Hormone Replacement Therapy for menopause - part 1 of at least 4

I've long been promising an enlightening blog to my readers, providing all the answers to gliding through menopause either with Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) or going native (N) :) ; i.e. sans drugs or supplements.

The research has proved more confusing than the original question. Should a nice mid-life girl use HRT or is it the Great Evil? Here's what I found from consulting doctors and the Internet:

• HRT supplements the body with either estrogen alone or estrogen plus progesterone. A combination of these hormones can greatly ease the symptoms, or even delay, menopause.
• Sources are conflicting as to whether using HRT is the greatest thing since sliced bread or the baby swing for fussy infants.
• Other sources claim that bio-identical hormones (as opposed to synthetic) are the only way to go.
• There is controversy about what type of hormones are beneficial vs. harmful.
• Many doctors continue to prescribe birth control pills for menopausal patients.

Finding myself thoroughly confused by the virtual cornucopia of menopause and mid-life answers, I turned to the real authorities: my bffs (best friends forever plural). I'll present a series of anecdotal evidence as to how my kitchen cabinet of advisors are handling the big "M".

I wanted to protect my bffs anonymity, so I gave them the luxury of choosing their own pseudonyms. Stay tuned for words o' wisdom from Trixie, BoPeep, Belle, Pixie, Ramona, Sandra, Blondie and Victoria.

These wonderful and amazing women are coming from all stages of mid-life. In the immortal words of Bette Davis, "Fasten your seat belts. It's gonna be a bumpy ride."

Stay tuned - please!

Can't Sleep - Haiti on My Mind

My next blog was supposed to be on the use of hormones to stave off or ease into menopause. I will get this written eventually. It is useful and timely information. Do you take hormone replacement therapy - or simply ride into the sunset (my personal choice)? It's a terribly interesting topic. But is vain and superfluous in the wake of the day's events....

What is terribly interesting tonight is the people of Haiti. I am engrossed in the horrorific images coming out of this disastrous earthquake. I am distraught and begging God to save these precious people.  I am going to pray as long as I can tonight before falling asleep. Will you join me?

Mid-life Looks at Old Age

My mother-in-law and I are looking deeply into each other's eyes. I see a woman who has always been good to me, thanked me for loving her son and prayed for me many, many times. She looks at me and sees a total stranger. Alzheimer's has named its next victim and robbed my mother-in-law of her memories. I am angry. I curse the disease and beg her Maker to heal her.

The irony of this heinous disease is that this sweet lady is happier than I've ever seen her. In her prime she was steely, accomplished, melancholy, talented, a perfectionist and known to be critical of loved ones (as are we all on occasion). That woman is gone and in her place is a docile, gentle and totally dependent child. Her soft white-silver hair is no longer dyed, permed and sprayed. She is dressed by kindly nurses and fed by aides, when family is not visiting to perform these tasks. Her face lights up like a three-year-old on Christmas when she sees her son, my husband; the light of her life. But she doesn't know his name. In fact her ability to speak is rapidly vanishing and sentences devolve into repetitive syllables, like an old vinyl record with an eternally skipping needle.

My husband speaks tenderly to her. He makes little nonsensical jokes, then throws his head back and laughs boisterously. She looks at him and decides to laugh too. The laugh has a vacancy that haunts me and causes a tear to slide down my face. She looks at my husband and calls him names of other men; her husband, her daddy, her brother, all long passed away. Sometimes she calls him by his own name. But the sounds of the names are garbled and hard to make out. Nonetheless, she is delighted by his attention and snuggles into his shoulder, clinging to the sound of his voice.

She is 85. I am 49. Where will I be in 36 years? Will my mind or my body betray me? Is it really betrayal, or simply the capitulation of faithful and exhausted faculties? How will my children and their spouses relate to me? Will they remember me as a kind woman who turned hateful? Or a sinner turned saint? Does it matter? I don't think so. I think what matters is now; who I am at mid-life. Someday, I may not be able to control my actions, my thoughts, my words. Right now - today at least - I can be the woman worthy of remembrance. The woman who loved and tried to do the right thing. The woman who desired to be a handmaiden of God.

