The Messy Middle of Menopause: Rage, Change and a New Season of Womanhood
Rage, the changing body, and finding my way into a new season of womanhood.
I am five years beyond my last menstrual bleed, and I feel more solid in myself than I have at any
other point in my life. That isn't to say everything is easy. My body is still changing, I am still
learning, and there are days when I feel anything but wise, but there is a growing clarity about
who I am, what matters to me and how I want to spend the years ahead.
I couldn't have imagined feeling this way when I was in the thick of menopause. The ‘messy
middle’, as I have come to know it, was quite something. I remember feeling an enormous amount of rage.
My tolerance for things I had previously accepted seemed to disappear almost overnight.
I was irritable, exhausted and questioning so much of my life. There were moments when I barely recognised myself. Underneath the rage, when I began to get curious, there was a great deal more going on. There was sadness, grief, and an uncomfortable recognition of how much of my life I had spent adapting to the needs and expectations of others.
As women, many of us have been conditioned to be accommodating, to keep things together, to care for those around us and to place our own needs near the bottom of the list. I could see how these patterns had shaped me.
By midlife, I was bone tired. I began to wonder whether some of the anger I was experiencing was connected to all the things I had learned to swallow over the years. The boundaries I hadn't held, the compromises I had made, the times I had quietened myself to maintain connection.
It was confronting to recognise how much of this was still living in me. Menopause as an initiation, I have come to understand menopause as one of life's great rites of passage. In our patriarchal society, we tend to approach menopause primarily through a medical lens.
We talk about hormonal decline, symptoms, deficiencies and treatments, often as though a woman's body has begun to malfunction. Of course, hormonal changes are real, and the symptoms can be enormously challenging. I believe women deserve excellent medical care, access to HRT when appropriate, and the freedom to make informed choices about their bodies, but menopause itself is not an illness.
Let me say that again. Menopause is not an illness. It is a transition that every woman who lives long enough will experience, although our individual journeys will differ.
What interests me is how little attention we give to the psychological, emotional and spiritual
dimensions of this passage. We have so few meaningful rituals to mark the movement from our reproductive years into the next chapter of womanhood, so little acknowledgement of what may be changing within us, beyond our hormones. I wonder what might be different if we understood menopause as an initiation. A passage that deserves time, care, recognition and support, rather than something we are expected to manage quietly while carrying on with life as usual.
The five phases of menopause
One of the frameworks I have found helpful for supporting this initiation came from my training with ‘The Red School,’ which describes menopause as an initiation unfolding through five phases. In their book Wise Power, they explore Betrayal, Repair, Revelation, Visioning and Emergence.
These are not medical stages, and they don't necessarily unfold neatly or in the same way for everyone. But they offer a way of understanding the inner journey.
1. Betrayal speaks to the unsettling experience of no longer recognising ourselves. Our bodies
change, familiar coping strategies stop working, and we may feel frustrated or let down by the
very body we inhabit.
2. Repair invites us to attend to what has been neglected. Rest, nourishment, boundaries,
emotional support and the recognition that we cannot continue giving endlessly without
replenishment.
3. Revelation is where we may begin to see ourselves and our lives more clearly. Old patterns
become visible, uncomfortable truths surface, and we start to recognise what we are no longer
willing to carry.
4. Visioning opens the possibility of imagining what comes next. As some of the intensity settles,
we may begin to feel a renewed sense of purpose and curiosity about the woman we are
becoming.
5. Emergence describes the gradual movement into life beyond the transition, bringing with us what we have learned and beginning to inhabit ourselves with greater confidence and authority.
I recognise aspects of all five phases in my own journey, and I appreciate that this framework
makes room for the uncertainty and disruption that can accompany menopause. It reminds me that I don't have to know exactly where I am going while I am still finding my way through.
We need other women, particularly those who have walked this path before us.
There is something deeply reassuring about being alongside a woman who knows this terrain, who remembers the confusion, the exhaustion, the rage and the uncertainty of no longer quite recognising herself. Someone who has made her own way through the messy middle and understands that this passage cannot be rushed, nor does it need to be navigated alone.
Having walked this path myself, I feel a growing devotion to supporting other women through this extraordinary transition. I know how unsettling it can be when the familiar ways of being in the world begin to fall away, and how much it matters to have someone alongside you who can hold space for all that is emerging, without needing to fix it or make sense of it too quickly.
I will offer you a huge permission slip to rest, to rage, to grieve, to question everything you
thought you knew about yourself. To get curious about your changing body, to listen to what it might be asking of you, and to begin making room for the woman you are becoming.
Through somatic work, deep listening and gentle inquiry, we can explore what is happening beneath the surface, what might need tending, and what you are ready to leave behind.
You don't have to arrive with answers, or even know what you need. I will meet you where you are, with all the messiness, tenderness and fire of this passage, and walk alongside you as you find your own way through.
There is so much life on the other side of this threshold, and I would love to support you in
discovering what that might look like for you.
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