her reproductive cycle, while the menopausal woman is finishing hers. There is also a potential difference in the economy of solar versus lunar direction of energy. In the teen to young adult years, if the more traditional roles are viewed as desirable and a priority, the solar side (self-development, self- expression) often subjugates itself to the lunar roles from here through the Third Quarter. For the menopausal woman, caretaker (lunar) roles typically are no longer so needed, and solar tasks can again come to the forefront. The adjustments to their roles are therefore opposite, just as the two lunar phases are 180 degrees apart. The Dark of the Moon, to which Rudhyar attributes visionary and prophetic qualities, is like the Wise Woman phase past menopause, in which wisdom and experience give older women much to offer the world, if it would but listen. It has become fashionable--on the cusp of politically correct--for fifty- something feminists to refer to themselves as crones. Because the word is uncomfortable, no doubt due to ageist conditioning, I would never, ever call myself that! (Perhaps I shouldn't say never. A walk-in might take over my body and I would eat tofu and call myself a crone. That's how you would know it wasn't me anymore.) The Invisible Rite of Passage, or, "I am NOT Menopausal--I'm Just Stressed Out!" After reading about the menopause and getting to know the myriad of signs, I began to encounter clients and friends who were in denial that it was happening. One friend who was having hot flashes decided she had some sort of weird illness, probably terminal, that was bringing on what she called her "fevers." Like any new body of knowledge or healing technique an astrologer acquires, the more educated I became about this phase of life, the more clients came who needed the information. Women in their late forties to early fifties who came for readings and who were having major transits to the Moon typically believed they were going crazy. Although relieved to discover they were sane, they were not necessary delighted at the possibility that they were menopausal. Especially when women are isolated from older women and extended family ties due to geographic mobility, it is all too easy to deny that menopause has begun. ("Nonsense! I still have my period every month!") We seldom recognize that years of hormonal shifts precede the actual event of menopause (literally, the end of the menses). These gradual changes can create emotional ups and downs, a dicey temperature regulator that can result in both chills and excessive heat, problems in concentration and memory, and a large variety of other odd symptoms. The last period itself is often the midpoint in as much as a decade of physiological changes--it's not over 'til it's over. Our ignorance is changing, as there is now a rash of books about the menopause. The same feminists who led us as we burned our bras in the Sixties--articulate thinkers like Erica Jong, Gloria Steinem, Kate Millet, and Germaine Greer--are now leading us into a liberated, non-establishment menopause as well. They are in their fifties, hitting that menopausal wall, and climbing over it into cronehood, writing books that let us share their wisdom and process of self-discovery for the later years. More women are letting go of their shame and secrecy about this condition, discussing their symptoms openly. As that self- obsessed Pluto in Leo crowd, the Baby Boomers, start into theirs, we'll be hearing all about their hot flashes and their black blood clots, just as we were successively forced to sit through their psychoanalysis, their dreams, their spiritual initiation, their dysfunctional family backgrounds, and their recovery. When the Yuppies just below that enter the change, it may even become trendy, albeit high tech. There'll be menopause rooms on the Internet where we can kvetch to our heart's content in blessed anonymity about night sweats and even, in this tell-all age, vaginal dryness. NOTE: The Moon in Your Life contains many tools for balancing the lunar parts of our nature, including a summary of natural remedies for the menopause.