At this moment in my ruminations, my mother-in-law turns to me with those cloudy eyes. For an instant, the mist lifts and she raises an arthritic finger towards my face. She says with clear gaze and perfect articulation, "You are good."

The fog rolls back over her as quickly as it was briefly lifted. I'm not sure if she knew who she was talking to or what she meant to say. My husband looks at me and smiles. Thank you, dear mother-in-law, for this most precious gift. I am good, and so are you. It is my eyes that are now drowning in mist.

Mid-life Crisis Salvo #3 Compliment Your Beautiful Self

Last week I was videotaping a children's Christmas performance. My camera and tripod were perched atop  a makeshift scaffolding and I was awkwardly straddling a folding chair trying to frame up the stage before the classic nativity pageant started.

"Say cheeze!" I heard a good friend's voice ring out and the next thing I knew, she had snapped my picture.

"Wait a minute," I exclaimed, "let me take a look at that." In the world of digital cameras, you can instantly assess whether the photo is acceptable or if you look like an aging Sumo wrestler in drag. My friend dutifully handed her camera up to me.  "Oh my gosh, that's horrible! Where's your delete button?" I fumbled with the tiny torture device.

"For heaven's sake, girl!" My friend admonished. "How bad can it be?"

"Bad enough, From that angle, I've got more chins than the Chinese phone book and my thighs should have their own zip code.

"Who cares?" she said. "It's cute and you're up there doing your thing for the kids."

"Please," I was begging at this point. "No one needs to be traumatized on Facebook if this pic gets loose. Visual cyber assault is a felony, I think."

My dear friend sighed and dutifully deleted the image for me. Ahhh, relief.

This got me thinking about the entire touchy world of feminine vanity. I know male vanity is potent stuff as well. My husband is, in my eyes (and others, I see ladies checking him out!), the most handsome man I know. He thinks he is ugly. Period. It's so easy for me to tell him he is gorgeous. Why am I so hard on myself?

My friend who took the picture is beautiful. She has glossy brunette hair and exotic eyes. After the whole uncomfortable for-the-love-of-all-that-is-sacred panic moment of trashing the .jpg, she and I had to snicker about why it's so important to me to look a certain way. Good question - why?

As the fat kid who was always picked last for basketball, I think my inner "ugly girl" will forever be lurking. Was I an ugly child? No, I've never seen an ugly child. But I felt hideous. Can't blame it on my parents. They were supportive and heaped love on me.

When I outgrew the baby fat, did I feel pretty? No. How about college? Nada. When I was decked out in 80's chic in the corporate world or hitting a club with some friends? Zilch. Did I like anything about my looks as I entered my forties? Of course not. My main styling talent has always been standing in front of a mirror, finding and detailing my flaws. And I'm not alone.

Most women can, within a nanosecond of reflection, produce a laundry list of their physical flaws. The "if only's" are legion. If only I were thinner, not so skinny, younger, didn't have these bags under my eyes, weren't bottom heavy, top heavy, short, tall, tanner, had better skin - well, you get the picture. Aren't you reading this right now thinking about your own aesthetic shortcomings? If you are, welcome to the majority. If you aren't - congratulations. You're a better woman than I am, Gunga Din.

The challenge to this Salvo is to stand in front of a full-length mirror and forbid yourself to make negative notations. This is a lot harder than it sounds. Your first instinct may be "Thank God this isn't a three-way mirror." The second may be, "So this is what mid-life looks like. Just shoot me." But this isn't what I want you to do. Yes, I'm exhorting myself too.

Pick your three best features. If you're a hard core case and firmly believe you don't have any good features, pick your three least bad. No fair going to the whole "inner beauty" thing; not right now anyway. That's another Salvo. I promise!

Can you look into your own eyes and see chestnut-brown or crystal blue instead of crow's feet? Look at your body and see what your friends or your lover see, not what your hyper-critical scan picks up. Do you have pretty feet? Are your legs shapely and strong? Maybe you are the lucky woman with the long neck or the beautiful arms. Is your smile something that lights up a room? You don't have a big butt, you are blessed with "junk in the trunk."

Why is it important to note your own physical beauty at mid-life crisis? So many things are trying to grab us by the ankle and drag us down during this challenging time. Life does change at mid-life. By appreciating the wondrous creation of your physical persona, you are essentially handing yourself a bouquet of beautiful flowers. Go on, try it.

To finish this blog, I wanted to post a picture of myself where I thought I looked beautiful. What a challenge! You, wise mid-life woman, will probably not be surprised when I tell you that after a long search, I chose a picture where I had no makeup, was dog-tired and in a hideous gown. You guessed it! The birth of my first child. Is that cheating? Was that inner beauty, or just glorious joy? I don't know. What is important is that I perceive it as a great picture. Find your beauty and compliment yourself on it.

Mid-life Crisis Anti-Salvo - Will you sabotage yourself?

What can we mid-life ladies do to absolutely torpedo ourselves? We're feeling old, ugly, fat, and failure. Cinderella exposed as a freaky fake. We all know what our piggy male counterparts do. They take on a mistress or two, become pornography freaks, buy cars and vacation homes that they can't afford. Worse yet, they get hair implants, ear-piercings and/or grow a long gray ponytail.

Lest we enjoin in brother-bashing, let's look at the asinine things we sistahs are capable of:

1. Become botox-nip-and-tuck-wind tunnel- Joan Rivers junkies. My ladies; please don't do this. If you want a small eye job, or if lipo on your hips would bring you joy sublime, save up and go for it. However, you are too old to have cantaloup sized breasts - please don't go there. Caveat to this - if you are cursed with breast cancer, do reconstruct. Just don't go to a DDD when your original lovely girls were a sexy C.
2. Hook up sexually with your high school or college boyfriend. Yes you still love them. You also haven't lived with them for thirty years. Enjoin them in good old fashioned friendship. But don't ruin your marital relationship or his for this. Yes, he's still cute. Yes, he's still sexy. But Girlfriend, how many lives will you ruin and when the "honeymoon" is over - you'll be a Tsunami sized wreck and cut a wide swath of devastation for everyone concerned.
3. Some of my best friends have tattoos. At 49 years of age, they can possible be cute; maybe your man is turned on by a tramp stamp. But what will it look like at age 82? That adorable yellow rose on your buttock will look like an elongated, rotten squash. Visualize this. ew.
4. Get snippy with your man and your children. Sure, you want to run away to Maui or become a bartender in Cancun. Those of a religious turn might want to be a missionary in Nepal. But your calling is in your home front. Yes, it can be a drag. I almost projectile puked doing five loads of laundry late tonight. I wanted to scream obscenities. Get in touch with your inner martyr and promise wonderful you that you can eventually be a classy senior living it up at a resort condo or a cozy log cabin when the kids are gone. Visualize this. Woo-hoo, extra hoo! Caveat here too - if you are a single lady with no kids or empty nest, still practice those random acts of kindness. We all have raging hormones that make us as much fun to be around as a rabid German Shepherd. Relax, exercise, meditate, pray. Whatever can calm you into a placid zen. Laugh baby, laugh till your face hurts.
5. Self-medicate with booze or recreational drugs. Really, this is just as stupid at mid-life as it was in college. Don't do this to your precious body. This is a one-way ticket to true bad-ass ugly.
6. Overdo makeup, clothes, shoes, accessories. Have you seen Rachel Welch lately? The once most beautiful woman in the world is looking pretty awful. Study Sophia Loren if you want class, beauty and sex appeal in your waning years. Ride into the sunset on a white Stallion wearing a beautiful frock. Okay, I admit it. I'm a shoe fetish freak. Economic woes have cured me though.
7. Become a slob, because what good is trying to be attractive when you know you look like you've been drug through the back alley? This is the antithesis to #6. Find that classy in-between. Buy a string of Mikimoto pearls. Wear them weekly, if not daily.

Have I preached at you overmuch? My apologies, dear reader. Do I avoid these pitfalls of mid-life crisis?  I've avoided most of them, but I have my Achilles heel too. Preach back at me. Add to this list. What can we do to become idiots at mid-life and how can we avoid these crimes of self-esteem? We don't want our mid-life brothers laughing at us like we laugh at them!

Love yourself gently, kindly and be that classy broad that turns heads when she strides into the room.

Mid-life Crisis Salvo #2 Spend Quality Time with Yourself

How would you feel about walking into a tony restaurant at 8 p.m., confidently telling the hostess that you are a party of one, ordering a nice Cabernet (or any drink exclusively of your choosing) and leisurely perusing the menu, searching for exactly what you want - not what your kids, husband or anyone else thinks you should order. Not your cup of tea (or glass of red)? I've traveled alone on business for so long, that this actually sounds heavenly to me, just once in awhile. I truly do not want to ditch my loved ones!

But I crave quality time with myself.

Is the dining alone scenario not working for you? Okay, let's try this. Suppose you are blessed to live near a picturesque, quaint, fun or eclectic venue where you'd like to take a day trip, but no one else in your circle is interested in visiting. What do you do? If I know you, my middle aged female friends, my guess is that you put your wants aside and do what makes others happy. Am I right? Or you carefully plan around when a favorite friend can be convinced to go with you, cross your fingers and hope that none of the kids get sick or your spouse has to go out of town on business. Lots of variable to go wrong in this picture.

You now have permission (from me, your fairy Middle Aged Godmother) to carefully "x" out a day on your calendar and declare it "National Your-Name-Here Day." This is a day you set aside once a month, once a quarter or however frequently you can schedule it. Then write down something that you have wanted to do, but responsibilities or lack of companionship have kept you from it. Yes, you need a mental health day. Call in to worked "scared" (afraid you can't make it) and live one day, for your own desires. Is this selfish? Try this question: Is this something you would want your stressed-out best friend to do for herself? The answer is probably a hearty "YES!" I'm just asking you, for one day, to be your own best friend. If you're snickering, you can stop now :) .

So many of my mid-life crisis girlfriends don't even want to go to the bathroom in a restaurant by themselves, let alone daytrip or - gasp - dare I say it - an overnight excursion! Am I suggesting that you eschew your friends and loved ones to mope around like a hermit wannabe? Far from it! If you are uncomfortable with having fun on your own, I challenge you to find out why. Is it a simple dislike of being alone? Are you afraid to venture out unaccompanied? If so, who am I to say these are not valid reasons. Take baby steps. Maybe a pedicure, or a massage, or a solitary stroll in a beautiful park. You may be surprised at how much you've missed engaging yourself in pleasant solitude. I promise you will think new and possibly great thoughts, and perhaps even love your own company. Go ahead, it's okay.

I tried this the other day. I went to the mountains by myself. I stopped where I wanted to stop. Listened to my music (this is huge for me). Drove as fast or slow as I cared to. Hiked a steep one-mile trail. Ate a gourmand lunch without hearing a chorus of "ewww's" from the finicky eaters in my family. Stood and stared at the wonder of God's handiwork for as long or as little as I wished. Stopped at a family winery that looked like a magnificent Italian villa and had not a qualm about enjoying my own private tasting. Poked around to my heart's content in a 100+ year old General Store, replete with sweet old hound dog (see picture).

Did I feel selfish, spending a whole day on being, well, selfish? I'd like to give an unqualified "NO," that I lolled in narcissistic glee, but the truth is, I had to beat down the feeling of being a heedless hedonist several times. Crazy, huh? Despite my cognitive dissonance, I did love my day with me. I looked at things through my own eyes, heard through my personal aural screen, and hit on all five of my senses. Understood a little bit more of who Catalyticverbage is. Please reference Mid-life Salvo #1 "Get Reacquainted With Yourself."

To make a new friend or to get to know an old friend better, you must abide for a time together, right? Time spent alone is very different from time spent in loneliness. This is the essence of "quality." To pass the test for Salvo #2, you must define what quality time is for you, then go out and make it happen. It takes effort! Child-care, make up time at work and home, assuring your husband that you aren't off to meet your 26 year old fling, and the dozens of other preparations most middle age women must make to get a day to themselves. But it's worth it ladies and gentlemen. I promise.

I came home a more relaxed, attentive, and kind mother, wife/lover, daughter, care-giver, worker and volunteer. All those Post-it notes that I wear daily, attached by others throughout my life are a little bit lighter. I can see more of me through them when I look into the mirror of my psyche. I believe I even dropped a few unnecessary labels as I contemplated, in undisturbed silence, the glory of afternoon sunshine on a distant mountain vista.

Let me know about your adventure with you!
..

Mid-life Crisis Salvo #1 Get Reacquainted with Yourself

"Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world." -Miquel de Cervantes

Who are you at your mid-life crisis? Maybe part of tracking down the answer  involves knowing who you were and the journey that led you to who you are. Sorry to go all "Alice in Wonderland" on you, but this is where I am right now.

For the past forty-five years, my identity has been defined by others. Those of you who read this blog can do the math and figure that up until age four I  defined my identity with all the joyful narcissism of a toddler. That phase came to a shrieking end for most of us. We started to learn rules. Our parents, siblings, teachers, caregivers, and friends all started sticking labels on us like reams of multi-colored Post-It notes.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, this time I've researched my blog. I'm all balled up in the Freudian psycho-sexual developmental scheme as well as Erik Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial crisis. Help me! I'm in over my head, but it's actually making sense. Would someone please just slap me? I'll be brief out of respect for you, my reader.

Other than being a Myers-Briggs devotee, I'm not interested in basing my blog on the scholarly dissertations of exactly how my life has gone down the toilet. Apparently, I'm stuck between actively developing as a person, then BAM! Mid-life and old age are only given a cursory scan in the professorial  world. I don't think that is a satisfying answer. I'd like to dissect mid-life much as I dissected a frog in the seventh grade; carefully skinning, probing, and really looking hard to see the nuances in anatomy. I want to understand the mid-life crisis subtleties.

If my life has been defined by others, at least I have been given the gift of realizing it. I'll have to use Christianity as a touchstone at this point. I am made in the image of God. That should be more than sufficient for me. But "as God is my witness" (ripping from Alice to Scarlett, my apologies gentle reader), I think God is nudging me to introspection, and perhaps that is key to understanding mid-life crisis.

Let's parse from the scholarly to the reality. I am not who I was in my teens, twenties or thirties. Even the forties, in which I still have my pinky toe, are getting a little "iffy." I need to get to know myself. I want to treat my psyche as a new friend, one who I am anxious to know and love. I want to tenderly strip those layers of who I am "supposed" to be and find out who is really in this body.

Does this make sense to you?

My nature is to approach finding out my mid-life identity as a project with a definite beginning, middle and end. Since I'm trying to shatter convention, maybe I'll just ask myself questions - sort of like a blind first date with myself. What do I enjoy doing? Do I have hobbies? Am I a happy person? Where do I see myself five or ten years from now? Am I conservative or liberal? Chocolate or vanilla?

I just scared myself asking these mid-life self-centered questions. Maybe mid-life crisis is the brass ring for a one time chance to revisit the freedom of my toddler years. Can I do that without hurting anyone? What if I don't like "me" when I find out who I am? What if all my fears are confirmed and I really am a putz?

Time to man up and ask the questions. I want to approach getting to know my mid-life self with the giddiness of that new date, ringing the doorbell of what may turn out to be a great relationship. I'm still a wife/lover, mother, worker and care-giver (don't want to fill up the page with labels - you can do that for your own life). I want to know who I am. Right now at age forty-nine. It's going to take some time.

Would you like to find out who you are at mid-life? I firmly believe this is step number one.

I'm in. Let the exploration begin. Check your wimpiness at the door.